Skidmore. A Shrinking Violent.
Looking at the picture of a pig’s ass on the CD cover of A Shrinking Violent, the beast’s grey, wrinkled buttocks are almost attractive after listening to the filth contained within. Written by a Montreal-based critic turned performer who goes by the name of Skidmore, A Shrinking Violent is a spoken word recording that integrates dialogue, music and sound-effects to create a comedy narrative lacking in what should theoretically be its two main components: humour and plot. “That gerbil had better had a manicure,” and other comments the context of which are better left unstated, are uttered nonchalantly between irrelevant and long-winded similes that describe the lewd antics of the main character Evelyn, which exclusively seem to be having sex and throwing up. Clichéd jokes, including a character called Ben Dover, are excruciatingly focussed on and explained to the point of condescension, but the greatest insult to the listener is the introduction’s claim that A Shrinking Violent is “literary,” as if putting rhyming words such as “lip lock” and “cock” in the same sentence demonstrates the careful deliberation of an artist and not just an ineffectual attempt to disguise verbal excrement
as poetry.
-Clare Pidsley

Requisite writer procrastination aside, for the past six months in Bali, the computer equals pain. Not just because of the constant black outs, the terrifying reboot sparks from the cord, or the haunting ghosts of fried hard drives past, but six months of unrelenting rains meant being shocked by every tap of the keyboard in a no-grounded electrical hell. I’ve moaned about this before, which, in an optimistic spin, isn’t such a bad thing for an easily distracted writer. Nosy neighbours don’t knock. The audible moaning, bordering at times on screams, means I’m busy, writing. Or possibly pleasuring myself with the kind of blunt barbed instrument not seen since the Inquisition. Neither, they suspect, will be pretty. So they leave me alone. In pain.

Is it merely yesterfear that prevents me from accosting the keyboard here in the “world”? I’ve been back in Montreal for more than a month, and my fingers still recoil. I feel like Supergirl trying to bang out all her big ideas on a keyboard made of kryptonite.

If the pen is mightier than the sword, does that mean I’m a writer, not a fighter?

But I am a fighter. I can do this. I can push through the pain, real or imagined, dammit. I can get the words out, in spite of the trembling typos. That motivational speaker on the infomercials says, we will do more to avoid pain than to gain pleasure. Of course, I’ve yet to find a writer who says writing equals pleasure, unless it’s one of those insomniacs stoned on Nyquill and sleep dep watching informercials at 4am. But I need to write, more often than I want to, and yet something happens to me every year in Bali. Deprived of technology the big fat writer ego discouragingly deflates.

On the island you might call Gilligan, surfing is an arcane sea adventure, and high tech means there’s actually a shade on the bare bulb. And if you’re thinking, a real writer only needs a pen and paper, I suggest inscribing your next grocery list onto a limp lasagna noodle. That’s paper in 70% humidity. That’s paper on the island that neighbours an island called Java, the island that also makes the world’s finest cigarettes. That’s the rub. Sitting in a smoke-filled cafe, served coffee by a waiter with a fresh cut flower behind his ear, enjoying the wind that just shifted from the dog shit pummeled street to the gardenia bush in full bloom. Shouldn’t I be writing about it… or something. How long had I been sitting in that cafe, just waiting, as it were, to inhale.

Could I ever get past the western idea of laziness that threatens life’s best offerings, like the quiet gratitude of wearing flip flops the entire month of February, surrounded by men in skirts [sarongs]? If, like I was taught in Catholic school, idle hands are the Devil’s playground, but God is in the moment, could my fussy, writing hands be the Devil’s stenographer? And right there, I thought, maybe absolutely nothing is exactly what I should be doing. Maybe not writing is actually necessary for experience. Yeah. Fuck you western guilt.

And then a prosaic, wide-eyed woman in a purple mumu at the next table cooed, ‘I’m a human being, not a human doing’.

Wow. Way to ruin the moment, hippy. But thanks for the reminder that I need to get back to work.

But to the naked eye, Bangkok’s biggest booming biz is increasingly less about affordable sex than cheap health care. Buzzphrase: Medical Tourism. That means a bypass or a facelift for about what you’d pay to take a half dozen friends to an upscale restaurant. All things considered, as a caucasian westerner, you really see the ugliest of your race here.

Bumrungrad hospital is Bangkok’s largest and most business savvy success story.

Check this out Canadians: within five minutes of entering the ER you’re seen by a doctor - not an intern, or a RN who just completed her correspondence course, but a doctor! And, yes, you read that right. Five minutes, not hours.

From the enticing menu, I chose the “Executive Check-up” package, meaning I’ve spent hours in elevators of sickly packed sardines and co from all over the world. Talk about an international cootie load [see above: world’s largest viral trade show]. Within 3 days I’d been properly prodded probed and poked, with all the results in. I got a thumbs up, and a smile, which I think means I’m healthy. But then again, a Thai smile can mean, I can’t find my father, and I think the water buffalo is dead.

Here in Bangkok an atypical loud-talking bitchy Thai man seems to have fixed my computer. Though I’m nowhere near the infamous hootchie hoods of PatPong or Soi Cowboy, squat little gentle men press porn menus into the hands of passing foreigners: pussy eat banana; pussy open bottle; pussy play ping pong. At a closer examination I don’t find, flaming pussy write blog, on anyone’s list and let that idea go, but it’s put me in a sudden mood for shooters.