Remember that Famous Quote by Charlie Brown's Dad?


It was such a big deal.

Having voiced announcements for Vancouver Transit, homegrown superstar Seth Rogen was voicing a series of announcements for the Toronto Transit Commission. Injecting a bit of levity and fun into a dreary subway commute couldn’t be a bad thing, could it?

The first few days after they were supposed to go live, I heard nothing at my regular subway stops. Caught the tail end of an announcement a few days later, but it was like the last few words, going quiet just as I hit the bottom of the stairs.

But today, I heard my first announcement from start to finish.

I don’t know what I expected. This is the TTC after all.

I’ve had my hearing tested in the last few years, and despite all the rock concerts and headphones and heavy equipment I’ve been exposed to over my lifetime, the Doctor said my hearing was fine.

So I can only surmise that everybody else in the station heard pretty much what I heard. By the light, rising and falling tone of the voice, I could tell it was Seth Rogen, but he sounded more like Charlie Brown’s dad from the old Peanut comic strips, “Murfel dodd mmummph, brigirdinitz shpinkle shpankle, crobopple...murfle murfle mummph crobopple.”

There you go. Far as I could tell, it might have been the Boston Strangler threatening to garrotte me the next time I set foot on a subway car.  Thank you TTC. You did make me smile. A somewhat rueful and dismissive smile for sure, as I slowly shook my head and got on the train.

I write literature of the fantastic. My short story collection, Psychedelia Gothique is mostly psychological horror. My just released novel, The Human Template is available through most online book retailers - and book two of the diptych, The Carnivorous Forest will appear in 2021. https://www.dalelsproule.com As a book reviewer I have written for Rue Morgue Magazine and AE Science Fiction. As a visual artist, I have illustrated books and magazines and have carved numerous sculptures out of stone.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Review of William Gibson's Agency

Image
  I recently read some reviews on Goodreads saying that  Neuromancer  is badly dated, has thin characters and is written in an unreadable style. I think what grates on me the most is that - to an extent, they are right. When you write near future science fiction, it will, by its nature, date quickly. Style preferences have changed considerably since the early 80s. But none of their observations struck me as particularly fair. They might react quite differently when the future he is addressing is more immediate. As in Agency .
Read more

Review of C.J. Lavigne's In Veritas

Image
I am not a particularly fast reader, but I did spend an unprecedented amount of time immersed in C.J. Lavigne’s debut novel, In Veritas . It is a story ostensibly about communication in which the major character, named Verity, is pretty much unable to communicate in the usual manner. The crossed-wires in her brain give her a severe case of synesthesia which lock her into her own somewhat non-sensical world and contributed strongly to making her an outcast from a very young age. – with the added complication that people have an impossible time lying in her presence. She escapes from incarceration in a mental health facility with Jacob, a wealthy young man who seems to be somewhere in the autistic spectrum. Having been cheated out of control of his family fortune, he does pretty well on the stipend he receives. Jacob and Verity live together in an affectionate - although emotionally distant and seemingly platonic -  relationship where he switches career paths every five minutes ...
Read more

The Book After Which Everything is Different

Image
I’ve never called myself a Chuck Palahniuk fan. I’ve been aware of him only since the  Fight Club  movie and have read only  Invisible Monsters  and  Fight Club . I’ve never been to one of his readings, though they seem to be pretty amazing and I’ll probably catch one if I get a chance. While looking him up online, I came upon a piece of his writing advice on Litreactor about avoiding the use of thought verbs. It was genius. It spoke directly to me and my worst tendencies as a writer like no teacher or article has before – and it came to me at exactly the right time. IE: while I’m on the fourth draft of the novel and that level of editing is at its easiest (which is a bit like saying it’s easiest jumping the Grand Canyon on a motorcycle when the sun isn’t directly in your eyes). When I discovered that Palahniuk had written an entire book on writing, it seemed like a good investment, even if all I was doing by buying it was paying him properly for the though...
Read more