Mango Pudding Blues 3.0

VINOTECA

Did you see me? Early this morning? Coming out of the Italians’ joint? Black Che Guevara beret, carrying a new carboy so I could start the day by racking the 23 litres of Cabernet Sauvignon that has just finished its secondary fermentation in my makeshift basement vinoteca? The wine I lovingly started a few weeks back from two crates of California grapes like the old Italian gents do? Did you see me?

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Thursday, October 20, 2005

TWO BRIEF HOUSEKEEPING NOTES

1) You may now click on the “mangovision” thing at right to see a rough archive of the pictures that have appeared here in the past. I haven’t built a rollover, and probably never will.

2) Hi. Where have you been for all these months?

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Wednesday, October 19, 2005

SPOTS, pt. 1

So I’m working at the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology in the summer between my two years as a student there. It was the summer of love, yeah? All-night illeagal rave parties, Public Enemy, Bad Brains, Faith No More. Early 90s, I was in my mid-20s, going out at midnight, long black hair, ring in my nose. Big black boots. Beautiful. Beautiful. I wish someone had told me to pause for a moment to really feel it; that it was only going to happen one time.

Anyway, the job was a little boring, and my little private joke was that every time I was alone in the elevator I would hold a brief rock and roll performance, leaping around in there, strutting, thrashing, dancing, singing. On this particular day I was air drumming, intensely, with my red editing pen as an imaginary drumstick. I was a Red Hot Chili Pepper! And when the elevator landed and I stopped and opened my eyes, and in the pause before the doors opened up to a lobby full of somber educators and administrators, I saw that my pen had leaked and the entire interior of the elevator was fucking covered with red spots.

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Sunday, October 16, 2005

THE FEAR, PART ONE

Reported verbatim: “I was living in Calgary in the 70s. Oil patch, high on the hog, big house, everything. When the boom went bust, interest rates went up, jobs evaporated. Lost my house. Guys were just walking into the banks and turning over their keys. I was one of ‘em. Wife left me too.

“And now I imagine the new perfect storm that could flip this new long boom on its back. A sharp and sudden energy crisis brought on by middle-eastern tensions. Inflation. Interest rates. You think it can’t happen? It’ll happen.”

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Also; Killer encountered an economist recently. It went like this:

Killer: So? How’s the economy?

Economist: Too good to be true. Too good to be true.

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So I keep an eye, now, on the whipping winds of global trade. In the crow’s nest office at the top of the good ship Mango Pudding Blues, I keep my eye on the Chinese appetite for steel. On pork bellies in the American midwest. On the forecasts of fashion retailers. Tar sand development. Real estate, precious metals, Alan Greenspan’s left eyebrow and oil, oil, oil. I triangulate economic trajectories from cultural indicators; hem lengths, hair lengths, number of words in the names of the new British pop bands. Dance styles, widths of shoulders and lapels on Italian suits, “hot” ingredients in hip New York restaurants. Software pirate prices on Canal Street. I’m a homeowner now, baby. The margin for error is razor-thin.

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CATASTROPHIC

Our arrival is catastrophic; violent and painful, but shrouded in mystery. Our departure inevitable, unknowable and unwanted. Everything in between is marked by these daunting bookends.

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