My name is Matthew, and I blog dangerously. I add alcohol to the mix, in order to also spell badly.

I need a haircut, and my soul needs a shave. Body copy contains a fairly insipid rundown on current events from this cheeseburger's point of view. It isn't a fun story or a colourful anecdote, and I don't even make lascivious mention of my wife's cleavage. Appy-polly-loggies.

No, friends, tonight I am running on empty.


Turn, Turn, Turn

Autumn will come, and the world will turn brown. The sun will become feeble, and I'll be able to see my breath again.

And, to the whole truth, it depresses the hell out of me.

I am able to be philosophical about it in spring, when the world resumes. I am able to be grateful for winter's death bringing me the wonderous explosion of annual rebirth, for free. I think that the deeper the devastation of winter means all the keener joy of spring. I think people who live in less extreme climates have no idea what they're missing.

But in the dying days of summer I'm less inspired. I think: Canada sucks. The world looks the way it should so briefly.

I know, I know -- it's not here yet. It's still summer, and the trees are still leafy and green. But I can smell it in the morning. I can see in the deepening colours of the late season blossoms. The bees are becoming sleepy and stupid, because the nights have a chill in them that penetrates the hive.

Many of the things I wanted to plant in the schoolhouse field didn't get planted. We're short at least one wall of cedars, a maple and a weeping willow. The fence didn't get finished either, though work progressed far enough to close all the gaps. The battle to reclaim the wild corner must be put on hiatus, because letting the fires burn through the night will soon become dangerous as the surrounding grasses dry.

I wish to burrow for the winter, to baton down the hatches. I have this instinct every year, that all my ducks must be a row before the snow flies. I want all projects done. But we must abandon the field to freezing, for now. Projects fall over to another year.

The old well remains uncovered. The pond is not dug. The deck is not stained. The fireplaces are not yet converted to natural gas.

So I figure the least I can do is slug back a few beer and then drive the riding-mower directly through the wild thatch, in defiance of its tenacity. It stutters and coughed through the thick weeds and bush, wobbling to and fro over the uneven ground and threatening more than once to spill over on top of me.

But I made it through. I had torn a meandering path through the bush, between two outcroppings of small trees. I stumbled off the mower to inspect my work. I had partly scalped a small hill, and revealed a jagged edge of buried sheet metal. I counted myself lucky for not fucking up the mower.

Old Oak is building a shed, but it's not finished yet. So I have to park the mower in the bushes beside the ice hut. Our little 4x4 is parked in the next bush over, a scow for pushing dirt around attached to the front. Then comes the snowmobile, sleepy these long months. And then my little sailboat, sleepy these long years.

Having all of the vehicles in a row makes me feel like a superhero. I figure that each vehicle should have some kind of CheeseburgerBrown emblem on it. When my secret burgerphone rings, I would slide down a poll and run down the hill, choosing the most appropriate craft for my mission to thwart evil.

...Of course, the top speed of any of these vehicles is slower than a healthy man's run, but that's neither here nor there. Perhaps I would specialise in very slow crime. Zen crime, maybe.

At any rate, I am not a superhero. I'm just some idiot.


I Am An Idiot of Magnitude Ten

Okay, so I got greedy. It's true.

I wasn't satisfied being buried under the weight of the Great Stereoscopic Cavalcade, working dog-long days without weekends, stretching my storage and rendering capabilities to the breaking point. No. Apparently, I am greater glutton for punishment than I had previously been aware.

I have double-booked the entire month of September.

My plan: to fuck with sleep! I figure if I can squeeze in that extra six or seven hours a day I can make off like a bandit this summer, and have some hope in hell of getting through the driest parts of winter without having to eat cardboard.

I am earning almost three times my usual monthly revenue, and I don't want it to stop. I can't afford for it to stop. At this rate I just might be able to pay back all the nice folks who helped me when times were lean (and Christ! what a lean year is has been!). LittleStar says we're within a hair's breadth of being able to destroy my MasterCard, and I'm delighted.

Both LittleStar and Popsicle are doing the sensible thing and going away for a vacation, so I can work in peace for a spell. They're flying to Edmonton, to visit with LittleStar's cousins.

I wouldn't want to be around me now, either.

Being a machine has its drawbacks. I lack the bandwidth for both endless work and endless love. It doesn't go unnoticed.


Scooponoia

What the fuck should I do about my writing? In the past couple of weeks a number of people have engaged me in curious chats about how I diarise the way I do, and several have expressed surprise that I haven't yet met up with any ugly consequences. (My friend Kitkat pointed out that our big big high school reunion is coming up -- what might the Lipgloss Gypsy have to say to me?)

(I'm too lazy/drunk to link anything up tonight. If you know what I'm talking about, great. If not, I apologise and direct you to Google.)

Should I be more concerned that people are going to become irate over what I've written? Should I fear professional reprisal for the things I've typed about the projects I've worked on, skirting NDAs or no?

For months I've entertained the idea of collecting (and rewriting) some of the autobiographical stories I've cast out into the Scooposphere, and putting them together under the title A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Cheeseburger. Maybe even try to get it published the old fashioned way, if not by handy web-distributed PDF.

But I hesitate. I can't quite explain why to LittleStar. She's bugging me about bugging literary agents.

Is writing into the Scooposphere good for my craft, or bad for it? I still don't really understand why Blixco's decided to clam up, nor why it disturbs me the way that it does.

There is also the question of cruelty. I think about this now because I am thinking about my recently unearthed student documentary Way of the Jazzman, the original exhibition of which in Halifax a decade ago caused its subject to quietly ask me, "Is the moving making fun of me?"

It was a fair question. People liked my little movie, and they recognised The Jazzman when he was with me. The Jazzman became uncomfortable with the attention, and began to wonder at its real nature. "You're a compelling personality," I told him. "They love you."

"But do they love me because I'm ridiculous?"

Sure thing. And who put the spotlight on his ridiculousness? I did, for my own fun and glory. Who stepped into it? He did, for his vanity. We all felt a little embarassed all around, I guess.

But I apparently took no lesson away from The Jazzman's discomfort. I continue gaily exploit my perceptions of the people I meet in order to spin an entertaining yarn. (My rationalisations are tedious and fairly unconvincing, so I'll spare you them.)

There is something lazy and cruel in my autobiographies, I think.

I have another epic in progress. I have mixed feelings about it. Who will my memory slander this time? My cowgirl girlfriend will get her turn, I guess. The Jazzman, further. Myself, over and over again.