My sister texted me late last night: What’s the internal temperature of a tauntaun? Now, Nerd Sister, being a nerd, frequently texts me things like this. Recently, it was questions about the Sword of Shannara series and why Kryptonite hurts Superman, being that he’s from Krypton. So I treated it like any of her other questions: with a degree of critical integrity. It would have to keep Luke warm in the frigid wastes of Hoth until Han got the shelter up, right? Hmm. Warm enough that it would maintain human core…
Category: Stories
Universal Cookie Constant
There’s always a lot of baking that happens during the holiday season. Even I get into it a little bit, although my baking usually consists of churning out several hundred sausage rolls, made in massive volume in direct competition with my dad. It’s one of my favourite bits of the holiday. We start off working together Dad prepping pastry while I cook sausages, then slowly we both go into head-to-head production of a squillion and eight rolls. It gets messy. Less often do I see those kinds of astronomical volumes…
Why Windows?
Since the latest episodes of both Bent and Throw it Against the Wall have seen me mention Windows Phone 7, I think it’s about time I talk about why I like it. I know there’s a lot of scepticism surrounding it. And why not? Most people I know who were considering jumping the Microsoft ship did so in the dark days of Vista, so that’s their last experience with Windows. Anyone who saw their parents working on a Treo back in the nascent days of the Blackberry know the sloppy,…
My Robot Friend
One of the things I found most difficult about being a teacher candidate was moving all the time. Every three to five weeks over the course of teacher’s college, I was picking up and moving either from my crappy apartment in Kingston to my folks’ place in Ottawa or back to the aforementioned crappy apartment. It was nice to be back at home; I hadn’t lived with my parents in years, and I had hardly been home at all in the previous fourteen months due to a punishing work schedule…
Scarface, Part One
Those that know me (or, failing that, those who creepily stare at me from across rooms) know that, up close, I’ve got a few divots in my otherwise unblemished boyish good looks. I have very nearly symmetrical scars above my eyes, for example. You’d think that such perfectly mirrored chunks taken out of my brow would have been from some freak accident involving a obsessive-compulsive mugger, or from a run-in with curious but aesthetically advanced aliens, but no–they were, in fact, thirteen years apart and under wildly different circumstances. The second…
Vigil for a Fish
There are a lot of nerdy things I’ll cop to. Being totally fascinated with Canadian airplanes and pilots in WWII is one. Being competitive about StarCraft and feeling like I should be training for it like it’s a half-marathon and not a meaningless video game is another. But one of the things I’m not as ready to admit to–and I have to, to tell this tale–is that I kind of love fish. Not all fish, mind you. Specifically, bettas. Specifically specifically cool-coloured male bettas, the fighting fish you hear about. They’ve…
Ice and Oil
Another prose poem, this one from earlier this semester, about teaching, and teaching creative writing in particular. *** Ice and Oil I watch the children dance upon the razor’s edge. No slippers upon their feet, no music upon the breeze. Only shoes of ice and oil, threatening treachery with every step, every pace and turn and link and separation. I’ve danced these steps before. I have fumbled these steps, teetered upon the micrometer-measured scalpel-blade of judgement. I’ve watched my own dance drip down both sides of the steel. I watch…