It seems like everything is working out

Everything is working out; I've nothing to complain about.

Circumstances seem okay.

I felt the same way yesterday.

My ankle aches and my eyes are heavy

but it's alright, my bed is ready.

Tomorrow will be much the same,

but... I'm off till Saturday.

My throat croaks and phlegm comes up

I haven't felt that much like writing

It seems that I have things to say

but they come out slowly if ever.

Half baked ideas appearing and disappearing in my mind.

I feel useful to be doing work

but rarely creative

and mostly just tired.

I installed new pedals on my bike

I used a 5/8ths crescent wrench

and got dirt and oil on my fingers.

WD40 smells like work. I felt competent.

Honestly, you could have done it.

Sort of like my second job. I am a human vending machine

and sometimes I sweep the floor

but mostly, I drink iced coffee.

To be frank, I haven't really thought that much about it

I guess it seems like too small of a chance to linger over

but I think it's been sitting in the back of my mind

and making work easier.

Here's hoping. Things should have worked out that time.

Maybe we'll get another chance.

In Limbo by Radiohead

and Blaise Bailey Finnegan

I cribbed the style of this post from someone

that I used to date.

Or did I?

It feels pretty organic.

Neoprene biking gloves, business cards, Slayer tickets

A p-bass, red plaid loafers, work clothes draped over a fan.

A green skull-shaped shaker that Seb bought me for no reason.

Pirate bandaids. Headphones for listening to underwater.

A CD player I got for free when I was 14.

A carabiner that is unsafe to use for climbing.

Wine glasses I used once. How ornamental. Ostentatious?

A recursive beer mug. A craft vise in which I crushed a coke can.

Lots of coke cans. Duct tape. Staples. Peg winder.

A lava lamp that doesn't work anymore.

I'm too nervous to longboard at any reasonable speed.

Even on my bike

rolling over manholes makes me cringe

but I think the confidence will come back at some point.

All the roads I ride look so inviting for urethane.

I have more drum keys than I know what to do with.

When I got home today, I had a bunch of things to do

and exciting things to tell my dad

but there was KFC on the table and only one plate.

It was ok, though. 

He came back later.

My brother was listening to Ride The Lightning.

I gave him some more music to listen to.

Made me kind of proud.

He will be a serious dude someday.

If he doesn't discover cold fusion first

that would be death for his social life.

How ironic!

She paid like fourteen bucks for a cable I got for $1

at the Dollar Store, no less.

CAT-5 was invented in 1974 at Xerox Parc.

I have a package of fake moustaches on my desk.

The plug for my mouse is taped down because it is broken

I can't even imagine what life will be like in three months

How inconceivable. 

But really,

it's not a big deal.

I wonder if they'll let me keep my lego AT-ST...

It's a collector's edition.

(He just came into my room

and said it would have been awesome

if, as apparently they almost did,

Harmonix had put Angel of Death

in Guitar Hero: Metallica.)

Did you know?

Brian Gibson works for that company.

He is also in the band Lightning Bolt.

There is a tissue burnt from the application of a soldering gun

and a five hundred page guide to traveling in Mexico

for the sort of people who would travel in Mexico.

If i'd worked this job last summer

it would have been craaaaazy.

Maybe we can interface at some point

I'm available by many forms of electronic conveyance

I've collected about ten stickers that say  Thank You

and I dare you to type that on your keyboard.

Carrier pigeon and homing owl are not recommended

but you can probably send me an email.

I want a capybara.

Good night.

Bafflegab

It's kind of funny how there is such a backlog of my personal history on this blog. Admittedly it's kind of like the letters your parents got from you at summer camp saying how you hated it and wanted to go home even when camp really wasn't that bad and you only had time to write when you were homesick anyway, and I am surprised sometimes to find how upbeat other people's blogs can be. 

I think I've become really exacting about the kind of stuff I'll post on here, like I expect it to hold up to some personal standard that doesn't really have any guidelines. Hesaidquote is kind of about that; it has some more rigid guidelines that turn each post into a calculated take on whatever topic, as opposed to here where I just futz around and vomit verbiage pretending that people actually enjoy reading it. In fact I find that a lot of material on here is like some kind of purgatory for thoughts that irritate me so much I have to write them down, and it's often so lazy in terms of creativity and thought that it's basically the equivalent of HST typing out other people's books on his Selectric. That's a good example actually - I noticed the last time I used that word that I'd mentioned it twice more pretty recently and that bothered me. I think the kind of artistic sensibility that I like to imagine I share with people like Mackenzie sometimes bleeds into my view of a lot of things in my life; I'm judgmental about album art and other people's photography for example when they, for whatever reason, appear "incorrect" to me.

This kind of writing is interesting if you're focused on a specific topic and have some kind of goal in mind but I often find my own words on this blog so boring. I drone on about whatever topic with weak metaphorical explanations in disjointed paragraphs that have questionable specificity. I used to end each post with a haiku until I decided I was kind of insulting the great tradition by jumping lines and using curse words and that you can't really write haikus in any other language than Japanese... But anyway, I kind of like that sentiment. I'd say that I'll make more of an effort to include imagery but who am I kidding, I'd regress back to here anyway...

This weekend was a strange mixture of loneliness and good times with friends; I spent nearly every day with A&M, saw Wolverine, went to band practice where we wrote a great song, checked out the Skull Skates yard sale, ate at the Topanga Cafe, and beat most of MGS3 on normal... But last year just like this year my family was out of town and I came home every night to a house that was too big to be my space alone. While I'm whinging, my ankle is almost healed but I probably won't be skating for another three months even with lots of attention from the physiotherapist of questionable credentials who was constantly chewing gum and hooked up electrical suction cups to my foot.

Maybe it's that I don't often do much that is really noteworthy that hobbles my ability to come up with moments I feel are worth writing about. Really, who gives a fuck that I bought a slurpee (even though I didn't because I can't carry them without somebody to help me). Hmm, let's see what else - I wasted hours of my life arguing pointlessly with people I don't know very well over a largely irrelevant topic which wound me up to the point where I had a stomach ache on my way to the job interview I had today, which by the way leads to the most worthwhile thing I've been doing lately... It looks like I'll be gainfully employed at the very boutique Apple Store downtown in Pacific Centre as well as the laid-back and locally owned Park Theatre on Cambie St. So I'll have something to do during the waking hours... 

It's pathetic really, I go on Facebook sometimes and see people planning things I'm not involved in and have to remind myself that there is no malice involved and that I really live nowhere near whatever event is going on. Playing video games by yourself is cool as long as you have video games, and when you beat them all and have nothing to look forward to you might as well go out and hang out with people and actually get a real life. It's like summer is limbo where you are suspended in a constant shifting state of lethargy and labour before returning to the plane of reality for eight months of speaking to other people and drinking copious volumes of alcohol. 

Anybody reading this should check out the album Decline of the West by Holy Sons... You are probably totally into indie music and therefore you will probably like it a lot more than any of the sweaty armpit grumpy metal bands I'd otherwise be tooting the horn of. 

I wrote a pretty off-the-cuff op-ed thing for the summer edition of the Martlet about the election, and I haven't heard back so I doubt it'll be published but either way it'll probably end up here too. This blog is so often a catalogue of disappointment that it seems like it'll fit right in. Christ I am a bucket of sunshine this morning... I have to turn off the Godspeed You! and start grooving on something posi.

Lost for months at sea, craving human contact... Come in Cape Canaveral...

The Allure of Old Spice

I can't say how many times I've seen the new Degree Men's ad on tv... You know, the one that opens with "7 out of 10 men prefer Degree to whatever Old Spice scent," and then features a funny looking "average guy" jumping out of an airplane with a shopping cart and then zooming through two semi-trailers on the freeway. You can watch it here: http://www.degreemen.com/Men/Degree-Men-Deodorant.aspx It loads on the right side of the screen and you can enlarge it. I can't imagine the kind of jumped-up twitchy-fingered intercity/midtown card-carrying gym membership meathead jock that this ad is tailored to appeal to, but either way, mentioning that "fewer men like Old Spice" is really just unnecessary. I wouldn't be surprised if Degree was more popular that Old Spice, but I think that's because their target markets are far different. If the fans of Degree Men are Chad Ochocinco and shopping-cart-jumping guy, Old Spice is represented by Bruce Campbell and is probably used by Dos Equis' Most Interesting Man In The World. Here's an Old Spice ad: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Af1OxkFOK18 Damn. That was TASTEFUL. Now you know: Degree Men is nothing short of embarrassing.

As Usual...

This blog has lately been a pit of self-inflicted misery and poor and unenviable writing, I think. It's been really nice having my uncle here this week while he was helping my mom attend to my ailing grandmother. We cooked nasi goreng with prawns and all kinds of Indonesian-slash-Dutch foods involving thoroughly disgusting and rank "fermented shrimp paste" combined with delicious sambal. We also did hamburgers in the frying pan accompanied by scratch made flatbread, which is a surprisingly good burger bun substitute. Hopefully I'll be able to cook enough not to starve in September, or at least avoid scurvy from over-consumption of ramen. (Looking up nasi goreng now has me slavering over dutch cuisine and pictures of buttered mussles on wikipedia. Is it bad that it's making me reconsider the Utrecht exchange program?)

Still pretty much spending every day sitting around doing nothing and wishing I wasn't on crutches, but then I said I wasn't going to write about that. I've applied a bunch of places for jobs, and I haven't called anyone back yet but I'm pretty sure that I'm still mostly unemployable for the next three weeks or so. It was a little strange going back to Choices and filling out an application; I was hesitant, as last summer they gave me a weird interview with questions like, "What does organic mean to you?" and "What do you think are the top 5 priorities of Choices Market?" They didn't hire me because apparently I couldn't work full-time in the shifts they wanted, but we all knew it was because I blew the interview with the aging hippie-slash-vietnam veteran manager. But they apparently got new management along with their facelift and I was warmly interrogated by their "Head Cashier". I wouldn't mind working there at all.

Chris called me back on Thursday morning while I was at my dad's work watching his epic course-setting presentation of the year, and now I have an assured place to live next year. The room Chris showed me wasn't at all what I was expecting but over the last week or so I've been toying with it like a sore tooth and imagining what it could look like. I hope I have some money to make an Ikea run and pick up a desk and some bookshelves. I'm sure that Jens and Cobi and Chris and I will make a raggedy bunch of roomies in September and I'm really looking forward to it, although... Sometimes I get this feeling of loneliness, even among people I really like, even when I'm hanging out with those people all the time. Like my life is on a different tangent than everyone else's in the world and my thoughts and emotions just don't connect with those of others. Some people understand that intrinsically, I think because they sometimes experience it as well. I don't know who I till turn to for moral support. I'm sad about Lauren. I'm sad about Zoe.

In any event...

Had a lovely dinner with Uncle Leo and my parents on Saturday at Seasons in the Park, a high-falutin' restaurant at the top of Queen Elizabeth park. Delicious seafood fettucini carbonara, but it hit me like a carb grand slam when mixed with the wine glass that magically stayed full. Somehow I made it through to a 9:30 show at the Cobalt opening for Victoria's Mother Died Today and the revitalized Masquerade of Silence. Played a really solid show despite the ankle and not having practiced with the band for months before Friday. It'll be too bad to have Seb over in Chile for a month just when I'm able to get back on the throne, so to speak. I think we've got some recording aspersions this summer and there's been talk of an island tour, but certain people (AKA me) have roundly failed to secure their driver's licenses in time, and having your dad drive you is gauche unless you're Protest The Hero.

Cooped up in the house mostly, as I said, so I've been playing video games of course... I won't go into the nerdy details so suffice to say that Portal deserves all the praise it's garnered and that World In Conflict is one of the best RTS games no one's ever seen (yet). Plus, Steam is magnificent scam that will have me blithely downloading Left4Dead with the next Freaky Friday promotion.

Broke the ground wire in my p-bass again. I hope Eric doesn't mind how much abuse I've put it through to date since he lent it to me (maybe a year ago now). Although I keep mouthing off about it to everyone, I don't know how likely this sludge side project is to get off the ground. I don't think I'm much of a songwriter or a vocalist for that matter. On the other hand, it might just be a case of getting Seb and I together in a room for a couple hours. I don't feel comfortable referring to myself as a bass player without some kind of band experience, as if I need some kind of legitimacy to deem myself a four-banger. My insecurity is showing again.

It was maybe five years ago or so that my family visited our friends' home in Courtney, B.C. for a week or two; I remember looking up to their oldest boy with respect and being fascinated by his miniatures and Mechwarrior 2. Building robots out of lego that were close enough to the game schematics to surprise even myself. Picking leeches off my leg after standing in the freezing creek. Elia getting sick and feverish. Minigolf. Biko making nachos in the microwave after everyone else had gone to sleep and eating them casually, barefooted, in the middle of the kitchen. I don't remember thinking about girls once, although I was probably jealous. I wonder what they're doing now.

[Kinski - Montgomery]

I'm in a spaceship, flying away,

and this is my journal.

No letters to write, it's too long a flight

and it's tough to get wifi for email.

The radio's dead, I'm alone in my head

and I've had all the Tang I could want.

I'm flying away, to horizons of grey,

because all the windows are covered;

I can't bear to see, a reflection of me

come hell or even high water.

Don't leave me alone,

to an quiet dial tone

I realized nobody was there

and that's what they said, when they found me dead

"His mind was quite empty of thought."

As you were.

Another Month

Another month of crutches. 30 and 50% weight bearing, whatever the fuck that means.

Another month of not being able to carry anything and needing help all the time.

Another month of taking forever to get anywhere and begging for car rides.

Another month of being too self-conscious to apply for a job.

Another month of fighting to get up the motivation to leave the house.

Another month of wearing two different socks and pumping up a sweaty cast.

Another month of nothing but brown cargo pants and shorts.

Another month without longboarding or riding my bike.

Sigh. What the fuck am I gonna do.