I know we've been over this but:

Okay, last night I went out to the car to go to the barn.

And getting into the driver's seat hurt so much I just said "fuck it" and didn't go anywhere. So I didn't make it to what I assume was Rob and Adam's return set at Tribeca.

The leg is generally not too bad but there's something about trying to get into the driver's seat of the Civic that frankly makes it hurt like shit. I am not enthused about going to the doctor and trying to isolate what I'm sure is a soft-tissue injury that basically just needs time, but if this keeps up for too much longer I may have to. Damn!

Something unrelated on a mailing list reminded me of this:

A while back I read an old article about Johnny Cash. When he was writing "Folsom Prison Blues," he said he wanted the character in the song to have done something unforgivable. So he asked himself, "What is the worst possible reason to commit a murder?"

And the result was what I consider one of the best noir lines ever, from the Man in Black:

"...I shot a man in Reno, just to watch him die."

The heartless economy of the line is pretty much perfect.

...the other day I really gave some thought to the deceptively cheery "Casey Jones" by the Grateful Dead. It's roughly the old story of Casey Jones reimagined as a cocaine ballad, and there's foreshadowing:

Switchman's sleeping, train hundred and two is
On the wrong track and headed for you

And then what is, really, a pretty terrifying image:

Trouble with you is the trouble with me,
Got two good eyes but you still don't see.
Come round the bend, you know it's the end,
The fireman screams and the engine just gleams...

I was listening to the song the other day and I suddenly got a mental image of what that would look like--rounding a bend and there's the other train coming at you, and not one damn thing you can do about it. Brr.

And, as I say, it sounds so cheerful.

Some kids in Washington State may have found DB Cooper's parachute.

Cool.

And in his honour, here's Todd Snider playing his song, "DB Cooper":

I just added everyone from the Snarkfest friending frenzy, so "hi!" to anyone dropping by to see who just added them. Feel free to look around before you decide whether you want to do the add-back thing. It gets a little silly in here sometimes...

It is snowing again!

Yes, I know, it's Nova Scotia, and it's March. Even so! We've had plenty of winter already, haven't we?

A theory of protagonists, on editorrent2--it's interesting stuff, and includes this gem:

All of the ideas on the page spring, in some way or another, from the writer's individual psyche. We may think we've modeled the character of the waitress on a girl we knew in high school, but in fact, what we've done is model the waitress on our interpretation, our understanding, our memory and sensory impressions filtered through our own unique consciousness, of that same girl. The character has more to do with how we interpret people in our world than with who those people actually are.

When I talk about "character kidnapping," what I mean is that I am modeling a character on the impression I have formed of some real person (not someone I actually know, but have seen interviewed or watched onstage or something like that--someone whose personality has made an impact on me and caused me to think "that person is like this". Eventually it won't matter if I do meet and get to know the model, because the character develops an independent reality.)

In other words, when I talk about "character kidnapping," I am talking about exactly what the quote above says.

Cool.