Growing Spines

So now that I’ve figured out where the loo and water cooler are, I’m finally able to focus on more important things. Like spine poetry, which I discovered some time ago on Brain Pickings. Spine poetry is basically piling up book titles so that they become lines of a poem. Like this:

Or for those inclined towards darker, socio-political satire:

As you can see, the selection of books landing up on my desk are of sterling quality.

There are other distractions, like one guy who has a prominent hickey every other day. I’ve started referring to him as Oskar or the Right One (ref: Let the Right One In) in my head. It’s like making sure he’s marked is on his partner’s to-do list. The moment the mark begins to fade, I imagine his partner taking a deep breath, sucking the cheeks in a couple of times, running tongue over  teeth, and then lying in wait for him to come home. The moment Oskar walks in, his partner lunges for his throat. Next morning, hickey’s back.

However, not even Oskar’s particularly luminous love bite has been able to steer my attention away from the nausea that has been growing stronger over the past week. I’d imposed a gag order on myself about a film because too many people I know are involved in it. I was not going to talk about it, write about it or do anything else about it because when friends are involved in an outstandingly inept and horrifically bad piece of cinematic work, the only thing to do is keep your mouth shut and be there as the shoulder to cry on when the critical world sticks its tongue out at them.

Except the critics who have seen the film haven’t torn it apart. Everyone absolutely loves the film. Which leaves me feeling like the blonde dude (who was the villain’s sidekick) near the end of Mission: Impossible II. Remember when Tom Cruise puts on his face and brings him in, looking like Tom Cruise when he’s actually bound and gagged, unable to do anything other than go goggle-eyed and grunt? Well, that would be me. Every bit of rapturous praise that terrible film gets is like a kick to my aesthetic sense’s private parts, and I can say nothing. Someone told me the other day that if I had a spine then I wouldn’t not “speak my mind” about the movie. I’d have to lose a heart and replace it with a lump of Teflon to tell my friends what I thought of the damn film. Particularly since the critics are spouting all sorts of cotton candy compliments. Me being critical is just killjoy behaviour; cruel, killjoy behaviour.

So I’m going to go make more spine poetry.