Screenplaying

  Writing a screenplay is easily the hardest thing I've ever done as far as literary endeavours go. Formatting it is a pain, and trying to transcribe my mind's eye into something a camera can see is a constant effort for me. But I guess that's not too much of a problem considering I'm really excited as to what the outcome will be. Yes, ladies and gentlemen: I have yet another project in the works! This time it's a comedic short film - around 30 minutes in runtime - titled "Flatlands: The Story of Rico Winters". It will follow the fall and rise (which is totally better than a rise and fall) of beatboxing legend Rico Winters, from his brief stint touring the world with multi-platinum rapper G-Wizzly (jointly voted d-bag of the century by Rolling Stone and the BBC) in the '90s to his washing-up in Edmonton 14 years later.
  I really don't want to give out too many details, as the script is still under construction and could change (more importantly, I don't want to ruin it for you). But I'm hoping to have it finished by the middle of this week and to start filming a week from now. This is a huge rush project as I'm trying to finish for the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards, the deadline of which is January 4th.
  While that may seem like a tight deadline, I'm confident I can get a quality film out by that time. By the end of this week, I should be finishing the casting. In other words, I'm hitting this thing head-on. It'll be great, I promise.
  If you want a taste of what the script will be like, check out my other comedic writing: Love Hurts and Some People Can't See The Future.
  I'll keep you all updated as this baby moves forward. For it will, oh yes it will. Because that's what babies do. They move. Forward.

Feo.

Wonder

Wonder

In bed I stare at slatted wood blinds

That let autumn moonlight in,

Slicing at it, making shapes like spines.

Hey Psyché, come for a spin.

I stare and wonder what went wrong,

I stare and wonder what went right.

And as upon creeps dream-song:

Is there a difference in moonlight?

September 2012

Feo.

Streams of Consciousness

  It rained hard this night. And that means quite a bit coming from me; I live in a Canadian city where the summer is fractured by raging thunderstorms that shake windows and illuminate the skies for hours. But it rained hard tonight, here on the border between France and Italy, and it was unlike anything I'd ever seen before. At home, the thunder booms. Here, it sounded more as though some great whip was being flung at the sea below. It crashes here.

  Or maybe that was something that wasn't typical, something special. Neil Armstrong passed away today. Maybe that was the Earth weeping his inevitable fate, the fate of all life that finds itself on this blue expanse we call home. Weeping that the first man who stepped on what is quite probably a piece of the Earth itself had to go further than any other astronaut can. Maybe our planet weeped because we, that life that had taken so long to bloom, had reached its ancient sister, and so had finally bridged a gap of sorts. And now this bridge was collapsing once again.

  I remember that when I was younger I didn't believe in the moon landing. I was completely convinced it was a grand performance staged by a desperate government. I held this belief for a long, long time. I guess I'm still not fully convinced in its happening. I don't think we "normal" people will ever know if it truly happened, not until we set foot on the Moon and see for ourselves the footprints left behind so many years ago. There's no atmosphere on the Moon, and so no wind to sweep those footsteps away. 

  But I have faith that it happened, because if it did, there are only good things to say.

  I wonder where astronauts go when they die? Maybe Neil Armstrong is on his way to a second Moon, one that none in the realm of the living have ever seen. A moon that is kept hidden by our ignorance of the inner (or perhaps outer) machinations of the Universe. I'd expect that that moon has a fresh gelato stand, because even astronauts get sick of freeze-dried ice cream. Maybe they each get a little space station to live in.

  Am I religious? I would say yes. I would say I'm a Christian by definition. I believe in God and in Jesus, and that Jesus is, in fact, the son of God. Although I'm confused as to who the true mother is here. But I also believe that the Sea has a consciousness all its own, and that if you mock it, it will answer accordingly. The lightening that tonight brought sharp blue arcs crashing into the coastal mountains seemed alive. It seemed to be making its own decisions, haphazard as they may have appeared. I also believe that praying for forgiveness will not cleanse you of your sins. Bringing something good to your fellow humans cleanses you of your sins.

  I don't believe in Hell, and I don't believe in the "cloud city" image of Heaven. I prefer to believe that when we move on, we live in peace with the Earth. We are free to roam it in whatever way we see fit, under the condition that we act as guardians towards our loved ones still in the realm of the living. I hope to watch over the people I love when I pass away, to protect them when they truly need protection.

  So I guess I have my own modified version of Christianity. But I am immensely happy to have faith in it. Faith is a shoulder to rest on.

  I don't know what love is. That's what she told me. That we are too young to know what love is. But how do you know when you know what love is? How can we separate the lies of our mind from the truth of our heart? 

  But then again, I don't believe in loving someone without being loved in return. What is the point of spilling everything we can find in our soul if there is no one to appreciate it? I believe in the possibility of convincing someone to love you. However, I was not able to do that. I say 'love' because I am a romantic. 

  I guess I'm over it. But I miss our conversations, the ones that would sometimes go on for hours. It hurts because those conversations don't happen anymore. I don't have conversations like that anymore.

  It ended because it didn't start, but before it ended (or started), I wrote differently. I wrote like the rain that crashed tonight. I wrote the sea, the sky, the mountains, the men, the women, the children, the eyes, the orange sunsets, the veterans, the snow, the lovers, the donkeys, the mattresses. I wrote because I needed to, not because I wanted to. My infatuation leads to sublimation which leads to creation.

  After it ended because it didn't start, I decided to write a story about Cupid shooting people with a sniper rifle. Absolutely no connection, I swear.

  That's what the rain made me think about. It made me question my beliefs and rest in them. It made me look at the past year of my life and remember how sublime sublimation is; how wonderful it is to create without wanting to. It made me realize I'm missing something right now, but I'll find it eventually.

  You can believe what you want, but I want you to look hard in yourself and tell me that the rain has no soul.

  

Siberia: Red Rain

Episode One: Red Rain

  On February 25, 1956, First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Nikita Khrushchev made a speech that would be recorded as one of the most pivotal in the history of the Soviet Union. This event became known as the "Secret Speech". 

  It was the last day of the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, held to review the outcomes of the fifth five-year plan, and a private, unscheduled session for Soviet delegates was announced that morning. There, Khrushchev would denounce the personality cult and dictatorship of Joseph Stalin, and would call upon the Party to eradicate that cult of personality, the elevation of Stalin to such heights that he took on the supernatural characteristics of a god.

  The term "Secret Speech", however, was a misnomer. The following night, Eastern European delegates were allowed to hear the speech, slowed down to let them take notes. Copies of the speech were mailed throughout the Soviet Union, marked "not for press" rather than "top secret". Soon, they were read at meetings of the Komsomol, the youth division of the Communist Party. Within a month, an official translation appeared in Poland, where 12,000 additional copies were printed. One of these reached the west, and so the entire world knew of the speech before Spring had even fully bloomed, quite possibly much to the pleasure of Khrushchev.

  That day marked the beginning of a new era in the Soviet Union. Slowly but surely, censorship on the arts eased, leading to some of the Soviet Union's greatest artists emerging and creating art and literature that would be acknowledged the world over. 

  Soviet citizens were allowed to travel more than ever before, with 700,000 travelling abroad in 1957 alone. Khrushchev believed the Soviet Union could match and exceed the West's standards of living, and so was not afraid to let Soviets see Western achievements. Foreigners were allowed through the Iron Curtain, the true scope of which was seen when Khrushchev authorized the 6th World Festival of Youth and Students to be held in Moscow. Over 30,000 young foreign visitors attended, which served to shatter both Soviet and Western stereotypes.

  But arguably the hugest achievement of this 'Soviet Renaissance" was the rise of the Soviet space program. The first man-made object sent into orbit, Sputnik-1, launched in 1957. Soon after, Yuri Gagarin became the first man to fly into space in 1961, and Valentina Tereshkova the first woman in 1963. The space program continued to make firsts as the Soviet people reached out and prepared to touch the stars. A future where space-travel would be as common as a trip on a plane no longer seemed so far off. 

  And so the defining words of this era, a bright future, seemed truer than ever. The first generation of Soviets who had never seen the horrors of the Second World War had grown up and were ready to create this future, to build a new country. The windows of enlightenment had been opened, and anything seemed possible.

  January 1964

  Bratsk, a relatively large town in mid-Siberia, began a steep increase in both population and size during World War 2, when Soviet industry had been moved east of the Ural Mountains on account of an advancing German army. Although this increase in development slowed after the War's end, when resources were needed to rebuild European Russia, Bratsk was finally put on the map when a 4500-megawatt power plant was built there between 1954 and 1966. It received town status in 1954.

  Because of Bratsk's central location, it served as a favorable place to build military bases around. Although the area's major airfield and civilian airport, the aptly named Bratsk Airport, was built in 1977, many small bases already surrounded the town prior to the airport's arrival. Little more than outposts, these bases were equipped modestly because while the location was central, it was far from any borders or significant population centers. As was standard in the Soviet Military, the bases received the name of the largest nearby village, town, or city, and a number. One of these outposts was Bratsk-3. Located almost 200 kilometres northeast of Bratsk, it was the furthest of the Bratsk bases. The oupost closest to it was Bratsk-1, about 120 kilometres southwest. The small team occupying Bratsk-3 received the quiet (which happens to be a common synonym of 'boring') position for a reason: they were not the best of the best in any sense of the phrase. They were all deemed unfit for positions anywhere else, which stemmed from anything such as physical incompetence to an inability to retain any basic skills learned in training. However, the six occupants of Bratsk-3 wanted to be in the army for various reasons, and so did their jobs as best they could. Led by starshina Igor Bogdanov (a position that ranked slightly higher than a common soldier), the team essentially did three things: scanned the surrounding airspace, cut down firewood for additional heat, and occasionally shot a deer because canned food is boring (which is, in this case, not a synonym of quiet). 

  The other inhabitants of Bratsk-3 were two common soldiers, Kostya Sapozhnik and Maksim Glinka, a medic, Ilya Nikitsky, and two radio operators, Alexander Semenovich and Eva Anikina, the only woman. While one might have expected a considerable amount of sexism towards Eva, and although she did receive her fair share when the six were first brought to Bratsk-3, the others eventually treated her as an equal because any sort of conflict in an isolated place like a tiny clearing in the infinite forest they were based in could lead only to bad things (case in point: Eva physically assaulted and forced Kostya to sleep outside on a cold early-April night following an unappreciated crotch-grab a day after their arrival, much to the amusement of the others. It was at this point that Alexander fell into what he decided must probably be love. Ironically, and unfortunately for Alexander, she was the only one at Bratsk-3 who did not realize this). She was quite beautiful, but the lesson taught to Kostya stayed with the rest of the base, meaning that any advancements the men may have had in mind were dissolved quite early on. That, and Alexander was too shy to make any advancements. She translated thoughts into words quickly and perfectly, making her an excellent radio operator, and excellent at winning any argument at Bratsk-3, even if it had nothing to do with her.

  Kostya Sapozhnik was everything you could ever want in an incompetent soldier: lazy, a joker, endowed with a painfully average intelligence, but endlessly kind-hearted. The skinny, blond-haired, blue-eyed bungle's 'tough-guy' routine had yet to fool anyone. He and Maksim were the ones who usually hunted for deer, having nothing better to do. They were occasionally joined by Ilya Nikitsky.

  Maksim Glinka was actually Kostya's best friend since childhood. Although he was quite a bit smarter than Kostya (and indeed, most people he'd met in his life), he loved Kostya like a brother. When Maksim realized that his friend was to be shipped off into the forests of Siberia, he pulled some strings, which is another way of saying that he "accidentally" pushed the Polkovnik of his and Kostya's training camp into a septic tank. His fate was sealed then and there.

  Ilya Nikitsky was a quiet, soft-spoken man, and an excellent medic. But he had a strong limp in his left leg that meant his speed was greatly inferior to his colleagues. And because a medic must be able to undergo the same basic training as a soldier, his limp quickly sent him to the bottom of the class, and to Bratsk-3.

  Alexander Semenovich was born, so to speak, with a passion for electronics. And plants. He became a radio operator in the army because of this love of everything that had a current flowing through it. He also happened to be the only person at Bratsk-3 who was there voluntarily. Being a child of rural upbringing, he told his supervisors he wanted to be placed somewhere far from the city. So they did. He kept a small vegetable garden in the base, where he cultivated the greens that complimented quite well an occasional meal of fresh deer.

  Starshina Igor Bogdanov was like the aging patriarch to the family that was Bratsk-3, in that his children were smarter and better than he in most respects. But although he was still young, a forty-something, he had amassed more wisdom than anyone else at the outpost, probably because of his duty in the War. He was the only one at the base who had ever seen people killed. He fought almost from day one to Berlin, a stubborn survivor, and returned home to Leningrad a decorated veteran. But like Ilya, he had an injury that made his career as a fighter come to an end. A splash of shrapnel covered his right hand, his shooting hand, in scars and made it virtually useless for battle. He could hardly make a fist without extreme pain, let alone pull the trigger on a gun. His dreams of rising higher than his wartime position of starshina died away. He couldn't lead soldiers if he couldn't fight with them.

  But he refused to leave the Army, and by pulling some strings (this, in fact, did not involve "accidentally" pushing a superior into a septic tank), managed to receive a position at a tiny outpost somewhere in Siberia. And here we was.

  There were no antagonists at Bratsk-3. And in the end there were no protagonists.

  Bratsk-3 brought in the New Year of 1964 as they had done the past two years. They made each other the gifts that they could, considering their modest resources. Kostya and Maksim made a rabbit and elk dinner, with Alexander supplying the first harvest of a plant he had only recently planted: peas. Ilya wrote a long speech in the form of a poem, describing the friendship he had built over the past two years with the rest of Bratsk-3. When it brought Kostya to tears, he said it was caused by the onions he was cutting earlier. There were no onions for dinner that night.

  Together, Igor and Eva managed to have the delivery truck driver, who drove in supplies every two months, bring some fireworks. 

  They stood together in the freezing cold and watched red sparks rain from the black night. They drank a toast to a bright future. The last year stepped aside, and 1964 began with a cherry downpour.

  There are really only two phases to life: the calm, and the storm. When someone basks in joy for too long, life simply balances it out.

  Life brings a storm.

Feo P-S

Tomorrow

Episode Two: Transmission Received

Huge New Project: Siberia!

  

Siberia: What is it?

  People, I have a new project I'd love to share with you, but I need your help.
  Siberia is a literary miniseries of 'strange' fiction that details the crash of a strange object in the Siberian tundra, and the events surrounding it. The miniseries will be released in four blocks, each consisting of five episodes, starting in a week's time on Monday the 16th. I'm really excited about this project because of the way each episode will be presented: as a completely seperate angle of a story. Simply put, each episode will be told from the perspective of a different source, a bystander in one, radio transcripts in another, and so on. As far as I can tell, the format I've made for this writing has not really been done before, so this is a magical mystery journey we can all embark on together. While the length of each episodic story will vary, it'll probably stay within the realms of flash fiction, pleasantly short.
  What does this mean for you, and where exactly do you come in? In answer to the first question, this is some great unpublished summer reading that you can probably do in under fifteen minutes, every day of the working week. Bored at work? Lunch break? Constipation? It's time for Siberia. Fifteen minutes of information transfer from my mind to yours? Sounds cool.
  Now to the question of your help: I need two things from each and every one of you. Firstly, enjoy this thing! I don't want to write into thin air, and would love to hear your opinions by way of comments. Thought the last episode sucked? Tell me why so I can fix stuff in the next block. And so I know how each episode is doing as far as views go, click on the headline of the episode's post. That'll send you to the post's page, where views are counted.
  Secondly, please share! If you thought the episode was good, hit the Facebook 'Like' button at the bottom, or use the AddThis buttons at the bottom to share on your Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, and a couple hundred other social networks. And so people know about this project, 'Like' this post! I really want this idea to get out there, and would truly appreciate your help in doing so. 
  That's really all there is to know, so on to when you actually get to read it.

EDIT (August 21, 2012): The schedule for Siberia has been changed in that it no longer will have a schedule. I will be releasing "episodes" whenever they are ready, with all the episodes hopefully being published by mid-December. That's when the deadline for the 2013 Scholastic Art and Writing Awards starts to loom, and I really want to submit this project.

Showtimes

  As mentioned above, the episodes will be published here on the Blog in blocks of five episodes. There will be four blocks, one published every second week (except for Block One, which will be published back-to-back with Block Two). The episodes will be released on weekdays.

Block One

Monday, July 16: Episode 1

Tuesday, July 17: Episode 2
Wednesday, July 18: Episode 3

Thursday, July 19: Episode 4

Friday, July 20: Episode 5

Block Two

Monday, July 23: Episode 6

Tuesday, July 24: Episode 7

Wednesday, July 25: Episode 8

Thursday, July 26: Episode 9

Friday, July 27: Episode 10

Block Three

Monday, August 6: Episode 11

Tuesday, August 7: Episode 12

Wednesday, August 8: Episode 13

Thursday, August 9: Episode 14

Friday, August 10: Episode 15

Block Four

Monday, August 20: Episode 16

Tuesday, August 21: Episode 17

Wednesday, August 22: Episode 18

Thursday, August 23: Episode 19

Friday, August 24: Episode 20, Season Finale

Feo.

  
  
  
  

New York²

  I'm back.

  Add some bass to that. I'm back for real. This isn't me saying I'll be back and then disappearing for a month. Summer's here, and I have time to spend on the blog. I'm also back from my trip to the centre of the world: New York.

  What? You didn't know I was in New York to accept a National Art and Writing Award in Carnegie Hall. That really sucks. If only the internet had some sort of way of linking you to my badly formatted post about said awards. I bet they'll figure out how to 'link' stuff on the internet IN THE FUTURE! We can only hope.

  Anyways, I spent a (much too short) week in New York City, checking out the art galleries and museums, eating French sushi (it's the way to go), and accepting awards at Carnegie. Meryl Streep was there. Everyone digs Meryl Streep.

  Day-by-day play-by-play of New York², city so nice they named it².
 Hit "Read more" to actually read the post.

FEO'S IN THE NEWSPAPER!

  Hey, chaps and chapettes!
  Good news - I made the news!
  Really, I'm sorry it's been three weeks since I've gotten back from New York and have failed to write a blog post about it detailing all the excellent things that went on there. It's in the draft section of my dashboard. I'm working on it, and I'll have it up very soon. Please don't despair.
  Back to the subject of news. You all have until this Wednesday to pick up a copy of the Edmonton Examiner in which there is an article about me and my adventures in New York! The article's title is in huge letters on the front page! Sha-bam! It's a wonderful article, and as always, I'm all over the place. GET THE NEWSPAPER! IT'S FREE FOR THE LOVE OF KEANU REEVES! And if you can't get it, here's a link: http://www.edmontonexaminer.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=3584884 !
  Thank you Aspen Gainer and the Examiner for the great article!

Feo.

Love Hurts: A Day With Cupid

  

  "Frankly, I find it offensive," says Cupid, "that people stereotype me as a diaper wearing baby." 

  I had the unique opportunity of following world-renowned 'loveman' Cupid while he went on with his daily routine. Contrary to the image of a cute arrow-wielding baby with fat rolls spilling every which way and such that Valentine's cards love to portray, Cupid is actually 6.1, broad-shouldered, scruffy, and in possession of a low baritone voice. Today, he is wearing a black hoodie and a pair of sweats. He assures me that, despite his attire, he is not a rapist. A canvas duffel bag is slung over his shoulder as we walk through the dim halls of an apartment building. A spring 6 PM Montreal sunset spills through the dust coated windows. Signs labelled 'Roof Access' and 'No Unauthorized Entry' are taped to a door that we find to be unlocked.

  From our vantage point on the roof, we can see a small park inhabited by pigeons and some skinny jean-wearing lone wolves reading Marx, or whatever it is that lone wolves read these days.

  Cupid lowers his binoculars and holds them out to me, "See that guy reading the...uh-"

  I squint through the freshly polished lenses, "The Communist Manifesto. Definitely The Communist Manifesto."

  "Man, this'll be a tough one. Anyways, see the girl just behind that statue, sitting on the bench under that tree? The one in the flannel? Right, so she's totally the one for Lenin over there."

  "Marx. I think you mean Marx," I pause, "how do you know she's the 'one'?"

  "Listen, who's been doing this for the past eternity or so? Me. That's right, me. I've got workplace experience. I just know," he smiles knowingly and starts to unzip the duffel bag. He pulls out several polished black pieces of metal, the last of which I recognize as the body of a rifle.

  "Whoa, whoa. Shouldn't you have a bow and arrow?" 

  Cupid momentarily makes annoyed eye-contact with me, and then continues to screw the pieces of steel together to form the barrel and handle of a sniper rifle.

  "Okay, so here's how it went down," he says as he fishes around in the bag and pulls out an optical scope, "when I was still a baby, rolls of fat and all, a reporter climbed up to the window of my playroom, and saw me playing with a bow and arrow. Now, he wrongly assumed that this was my weapon of choice, though I can't see how he'd assume anything near that, considering I couldn't even stand at the time. He wrote an editorial about it, became famous, and created the image that is baby Cupid. He neglected to do any research about how the bow and arrow was a teething toy given to me by Jupiter. Jupiter always gave weird gifts."

  "So you never used a bow and arrow? Wow."

   "Nope." 

  He stands up, the gun gleaming in the orange light. He stuffs a hand into his sweatpants and pulls out a single object: a huge shining pink bullet. 

  "Because of that bow and arrow incident, people always say things like 'Cupid loosed his love-shaft'. I find that particularly tiresome. First of all, I've never used an arrow for anything but teething. Secondly, the phallic innuendo going on there is just plain disgusting. It's not as if I shoot weenies out of my gun."

  He moves his eye to the scope, the rifle now resting on the roof's edge, and pulls the gun's bolt back to lock the pink bullet in.

  His finger hovers over the trigger, "Who needs love-shafts," he breaths in slowly, "when you have .50 caliber ammunition?"

  The hammer of the gun strikes the bullet out in a brilliant flash of pink smoke. An ear-warping bang tears through the sunset air.

  Screams rise from the square below. Cupid moves his eye away from the lens in confusion, and then looks through the scope again. He jumps up abruptly and starts folding the gun into his bag.

  "Right. Okay. So 'Marx' is dead."

  "WHAT?!"

  "He moved. He moved and I hit him in the head."

  "Oh Jesus."

  "Anywhere but the heart, it's just a normal bullet," he pulls my by the arm towards the stairwell door. I follow in my daze.

  "That's one hell of a margin of error!" 

  The screams from below get louder, and the sound of sirens filters in through the door closing behind us. Cupid skips down the stairs, taking two steps at a time.

  "Crap crap crap," he mutters, "Crap."

  He half-kicks, half-jumps through the door labelled 'Roof Access' and into a hallway. Doors open, the tenants peek out attempting to satisfy the human curiosity that appears whenever a loud noise is heard. Someone notices the barrel of Cupid's rifle sticking through the bag and shouts at our backs.

  As we near the lobby and the outside world, Cupid, still sprinting full-tilt, sticks out his free hand, "Wonderful meeting you, but this is where we part ways."

  I shake his outstretched hand and we crash through the condominium doors. He rockets into an alley, and I jump the fence of a nearby backlot. 

  That's the last I ever saw of Cupid.

  He seemed pretty cool, except that he really did shoot a man through the head. 

  That might've not actually been Cupid.

Feo P-S, 2012.

  

    

  

Sketch: Nude

  [Edit: Yes, I realize her bottom is impossibly sharp. No human should have one that sharp. I fixed it in my sketchbook, I'm not going to go and scan it all over again. Enjoy Madame Pointy-Bums, Haters.]
I realize that I haven't been posting nearly as often as I should, but I'm too tired to write anything tonight. So instead, I grabbed my sketchbook and drew a FILLER! It's what bloggers and other content producers do to pretend that they are always working on their blog, when they're really just eating large amounts of food for no reason whatsoever. Not that I would know or anything.

Feo.

Why Redheads Are Better Than You

 
  Contrary to popular belief, setting your hair on fire will not make you a redhead. It will make your hair grey and odorous. Trust me, I've had personal experience with that sort of thing. Not that I've tried becoming a redhead before or anything. Completely unrelated circumstances. Completely.
  Right.
  Apart from them being really hot, there are some really cool 'abilities' that redheads possess. For example, there's something totally supernatural about the way they feel pain. And by supernatural I mean genetic mutations. And witchcraft.
  Firstly, they're more sensitive to thermal pain than others. That's because they have lowered Vitamin K levels. In other words, you should keep redheads away from tea-kettles. But wait, they're less sensitive to other sorts of pain, including noxious (potentially tissue-damaging) stimuli, like electrically induced pain. This red hair colour-pain tolerance correlation is attributed to hormone receptors for red hair and pain tolerance having some sort of 'crossing'. Does that sound kind of vague? It's because I don't get it all. You can look it up if you want. Good luck if you're not a geneticist. What I'm trying to say is that redheads can withstand more pain than us. They are invincible.
  That's not all. They require higher doses of anesthetic for its use to be effective (except for the painkiller pentazocine, and opiates like morphine, which redheads actually require less of than the rest of us). You can't knock them out (as easily).
  In conclusion, redheads have superpowers. That's all there is to say.
  All I know is that when the impending redhead-apocalypse comes, I'll be safely basking in their only weakness. At the beach.
 
Feo.

One Huge Step to New York

   I guess this is one of those milestones you remember for the rest of your life. Something you look back on and say "that's what led to it all."
  Back in late December 2011, I submitted fifteen or so of my works to the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards, the longest running youth art and writing awards in America. At the time, I obviously had a thought in my mind that I could win, but generally thought, considering that the awards are of such magnitude, there was no way I could win anything.
  Shut up, Feo's intuition.
  Late January of this year, Scholastic's Facebook page posted up that the Regional Awards had been announced. I decided to check out the page to see if I was a regional winner. Much to my surprise (I hyperventilated), I'd won a Regional Gold Key, Silver Key, and Honourable Mention. I had cake for dinner that night. The Gold Key meant that my writing was going to be judged on a National level, in New York. But obviously my writing wouldn't go that far?
  Shut the hell up, Feo's intuition.
  The Gold Key winning work that had been sent to be judged at a National Level won, in mid-March, won a National Silver Medal. Out of 200,000 submissions, I was one of the 1,500 to win a national award. And this Silver Medal is my ticket to Carnegie Hall, New York.
  So yes, my writing has just earned me a seat at an awards ceremony in Carnegie Hall this June. And, believe it or not, the National Silver Award is one of my earlier blog posts!
  Thanks to all the people who have supported me, support, and hopefully will continue to support me in my writing. It means a lot, and look where it's led me. Love you!
  I heard you wanted to read the award-winning works. No problem! That can be arranged.

Some People Can't See The Future

Humour

National Silver Medal

Regional Gold Key

  My English teacher seems to have a view on innovative artwork quite different from my own. What other explanation is there to explain his reaction to the all-encompassing beauty of my latest work?

  So the other day we were preparing for our PATs in class, which are, in essence, tests to see how low the IQ of my province is that year. One of the things we're tested on is business letter writing. The old exam papers we were using to prepare for that aspect gave this topic: your name is Kim Rogers, and you must write a letter to this and that person at your local newspaper about how you lost your pet, and subsequently found it. BUT WAIT! THERE'S MORE! Apparently, your pet was found by the local animal shelter! So now you have some sort of unhealthy obsession with preaching the word of 'animal shelter' to the masses. Oh, and the shelter also offered (and there was strange emphasis on this) spaying and neutering services.

  I wrote the letter, and after class, read it to some people. It was met with support. A musical adaptation was discussed. The next day, it turned out we had to hand in the letter. Uh-oh. With a beaming smile on my face, I handed in the paper as my classmates laughed knowingly.

  Fifteen minutes before the end of class, my teacher stands up, walks to my desk, and throws the paper on it.

  "Next time, write something."

  A silence hung in the room.

  "What's wrong with it?"

  "You could never actually send that. What was that?"

  "Weren't we supposed to concentrate on business letter form and not on content?'

  "But you didn't learn anything! It's some sort of bad joke!"

  I seriously don't know what I was supposed to learn. I learned how to address a letter - what else do I have to prove?

  I paused for a moment, "should I rewrite it?"

  "If you want any participation marks, then yes."

  And with a sigh, I rewrote the whole thing. In seven minutes. I walked to his desk and gave it to him.

After a minute or so, he comes back to my desk and hands me the paper.

  "Why couldn't you just do exactly that...the first time?

  "I chose not to."

  This is what he didn't like:

PO Box 701

Mikmat AB T75 4D6

Happy Day, 1960

Lesley Thompson, Editor

The Wentworth News

8974 Elm Avenue

Larkville AB T8M 4Q4

Dear Professor Thompson:

Several days ago, my donkey escaped my care. I discovered that it had been spayed, neutered, and almost adopted at my local animal shelter. Luckily, the person adopting Grigorovski, my donkey, realized just in time that it wasn't, in fact, a South African wiener dog. Thus, I have been happily reunited with with a now spayed, neutered, and slightly effeminate Grigorovski.

Once Grigorovski had been returned to his attic at home, I went to learn more about the animal shelter. It turns out that the Holy Mother of Keanu Reeves Animal Shelter is a completely volunteer-run organisation that provides emergency animal care, lost pet services, and an adoption program. I would be a volunteer too, but my extreme killer bee-keeping schedule keeps me from doing so. That is why I write to you, Professor Lesley Thompson: the Holy Mother of Keanu Reeves Animal Shelter is in desperate need of volunteers. I believe that if you publish even a small article on the subject, a team of willing spayers and medical amateurs will show up standing on the doorstep of the shelter. That would seriously help the likes of Grigorovski and me.

Peace,

Kimshafandinsterisko (Kim) Rogers.

  The moral of the story is that if you're going to spend 15 minutes doing what you like to do, be able to do what everyone else wants you to do in 7 minutes. I got full marks.

  I still think the one above is far superior.

The Chair and The Fire

Short Story

Regional Silver Medal

(Final Version)

An amber sunset splashed across the fields of dying grass. Shades of light prairie blue broke through the clouds that rested on another day’s tired horizon. Gavyn Aubade’s dark grey car passed the streaking divider lines of the highway. On the side of the road, powerlines rolled in an up-and-down motion as the vehicle accelerated, not a shadow stopping the gold from enveloping it.

Gavyn Aubade had worked as Benjamin Verdigris’ social worker for 3 months. Verdigris generally had a clear enough head, but it would cloud at moments, rendering him somewhat helpless. And so Gavyn would drive for some hour and a half every weekend to make sure everything was fine: gas was off, car not running in the garage, stuff like that.

The car slowed as it passed a small house several dozen meters off the road. Gavyn’s hands crossed as he pulled the car into a 90 degree turn. The suspension compensated for the gravel road.

Pebbles scattered and made a noise that sounded like a cross between autumn leaves cracking and fire being blown back to life as the car stopped near the house. The door opened and a pale white sneaker swung out, followed by another, followed by a pair of loose-fitting blue jeans, followed finally by a plain olive t-shirt. Then Mr. Aubade’s fairly young face emerged, a thin beard wrapped around his chin. His pale blue eyes squinted in the orange glow. He pushed the door shut and cracked on the gravel to the wooden porch. Gavyn knocked on the door, a fading white slowly turning to grey - a silence. He rapped with the sharps of his knuckles - another silence.

Stepping off the porch, Gavyn walked over to the side of the house dedicated to the garage and peered through a muted window. Benjamin’s pick-up was still inside. Then Benjamin definitely had to be in the house. There wasn’t another place to go for miles. He returned to the porch and tried the handle. The door gave with a squeak.

The sunset illuminated the floating dust and cast shadows haphazardly around the main room of the one-story house. A draft sweeped in from the back. As he stepped through the room, Gavyn heard a glassy snap at his feet. He looked down to find, in the evening shadow of a couch, a broken wine bottle. A roan liquid was soaked into the surrounding carpet. This surprised him, as Benjamin had always insisted that he hadn’t drunk a drop in 10 years. Gavyn crouched and brought his head closer to get a better view of the peeling wine-stained label: Bordeaux-1974. He did some arithmetic in his head-Benjamin must’ve been in his mid-twenties at the time. He had been saving the bottle for something.

He looked up from the ruins of the bottle to see the source of the draft at the end of a hallway: the sliding glass door in the back room was completely open. Past the door was nothing but fields as far as the eye could see.

Gavyn stepped through the steel door-frame and looked out at the burning horizon. Something at the bottom of his field of view caught his attention. There, coming straight from the door-frame, were footsteps and two strange, thin, evenly spaced out marks trailing behind the steps. Gavyn followed their progress into the field with his eyes. He decided to follow the trail.

So he walked, and the sun spilled orange light onto the quietly swaying grass.

So he walked some more, and the bottom tip of the sun began to fall through the horizon.

So he walked more still, and the brightest stars of the night sky slowly began to appear.

So his feet began to ache, and a dark blue glow crawled down from the top of the sky to the edge of the earth, leaving behind blackness and evermore stars.

Gavyn checked his watch; he’d been walking for more than an hour. He started to turn to leave and call the police when he saw a hazy yellow glow in the distance. A plume of black smoke withered from the tiny dot. The steps and trail led to the haze. He halted in his turn and instead walked towards the yellow light.

So he walked, and the glow began to increase in size.

So he walked some more, and the light took on a flickering form. It was a small fire.

So he walked more still and could see a human shape wrapped in the fire’s light.

As he finally approached the fire, and the now clearly visible silhouette of a man sitting on a steel chair, he could hear the snapping of flames.

“I thought,” said Benjamin’s voice, “that you wouldn’t come this far to find me.”

The silhouette gazed down into the fire.

“You never seemed to really care about me as long as the gas was off. Of course, that is your job, so who am I to complain? At least you made sure I didn’t set myself on fire. So I assumed you’d decide I’d disappeared, and would call the police. And then they would find me in the morning with a bullet through my head.”

Still looking at the flames, he raised a hand in which shone a revolver, the fire’s light reflecting in its cold metal. Gavyn, who had, until this point, been standing startled by Benjamin’s voice, took one large step and plucked the revolver from the man’s hand. Benjamin didn’t protest.

“Jesus, Ben! What the hell were you going to do with this?”

“What, with the gun?”

“Yes, with the gun!”

“I was going to take that gun,” the fire flickered in his ageing eyes, “and I was going to put it to the side of my head. And I was going to shoot myself.”

“Why the hell would you do that? Why would you drag a chair out into the middle of nowhere, start a campfire, and shoot yourself?” Gavyn shouted as he pocketed the revolver.

Benjamin stood up and motioned towards the chair.

“Here, sit down.”

“Ben-”

“Sit down,” said Benjamin with a subtle force that Gavyn had not heard before. He thought it wise to abide, and so he sat.

Benjamin stood with his back to Gavyn and the fire, his hands in his pockets.

“You’ve seen all those pins and medals on the bookcase beside the T.V. in the house, right?”

Gavyn vaguely remembered having passed his glance over them once.

“Yes. Of course.”

“I got those for killing people. I got those when I served in Vietnam. I was part of one of the few Canadian deployments sent there to enforce the Paris Peace Accords.

“I’ve counted the number of lives I’ve taken. Four when our camp was ambushed by North Vietnamese troops. That’s when I got most of those medals. And then, in the last days that I was in Vietnam, we were performing a search-and-destroy on a small stronghold in a village held by the North. When we got to the centre of the village, there was a small gun nest armed by one man. My squad and I were pinned. I took a risk and peeked out from behind the building separating us from the nest. I got a good look as to where the gun was before the man started pinning us down again. After half a minute the racket stopped, so I stuck head out, took one clean shot, and that was the end of it.”

Benjamin made a noise; he was crying. He cupped his face in his hands.

“Except that wasn’t the end of it. When we looked into the gun nest, there was a dead boy on the ground, no older than ten years old, a bullet through his left eye. I don’t know, or really care, why they left a little boy to man the nest, but they did. And I shot that kid clear through the head… I still see his bloody little face every night. And now, after all these years, I can see that his life was definitely worth ten of mine. I took away a future, and no man should have the power to do that. So I decided to give at least part of the life he deserved back.

“I tried to drink a good-bye glass of wine, but I couldn’t even see straight. The goddamn thing slipped and fell. Then I dragged the chair here and lit a fire. I didn’t want to die pathetically. I wanted them to find me staring into the embers of a fire. It would be majestic, like something out of a movie, something special. So I sat down in that chair And I put the gun to my head and tried to pull the trigger.”

Benjamin was sobbing.

“But I couldn’t, because I’m a coward. I’m a fucking coward who shoots babies through their eyes.”

He stood, the tears streaming silently down his face. They shone in the flames’ gold. Benjamin fell to his knees and let out a single, tearful roar. He looked up, breathing heavily, at the star-filled black sky from in-between his fingers.

“I see him every night. Whenever I close my eyes, I see his beautiful, bloody, ruined face.”

Gavyn said nothing. He stared into the fire. His eyes said nothing.

They sat in silence for hours. They sat until the sun started to rise through the blades of grass. Still looking into the ashes of the fire, Gavyn took a deep breath.

“Let’s go?”

“Yeah, let’s go,” said Benjamin, standing up.

And so the two men walked through the field of dying grass, Gavyn Aubade dragging a chair, and Benjamin Verdigris looking down, wondering how much the Bordeaux had been worth.

Agave Attenuata

Poetry Compilation

Regional Honourable Mention

Dark Bare Feet

(Requiem for Japan)

From the ruins of some city

Cries of pain and words of pity

Rise from the fallen blocks of stone.

Rubble’s stained with shades of roan.

God, let them out of there!

This sort of suffering is more than rare.

People’ve been swept away,

Their flesh is floating in the spray.

Something’s crying with a pain,

A man, a woman, someone insane?

A cry so tender, so softly sweet,

The child cries on dark bare feet

Not men and women of courage steel,

Not slow-motion movie reels.

No, they will not save this land-

That is in the child’s hands.

It’s seen so much

It’s known so little

It cries on dark bare feet.

Hard Rain

Icarus’ burden hung in the sky,

The wind shifted blades of evergreen grass.

It made in between them sort of a sigh,

And up in the air not a cloud shifted by.

A bird turned its small, beady glass eye,

And looked through the blades of evergreen grass,

And saw what’d interest some passerby.

But not our small bird-she flew with a cry.

What was this quaint, uninteresting sight

That’d interest someone passing by?

The wind shifted quietly sous the sun’s light,

And sighed through the cracks of this large grey sight.

Silver steel girders tore through the frame,

Quite like a web suspended in air.

Through it was visible a faded blue crane,

The paint peeling off from years of hard rain.

Once there were people of all sort and size

Who toiled away in the cavernous cube,

Fed slowly and surely full paper-thin lies.

Everyone knew, but no one would rise.

And then apart it all fell in a flash,

Iodine tablets lay in the grass.

Drifts of black smoke rose from the ash,

Achievements reduced to mere, useless trash.

But a burning hot sphere of hydrogen gas,

Hung in the bright, unmoving blue sky.

And the building sat now with all of its mass

As the wind shifted slightly through the evergreen grass.

Feo P-S.

How Kony 2012 Is Changing the Internet

  I try to stay clear of serious topics on this blog. 'Serious' just doesn't quite mix well with 'fun'. But sometimes, it's very beneficial to break that rule. Say hello to Kony 2012. Say hello to what might be the face of a new Internet.
  Considering the pandemic speed with which Kony 2012 is spreading, it's a safe bet you might already know who and what it is. But if you don't, everything that you'll need to know as far as introductions go is in a 30-minute video. This video attained viral status within hours of its appearance, and I strongly recommend watching it. Videos of this sort are rarely so skillfully and powerfully written. And the production is brilliantly simple. Again, 30-minutes well spent whether you side with the cause or choose to debate against it. The video is at the bottom of this post.
  The main cause of this post is not to defend or condemn the video and its underlying concepts, but rather to look at exactly how scarily (and dangerously) powerful Kony 2012 has become, and what it means for the future of the Internet.
  The Internet is a diverse place. Everything from extensive collections of human knowledge to incredibly disturbing images of humanoid animals has a place on the huge landscape that is the net. One of the relatively young concepts on the Internet is social networking. It's easy to assume that when the first 'true' social networks were being thought out and created, their creators probably never expected events like Kony 2012 to play out quite like they did. They probably expected that these new networks would be used to share minor bits of information and other things that people do when they casually socialize in real life. Stuff like "Yeah, just had a great time in Gondwanaland. Going back next summer" or like "Look at these photos of a totally hot chick I have no relation to, but who took a photo with me out of pity". Stuff like that.
  And that's exactly what happened in the beginning - a casual place to talk, share, and make yourself look cool. But things began to change. People started to realize the principles behind the networks could be used to share so much more than incriminating photos of incredibly drunk friends. They realized that articles, knowledge, and important information could be spread to hundreds of people within seconds. This is clearly noticeable with apps like Facebook social readers, which automatically spread the articles you read on certain sites to your entire friends list. Suddenly, people who would never normally search a certain topic are now reading up on exactly that topic, absorbing information, and educating themselves about almost anything - inadvertently. They don't log on to Facebook to learn about something that's making news or is happening in the world, but they log off having been bombarded by various sources: statuses, social readers, likes, shares.
  In other words, we are still experiencing the same massive downpour of information that's been hitting us for years, but the nature of that information is changing. We're still getting text messages and endless notifications, but those inputs are being interlaced with 'substantial' information, stuff that sticks in your brain.
  Arguably, the first time social networks, the media, and the people truly combined to form an immense information machine was the Arab Spring. People tweeted the locations of conflict zones, posted photos no reporter had yet obtained, and coordinated their efforts to plot their next moves. This new type of communication was born into a world of violence, and that scared those at the top of the food chain. Anyone could suddenly say anything they wanted, and no matter what those in control tried to do, their efforts were circumvented. The world began to realize that the Internet may be as much a human right as talking to your neighbour.
  The Arab Spring method of information sharing and communication smoothly flowed into a new entity that year: the Occupy Movement. Whatever your opinion on that matter may be, it's a fact that the way news was spread in the camps, and beyond, was revolutionary. Thousands of protesters would congregate, around the world, within hours of a march being announced. Photos and videos of both hope and violence began to appear. The news started using Youtube videos as valid replacements for reporter footage. Social readers began to appear, publishing corporations realizing that social networks had truly become the most effective way of spreading information.
  The growing idea that the Internet was quickly turning into more than just a medium for the exchange of information was finally solidified into proper existence in January, when the battle against the US piracy bills SOPA and PIPA was at its peak. When the bills were stopped, the world examined all the prior evidence: the Arab Spring, Occupy, the Piracy Acts, and concluded that the Internet is the most powerful non-violent weapon in existence, and scarier still, that it is the peoples' weapon.
  And now here we are, watching as Kony 2012 unfolds before our eyes. We've seen what the Internet can do, and this is the biggest display of its power yet. Within days of the Kony 2012 video being released, Kony, the man, has already become an icon. Today, my fellow classmates would spontaneously break out into shouts of "KONY!", rhyming it with "PHONY!" and "CRONY!". Everyone who still didn't know who Joseph Kony is was treated as an outsider, someone outside the absolutely huge 'club' that is Kony 2012.
  The world has declared a total hatred towards one single man in less that 48 hours. Imagine that.
  This is the grand spectacle of our new interconnected world. This is a display of power, a sign that says "the little man has found his army." This is the new face of communication, of human relationships. We have gained the power to channel each others' ideas into a single intention, and direct it at whatever we want. And for the first time, the beam of our ideals is focused.
  I think it's amazing. And incredibly scary.

Feo.


Share what you think of Kony 2012, it's impact on how we use the Internet, and the controversy currently surrounding it in the comments sections (you probably already have one of the accounts necessary to comment).
I will admit that I am standing in support of the Kony 2012 Campaign right now. But I am open to all thoughts and information, and will definitely consider any facts you have to give.

Official Kony 2012 video on Vimeo

KONY 2012 from INVISIBLE CHILDREN on Vimeo.