Crooked Letters
May 15, 2007The Winterbeard has now been laid to rest.
Please visit www.crookedletters.com
Thanks.
The Scent of Death.
May 5, 2007The winterbeard is dead. A new site will be launching in a minute. Watch this space.
mono. a lot of sitting- all the more time to concentrate on the never-ending pain.
April 2, 2007i have mono. it sucks. allow me to illustrate by giving you a rundown of my day.
Wake up at 4:00 am. The nyquil has worn off.
Finally get out of bed at 8:00. Stare at the kitchen counter untill you think it’s late enough to start taking drugs (appr. an hour and a half).
Begin the drug regiment that will feebly try to mask the pain a doctor has recently described as “the wrath of God”.Take a half hour to painfully eat a bowl of ice cream so the drugs (a cocktail of prednisone and T3’s) won’t make you puke.
Watch ‘Little Miss Sunshine”. Cry for the fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh times in the last two days. including one shift-ending episode at work last night.
Catch the climax and resolution of ‘The Bodyguard’ on TBS.
Watch 3 Seinfeld episodes on TVtropolis.
Watch an indeterminable amount of “Search for the Next Pussycat Doll”. Cry some more.
Take more drugs.
Choke down half a bowl of Mr. Noodles.
Watch “Taxi Driver”, taking the time to rewind and rewatch the final scene about five times in slow motion because I thought I saw something in a rear view mirror (which I did, check it out.).
Watch two periods of a hockey game.
Watch part of “Drumcore” on TBS.
Watch “The Client” (a terrible movie adaptation of a John Grisham novel made bearable only by the incomparable hotness of a 48 year old Susan Sarandon. May I dream of her tonight.)
Begin watching a Germany vs. Korea curling game (yes, Korea has a curling team. These are things you learn when you have mono.). Decide it is late enough to chug some Nyquil.
Write cryptic post while waiting for the Nyquil to kick in.
Repeat for anywhere between four weeks and a year.
see you on the flipside.
Sing-a-long! Updates are Fun!
March 28, 2007We lost track of our Manchester connection, Roch. The last we heard he was drowning in a sea of New Era hats clutching to his favorite over sized, blank white t-shirts, trying to cop some Lady Sovereign B-sides. True story. All of it.
Two weeks ago, we had our first ever Winterbeard “sitdown”. Meaning all three of us talked to each other at the same time via Skype. It was glorious. A full site redesign was decided upon, so we are currently in the midst of that. Nathan O’Coolerhan. Blogger. Designer. Pastry Chef. Has come to aide the ‘beard in making a new site happen. If you need some web development done for your own project, check out Nathans work. He also takes some slick photo’s
Graeme and I are also seeing our respective hockey seasons coming to a close, so expect to see a huge spike in posts on Fridays (between 8-10pm) and Sundays (between 9-10pm)
We have a short film in production, that will be done 100 years from now. We are also busy hand-making some hardcover volumes comprised of classic Winterbeard material + brand new, never before seen, work. As much as we love this digital media, our hearts bleed books. Actually, they bleed blood. We are human just like you… It’s just, we like books. We have a Mid-May deadline for those, so expect them in October.
I have reading this small collection of short stories by Ernest Hemingway (Men without Women) that I dug out of a forgotton box of books. They are so wonderfully succinct. Being inspired as I was, I had plans to sit down and hammer out some short vignettes, based on an idea I have been kicking around for a while. However, when I sat down to write, I noticed there was a box of cookies on the desk beside me. We hardly ever have cookies in the house.. let alone these big, soft, massive chocolate chip, store-bought-variety cookies.. So I ate seven of them. After that I just watched television.
As it Happens…
March 15, 2007This may break with strict winterbeard protocol, however, I think it’s a fun story worth sharing.
This is our dog. Know that she hardly ever barks. Therefore, if you do happen to hear her bark, action is going down, somewhere, someplace.
Peace like a River
March 12, 2007Sometimes hymns just catch me off-guard. This one, however, has been a constant favourite for some time.
When peace, like a river, attendeth my way,
when sorrows like sea billows roll;
whatever my lot, thou hast taught me to say,
It is well, it is well with my soul.
It is well with my soul,it is well, it is well with my soul.
Though Satan should buffet, though trials should come,
let this blest assurance control,
that Christ has regarded my helpless estate,
and hath shed his own blood for my soul.
It is well with my soul,it is well, it is well with my soul.
My sin, oh, the bliss of this glorious thought!
My sin, not in part but the whole,
is nailed to the cross, and I bear it no more,
praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul!
It is well with my soul,it is well, it is well with my soul.
And, Lord, haste the day when my faith shall be sight,
the clouds be rolled back as a scroll;
the trump shall resound, and the Lord shall descend,
even so, it is well with my soul.
It is well with my soul,it is well, it is well with my soul.
Apparently, this hymn was written by a man who had just lost his entire family to an accident at sea. Adds a little to the impact of it i think.
Notes From a Road Trip
March 7, 2007I have had difficulty writing lately (for more information on this, see ‘Bad Poetry’ post below) One thing I have found that helps get me out of a rut… and by rut I mean the deep rut of laziness/procrastination, not the rut of writers block - I have ideas, I merely lack the motivation to write any of them down.
Anyway. One thing I like to do is revisit old notebooks or .doc files, looking at old stuff I wrote or thought about in the past and rework some of those ideas… or at least having a good chuckle over some forgotten scribblings. Last night I came across an old notebook filled with a bunch of writing I did during a cross Canada road trip Melody and I embarked on 2 summers ago. I have decided to share some of that with you.
Random Notes
When you hear news that big, it’s like you didn’t hear anything at all. Not unlike a co-worker sticking her head over your cubicle wall to tell you the office server has gone down again. Sometimes it is just sounds, no words or voices. Just vibrations, energy transmitted as a longitudinal wave. And you live in this moment.
What kind of conversation do you have in the car on the way home from the doctor’s office, after your life has been given an expiration date? Do you talk about the price of gas or oil changes? Do you notice street signs, shops, or other randomness along the way, or do you talk about it? I don’t know what I am to say, driving in this car.
Observations on a Ferry.
- Making out on the deck of a Ferry Boat never gets old
- If you are doing Yoga while smoking a cigarette, you are not that committed.
Roadside Signs in Northern Michigan.
- Guns! Guns! Exit 112
- Kids Day! Fossion Gun Club
- Fireworks Warehouse: Trust us, it’s the GOOD STUFF
- Big Knob State Forest
On The Radio
- Coming up next, Mariah Carey with the HOTTEST JAM of 2005
- I also wrote down the lyrics to Ronnie James Dio’s classic song, Holy Diver. Google that, they are awesome.
- One morning show host managed to say derogatory things about the French, Jewish, German, Gay and Lesbian communities respectively, in one foul swoop. (I failed to write down the specifics, but at the time I was completely shocked)
- An ad for a store in which they advertised selling the following things in this exact order: Body Piercing Jewellery, Female Sex Toys, XXX DVD’s, Martial Arts Supplies, Knives, Swords, Numchucks, Ninja Stars, Stun Guns, Tear Gas, and Bulletproof Vests. True Story.
Bad Poetry
March 7, 2007Graeme and I were sitting around today sifting through some writing exercises found at language is a virus… One exercise prompted us to write the worst poem possible. Giving each other 4 minutes, this is what we came up with:
Reigning Heart By Graeme Kennedy
The rain is the same color as the sad man’s heart
It beats against the ground
like his hand against his broken chest
and fills the lakes and rivers like pools of heartache
and he is drowning.
Drowning.
Drowned.
Soil. Birds. Air. By David Blondel
The night sky fell
Smoke glossed over the moon
Birds flailed to the air
Love hung in trees
Whilst sand sifted glass
Hour after hour
Dust after dust
Flowers into flowers.
Soil. Birds. Air.
Smoke glossed over the moon
My heart sank. And raced.
In the falling of the night sky.
Looks like rain
March 5, 2007She’d been on the porch since seven. She’d come out with her cup of coffee and a glass of ice water to sit on the loveseat and wait for rain. The porch was deep and covered so she wouldn’t get wet, unless the wind was blowing in hard from the east. Today there was no wind. The air sat like a fat beast, sweating in its sleep. It was so hot it felt like the air was melting. It wrapped like cellophane around her face and then dripped slowly down her neck, stopping briefly at her collarbone before creeping down between her breasts and soaking into her shirt. In a way the rain had already begun. There were drops all over her chest and brow, and her glass of water was nearly as wet on the outside as it was inside. But not a drop had fallen from the sky.
It was hours later when she was jerked from a thought by a sudden breeze. It came down the porch like water through a hose, ran over her wet skin and poured out the other side. There was coolness in the breeze. It was as if the wall of heat had cracked and this little breath of cool air that waited on the other side, had managed to sneak through before the wall closed again. Just then she saw Paul, her mailman, coming down the street. Was it noon already? She couldn’t have been sitting there for that long. She watched him go to a few houses, drawing quickly nearer to hers. As he came closer she could see his hair pasted to his forehead, his shirt sticking to his chest. He came up her walkway.
“Morning Ms. Fisch.” He said as he came up the steps.
“Paul, my goodness you’re soaked. Did you run through a sprinkler or something?”
He smiled.
“No. It’s just pouring over on Donegal.” He said as he looked back down the street. “Raining at one house, dry at the next. Weirdest thing.”
She leaned over to see if she could see it coming down.
“Might be done by now, who knows. But it just opened right up. Course I had to be doing that street when it did. Isn’t that just the way it goes.” He was fishing through his bag for her mail. Another breeze came rolling through the porch. Paul shivered as it ran over his wet shirt.
“Seems to have done the trick anyway, it’s breaking up that heat thank God. There you go.” He handed her three envelopes which she stuck in the crack of the cushion beside her.
“I just can’t believe that’s it.” She said. “I was hoping to see a good storm.”
“Well, who knows, could be one yet.”
“I suppose.”
“Well storm or no storm, have a nice day.”
“Thanks Paul, you too.”
He turned and walked down the steps. She watched him walk until he went behind the Burnett’s hedge. She grabbed her glass of water and her empty coffee mug and went inside.
