Close (to the edit)

I have this involuntary fetish for my own name. Or perhaps history is catching up with me and playing little linguistic jokes with my tastes.
In the past year I've encountered two novels I've thoroughly enjoyed (or rather, I'm enjoying one of them right now) in which the main character is named Patrick.

I almost typed "the name character is mained Patrick."

In any case, the first was In the Skin of a Lion by Ondaatje and the one I'm reading now is A Splinter in the Heart by Al Purdy. I was delighted to discover the latter at that weird little huge cash only bookstore in the Eglinton subway station. It's Purdy's only work of prose; he's one of my favourite poets and I didn't know it existed. $7. It's really innocent (well, dementedly so, but still) and the dialogue leaves something to be desired, but his historiographic reimagining of Trenton, Ontario is really astounding. And his descriptions are wonderful...the everyday behaves insanely in the most mundane ways. It's quirky as fuck and I love it (although I dislike the word quirky. Well, not the word itself. Just the way people use it to describe things that evade easy description. But alas, I am guilty.)

I also discovered the album (Who's Afraid Of) The Art of Noise by the Art of Noise. It's their second(?) full length (it actually might be their first). The musical director is Trevor Horn, of The Buggles and late period Yes and producer of Frankie Goes to Hollywood (who I will be exploring next). I was first turned on to his work by a random vinyl copy of Adventures in Modern Recording by the Buggles that was literally given to me for no reason by my ex-girlfriend's father. I can't believe he didn't want to keep it; it's a fucking masterpiece. Interestingly enough, it's out of print, along with their debut record The Age of Plastic which features their montrously huge single "Video Killed the Radio Star." I still haven't heard that song in context, for fuck's sake! But I digress. The Art of Noise are basically an instrumental hip-hop band...but they were doing this shit in 1984! I'm so surprised that I'd never encountered them before. The record is really dope...it's like a J Dilla embryo with bad British teeth. Maybe Ratatat or Kno is a better comparison. I'm not sure.

Feeling good today. Perhaps I'll clean my room. But probably not. =)