If this is your first time here, you should probably read this.

August 16, 2008
The Sanguine Beast

Been a long fucking time. Much happens. Ya eat a layoff or two in real life, figure you need a change and decide to move East. Long fucking story. Get to it at some point.

But for today, I got to say I'm two weeks from moving out of E-Ville and I got to sell the ambulance. Bought it for the tour, drove it for the last 4 years as my sole source of transportation and I've loved it more than some women, but I can't take it where I'm going. So I'm selling it for whatever it's worth. Make a bid. Minimum is 6 bucks and handful of cod.

Course, instead of just listing it in the bargain finder, I made a monster four minute trailer and built a website for it. Go:

PinkAmbulance.com

Nunt: the book Find out about Mingus Tourette's journey to hell and back. "Makes Fight Club look like Three Little Bunnies"... MORE!

January 1, 2008
one more down

December 18, 2007
from our family to yours

November 22, 2007
a history of bottles

If you're in E-Ville, check out this week's SEE Magazine, last page. Look for the history of bottles article. SEE just relaunched--new look, new typefaces and new sections--including a back space with room for literary non-fiction ruminations on E-ville. They're looking for 600-800 word personal essays about life in the city. An anecdote or personal reflection. I was hotly honoured and shit-tank scared to bust off the first one with stories about broken bottles. But, they're looking for a rotating host of folks to fill the page, so tell some stories. I'd link my article up, but it's not online yet. Soon enough. If you're in town, get it while it lasts.

November 12, 2007
if yer Christmas Shopping

If you're shopping for yourself and loved ones during the religious season, I would highly suggest Jim Munroe's new graphic novel, Therefore Repent. Super fucking cool, great production value, beauty illustrations and a hot story. Plus, fellah's all independent, Canadian and ships fast & cheap.

In short, book goes like this: "What if the religious right… are actually right? Without warning, multitudes of Christians float bodily up into the sky. For the immoral majority, life goes on pretty much as usual. Except that after the Rapture, magic works — for those willing to risk demonic mutations. And an angelic army appears to have been deployed to mop up the sinners. But through it all, outsiders Raven and Mummy face the possibility of a bigger problem than the end of the world: the end of their relationship."

Check out the first 60 pages for yourself free.

I once dreamed of doing an animation series set in the same time period, but never got past making the trailer. This one works bloody well as a graphic novel--I read the whole thing in an afternoon. But, if you don't trust me, and those first 60 pages, believe yer pals at the Quill and Quire and their starred review:

“Therefore Repent! is an absolutely boundless piece of fantasy that [Munroe] wisely grounds in very human relationships… to say it’s an imaginative work would be an understatement: ‘unhinged’ is probably more accurate. I can’t wait for more.” — Robert J. Wierseman, Quill & Quire

Yup, enjoy the roast beast.

October 26, 2007
blacktop

Last night, I go looking through notebooks for a poem about smashed mirrors and my pink bitch. Searching, I marked a couple of random haiku that didn't gag hogballs--both used the word blacktop. And the poem about smashed mirrors, when I found it, used the same noun. Maybe that's why it gave me the crisp salute, why I remembered it. But maybe not. Wonder where I picked it up. All three poems were written over the course of a year, two different notebooks, three different seasons, two haiku, one longer narrative poem, no intentional connection at the time of writing. Can't recall using the word before this year, would normally use pavement, like nunto 1. So I gotta ask myself: What's the motherfuckering semantics of this blue collar word, eh? If there were more linguistics in my life, and less overproof rum, I might trawl my cerebellum and figure out the answer. But tonight, I'm getting drunk cause it's almost my birthday, and therefore, Halloween. And so, blacktop will remain an eternal mystery. Tragic; Rosebud.

The two haiku (plus a couple others in a new haiku sephirot series):

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Fat magpies
pick at gravel, iron bolts.
Frost tonight.

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All You Can Eat Ribs!
The blacktop hums--balding poplar
withers in exhaust.

---

Frozen moths
cling to your old house;
bitter Prairie concrete.

---

Women rake blacktop.
Orange leaves drift in the steam--
caught, crushed under rock.

October 1, 2007
breaking laws

No, I have not been to Massachusetts recently. No, I'm not 14 stone. Yes, I appreciate the story. Yes, I've read Nowlan's Mysterious Naked Man in Public. Yes, I've also run naked in public. Yes: worn a gasmask nearly naked in public at government protests, walked naked casually down the main street of a small town after midnight, and yes, my old book featured a gasmask, and insinuated sub-habit nudity. But no, it's hardly the start of a trend, a statement, or a revolution. It's just one guy:

kneeling behind a garbage can or lying on his belly
in somebody's garden
or maybe even hiding in the branches of a tree,
where the wind from the harbour
whips at his naked body,
and by now he's probably done
whatever it was he wanted to do
and wishes he could go to sleep
or die
or take to the air like Superman.

-A. Nowlan, A Mysterious Naked Man

September 10, 2007
antiplot

I am trying to write a new book. If it didn't sound like a punchline, I would say I am working on a novel. But who fucking cares, hey? Don't talk about it, eh? Gimme 80 000 words, or fuck off, eh? That's what I think.

But what I got: thousands of words about characters, tens of thousands about the story. And the plot. Right now, the plot is fucking me, fucking me good--in the eye. Icepicks in the irises. Goddamnit, I thought the first third was figured out. And today, I am staring at it, thinking: how in fuckJesus does this make any sense? Why is the chronicity more twisted than a 315 mph Mazerati crash spinal cord? Why does grappling this rancid bookbitch feel like headbutting an octopus--tit on buck useless.

And why are all those similes so weird, so uselessly piled on each other? Maybe cause plot doesn't feel like actual writing, and it's splurting out, freshly lanced sebum. That hoary bitch plot--that logical, emotionally-devoid, puzzlemaking slut. Isn't poetry easier? At least one has something to show at the end of the day. What now? Ten hours of work, and I can say the first act doesn't suck all slapping-hairy-porno-balls? I suppose in six months the tearducts will open when each of those finely constructed plot points pays off with perfectly timed death scenes, expository revelations and meaningful fuck paeans, but fuck me--a long afternoon walk in the river valley, a couple stiff autumn haiku and I could have strided out the day feeling tall and brilliant. But now, repressed and thinking about vodka shots on a Monday. No wonder Lowry was so blitzed all the time.

August 30, 2007
3 Daze

Those crazy bastards at BOokTelevision are at it again in E-Ville. 3 Days to write a novel. Good luck with the illegal stimulants, I say.

August 27, 2007
TBOS

Babiak's hot new novel, The Book of Stanley, rolls off the presses this week. Serious book launch and celebratory carnage, with Ben Mulroney and Mingus Tourette in an existential DEICIDE CAGE MATCH at the Billiard Club this Wednesday, Aug 29th at 7:30pm. That's on Whyte and 105th, if yer a teetotaller.

Though even the DEICIDE cage match isn't as much carnage as me and CT headbutting bouncers at the Commercial on a Friday night Fringe Fucktacular-- but what is? Good ta see that fucker around.

August 20, 2007
Fringe Inn

If you're staring at the Fringe program, wondering what plays to check out this week, here's a few high grade choices:

ONE
who: directed by that fellow who directed postcards from hell, Jason Carnew
what: love story in hell, theatre at frightening best
where: Westbury Theatre, TransAlta Arts Barns
August 20 – 2:15 pm
August 22 – 6:30 pm
August 23 – 2:15 pm
August 25– 11:00 pm
August 26 – 12:00 pm
more: Youtube Trailer-ish

Chance Moments
who: Charles Netto, fellow who transformed nunt to stage last year
what: In a series of snapshots, two lives are inexorably drawn together and inevitably torn apart.
where: King Edward Elementary 8530 101st St
August 20 – 6:30 pm
August 21 – 2:30 pm
August 23 – 1:00 pm
August 24 – 9:00 pm
August 25 – 4:45 pm

Whoa Whoa Whoa, Hold On a Second, Wait Just a Minute...There's WAY Too Much Butter on That
who: those fucktards from MOSTLY WATER THEATRE
where: Filthy McNasty's
what: the funny shit that makes us laugh
when: every night Aug 21-26th at 6pm
more: www.mostlywatertheatre.com

August 1, 2007
The Passenger and On

Michelangelo Antonioni checked out amid the crowd, under the shadow of Bergman. The Passenger was one raw hell of a movie. One of those works that resonates, post. Like Bowles' Sheltering Sky. Maybe it's just the desert. But I think there's more; the alienation, the desperation. Both slow moving works with startling, horrific conclusions. I remember finding Sky was just a tepid story by a Fitzgerald stylist as it began. But it became something honestly unexpected, something that won't stop. Still trying to decide what it said about those characters, what it did to them. Same way, I thought Antonioni was wanking at the start of Passenger. But it came around: hard and ugly. Still think of both, though I love the desert. But that's besides. Peace, Maestro.

July 17, 2007
The Harry Potter Humdinger

Harry Potter fans stop reading now. Potential pericardial-sac busting spoilers ahead.

Because what if I know how Harry Potter ends? The whole series. What if I know it today. What if I know it five days before publication date because anarchist poet friends with a taste for infiltration walked past a sleepy-eyed security guard into a Quebecor Montreal warehouse three weeks ago and snatched a copy. Not all the crates are padlocked, apparently. And what if those miscreants mailed it here just because I have a numbered PO Box and a means of broadcast more robust than Myspace.

And what if I read the last chapter only, because I don’t read Harry, and I don’t care what happens to the Neil Gaiman Books of Magic clone—live or die? But what if I was touched, just a bit, because he didn’t die. Sure, that snot-lipped red-head friend of his goes out in fiery blast, but who cares about him, whiny bugger. What if I was touched, because like King Eddie #8, Harry abdicates the Merlin-esque future given him for the love of a young woman. To protect her, to protect them in the long run—after knocking off the bad guy in style, natch. Gives the whole life up for some feline named Ginny. Sound intimately familiar? Powers retired, largesse future dissolved, all things gone, for the folly of a young girl. And all things gained, it seems. Mr. Witch and Warlock, gone to live the regular life after all the tragedies. Home with the Dursleys (for now). Muggle-style.

You wouldn’t see it coming, would you? But you might understand why Rowling wept when she finished the story. Love over destiny, natch. Makes us all weep.

I'm not saying the Deathly Hallows definitely sits on my table beneath a copy of Lorca’s Poet in New York. That would presume a complete lack of legal self-preservation. But I am the same fellow who may have snuck into a major book chain last year to plant 32 copies of my own book on the end-display (cue photo). And I'm not sayin that I command reams of poetic rabble spread thick across the country, particularly in la belle province, that would engage in such practice. None ever swore fealty to the ambulance. But that is the anarchist way. And so is this. Nor am I saying that I debated reading the entire Hallows because it would be fun to be the first reader, but that I guiltily read Steinbeck instead. Because Steinbeck knew suffering and the true language of defrocked preachers who spread too much holy spirit among the flock. But who wouldn't prefer to read about ole Jim Casy laying down the cross for the love of young women, a young woman anywhere. I guess it's really not that different, in the end. So what if I did read Steinbeck, and the Hallows still sits on the table, under a New York ledge? Wouldn't that still be—as those Brit bastards would say—brilliant? Enjoy yer wait.

July 13, 2007
Fifty Years After the Volcano

If you ever had a soft spot for the churrigeresque dipsomania of Malcolm Lowry, check out this article on the fiftieth year of his death. Oh, the things I've learned living Under the Volcano. Fucking churrigeresque.

June 19, 2007
That Mocking Little Bastard

If you've ever tried to write a novel, or know someone who's been at it for several years, you must watch this: That Novel You've Been Working On.

"Everybody learns the hero's journey isn't always a happy one..."

May 30, 2007
Renaldo

Your life is split into two pieces: the bleak heart-rending time before you heard this song, and the blessed time after. Remember that you heard about this brilliant piece of musical history right here. When it is a worldwide phenomenon. And, that Mingus Tourette was the first person on the planet to hear it, besides Sweaty Charles. If nothing else in this, there is that. And, Sweaty Charles is almost available for parole.

C'est Renaldo. Turn it up. Loud. He will be fucking you now.

May 10, 2007
Infest Wisely

and out of the southern wilderness, they came carrying sixteen sticks of dynamite, teeth taped together, eyes sewn shut and then, the horror began....

Jim Munroe, inventor of the late Perpetual Motion Roadshow, has a supercool new low-fi feature film coming out, entitled Infest Wisely, about a chewable nanotechnology that lets people take pictures with their eyes and cure cancer. But early adopters find out it's hard to uninstall something after it's spread through their bloodstream... Horror, action and sci-fi social commentary ensues.

The refreshing aspect of the feature is the collaborative approach and execution. Munroe wrote seven 12 minute episodes, which were directed by seven different directors. Each episode is to stand on its own, but an ongoing narrative and interconnecting characters will allow it to combine to form a feature length movie. Munroe calls it "Voltron-inspired".

Infest Wisely is screening in Toronto at the U of T on May 18th, and afterwards, will be releasing an episode a week online.

What I love about this: the deleriously low-fi indie Collective Commons spirit of making a movie and putting it out there without regard for anything except making a movie and putting it out there. Fucking cool. Looks like fun.

Check the brand new site and watch the trailer here

April 21, 2007
Respite

I'm out of town for a couple weeks. In the meantime, do yourself a favour and read this Paris Review interview with Mr. Vonnegut.

So it goes.

April 10, 2007
Theskza Risen

For those who like books. And like smart, fun, insightful writing about books that just gets to the guts of it: Theskza's new blog. Meditations on Palahniuk, Geek Love, Ulysses and the Magical Amis. You gotta love it.

That link again, in case you are dissmart.

March 20, 2007
Fun With Google Maps

This year, when I am tracking the upticking number of Edmonton homicides, I can do so with this handy map. Sweet!

February 21, 2007
the great black procession

just cracking vox box
and carefully tending
treasured tufts of pubic hair

we bought each other
the same Bakshi Lord of the Rings
movie for Christmas
         years before the great disbelieving

18 different apartments
and seven wives later

i open the snowflake wrapping first
to discover
we've bought each other
the same Frank Miller graphic novel

my brother and I
we're pallbearers Saturday

we both know
her husband's casket was heavy
and this one probably too

February 14, 2007
The Valentine Question

When starting to write something new, there is always this question:

Giant squid, or insomniac photographers who break into city towers?

That is - what story to follow? The hard personal obsession, replete with pictograms, or the book that isn't intrinsic autobiographical exorcism?

Tricky stuff. At least I'm smart enough this year to know either one will take eighteen months. Lots of blood and wanton writing both ways, but different angles. Marvin would say "I don't know if there's a wrong choice". But there is.

February 9, 2007
Haiku Found In the Margin of The Travel Journals of Tento Yuriko

Seemed fitting, given the temperature in this burg.

---


The night snow graders
and coyotes - call to each other.
Gravel road.

October 12th, 2006
730 Days Later

On a bitter autumn morning, Tourette loaded the wide-eyed Mike Gravel into The Pink Bitch and the two headed East on the errant missile, a pair of screaming lumberjacks with hands bit hard into the edge of a frozen log split off some giant wooden cock pumped hard by Herculean balls, blasting meathammer poetry towards that blackened godless Mecca, The Big Smoke. Tourette, destined to slapshot his own words into the deep, empty lakes that ring the City, rode the bitch hard and endless until sleep and day overlapped in one slitbuzzing hynagogic dance that could only end in failure, madness or lidless-eyed death.

Two years ago, it started like that. And even when it was done, he refused to let go of the wheel, refused to believe it was done, that the dream was dead, ground to red paste, that poetry was finished, that writing was broke, that the Bitch was rusting and flaking and he strapped her doors shut and kept a hundred copies of the Word in the trunk with two shovels, a barren cashbox, his emergency bottle of rum and the scar on his fingers where the knife hit bone. Obstinate bone, buried deep in the hood of his parka, encasing that glistening skull and two eyes, ceaseless humming, carved from tar and the sheen of pavement, ever aiming left in the darkness, just the side of the oncoming lights, faithful that somewhere past the whitewalls of rain and highbeams lies the white dotted line again, leading on. Somewhere.

April 4th, 2006
one last little black hope

If you read that hot Edmonton Journal article and found your way here, you're probably looking for the thousand dollar notebook reward. Or you'd like to read the poem I wrote about it. Both are posted after the jump. And that's it.

The reward was first posted about two weeks ago. Yes, it is a genuine reward. Hand my notebook over, and I'll give you a thousand bucks. No questions asked. And no, I'm not rolling in hot cash money—I'm a poet. But that's what I'm willing to eat for it.

Frankly, I've just about given up hope for it—even though I keep checking snow banks near the ambulance. I first panicked about this in February. It's coming round to the time when I should get on with it, and write about something else. Whether I'd like to or not. Unless an Easter miracle happens, it probably ain't coming back. So, thanks to all who didn't laugh, and to Ohler, who actually thought it was worth writing about it.

In the end - the reward stands. If you know someone who might work near a lost and found, or a landfill, let em know it could be worth big bucks.

Permalink: http://www.nunt.com/notebook.gif.

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---

And... the poem.

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Blue Stigmata

The first snow storm of winter
comes in March.

The forests will burn this summer.

Under the deep drifts somewhere
lies my notebook.

Her face blank.

Her fine aster-white pages
rigid with ice crystals.

Her words and lines
still crisp for now.
Like anything buried in February.

Though soon,
the moisture will slither in.
The blood will soften
and sag heavy through the leather cover,
rotting out
and flowing into the mud.

Later, in June,
when this is supposed to be past me,
I will look at the black veins of flowers
with suspicion.

Stand four footed in the dirt
inspecting xylem and blue stigma for ink.
A pistil at my head.

Sniffing the styla for letters and lost poems.

And frighten spring hikers
with a righteous ridgeback's glare,
nostrils flaring between the petals.

So I'm on my hands and knees, I'll snarl.

Fuck you.
I'm whispering
to my daughter.

January 6th, 2006
a step and a whirling spire

three days ago
I ate a tin of oysters
that I later discovered
expired in 1999

only now
am I climbing out of the fever

but barring the vomiting and sweating and shaking
it has not been a bad time in the cave

I have not seen as many old friends
in one place
since my third wedding

Gander was there
and said
caterpillar-like

that pink book is a pillar of salt
and so is she

Nat
stood white and hard
in the corner
saying nothing

Tento
asked me out for breakfast
down in grey forested limbo

Colette
said she hated me
and my pale lips

and

Chloe
said
I don't even hate you

i pity you
to have to

live with you

and curled her lips
as she spoke
which made me shiver

but my old bookbinder
perched there
on his black chair

and said

you knew it was time to
start walking again
anyhow

this ironshod city
with her collar of rust
is starting to flake
and burrow under your skin

so crack it off and start moving

you great stupid pipemoth
you terrible wandering fool

and when I woke
I clutched long strands of hair
in my fist
and gasped for breath
and saw nothing

but the crackling ceiling
and ravens
chasing sundogs
howling across the sky

But What Happened Last Week? By God, Find Out Here!

Copyright © 2007 Mingus Tourette