originally published june 2006, one of the only things from this blog that ever made it anywhere. everything else is archived because it's painfully bad.


1) Most contemporary British writers are obsessed with Shit: Self, Welsh, Amos, Warner. Try reading four pages without running into somesort of detailed description of bodily evacuations.

2) I've got my car back, and my glasses. It's nice to able to see clearly. It's nice to have a shiny red Mazda in plain focus. My friend Chuck And A Half is back from Las Vegas, and he came with me to retrieve my car. My heart was in my throat the whole time, so I was glad to have someone come with me to do it, especially as it looked like I was going to have to do it alone.

3)Pattern recognition : I've just realized that after I date someone, if it doesn't work out, I become a little creepy around them, go to extreme legnths to alienate them, test their patience and how nice they'll be before they finally brand me irredeemable and strange. I have no idea what it's about, and it's way of embarrassing, but it's like a compulsion, like tourettes or something. I've got Creep Tourettes, bourne of insecurity and amplified by problem-solution drinking. Does anybody else do this? I am currently in the process of alienating Ohio Heat (everyone shall henceforth be referred to as their codename in my cellphone library) and, like picking a scab, I can't stop myself.

Rot once told me that my behavior is a self-fulfilling prophecy, but I think it's more like, I see what's coming and just start acting all weird so I can blame all the failure on my strange behavior, which I know is actually not who I am so that's okay, right. Which I guess is the definition of a self-fulfilling prophecy, but I think the that term suggests I have some control over things,which I rarely do, it usually goes pear-shaped and then I start acting like a jerk. Does any of this make sense? Dr. Phil? Are you out there reading my blog?

When was the last time you cried, Dr.Phil? Is it hard being the "tell-it-like-it-is?" man? Do you regret your massive donation to the Bush 2004 campaign? What about the universe, Dr. Phil? do you stand under the stars and think of Caesar and Socrates and the Witch Hunts and Dinosaurs? Is Dr. Phil a out-of-control T-Rex of the media, that even you, born Phil McGraw, cannot control? You, born under the same sky (yet totally different, because the stars, Phil, they are always dying)as that great Emperor who met the stars' fate by the hand of his brother? Do you think much about that, when you're telling-it-like-it-is?

What would you tell me, about my own self-defeat, Phil? (for surely I could call you Phil, and dispense with this doctor nonsense now that it's just you and I staring atthe stars)

Perhaps I would hand you the last dreg of the warm beer we'd split, and you'd haul on the bottle, look at me, with eyes heavy from alcohol and impatience and just say "Lainey, some people is just fucked up".


4) I am wearing a thick coat of crankiness today.

5) The end.

6) I bet there is a star named for Dr. Phil. It seems like you can't be that famous and not have had someone name a star for you. Perhaps you or I have even made a wish on the Dr. Phil star. Perhaps it shot through the sky (I have seen so many this summer) as I sat drunkenly staring at it. Somebody once told me I was in love with the sky, but maybe it's just Dr. Phil.

7) I just realized this is the second time I've written about the Good Doctor in as many months. Good heavens (pun intended).

8 or 3 continued) And after we'd named the star, Phil, claimed that little piece of the universe for your namesake, I bet instead of feeling larger, we'd feel tiny. We'd carved out another jack-o-lantern eye in the shape of pop culture, but up there, Phil, you're just a tiny ball of dust and ice amongst others, amongst stars named for great-grandmothers,and unjustly cancerous young boys and astronomers driven to madness by dogma and politics. It would be almost democratic up there, in the sky, past the edge of this galaxy... Your currency here and now, the weight you carry after healing marriages and helping self-esteem deprived women shed layers of adipose tissue so as to further help themselves to a plate of galatic happiness, it would mean little: your star would not live longer or appear brighter against the hoards of light pollution that crowds the night sky outside your Texas home. In fact, Phil, such would be it's fate that, given the speed of light and the Dr.Phil Star's distance from us, your star would already be but a memory made of light, dead millions of years before you ever helped Oprah defend herself against the iron fist of the Texas Cattle Industry. So that glow, that glory, like that newly- found self-esteem of your svelte success stopries, would be but an agreed-upon ignorance, a suspended disbelief as tangible as the satellite waves that beam your hairless skull into pixels on my television.

Do you know what the French word for scalp is, Phil? Cuir de Tete. Literally translated to Texan, that means: the leather of your head.

And we are nothing if not literalist, aren't we, Doctor? That's why you and I get along so well. But for this shared illusion of your star, we're a couple of no-b.s. pragmastists.You're always saying "you gotta get real" and, even though I think we can both agree that your authority is just a another example of a shared hallucination, I couldn't agree more we have to 'get' real or 'be real' or act' real' or 'keep it' real ( though the last one is a little street and therefore a bit scary, non?). We're in the foxhole together, friend. Agreeing to concepts of time and space and love and the vain pursuit of self-satisfaction, because if we didn't, our brains might explode, right through the leather of our heads and out for everyone to see.

And if that were to happen right in the middle of a show, or say in the middle of the JC Penny Jam for Kids you so artfully hosted, you can imagine the ramifications. Entire spools of understanding coming undone before our very eyes. 'Getting real' would become a sadly ironic slogan to spraypaint on the cliched brick walls of depressed urban ghettos, and hipster-gentrified hotspots, rather than the life affirming rallying-cry it is today. Long fractures of sanity would snake their way through the sub-urbs and then the cities and then, Phil, there would be the unbearable weightlessness of everything depressing it's thumb upon us. Oh Phil Calvin McGraw, holder of doctorate and gatekeeper of western faith, we can't have it happen. Not now. Not like this.

NEW BLOG!!! GO THERE NOW!!!

I have a new blog at elainecorden.tumblr.com, called Dangerfield! I know what you're thinking: why do I need a new blog? How is it different from trifective?

For your edification, pie charts.

Exhibit A: Trifective subject matter :


Exhibit B: Dangerfield! subject matter:
What are you waiting for?

The Tyee's Vanessa Richmond interviewed 6 BC Fiction writers for a piece on young novelists.
I'm technically only a young half-a-novelist,but I was happy to be asked. The piece turned out really well- even if I distinctly remember saying to myself "no talking, just listening" before we went to panel. Bigmouth strikes again.

CBC and Music Picks

Writing about Chet for the Tyee Didn't write the sub-head or head, not that it's important.

also

Cassandra Szklarski from the Canadian Press in TO interviewed me the other day about my piece on the CBC/ Facebook "Great Canadian Wishlist". CP pieces are picked up on a newswire and run in papers all over the country. Here it is in the Brandon Sun , the first of what I'm sure will be many pick-ups.

So basically I'm shooting my mouth off about the CBC again in a nationally syndicated forum.

Let me just say this: I love CBC. I was raised on it, and I'm an active supporter. But when they do things like this stupid Facebook Wish List, I get annoyed. I don't want to sound like one of those old-school fogey CBC supporters who want to dig up Peter Gzowski and put him back on the air, but I think they need to reach out to new (read: younger) audiences more intelligently. CBC Radio 3 does this incredibly well. They legitimately explore issues, pop culture and news and create content that is engaging without being sensationalistic. CBC Radio One is and always has been good the way it is, but now they're adding in ridiculously transparent youth gambits that annoy both older audiences and the young market they're so clearly after. With exceptions, CBC Television (ch 3, not Newsworld) has been the worst at creating intelligent, twentysomething-oriented programming. They're incredible at kids shows, and at news programs, but they're lousy at creating programs for the demographic with the money (which attracts advertisers, and therefore more $$$ to keep CBC running. Thats reality, folks). They've had successes, but when they attempt to ape American programming, on the budget of state-sponsored Canadian TV, it simply doesn't work.

I think they'll find their way. I hope they'll find their way. But they're making some very public mistakes in the interim and possibly putting people off for good. And the Ceeb is already under duress from budget cuts and free marketeers who think state-funded media is garbage, so dumbing things down for the kids really doesn't seem the way to go. I know they need to adapt to changing climates and technology, but they can't just change just for the sake of change.

I have ideas, which I won't share here (i'm still holding out for my dream in which the CBC hires me), but yeah.... I just don't want to sound like I hate on CBC or anything. Cause truth is, I love it more than anything. Which is why I'm so hard on them.

Dig?

Now please listen to my music picks.