Periodically.org

Train Show

2011-12-30T00:39:00.000-08:00

We went to a model train show in November. Mainly, okay, soley for Owl Jr.'s benefit. It was at the local community centre, the gym which usully holds weekend warriors doing some approximation of a team sport they had done decades ago in highschool playing host to enthusiasts of recreating some aspects of industrial-era mass transportation infrastructure.

The hobbyists are nearly exclusively old men with beards wearing engineer's caps. Train engineer caps, to be precise. (I'm not sure if other engineers (mechanical, electrical, chemical, etc) have hats, although that could only be a boon to recruiting new blood. Just think, a solid iron baseball cap with oversized rivets for mech engies, a erlynmeyer flask breeding a hardy yeast species for industrial bread making for bioresource engineers, the mind staggers.) And some a bit younger folks who would not look amiss at a convention featuring dragons and swords and possibly magic. My kin, if you will. Or kin from a long forgotten arm of the family that has taken residence in some earthy, unmentionable region of the Appalachians.

There are gauges, as I understand it, different scales and rails and eras and whatnot. Large trains, small trains, mini-trains. There was even a Lego railway. Quite well done too, many almost recognizable buildings and intricate switchbacks, or,whatever you call those things (I was not into trains in any way, apparently).

Interestingly, Owl Jr. wasn't captivated by the Lego ones -- which I imagine the real hobbyists sneer at, you don't spend 8 hours in the workshop faithfully reproducing a 19th Century North Hampshire farmhouse to have some upstart do the same in 30 minutes with a few woodgrain decaled plastic bits -- he was interested in the intricate ones, the more ancient locomotives, that had lots of pistons and drive-shafts and bit and pieces moving. He also seemed to be into the scenary, which I imagine is at least half the job of these model trains. Tunnels, mountain ranges, trees, these were all appreciated. Factories, warehouses, even a dock were stared at for uncomfortable amounts of time.

The tricky bit was trying to avoid being engaged by the hobbyists, because I knew less than nothing and had no inclination to learn more. And while I can feign interest in things, it does tend to suck up my dwindling supply of energy which was being used up at the time holding a two year old at shoulder height so he could see all the action.

As a PC gamer, I'm all too aware of the pain of being interested in something that most people find childish, regressive, or perhaps even a little bit nerdy. I didn't want to get any of the vendors hopes up that I'd be soon recreating the splendour of a small coal mining concern in 17th century Newcastle.

But Owl Jr. was happy, Owlet was led back up to the library ages ago, and at the very least I got a pretty decent shoulder workout and the beginning designs for a Programmer's Hat.

Bunk Bed

2011-12-28T12:46:00.000-08:00

In August, I constructed a bunk bed. Assembled. From the standard Scandinavian outlet of fine particle-board based furniture.

Owl Jr had just come graduated from the crib. We made the sage decision to have Owlet and Owl Jr sleep in the same room, in a bunk bed, and leave the other room as a play room. (In actuality, now they have one tiny room for playing and sleeping, and one room with an infrequently used tent).

It took me 3 hours. Or 4, depending on how truthful I want to be, and how prepared I am for humiliation.

These things look so simple in the show room. Until you get it delievered in three flat boxes, each one absolutely packed with long 2x4's which look exactly alike. The wood pieces differ only slightly, by the position of the holes, by the number, by some currently indiscernible difference which you better discover before you get 80% of the way through and find that the 2x4 with the three holes on one side and two holes on the other is NOT interchangeable with the 2x4 with the two holes on one side and three holes on the other.

There is a hopelessness that is perhaps the closest I will come to understanding the Bataan Death March when opening the boxes. Thirty or so of these 2x4s, neatly arranged, a wordless instruction manual, with litigiously minded safety steps (Please ensure you are not constructing said bed in front of a lava pit, firing squad, fault line), oh, and an Allen wrench.

The instructions are trying to do the 'less is more' thing, where it uses friendly drawings and gross approximations to what you have in front of you to assemble something that will keep one of your children five feet in the air and the other hopefully uncrushed beneath. Due to the enormity of said retail furniture outlet, they cannot have written instructions, anywhere, I suppose that would cut into their costs and they might not be able to provide 24/7 free childcare for their workers or a comprehensive dental plan. Not that I begrudge said workers, if it wasn't for progress in labour we'd still be sending five year olds down chimneys to clean them and contract exotic, lethal lung ailments.

But it does leave me turning said instructions this way and that, thinking that if only they had a single line saying, perhaps "Ensure you are using the smallest wood piece which doesn't really look that much smaller but it is, and you can tell by this small divot on both sides and is represented in the drawing by a whimsical X. Because if you don't the entire contraption will fall apart and possibly burst into flames". Just one line. A little hint. There's a reason we have moved from pictographs to a written language, as a species.

I blustered through. It's made, it's stood up and has not fallen, crushing Owl Jr. on the bottom, yet. I take this as success.

I really cannot wait until they grow out of it and I can burn it in a large pagan pyre on some beach somewhere. Using the instructions as kindling.

Christmas Family Letter 2011

2011-12-27T14:13:00.001-08:00

It was a hectic year for the Owl family. As it is every year for families with children of a certain age (where they cannot creditably threaten you with retirement homes). It ended on a very bad note, however, so let's start there.

In November, Mrs. Owl's dad passed away from a heart attack. It was sudden and hit the family hard. Mrs. Owl and her sister rushed to their mother's side, in the Phillippines, where Mrs. Owl's mom and dad spend a good part of the year.

He was a well loved man , always with a song or a game for the kids. The songs were either Tagalog or old songs that had the faint air of the Roaring Thirties and Spain. The games invariably involved the kids riding on his back.

His enormous, ready smile was big enough to include everyone, just like his post dinner impromptu programme in which anyone with even the slightest talent was called upon to perform.

He will be missed.

Mrs. Owl had a trying time in the Philippines, and I’m glad she had her mother and sister for support. Fortunately the most trying aspect, the Filipino wake, turned out to be a great help. Although when she heard about the days long period of staying with the body, even overnight, she had to contend with culture shock on top of grief. Luckily she found it cathartic, helpful, and not utterly terrifying like another, lesser person, like me, would have.

Dad is buried in the Philipines, in the backyard of the home he and Mom have there.

Mrs. Owl was gone for 17 days, so I had the, the, uh, the privilege of working full time and taking care of the kids. We got by on the mantra ‘She’ll be back in 10 days’ (miraculously this quelled questions about Mrs. Owl’s return for seven full days), the kids unwavering good cheer, and my mom and neighbours helping out tirelessly to look after the kids and get them to their various activities. Besides the endless frenetic pace, the bulwark of my sanity wavering every evening, and the terror of having my wife in a country where traffic laws are, at best, casually suggested, it was a snap.

All single parents should have an automatic sainthood.

And now on to the minutiae of our lives that I’m sure you’re all reading breathlessly on for.

In the summer we went down the Oregon Coast, for the first time since Owl Jr. was born. The trip down involved the various ways that the phrase “Are we there yet” can break down two adults’ previously healthy psyche.

The actual beach at Seaside was lovely. It was somewhere between pleasant and chilly, which, as this temperature mirrors a basement office with nothing but computers to keep one warm, suited me fine. The kids were enamoured with the waves. Owl Jr., on seeing the vast expanse of beach, tried many times to escape and perhaps set himself up as some kind of beach comber. Owlet had fun making and destroying small sand cities. God help us if either of them develop any sort of super powers.

There was also great fun with bumper cars, bike cars, and miniature trains. There was no tourist trap unsprung by the time we left Seaside.

Speaking of touristy things to do, Mrs. Owl and I went on a luxurious, very high class three day cruise from Vancouver, to Seattle, to Victoria, and back to Vancouver. We must have crossed at least, 10, 20 nautical miles. Our fellow cruisers were older folks who I suspect make it a lifestyle, somewhat wild middle-aged women, and not a few people who mistook it for a ferry. It was just our pace, however. Nice dinners, quiet lounges to read or listen to a jazz ensemble, and those cruise shows to which most Theatre majors are bound.

Owlet is in kindergarten. Full time school, which is absurd, as she only just learned to walk last month. Or so it seems. She’s started that great journey where complete strangers and their children will have greater and greater influence on her.

She’s in a pilot program where she’s learning Mandarin. This seems to be the hip and progressive thing to do but I can’t help but think she’ll spend quite a lot of time doing inflections properly so that she somewhat misunderstand the Cantonese when we go to dim sum.

The last big event that I can remember at her school was a dinosaur program where she sang a fugue-like song about a Stegosaurus. After the program they went to show us the dinosaurs they crafted out of cereal boxes, glue, construction paper, paint, and what we’ve been told is close adult supervision. It was, I can tell you as an objective parent, very much like stepping into Jurassic Park.

Owlet is also taking jazz dance and gymnastics this year. Both involve large groups of children following, in a very liberal interpretation of that word, what the teacher is saying. The only difference I can discern between the classes is one has falling mats. Owlet, as in all things she does, enjoys it enormously, with lots of screaming and laughing and a natural clumsiness which I’m certain is one of my many unfortunate legacies to her.

Owl Jr. has come out of his very sad and sombre cocoon . It appears he was quiet all those months building up reserves of energy, mainly to resist all requests to : eat food that isn’t 1) hot dogs 2) a fruit of some sort; do his business on the potty. Fortunately you can look to the Owls to be that salve against your other family friends (you know the ones), whose children are reading by the age of two and doing UN recognized charity work by four. We have every expectation that we will be giving Owl Jr.’s prom date instruction on changing his diaper.

Oh, he’s generally a gentle, thoughtful little boy, but the things he thinks about are his opinions on things, which cannot be moved (with regard to potties and Other Food). But his defiance is a bastion which will, for no reason at all, collapse under repeated requests. ‘Do you want to eat this rice?’ “NO!” “Do you want some rice?” “NONONO” “Do you want rice?” “Ok.”. It makes meal times baffling and randomly rewarding.

The other thing he thinks quiet, deep thoughts about are trains. Thomas the Tank Engine, mainly but anything on rails will do. We pooled money with the parents to get him a large train table with double level tracks and a crane and a road system. When asked “What do you think of it Owl Jr.!?”, he paused his play with the crane to say, “Yes.”.

Mrs. Owl is stil part-time at a long term care facility assiduously watching what the old folks eat, possibly ‘tsking’ and making adjustments and the like. Her contract is up in March, so she might be looking for another place to watch over the eating habits of the elderly, I’m not sure.

I am still at UBC, programming. Interesting life I lead.

May this notoriously late holiday letter find you all well & happy, and our best wishes to you and yours for the new year.

Owl Family
2011

Gabriel García Márquez Denies Your Firewall Request

2011-12-09T16:46:00.001-08:00

Your request reached me just as the sun had set, and the sound of cicadas rising with the smell of frying onions and garlic and forgotten bits of lamb from yesterdays repast. It was not my intention to ignore it, indeed, it had done the unforgivable sin of reminding me of the years and months on days and hours since I had last been vigilant, that ever dwindling and ever so important virtue which holds the Group IV IT Security and Audit together, the shield against a rapacious public and the blind, unseeing corporation.

My heart is heavy, pendulous, dripping with, if not pain, then something much like it. If I were to excuse my age and the fading of my keener thoughts -- which were I an infinitely braver man, I'd have to admit was dementia --I still couldn't pinpoint why.

Your request, like so many others, seem reasonable. But the corridors and cobbled alley ways of networks and protocols and Virtual Firewalls and SANs all twisting between each other and over another and no one can say where one came from or where it's going only that it's important, a redolent mango, an untouched liana which would surely bring down the entire rotted ediface if altered.

And so your request must be queried and rethought. Rethought not out of some malice or out of a purposeful forgetfulness but out of a need to reconnect with how everything fits together, crisp bits of tile that clink together, that slowly, with a laziness of one drenched by an August sun, becomes clear.

In anycase, I doubt, quite strongly, that your BonziBuddy.exe needs to connect outside the network.

Seaside Part 4 : Activities I

2011-09-19T00:23:00.000-07:00

We were there only for a few days, hoping to avoid the dreaded affliction of boredom that runs rampant among kids 1 to 65. So the next day we had to pack in all the quaint and Kodak-moment worthy activities that any beach-side town has in abundance. The activities that look really fun and laugh-a-minute until you're on the bumper boat and the water smells like bilge from a recently decommissioned Ukranian cargo ship and your particular boat is persistently wreathed in engine smoke that smells faintly of burnt hot-dogs.

It wasn't as bad as all that, thankfully. There is a sheen though, isn't there, to all those whacky activities, like our first one: Bike Cars! A side-by-side tandem bike with seats in the front for the kids and pedalled seats in the back for the galley-slav--I mean parents. And to steer they give you an actual steering wheel! Oh the whimsy! There is a sheen, anyways, when you first see them, a novelty, a minor spastic scurrying of imagination, 'Wow! That's kinda NEAT!' you might think as you adjust your collection of Norman Rockwell buttons deftly arranged on your cardigan. But when you get there, it's the same sullen teenagers; the same iron-clad waiver agreements that makes one look about casually for Bike Car! sanctioned burial plots; the same state of the item you're going to rent: made of pig-iron and a type of pleather that's been outlawed thirty years ago due it's immediate carcinnogenic effects and indestructibility.

The kids had fun, more than I thought they would. I guess being at the front of a self-powered car without absolutely nothing in front of you has it's charms. A bit better than being in the back seat while strapped into a whatever government ministry approved child safety device that can withstand everything short of a direct RPG hit. View can't be that good.

We took a tour of Seaside, it was as quiant as you'd imagine. However, these car-bikes were supposed to follow proper right of way rules, like a, well, a car. But they'd have teenagers driving it, or moxie-filled tweens. So there were quite a few scenes that made me simultaneously cringe and bite down on the urge to shake my aged fist at a passing car-bike and yell 'Where'd ya learn how to drive?! And turn down the rock n roll!'.

Next up was -- and you'll forgive me for relating a phrase my 2-year-old says that I find cute but that anyone else will find groan-inducing-- the bumpy cars. Zooming along in 1950's technology with safety straps from about the same era. Crammed with kids and adults and different cliques that quite clearly want to do each other massive harm, and, touchingly, are rather sorry if they hit you in the process. I drive the kids around, in turns. You can feel the butterflies just humming in their tiny bodies. A car!? Just the two of us?! That bumps?! I remember that. That's when driving was fun. Now driving is an exercise in maximal safety while calculating MPGs and best routes and avoid traffic and watching blind spots. I think everyone would have alot more fun in life if our cars had all of 3 horsepower and came equipped with massive rubber bumpers.

That is, of course, until the sheen wears off.

Seaside Part 3 : Beach

2011-08-17T19:54:00.000-07:00

It was finally time to make our way back to Owlet and Mrs. Owl.

It's a tricky thing toddlers, the Terrible Twos. That explosions of impotent rage are just under the surface most of the time, but it's something that I've come to empathize with. Imagine if you, after months and months of not really having an opinion about anything, suddenly, are YOU. You with all your preferences and ideas and wants. Now imagine that you need to communicate with an unreasonably large human who has complete and utter control over everything you do. Now imagine you can't quite speak English. Or can, perfectly, clearly, succinctly, but either the Ginormous Human has defective ears or you must, at all times, speak with your mouth filled with marbles.

I can see where the rage comes from. These episodes usually arise when the activity changes, especially if I'm taking Owl Jr. from an activity he likes, aimlessly following tire tracks, to one he might not like, joining up with the family.

As emotional and mercurial as kids are, I've found that what they want is to be reasoned with. They need to understand the logic, the why, the what, and they can be receptive to it. Or they can give you their reasoned rebuttal with screams of 'NO' that has the decibel level and chaotic clarity of a 80's hair band at the height of their powers.

So the reasoning begins, the simple, calm, quiet reasons. The trick is to not show fear, to not show the merest chink in your armour through which they can burst through and weather you down to the nub of a human you are after, say, a five hour drive running on nothing but diet red bull and a bag of corn nuts. It's a bit like you are the negotiator and what you're trying to get is a calm transition, and what they threaten, whether they know it or not, is an episode to rob from you the last precious bits of energy your frail, pathetic parenty body contains. The energy you were going to use to read a book when they were asleep, or something more luxurious, like brush your teeth, or breathe unassisted.

It's a relief that's quite hard to explain when Owl Jr. relents and gives me a pause, looks at me, thinks, then says, 'Otay'. It's quite possibly one of my mostest favoritist words at the moment. That and profligate. The other possible result the classic toddler meltdown. Nothing to do there but bunch up the shoulders, weather the storm, and try not to make eye contact with the appalled theatre-goers who just wanted to see "The Hangover 2" in peace (I kid, I'd never bring my kids to see that, explaining all the jokes, the references, the double entendres, the monkey? Come on).

In any case, it's a semi-meltdown. It's a crime against human rights and all that is just in the world that I should pull him away from following slight indentations in the sand just so he can go play with his sister in the sand. If she can't see the magic of actual rail road tracks in the beach that'll inevitably lead to Thomas, well, that's her loss, isn't it? Isn't it?!

We make it back to basecamp, with more, rather than less, tears cried. Instead of calmly making a castle or homestead or pyramid or whatever while Mrs. Owl relaxes, Owlet has taken on the job of MONSTER CRUSHER of things Mrs. Owl must make in the sand with increasing urgency. I never remember getting my parents to do that. More power to Owlet, I suppose.

And then, finally, it's time to brave the cool waters of the Oregon coast with the waves and the sand and the more waves.

We stand about where I think it'll be safe, outside the undertow zone, not high enough to sweep my children away from me as I hold onto their hands. In any activity that has even the slightest danger I don't think I'm alone in the dad-o-sphere in that I picture the worst case scenario, which, I should tell you, involves a tsunami, a pod of radioactive psychopathic killer whales and a nuclear submarine with a faulty firing safety protocol. So I don't so much hold their hands as clutch them tightly should I have to haul them both bodily out and run to the nearest abandoned Cold War era bombshelter with optional supply of killer whale repllent.

I look down at them, holding on for dear life as the waves sweep them up, they are hooting, howling, having a good time, and besides the odd smile coming to my face I realize that, at this moment, to them, I'm the strongest person ever. It's a little humbling, and a little disconcerting as I have the bones of a osteoporis addled hummingbird and the athleticism of someone who was personally offended by the TV character Urkel. But to be linked to all those kids who's parents haul them back onto their skiis, or lift them out of the pool, or do any number of hefting and lifting that's required of a parent of young kids.

We have a great time and of course Owl Jr. has to go back to the beach earlier than Owlet, as he's going to get chilled to the bone faster. Not that he'll admit it. The answer is always 'no' to the question of 'Are you cold?'. I have to watch for visible signs of mild hypothermia, and of course, haul him out of the water. That is my responsibility, after all, being the unreasonably large human, and Owl Jr. isn't communicating properly, mouth full of marbles notwithstanding.

Seaside Part 2 : Settling In

2011-08-10T21:14:00.000-07:00

The rental house was a few blocks from the ocean, so not a beach house perse, but a close-enough-to-the-beach house. Which was fine by me. If you get one right on the beach (so I tell myself), you'd have to start driving cars with leases that could be confused with a mortgage, have opinions about European soccer leagues, test cricket, various exchanges, and how often, or if you ever, press your chinos (you'd have to have chinos as well, come to think of it).

You'd be Upper Class, or Comfortable, as the Upper Class like to think of themselves. And I can't, I won't, have that. And not just because I can't afford it, not in the slightest. It's a principles thing.

The house itself was not the seedy, somewhat charming dive I expected it to be. It was rather done up and not altogether horrible. Which it had every right to be. As far as I'm concerned, these neglected, often empty houses have every expectation to be utterly run down and just this side of condemned.

After looking around the house we walked to the beach and enjoyed the sand and waves. The sand was soft and very, well, sandy. Not the mud and silt and sand affair you get in Vancouver, which, while biologically interesting and I'm sure greatly enhancing the first hunter gatherers diet in the region, makes for a pretty messy walk. But this Oregon sand that was powdery and soft and was sure to keep the kids entertained for hours while their weary parents sat back and got into some summer reading.

We have a sandbox at home, and they keep themselves remarkably content playing in the sand; but not in anyway that you might imagine. They don't make ordered castles or little pyramids or whatever. It's somewhat more chaotic, mostly they just sift it ,over and over like prospectors without the tattered overalls and mercury poisoning.

This is how we thought they'd take to the beach sand. However, Owl Jr., in seeing the beach, decided to go wandering, with me in tow, because at two and a bit, a kid just kinda wanders and isn't terribly worried about being lost. At least mine isn't. He's off and in his own personal quiet reverie about life and if his parents don't have the sharp-minded alertedness to keep a tab of him every 3 seconds, well, that's not exactly his problem. He doesn't make much noise, generally. Someday he'll make a great ninja or congressional archival librarian.

There was a lifeguard on duty, somewhere, anyways, the tracks of his truck or hilariously wide-stanced ATV traced across the beach. Owl Jr, in his infinite understanding how everything in the worlds relates to trains, decided these were train-tracks, and therefore must be followed. He had a grand old time following these tracks endlessly and I had a slightly less exciting time following him as he repeated "Thomas, thomas choo choo?".

It was relaxing, nevertheless, even if my job description for the day had been changed from 'stationary, reading concierge' to 'strolling butler'. The waves beckoned, those would offer some adventure, I'm sure. For another post.

Seaside Part 1

2011-08-03T16:59:00.000-07:00

I find I'm trying to reconstruct my childhood in my vacations. Not purposely, but out of habit.

To that end i took the family to the Oregon coast, to experience the beach as I experienced it: chilly, windy, and with far too much Gore-Tex™. It's summer vacation as experienced by a son of immigrants. How were they to know a proper vacation was at a multi-billion dollar ride park festooned with anthopomorphic domestic animals, professionally-created childhood-focussed-grouped animated imagination avatars and other copyright protected IP? They wouldn't.

There is also the small problem of my parents being under the intermittent delusion that they enjoy the outdoors. (Memories of camping, such as it was, is dominated by twenty year old canvas tents that I now know smelled overwhelmingly of mildew with brief notes of a hardy, devastating killer mold; short-lived fires that were constructed with the quixotic idea that a roaring blaze could be had from warming rather large, damp logs with a handful of forest detritus; and by the recurring, never realized aspirations of going fly fishing at 4 AM.)

So, without knowing that 'going to the beach for our children to get partially blinded from short lived fires' was not a 'thing' to do, that's what we did as kids.

And so that's what I did with my family. Minus the fire bit.

The hardest part of the vacation was the drive, of course. With children, it seems, it's always the bit where they have to stay very still while confined with nylon straps and being told to 'look out the window'. Yes, we did have a device for playing the Dora's and Thomas the Tank Engine, but we wanted to wait until we really needed it, the Death Blossom of road-trip childcare if you will. Because if you play that card too early, and they get sick of it, well, then you're exhausted and they're tired and bored and you have absolutely no psychological backstop to stop you from offing yourself with an imaginative use of the automatic windows, a trick shoulder belt, and the judicious use of the e-brake.

If a kid is really young they don't actually care, and are happy to sleep and snack and look at the blurry things out the window while being flabberghasted and amazed by the most mundane things. Like trains, boats, an El Camino that has made the disastrous conversion to 'camper'. That's Owl Jr.

If a kid is really old, they, I'd assume, find a way to amuse themselves. With the bluetooth and the blackberries and the text-mess--why no I do not have a smart phone myself, why do you ask?

If a kid is in the Magic Zone of Maximal Annoyance (Owlet), then you're both in for a treat. They are like elves, these little guys, their attention has the ferocity and lifespan of a mongoose cross-bred with a mayfly. We brought colouring books and toys and games and oh look congratulations, you've just amused her for 27 minutes. 7.5 hours to go there, bucko.

And, thinking about it, trying to keep my blood pressure down as she complains that 'it's so tiring' even though I'm the one who had been driving for three hours, I can see where she's coming from. She has no reference for how much longer it'll be, or how to keep track of the progress, of having any indication that we won't, in fact, end up spending the rest of our days in that car driving steadily south on the I-5. I came to this realization as I tried to calculate when we'd get to the rental house given our current speed with rest stops.

But we all mustered through. We did this trick of leaving really early so the kids would sleep in the car for a few hours. And much to everyone's surprise, it mostly worked.

This karmic fluke would be paid back in full, later.

Pecha Kucha Vol. 17

2011-07-22T21:00:00.000-07:00

In a shambling, unfocussed, and entirely inconsistent bid to Get Out More, and Do Stuff I Wouldn't Normally Do And Perhaps Get Inspired I decided to go to this talk, called Pecha Kucha. The idea is to present a number of speakers: each one has 20 images, and has 20 seconds for each image.

The one I went to covered West Coast Modernist Architecture. Everything I know enough about architecture could fit in a extra small fortune cookie. I think natural light might be important. I.M. Pei? Is that close to something that might be architecturally related? Arches, I'm sure, feature in some way.

It turns out that West Coast Modernist is all about clean lines, large, large windows, and a blurring between nature and living space. Also, what was unspoken but all too well understood, is that the only people who can ever experience it first hand, on a daily basis, are the sort people who have a passionate interest in capital gains tax and actually know what the hell a Turks and Caicos is.

We're all sitting there, admiring amazing houses and people's thoughts on these houses and the movements behind them and there is that idea floating around, unspoken. Most people in the room can't even afford a Vancouver Special let alone some delightful structure which features more philosophical thought and aesthetic attention than a well-funded private liberal arts college. Vancouver is famously (if only in Vancouver) ill-affordable? Unaffordable? It's damn hard to buy real estate here.

It seems it'd be a much better talk if it focussed on architecture in public spaces. The sorts of things that affect everyone's quality of life. But, then again, Pecha Kucha was first created for architects to talk shop with other architects.

It was a great night, nevertheless, some great speakers, some ... speakers who perhaps got a spot because of personal connections or a vast file of unpublishable photos of the director of Pecha Kucha and a small arctic hare. I'm not sure. The quality was a little erratic but overall, it was interesting.

Two thumbs up, would likely break my self-imposed cocoon of hermetic anti-social behaviour to go again.

Brief Update : Fitness

2011-06-19T11:40:00.000-07:00

Since February 7th I've been on a bit of a diet. And going to the gym. All which seems to have cut into creative time. Or, more sensibly, has cut into any energy I might have had to think up appropriate topics for the blog. So I'm just going to blog a post that's more.. bloggy.

The getting fit thing is something that I've been meaning to do for a while, but I finally snapped. Cumulative thing really. One of the straws was realizing that the amount I was overweight was like carrying my two kids strapped to me at all times. Another was I was getting short-winded typing.

My fitness regimen is a mix of things, really. The most important being diet, since it's far more important for weight loss.

I'm from the school of thought that goes, if it's too hard, I ain't gonna bother.¹ Which, granted, might be the Loser's Recipe for Life, but helped me to build the perfect program for me, so far.

Diet

A few notes:

in weight loss, diet is way more important than exercise.
keep it simple, calories in < calories out (there are no forbidden foods).
there are 3500 calories per pound of fat.
eat tons of veggies. I mean, a ton. I mean, 1/2 to 3/4 of my plate is heaped with broccoli or bell peppers or lettuce or some other leafy green, this is to keep me from getting hungry. Some veggies have a caloric punch to them, just look them up and count accordingly.

The first step is to find how many calories your body burns doing nothing. Now, I'm a lazy lazy lazy man. I have no illlusions. I always enter activity level of 'sedentary', and that, only because there's no option that reads 'for all intents and purposes, functionally vegetative'.

The second is to count every goddamn calorie. This involves a calorie counting book/app/website of somesort, a weight scale, measuring cups, and severe OCD. Try and find a calorie deficit per day you can handle. A deficit that won't have you clawing at the walls for food. Keep in mind that there are about 3500 calories to a pound of fat. Plan your loss and expectations accordingly.

To keep you on the plan, I use the Seinfeld method.

To keep me from going insane from hunger, I eat food that's volumetric, which is a fancy way of saying 'pack as much water and vegetables and lean protein as you can handle so you feel full'. When that fails, diet coke.

Life is a constant balancing act and counting game. Trying to figure out if this weight of food will get me full, is a 'good deal' in my crazy diet parlance. It kinda consumes a shitton of mental room, but none of us are working for CERN, we can spare the brainpower.

One ends up having a weird knowledge of how many calories many common bits and pieces of food are. Slice of Bread= 100 cals, banana = 150, egg = 80, can of tuna = 120, bagel =300, big mac = 550.

And what I've found is that if I do count every calorie and try and pack lean protein (most satisfying filling for the buck) with tons of veggies (feeling full) plus some sort of carb (my body goes crazy on Atkins like things) I feel full², and can keep the diet going.

Inertia, I think, is the most important thing. Overcoming the inertia of doing nothing is the most hardest bit about getting fitter. The absolute hardest bit. I've been intending to do something about it for about, oh, five years? Likewise, the inertia to keep it going is even more important. Because I know how hard it is to GET going.

Exercise

This is the graph I live by. You'll see that as you increase your effort, you get to a point where the additional effort you're putting in is TREMENDOUS, but the calories your burning per hour is hardly increasing at all. The trick is to find that sweet spot where it seems like you're barely exerting yourself at all, yet burning quite a bit.

I use cardio machines that have a heart rate monitor. Heart rate can be roughly mapped to your effort. If you can keep at that perfect pace, you'll never get that winded, 'going to die right now I swear drop down and die tell my wife I love her' feeling that you experienced in high school gym doing timed runs. It's that pain that keeps many from doing cardio, or at least me. Which will effect the all important inertia.

It will vary according to sex/age, but I find doing some cardio activity with a heart rate between 120-140 is sustainable for a ridiculous amount of time. 140-150 the sweat starts pouring in torrents, 150-170 is a full on sprint that is unsustainable.

You'll see that in both my diet and excercise, everything is planned to avoid pain, because pain (whether that be hunger or the sensation of your heart exploding like a pinata ) will bring your fitness and diet to a stop, will kill that all important inertia of keep on, keeping on.

That's all I have to say about that for now. And as for results? I find bragging to be a character flaw, unless you're in a job interview. But it might be helpful to see if this crazy No Pain All Weight Loss system works.

February 7th 2011 : 211.7 lbs, ? % body fat
June 19th 2011 : 166.4 lbs, 19.2 % body fat

¹ Where 'hard' is defined as 'feeling fricking hungry all the time', or 'dying while exercising'.
² Example of a meal : 200g chicken breast diced (200cals), 1 cup cooked rice (200cals), 1 cup diced carrots (50cals), 1 cup diced onions (50cals). Cooked in a non-stick pan (oil is cals), mixed all together, seasoned with low to no calorie seasonings (soy sauce, hot sauce, rosemary, thyme, salt, pepper, even some chicken stock (very very low in cals)). The result is a heaping plateful of food. Total cals, 500.

Just Saying...

2011-06-10T19:02:00.000-07:00

Oh breaking buddha on a babbling baboon. That goddamn phrase is among several makes me briefly consider that the mandatory sentences for 'murder by blunt force trauma' are tolerable.

It's not just that it's the needless blathering of a word-hipsters trying to fit in. It's not just that it precludes any sort of actual, real personality of the writer and steamrolls it with a snarky asstit blunderbutt who's first opinion about anything is mockery and sarcasm.

It's that it creates a sort of verbal short-hand. A personality stand-in. It's a phrase most often used by the sort of people whose desire to point out their lack of a television is only eclipsed by an urgent impulse to proclaim their simultaneous love for a multinational grocery chain (their Raw Rosemary & Kosher Salt Kissed Brazil Nuts are AMAZING) as well as an even larger multinational which manages to charge 40% more for electronics by making them 100% more ostentatious.

It's the 'just saying..' and the 'natch' and the 'What is that, I don't even' mental shortcuts, verbal junk of minds and personalities too worried about what someone might think of them; if they don't conjure up the correct bon mot, the slyest opinion, the blinking beacon that they are, indeed, One of Them, the smart set, the group that was into whatever band you are into but ten years ago, they'll be reviled and marched down the aisles of aforementioned grocery chain, being pelted at with off-brand dried fruit candies and magazines with not enough bokeh.

It's a waving the white flag while you say your peace. The verbal camouflage, the meagerest offering to the strongest, tightest skinny jean-wearing beard-growing oversized-aviator wearing uber hipster, that hypothetical god of all that's in the know and cool and with it. It has a powerful whiff of servility to it, the submitting to the uber hoard, the sacrificing of your voice, the exposing your tastiest nether regions to horde in hopes they won't pounce.

It reeks of automata, of the Given, of fear.

And that, that's all I'm saying.

Opening Lines of Cormac McCarthy's "The Cat In The Hat"

2011-06-09T01:17:00.000-07:00

The boy and the girl were inside. Outside it drizzled an unending fall of dead cloud. They both shivered. Their ball sat motionless in the middle of the room. Not waiting, not sleeping. Maybe dead. The boy looked at the girl.
Not much to do.
Too cold.
They sat and watched the grey splatting outside their window.
She frowned and it creased her face until it might have been a smile but then the shadows faded and there was only that frown.
They both heard it, who first, didn't matter. It was a bump. They jumped.
And then they saw him. Tall, a grin ringed with sharpened canines and a clownish hat, bent in the middle, or sagging, or broken.
Sitting around? He said.
The girl shrugged, the boy just stared.
I know some tricks. Might be worth your time.
They both stared back now. The girl's frown deepened.
Our mother?
She won't mind.
The fish swam to the edge of his bowl, made bubbles like the last sighs of a dry corpse.
That cat must leave. You don't want to play. And he shouldn't be here. Not when your mother is out.
The cat flicked at his hat, the brim jounced a nodding bobbing yes to whatever he was going to say. Chicken?
These are on the up and up. Nothing bad about them. Watch. Up up up, fish.
He grabbed at the bowl, and fish could do nothing, only squirm. Don't drop me.
I don't aim to.

Crushing, Secret HR Policies

2011-06-03T16:50:00.000-07:00

while fraternization is frowned upon, sexual harassment complaints from someone lower on the totem pole about someone who has, quite literally, carte blanche will always end poorly for the complainer.
the Kleenex in the break room are for make-up removal or runny noses. Please bring your own supply for crying jags or otherwise personal issues.
our wellness coordinator is actually a co-op/intern position that's shared with six other mulitnationals across three states. You may book an appointment with him/her in March and late October.
people who are inordinately thirsty during the day will have their cubicles moved furthest from the watercooler.
our 'paid grief time' is for recruitment purposes only.
the 'security cameras' are actually used to record the time you take for your breaks and lunch.
smokers and people who have been deemed 'generally unpleasant' get fewer, and less enthusiastic email reminders to join the Summer Company Picnic.
there is no typing test when we interview for receptionists.
all calls that may be monitored are, all calls that no one could reasonably assume would be monitored are.
business texts are checked for spelling accuracy, all managers are reprimanded accordingly.
the heater isn't really broken in the bathrooms. That would assume there are heaters there to BE broken.
The new front door is a metal detector.

The Waffling Waffle Salesman

2011-06-01T22:48:00.000-07:00

Why hello there. You look like you're in the market for a waffle iron, am I right? Unless you're not, I mean there are plenty of perfectly acceptable breakfast foods in the bread group to satisfy the working man's needs, why only yesterday I had a...

Oh, you are?

Well then, well then. I have, I think, just the waffle iron for you. You live in an apartment don't you, or a condo, or a timeshare, or a sublet, or a parked RV, or perhaps a very large house tastefully decorated, or none at all, the bare look.

You.. well, that's not really important, I think you'll agree. What matters is that you are in the market for a waffle iron and I have it right here. The last iron you ever buy, unless you have need of more than one, or your residence catches fire and you don't have the opportunity to go back and get that iron and maybe choose to save a loved one or a photo album or a rather lazy cat, I understand.

We all have priorities.

I think you'll find this is a mighty fine waffle iron, the best money can buy, outside some gold encrusted one with rubies and diamonds and emeralds and maybe with a nice mother of pearl handle that you might have seen adorn the breakfast nook of Sylvester Stallone in a back issue of GQ where collarless tuxedos are actually recommended for weddings; let's just say this as much waffle iron as any reasonable man could wish from one. Not that you can't wish for more, this land was built on dreams and aspirations. We are nothing but apes if we don't have hopes and dreams.

Oh, I suppose we are apes, that's right. I mean the real ones, the ones with hair and live in the jungle and get shot in African civil wars that have raged for decades, those ones.

Let's get down to brass tacks shall we?

This waffle iron here, the Studger Rothsman 2900 has a preheat function, an auto shut off function, completely coated in industrial Teflon for easy cleanup.

But you're right, who knows what's in that Teflon or how much of it comes off in your waffle. I mean one day you're having a simple belgian waffle, maybe with a strawberry compote and the next you're in the CDC where all sorts of doctors are pushing needles and IVs and probes trying to figure out why your spleen and thyroid exploded at once. Not something that we should be paying for in a waffle iron, at least not extra. But you're probably right, where are we if we dont' take a few risks.

And isn't a hot, fresh waffle worth a few risks?

Unless you are averse to them. Or don't like waffles at all, come to think of it.

Various Interesting Things About The Napoleonic Era Part III

2011-05-26T23:48:00.000-07:00

Killing On The High Seas

The battleship was the most complex machine of that era, requiring hundreds of sailors in addition to the many specialists (armorer, cook, cooper, surgeon, carpenter, etc). This is a machine (which, I know, sounds a bit wonky, one doesn't think of something that doesn't have an engine or at least a very prominent smoke stack to be a machine; a bit of rope, some sail, and alot of wood hardly constitutes one) which controlled the only means of overseas trade, --from the West or East Indies, from the Americas-- and therefore of wealth, and therefore, ultimately, of power. They were the Star Destroyers of their time.

Killing was done very simply, and much like on land, but with more cannons, heavier cannons. Iron balls of death that weighed as little as 6 to as much as 45lbs would be hurtled at the enemy. If you didn't get maimed or die outright from those, you'd die from splinters of all things, being broken off by impact and hurtling through the air to do the most untoward things to your major arteries, your lesser known internal organs, and generally spiling your blood all over the deck.

If they didn't kill you with roundshot they'd switch to grapeshot or canister shot, which would turn those massive beasts into the sort of shotguns you'd use to hunt elephants if you were interested in both killing the elephant and liquifiying its remains at the same time.

And if they didn't kill you with cannon fire (incidently, while you tried to do the same), they'd board you and you could both have an all out brawl trying to sever important bits off each other using axes and pikes and cutlasses. There was no room on a boarding action for any grace or parry or swordsmanship, much like when infantry would do a bayonet charge, it was all gutter fighting, moreso infact, since there was less room to move, and a drop into the ocean meant a drowning more often than not (many sailors never bothered how to swim, reasoning it was better to die quick than prolong it (this is as if all the sailors were the visitors from Alien Nation, touch water and you die, and you're surrounded by water)).

All the while this was happening they'd often have sharpshooters, as much as they could be, seeing as they had to use smoothbore guns, in the tops of the rigging to shoot down on you as you fired your cannons or steered the ship or tried not to be killed by screaming masses of iron being propelled by explosions.

It was a bloody, vicious affair, a fight of artillery at close range, full of a tsunami of noise and smoke and general chaos that generally accompanied war at that time.

Various Interesting Things About The Napoleonic Era Part II

2011-05-16T22:44:00.000-07:00

Ah, you thought I'd given up on this dusty topic that can only be of interest to people who collect ascots and have an enduring love of Coronation Street. How wrong you are.

Killing - On Land
Whereas now all you need is a few billion dollars worth of laser guided ordnance dropped from tens of thousands of feet lit up by an elite military team that has more hours training in Killing The Enemy With Dental Floss than I have spent being alive, in the Napoleonic Era, killing was all about cojones. Not that modern day or soldiers in Korean and Vietnam and WWII etc etc didn't have cojones. But in the Napoleonic Era that's ALL there was. No real tactics perse, or situational awareness, it was more or less a gigantic game of chicken.

You had three main groups in a land battle: cannons, cavalry, and infantry. They work in a sloppy rock papers scissors fashion. Infantry can beat infantry, cannons soften or beat infantry. Calvary can, in certain circumstances, destroy infantry, but in other circumstances, the reverse is true. Calvary, from what I can tell, tries to stay out of the way of cannons altogether. Then you have different grades of calvary (lancers, heavy cavalry, cuirassiers, oh god you're falling asleep already), and different grades for the other two roles in the army. But we won't get into that.

But we were talking about cojones,and games of chicken. In that time, there is no 'spotting' the enemy, finding the ambush, looking for IEDs. The enemy is wearing some ridiculously garish uniform, marching in a very large group (column or line) right at you. They are marching at you because muskets are only accurate (for generous definitions of 'accurate') at about 50 yards. I think you're at about 50/50 for whether the musketball will even hit you. So the enemy marches at you, you can see your likely death walking in cadence.

Behind them are their cannons firing iron balls (between 10 and 24 lbs) at you. You have to march at them, doing the same thing, hoping that an cannon ball doesn't find you and decapitate you or cripple your or disembowel you in a shockingly sloppy manner. I mean, the cannons will most LIKELY not hit you. Unless the gunners are good, and learn how to graze the shot, meaning the shot hits the first line, then bounces, but not too high, and keeps doing carnage all down the column.

And all the while you march, and your best friend gets his legs removed at the pelvis and that annoying bloke who still owes you 10 shillings cops it some upper crust officer is yelling at sergeant to yell at you to close ranks. That's right, fill up the space left by the careening ball of death that just left guts and viscera all over your already garish uniform.

And then you finally get in range. You all move together. Present arms, fire, load, veeeeeeery slowly. A really well trained infantryman could fire 3 shots in a minute. After the first or second volley there's smoke everywhere, you can't actually see your enemy are are just firing into smoke, hoping that the smoke is parted for a musketball coming from their side to you.

That, I'll humbly submit, takes cojones. Loading, firing, staying with your platoon.

At some point, the calvary might charge you. Big, massive beasts, trained to trample and bite (although, what with the trampling, I'm sure the biting doesn't worry you so much), and ontop, some enormous fellow from the upper crust who has had better food and better training than the poor fellows he's about to ride over. Infantry. Usually peasants or thieves or murderers, the general trod-upon of society. So this upper crust fellow is knee to knee with his fellow calvary men, charging you, swinging an enormous cavalry sabre to cut across your face or to sever your spine.

But remember that thing I said about 'in certain circumstances'? Well, there was one thing the infantry could do, which was form a square. Outer layer of soldiers put their muskets to the ground, bayonets facing out, the second and third ranks fire. Horses, for some inexplicable reason, will not charge into pointy sticks.

And, here again, cojones comes into play. If you hold the square, with your mates, you're ok. You're safe. If you panic,if you all start to break and run, well. That's what calvary is made for. Running down broken and scattering infantry. Complete slaughter.

Next post, Killing on the High Seas.

Various Interesting Things About The Napoleonic Era Part I

2011-04-28T20:55:00.000-07:00

Having read through the entire Sharpe and Aubrey-Maturin series, I realize I know perhaps a little too much about the Napoleonic era given my age, general disposition to pipes, and my inability to procure a single piece of furniture that might be described as an 'ottoman'.

Without resorting to taking strolls through the retirement communities of British ex-pats and striking up conversations with fellows sporting luxuriant moustaches and alarmingly hopeful comb-overs, I doubt I'll have opportunity to discuss the various interesting things about the Napoleonic Era.

And there are many.

The Sharpe series follows a loud, rambunctious, go-getter in the Army with recurring money problems and a taste for the wench as he climbs the ladder of promotion by grit, luck, and raw love of violence. The Aubrey-Maturin series features Jack Aubrey, who well, is very similar to Sharpe except that he's in the Navy, his idea of 'fiscally destitute' is quite different from Sharpe's, and he plays the violin.

Obviously, there are many other differences, the general gist is that they are both underdogs, and who doesn't love a good underdog story? Even if it happens to be 20 odd books long, right?

That era, early 1800's to about 1820's or so, was kinda the zenith of Crap We Can Just Make With Your Hands. Before industrialization and the whole machines making machines making machines things came into play. It's radically noticeable with the Navy. On a ship, you'd have a cooper (barrels), armourer, carpenter, gunner, surgeon (staunch the flow, amputate at will, no real training), sailmaker, and, I'm sure, about 20 other REALLY important positions I'm forgetting. But the thing is, that ship, say, a frigate, could land anywhere, and make stuff work from the rawest of materials. They could make boats, they could repair their own boat, they could slaughter and salt and store their own food. This is mind blowing to me.

Consider now, a boat made of carbon fibre, or steel, about a trillion transistors worth of electronics and radar and GPS and doppler. If that thing breaks, yer screwed. The amount of civilization to make the smallest component of a modern ship is enormous. Advances in mathematics, hydrodynamics, laminar flow, materials processing, metallurgy.

What that era was like is, well, I was thinking. It's basically the most advanced we could hope to get within a reasonable time after the zombie apocalypse. Or. Or a apocalypse.

Vice Admiral of the Blue Alexander "Like A Steel Trap" Parakov's Last Rallying Speech Before the Great Mutiny Of 4962

2011-04-23T23:02:00.000-07:00

I know I ask alot of all here today, what after the quasi-sentient bloodthirsty dark nebula 8301-wS, and the shockingly violent parasitic tribes of the Acbsenmil asteroid belt, there might be some trust issues in the fleet. I mean, never mind the Fzerom brain melters or the curiously strong limb-ripping pond scum from Aquas III. Only a machine, not unlike the Baader Hoff Decapitate-Maim-KILL! Kings of Circuita, to not appreciate that perhaps I'm asking too much; that perhaps every man and woman has a breaking point, as, indeed, the Gel Monsters of the Angel IV Outlander Colonial post found out for everyone there, in the longest time possible. Where was I.

Yes, breaking points. But we are the Inter Galactic Space Force Triumvirate Regiment! Conquerer of galaxies and usurpers of celestial dominions! Our people are made of harder stuff! Sterner stuff! Our suicide rate is nearly 0.000894% off the entire Imperial Navy. That's some real numbers! Sure it might be because we don't count murder-suicides but let's not quibble. I mean, we did include the Suicide Inducer Virus that rampaged through the fleet for nearly 30 years before someone thought that maybe doing a few autopsies might be in order. And it only took 3 more years until we realized that autopsies techinically only apply to the dead. That's a ten fold increase people.

But numbers shmumbers, right? I'm here to talk about victory! Something we haven't seen in anyone's lifetime but, our history assures us, has happened to a regiment that could very well be traced down to us.

And we can have it again.

Just like we shrugged off the Undead Infants of Barbyl 4 and the giant babooned faced multi-limbed Eviscerators off the moon Titus G, I'm sure we can shrug through these difficulties before us. Well, perhaps shrug is not the word. But 'screaming bloodily while rending each other limb from limb while narrowly averting fleet-wide hysterical madness' is hardly a rallying cry, now is it?

A Dream Within A Dream

2011-04-13T13:45:00.000-07:00

I've been a little writerly blocked up lately. It's irksome. Last night I dreamed I had become friends with Patton Oswalt, although I didn't recognize him until I woke.

In any event, he was my new, real life friend! And we were walking down a street at night, and he looked at me and said, 'ok, GO!', basically asking me to riff on anything, it was an audition for his friendship, this is what I remember saying.

Plus added fluff, because, really, who remembers their dreams?

I like blue drinks, the sort made by marginally paid scientists who's last work involved Dow chemical and horrific civilian casualties in some easily coerced Banana republic. Something that rings with a metallic taste and the undefinable comforting finish of something entirely man-made. Like the Constitution, the GMC Gremlin, and Lisa Carlise. Centuries of science and civilization and experimentation and the march of humankind bolstering a colour of drink that would only be found in nature if nature happened to have a lab full of copper sulfate.

It's not that I'm particularly pro-science, or pro-industrial chemical engineering, but literally years of bathroom cleaning product television advertising has convinced me that blue is the colour of the clean and fresh future; even if it's not that of what is always hopefully labelled 'berry' flavoured.

Or maybe it's my love of science fiction. Blue drinks always feature prominently in shows made with plenty of gold painted styrofoam, looped space battles and heroes who should have died from space VD about three seasons ago. It's like somewhere in our ape brain a fuse is being blown when we even consider an aqua marine drink. It shouldn't exist, it's existence refutes millions of years of hunting and gathering and eating reasonably coloured food. But no, there it is: BAM, the blue of progress, the blue of clean bathrooms, the blue made possible by trace amounts of a chemical banned in Europe due to it's nasty tendency to cause severe pancreatic failure.

I Don't Understand This Mainstream Star Who Is So Popular

2011-04-06T15:09:00.000-07:00

I don't understand how this mainstream star can be so popular. Sure he has the looks of a young Errol Flyn and the disarming charm of a Sean Connery during the golden age of Bond films, but please. Really? This guy? With the millions of albums sold and the half a dozen multi-million dollar movies to his credit? I mean, where does the public get off?

Sure he can dance and sing and seems to have the fashion sense of a high-end Parisian heroin dealer while retaining some of that down-home charm that makes even mothers swoon, but come on! It's entirely puzzling. Look at that face! And that skin! It's almost too perfect! How can the general public find him appealing in any way at all?

No one without a published genetic disorder has a chin that chiselled, or a self-effacing manner that calls to mind Carey Grant without some serious, serious personal issues.How is that so hard for Joe Six-Pack to understand?

He's only appeared in films where his natural charm, good looks, or brooding intensity can shine through as electrically charged anti-heroes or heart-stoppingly perfect romantic leads, right? I don't get it. I don't get the draw.

Failed Approaches to Defending Ship Memorabilia Purchases to Your Spouse

2011-03-11T15:12:00.000-08:00

Oh my god, it's not like I said ANYTHING about you wanting to BRONZE Sebastien's shoes? And he has weird feet.
It's like this, OK, you loved Richard Gere in "An Officer and and Gentleman", right? Well, it's kinda like that. Except without the subtle gay subtext.
Well, you did make me eat kale. KALE. *looks meaningfully at 1/2 empty plate*
I could just get a Veritech fighter. 1/60 scale.
Oh, so your love of anachronism stops as soon as we need 2 feet of bookshelf space for a 110-gun Spanish Galleon with flammable rigging. What? It is.
I promise this has nothing to do with me calling it "Davey Jone's Locker" down there.
You said no to my rubber ducky, my rubber sheep, AND my inflatable Betty Boop, and NOW THIS? What is WRONG with you?
Don't you dare bring my LP collection of "The Captain and Tenille". They are TOO more important to 20th century pop culture than "Sonny & Cher".
Well, you DID make me learn all those knots.
My interest in it has nothing to do with the fact that your lines have evolved from a schooner to a East Indiaman to a 120 gun 1st rate. Nothing at all.
I'll promise to stop christening and naming our cats. Or prepending their name with HMS, okay?

Prospective iPad 2 Owner With His Thoughts.

2011-03-11T14:45:00.000-08:00

Look, I know I live in a state and a city which thinks quinoa is a reasonable substitute for a starch and that gears on bikes an abomination. I know that all my coworkers, immediate family, and extended family who live in this region all love "The Wire", "Arrested Development", and now slightly hate "Arcade Fire" ever since "the Grammy incident". I know there are almost more recycling bins outside my apartment complex than there are elements in the Periodic Table, but still.

I have some expectations.

It'd be nice if the lineup wasn't ten blocks long. Like, 15 people. I could handle waiting for 15 people. But only if those 15 people don't have an itemized list as to why the iPad 2 is really the one to get, and, in the long run, actually quite a bargain.

Also, could the people in my immediate vicinity please not have tumblrs or blogs or twitter accounts that they casually try and advertise? How many streams of information do I need about new Apple products and product rumours and supposed long-term strategy and finalized, objective data on battery lives? Like, ten, at the most, and I already got them.

I happen to like black mock turtle-necks, ok? And jeans. I liked them about two years before Jobs (our prayers and thoughts are with you Steve!) got the look, ok? It'd be awesome if no one pointed tha tout.Or asked me how much my impersonation fees are.

Also, Rio is a perfectly good company. And my iRiver doesn't need replacing. The first 10 hipsters in that lineup who make a crack at it, or the fact that all I have on it is 1/2 of "Razor's Edge" and the "Blues Brothers" soundtrack get a very very hostile stare.

Uncomfortable Movie Synopses

2011-03-05T20:21:00.000-08:00

Predator
Ethnics die first. Austrian herrenfolk survives thermonuclear blast in a jungle without cover.

Death and the Maiden
Doctors who systematically rape and torture for a totalitarian regime can afford extremely expensive chamber music seats.

Robocop
Only a horrifying amalgan of machine and half-dead man, funded by and developed for a private corporation for profit can save a major city in decay.

Ocean's Eleven
Eleven hardened life-time criminals are justified in robbing millions from a legitimate business man because he's somewhat cold and happens to be dating the head criminal's ex-wife.

Untouchables
Federal agent has nearly all his best friends killed in a bloody war over a substance that's legalized a few years later.

Red Dawn
Every conflict to ever descend upon Afganistan, transposed to Montana.

Breakfast Club
Over-privileged white kids in the suburbs feel hard done by, get high, have a make-over, collaborate on a letter.

Top Gun
Man learns about commitment only by having his best friend die in practice.

Barton Fink
Wrestling movies pay the bills, not Great American Films.

Monsters Inc.
Entire species are reduced from a warrior band who strike terror in the hearts of millions to a laughing stock of cheap-gag vaudevillians in a desperate bid to keep the lights on.

Leon
A hardened sociopath almost delves into pedophilia, a girl's family dies, and an entire SWAT team is killed so that a ficus can find a better life on private school grounds.

Belle Epoque
A softcore film is not identified as such due to foreign language, soft-focus, and a superb prop-master.

Run Lola, Run
A screenwriter with career ending writer's block writes the same plot out several times, with small variations, just to make his vignette feature-length.

Things I Would Miss From My 20's If I Had Them In My 20's

2011-02-28T10:36:00.000-08:00

washboard abs.

any abs at all.

belonging to a team sport.

belonging, full stop.

having a nickname that wasn't used with derision.
keg parties.

scratch that.

having a secret handshake/hi-five ritual.
cruising down the strip.

having a car to cruise down the strip with.
knowing where said strip might be.

having a favourite band.
going to quirky cultural heritage days of which I'm weirdly proud.
beach volleyball.

not the "Top Gun" kind.
not the "Dead or Alive" kind either.
I'm not sure what I mean here.

witheringly advanced political views.
handing out Beat Poetry flyers.
joining an amusingly mismatched club for a girl.

getting more interested in the club's activities than said girl.

a koi pond.

L4D2 NPC's and Infected Rejected Out Of Hand

2011-02-21T14:47:00.000-08:00

Oil Derrick Worker:
You never see them, because, well, they're kinda isolated, but you hear reports about them, and they sound terrifying.

Tai Chi Master
If you ever swing that ax faster than an heavily sedated sea sponge, he goes down immediately. But should you go slower, HOO EEEEE!.

Hipsters
You only ever encounter their corpses, they go first.

Vegan
He can be found dumpster diving, looking smug and eating rats.Organic rats.

Flautist
A jazz flautist.

Driver
Sits in his car, a well-notated map of Toledo in his lap, a cold cup of coffee on the dash, and him, crying softly.

Concierge
He stands, looking from the door to his front desk, torn behind a hunger for human flesh and a sense of duty.

Gymnast
Stands below the double rings, arms still on the rings, him looking up, moaning.

Foodie
Fusses and pats you down, emits a low 'humming' noise as he considers, invariably leaves you alone.

Wipeout

2011-02-19T10:37:00.000-08:00

In a fit of what only can be described as a radically unfounded enthusiasm for the outdoors we decided to take the kids tobagganing. Living in BC means ridiculous cost of living, receiving way below the national median salary, but also that mountains are about 30 minutes away, turning the 1000 mm of rain we get at sea level into wonderful, if soggy, snow.

Capitalism dictates that where there are parents desperate to create 'memories' for their children there are cramped ticket booths at the end of interminable lines ready to charge money for it. And they do. For bringing your own sled to go down the mountain. Gravity is apparently a premium resource.

We borrow tobaggans from the neighbours, who have kids who are quite a bit older. This should have sent off alarms for me, cautious dad that I am. But on the other hand, I want my kids to be more or less fearless, and adventurous about things, so I don't really give it a second thought. It's a board, that you sit on, to take you down a very long sheet of ice. If that doesn't say safety I don't know... it does sound suspiciously like the sport that poor Georgian died doing in our Olympics.

We get there, pay the fees, and stand behind the impromptu lines. The hill looks kinda steepish, kinda longish. I do have all the coordination of a inebriated stork in a hurricane, but I figure I can keep things under control. I'm the Dad, for crying out loud. Evolved over the millions of years to, if nothing else, protect the young. From sabre-toothed tigers and rampaging bison and the odd rampaging tribe.

Nothing to it.

But somewhere in the profoundly careful part of me, there are doubts. Serious doubts. I'm the sort of geek who can sprain his ankle if the sidewalk he's strolling on hasn't been professionalliy resurfaced in more than say, eight days.

Owl Jr. and Mrs. Owl go down on a narrow bottomed contrivance, it cuts into the snow and doesn't go terribly fast. I think, oh, this isn't so bad.

A younger teenager takes his turn, he kneels on his tobaggan, and it just screams down the hill. I suppose being on his knees increases the speed and possibility of quadrapelegia should he hit a large tree. Whee. There's something familiar about his trip down, and I can't quite put my finger on it.

We go down, and geez, it certainly feels faster when you're on the sled. I brake with my feet, sending snow spray everywhere, we do a little 360 at a very slow speed and spill out. The worst thing is that snow gets into Owlet's jacket. She doesn't exactly enjoy the snow down her neck but wants to go again.

We go down a second time. I slow down again. Except I guess not enough, or we hit a bump. In any case we spill, but don't necessarily get untangled from the tobaggan, Owlet's hand gets dragged across the aforementioned sheet of ice that masquerades as snow and she's screaming.

We get up. Somehow through crushing guilt and impenetrable sense of failure as a dad and a person, I keep my wits, much to my surprise. I find the injured wrist, but I don't know what's happened yet, just that Owlet is really giving her lungs a proper workout. There's echoes off the mountain, I believe.

First thing's first, I go through basic range of motion, nothing broken, whew. Then I pull back her coat sleeve and really look at it. There's a patch about the size of a dollar bill that's completely white, and I know that a nice swath of skin has been left on the hill. In about 2 minutes there's going to some serious blood. Gotta get her to the medic tent. We trudge up the mountain to the saddest excuse for a cafeteria I've ever seen and I spot some offical looking teenagers standing around. I ask politely where the medic is, they call one in.

During this waiting time her wrist starts bleeding and it looks ugly. The teenagers are terrible at hiding their shock or their welling pity but I'm keeping things cool yet concerned. At some point they realize that hey, I'm the dad, and maybe they shouldn't overreact. One can really amp up the suffering of a kid's injury by overreacting.

She's actually much more concerned with what the medic is going to do. At this point her body is throwing so much stuff at the injury I don't think she's feeling anything. I spend all my time comforting her that the medic won't give her a shot or something equally horriifying. Never mind that her entire wrist is eclipse in a pool of red, the medic might put on a BAND-AID. Her chief concern is a Band-Aid that's removed too quickly, something she did herself and still remembers. The things that cause anxiety in kids are weird, funny, and familiar.

At some point another dad comes in with his son, who has some blood in his mouth, he biffed it good as well. He's about the same age. Owlet is then used as a pacifier for that kid, "Oh, look at her, she's much worse", well, at least something good came out of it.

The medic finally arrives, patches her up, and we go for ice-cream, because that's the only rational response to mild childhood trauma, in my book. While watching Owlet wolf down her vegetable oil frozen ice cream synthetic it suddenly dawns on me that the tobaggan that the hotdogging teenager was using was the same model as the one we used: stiff, flat bottomed, built for maximum speed.

We'll have to go up again, if nothing else than to stave off a phobia of hills, lineups, and tobaggans that I'm sure has taken root in Owlet. But at least I know that my enthusiasm for the outdoors is indeed, unfounded.

General Qualities Required for Yacht Captains Employed by Third World Drug Kingpins

2011-02-10T22:12:00.000-08:00

ability to keep eye contact when addressing employer on the "hottub deck".
past experience with caring for a ficus.
general disinterest in female anatomy, especially on aforementioned deck.
experience with pH balance and chlorination of 1/4 Olympic sized pool.
enjoys 'Miami Vice'.
supportive, but not too supportive of recreational drug use.
able to remove tricky stains from snow-white uniform (mud, grass, human brain and skull fragments).
refrains from 'punching it' at the first sign of law enforcement.
comfortable with frequent small arms fire.
knows how to start and operate a Vecoplan K-Model RG70K Industrial Shredder unassisted.
can do light cleanup (mainly of bent spoons, dusty mirrors, various lengths of rubber hose).
fond of Billy Ocean.
equally comfortable talking out of a search and seizure from the Coast Guard as he is having light banter at the dinner table.
doesn't press the need to wear 'short shorts'.
competent enough to serve as a spare 4th for bridge, should the need arise

Goodbye, Old Friend

2011-01-25T22:32:00.000-08:00

I got a snazzy LCD flat screen whatever computer screen. Quite recently. Approximately fifty hojillion years after the whole CRT monitor technology had become obsolete. That meant I had to dispose of my current monitor, a behemoth, 19" Samsung Syncmaster 900NF. Weighs about 40 pounds and has the dimensions of a early CAT scan machine.

A google here and a clicky there and apparently there's a depot nearby that will take it. Situated in a byzantine maze of twisty turvy streets that have never heard of a 90 degree junction. A place where entire businesses and thrive or die or live a kind of half-life that crushes the dreams of anyone who tries to work there. Marble counter top re-installation? Got that. Double Decker bus storage? Yup. One gets a sense of how many different sorts of things there are that people do to get food on the table. An entire life worrying about 'Industrial Outdoor Deck Design and Repair'.

I'm not usually a sentimental guy about stuff. I don't think I am, anyways. I'm cheap, which is why I hold onto stuff until mere molecules are left of it, past thread-bare, past donation. My Steam games library is made up of mostly $5 and cheaper games (made by Czech developers who are most famous for doing the conversion module for Quicken 2005) that seem like a good bang for my buck even though 99% of my gaming time is spent on games I've spent more than $20 on.

What I'm getting at is that I'm frugal, shop for clothes at Costco, books at Value Village and usually avoid spending money. So I guess i don't have alot of opportunity to get rid of stuff, as I have very little of it to get rid of.

I'm also not sentimental about technology, either. I watched that almost good movie, AI, and never once got hooked into the OH POOR ROBOT BOY sentiment that Spielberg was swinging for with all the subtleness of a $100 million budget under the aegis of the guy who used a robotic fricking shark in 1975.

But it could be this new kick I'm in, listening to Folk Rock, which is apparently a music genre.
And, foolishly, I was listening to this song.

I grew up listening to John Denver and Simon and Garfunkel and this sorta of music is kinda ingrained in my DNA, for good or for bad. And after I heft the behemoth of monitory goodness on the plastic dolly, I fire up this song. The man starts to dissemble it as I'm driving away, removing the stand. There was something about the way he kinda pushed it onto its side. Brusquely. Something inside me whimpered.

All around are palettes filled with other monitors, TVs, CRTs, massive projection TVs that might have featured in a Connery Bond film. All going to the grave. And there I'm thinking. There she goes. I'm driving out, and I'm watching my poor monitor being given up to the dead. To be sucked of it's component parts and rendered in such a way that will damage the earth the least.

I'd had that monitor for about 10 years. My not unconsiderable computer leisure time has been spent in front of that thing. Ill-thought out novels and laughable short stories and hours and hours of gaming.

I almost tear up, leaving there, but am struck by a nearby business, as I pull out of the parking lot, 'Hot Tub Reweathering', that's a thing?

You Can't Afford To Lose Me, I'm The 37th Best Pilot In The Fleet

2011-01-13T21:23:00.000-08:00

You can't ground me. I know you want to, I know in that hardened heart of a five star space admiral with oak clusters that you want to bust me down to private first class, have me bustling K-Rations across the fleet in the crappiest rust-bucket you can get out of mothballs.

Well, guess what, you can't. You can't afford to lose me. I'm your 37th best pilot.

Sure, after Stryker and Killion and Raybird, I mean, their kills together dwarf the next 150 pilots down the roster combined. Everybody knows that. And yeah, okay, number 34th on the list, Lieutenant Caberron, from the Xarglaac Nebula isn't exactly a fighter pilot but can fly a really mean intra-fleet transport, isn't exactly a slouch.

Okay, I get it. You got me. But how many pilots do you have like me?

Not counting number 36th and 38th and the fact that pilots 38-179 are separated by the thinnest scintilla of statistics which would hardly hold up to closer scrutiny.

So how many? That's right, one.

Well, sure, there are plenty of rookies that supposedly could replace me. Whose test scores and simulator results make me wake up in a cold sweat every night. But who would have my imp-- my physical fitness regimen? Not quality, sure. But quantity! Twenty years, Admiral. They can hardly accumulate that many mandatory physical checkups in that time. That many ANNUAL checkups. That's right, they can't. Physically impossible.

And what about that time I saved Stryker and Touchdown from that nasty brushup with the Anptwerk Empire? I think pointing out that I was piloting a battle cruiser at the time and I had warped in to save them with three Starreach frigates, a galaxy class IV Techrion Warlord, and a small sortie of Hyperion star-fighters is being nitpicky, don't you? The fact of the matter was that i was first on the. Yes, by 2 seconds. But 2 seconds, 2 weeks, what does it matter. 2 seconds can get you killed in space.

Which brings me to my ne-- oh, KP duty for a week? That sounds reasonable.

Questionable Bios

2010-12-27T10:58:00.000-08:00

Bios, as in the tiny biographies that magazines give contributors or blogs give their bloggers when you click 'About ...'

When not completing his collection of WWII hand grenade pins, Steve can be found volunteering his time with 'Explode This!', an interactive, hands on pyrotechnics demonstration for kids 1-4.
Fran takes her obsession with size-exclusion chromatography to pretty daring extremes, but not so much as to interfere with her career, a receptionist at Duluth's 16th highest grossing Century 21 office.
Travis enjoys his school marching band, being co-sub-captain of the Junior co-ed cheer squad, and taking all comers in his travelling full-contact "Octagon of Terror" (touring most of Norther Florida's retirement communities),
Marilyn's other hobby is sharpening steak knives, often not her own, and usually without anyone knowing.
Stamford says his most prized isolated pure virus is a variant of E. Bola he has secured with patent-pending isolation methodologies. He also breeds ficuses.
Besides being North America's foremost amateur expert in corn-husk and maize-silk based rope knotting, Kathleen is also Kansas's main importer of betel-nut and betel-nut accessories.
"Trendsetters!" 1987 annual issue named Jain the "One To Watch In Stand Alone Vending Machine Supply and Service", he hasn't looked back since.
Roger is the senior editor and owner of "Sticklers for Stickers", North America's premier magazine for sticker misprint enthusiasts since 1998.
Fazz also teaches jazzerskating at her local home studio. Still accepting students for the 2011 term.
You can buy Dr. Bioplanack's self-published book, "Taxonomy Ain't Just For Animals!' at Amazon.
Janet also is an avid horse jumper, horse groomer, horsefeed custom mixologist, horse tack adjuster, and horse shoer. She loves to keep her work varied and cites Leonardo as a kindred spirit.

Christmas Family Letter 2010

2010-12-20T19:50:00.000-08:00

Another year has passed and that means another torrid and spicy family drama wrapped in the infamous Owl Family Christmas Letter. Maybe not torrid, and perhaps not entirely spicy, but certainly without the more earthy odours familiar to any parent who's kid has switched to solid food.

Owl Jr. is now almost two. TWO! His soberness and infinite sadness continue unabated. I do so hope he doesn't reserve that look just for me (however well-founded it may be). He's starting to speak. Not in any way or form that might be recognizable as such, and not in any way that might be measured in relation to others of his age, unless others of his age call everything 'Ma-Ma', 'Da-Da', or “CHOO CHOO”; especially “Choo Choo”. He's very much into locomotives and rail centered conveyances. I suspect it's because we're not allowed to expose them to more interesting and edifying things, like ninjas, robots, ninja robots, and perhaps vikings. He's a happy camper, more or less, going from Eeyore to Tigger in about the space it takes you to go for his armpits. He looks somewhat like I did when I was his age: morose, serious, and entirely Japanese.

He's not a picky eater. He'll eat anything that has fallen from the tree or bush (veggies or fruits), or, paradoxically, lunchmeats (that unholy alliance of stomach lining, advanced food preservation chemistry, and cow lips). He's an enigma, a mystery.

He's very mobile now, going up and down stairs like handrails are a luxury (in our case, non-existent) and gravity not quite the enemy. But generally he's to be found under some table or chair, quiet, playing with one of his many trains, or pretending whatever he has in hand is a train (books, teddy-bears, day-old macaroni).

There's not much more to say about him, except that he's developed this nearly Woody The Woodpecker type laugh, except quieter, and perhaps slightly less maniacal.

Owlet is a whole four years and change now. Her favourite punctuation is the question mark, her favourite things in life being TV or bargaining. Usually the bargaining to get more TV, so perhaps we should just say her favourite thing is TV but then we might appear even more remiss as parents. She has a bright future as a SWAT negotiator or TV critic, perhaps some sort of amalgam of the two.

She's still firey, perhaps more so. She has an expressiveness that easily matches Owl Jr.' lack thereof, and several pretty hilarious misconceptions about pretty much anything. As a pre-schooler, that's her right. As her parents, it's our right to listen to her and not correct her. Mind you, it might be because some of these misconceptions were planted in there by us (chocolate makes you shrink) and are useful to keeping her healthy; if it happens to be entertaining as well, so be it.

When not asking questions and being just generally very firey, she'll attempt to start talking about something. She's incredibly adept at starting to talk about something. “Dadda, when I was a.. when I was... Dadda, when I was a... when... I.. a little gi... Dadda, dadda, I have to tell you something, when I was a little girl”. It's funny, written down like this. But at the end of a long day, it's like Chinese water torture if the water was replaced with mercury and the torture was forever.

She's discovered the joys of drawing sea monsters, robots, and aliens, curious how she got to drawing those. I certainly had nothing to do with it.

Knock-knock jokes are a huge favourite for her. And for us, because rarely does she actually understand how the first bit and the second bit come together and you end up with a masterpiece of absurdist humour, “Knock knock,.Who's there? Banana. Banana who? Aren't you glad I didn't say orange?” I choose to believe she's doing this on purpose. She does, however, know how to do the 'interrupting cow' knock knock joke to perfection, and well, her parents are cheap laughs.

She's noticing Molly a lot more now, trying to give her commands, making note that she's the “cutest dog in the whole wide world”. Molly continues to base her affection in direct proportion to how much meat Owlet has on her plate at the moment.

This is her last year of pre-school. Next term (2011 September) she starts 5 days a week kindergarten. I assume they need more time to get into the trickery fingerpainting, the lesser used crayons, and perhaps some neon Play-Doh™, I'm not sure.

Owl Jr. and Owlet continue to get along famously. When not ignoring each other or making each other laugh they are making each other scream (sometimes out of fun (I'm not sure how screaming has been associated with fun, for them, but there it is), mostly out of frustration). They do seem to care about each other a whole lot. Most disagreements arise because Owl Jr. can't see why he has to wait to play with something just because Owlet happens to be holding it. Owlet is invariably the put-upon party, since she's learned such things as 'sharing' and 'mine', while Owl Jr., noble savage that he is, is blissfully unfettered by such ideas.

They like making forts together, and sometimes just taking turns screaming and laughing at each other which is something that goes quickly from adorable to 'how can I cover my ears inconspicuously'.

Molly is still going to work. She's far too friendly to new people who come into our office but that keeps me from having to do small talk, which is a relief to all parties, let me tell you.

I'm still where I was last year. My rut is extraordinarily homey, thanks for asking.

At some point during the summer I took a weekend and went to NYC to see some friends. It was hot, it was fun, and I wasn't mugged above seven times. I'm told it's because I kept to all the touristy areas. The Chrysler Center, Central Park, and other land marks are just as you imagined them, as long as you add about thirty times more tourists and ensure it's hotter than a malfunctioning bathhouse in the third circle of Hell.

Mrs. Owl is still working part time at a long term care facility. The old people are still old, I'm told, the pleasantly confused are still both, as well. During the summer she took a weekend to go to Vegas with her friends. She's since asked me what a 'lien' is, and I don't know, and I assume it's not related to the Vegas trip. Or choose to believe.

And that's all the news that's fit to cram into a Christmas letter, in all its torrid, spicy glory.

Best wishes for you and yours, and may the new year find you as this year has hopefully found you: healthy and wealthy and wise.

Owl Family (Mrs. Owllle, Niteowl, Owlet, Owl Jr. & Molly) Christmas 2010

Magnadoodle

2010-12-18T11:35:00.000-08:00

Owlet has this doodle pad, it works with magnets somehow. You use a magnetic pen and you draw stuff, and when you're done, you erase it with another magnet. Owlet enjoys making sea-monsters and aliens and robots and all sorts of things that I'm sure I had NO hand in putting in her head.

We've taken to doing these things collaboratively, each adding a bit more. I used to draw a bit in elementary, jet-packed leopards with flamethrowers, aardvarks with rocket launchers, the usual stuff. Ok, maybe not usual, maybe the product of a war-and-apparently-zoo-obsessed 10 year old, but, no letters to home, so it's all above board.

In any case, I enjoy these collaborative efforts: sea monsters look something like the Loch Ness, with added various eye-stalks, claws, flippers, jaws, and tentacles; robots are generally squares with other square like things added on, invariable jet wings, or something of the sort; aliens are more humanoid, lots of antennae, and, well, overlap alot with sea monsters.

So we'll add and add and tweak and at some point Owlet feels like the monster/alien/robot might be a bit cold and gives them a sweater, more or less blacking out a large part of the body. We know what's under there, and I guess that's what matters.

Anyhow, after veritably minutes of work, she'll just kinda shrug and pull the eraser across the board. I always catch myself being surprised. We toiled over that creation. Poured together our limited and infantile imagination into every tentacle and misplaced jet engine! I never cease to be even more impressed by how zen Owlet is about the whole enterprise. Complete detachment. Or maybe I"m just looking too far into these things.

She'll be drawing over-armed aardvarks in no time.

Oz

2010-12-12T23:27:00.000-08:00

Went to a friend/coworkers place for a Christmas work dinner type thing. Good company, food, and the many, many kids didn't leave lasting scars on each other, so, a success in my book. There was a Secret Santa with all the excitement and bubbling enthusiasm that free loot tends to engender and the kids were relatively happy about what they got, or well-bred enough not to make obvious their bitter disappointment.

What was interesting was realizing how far I've come, well, how far anyone comes when they hit adulthood. Doubly so when you have kids and you see how excited they are about the whole thing and its stark contrast to your own mild enthusiasm.

For me it's become a thing to endure. Hopefully something I can make memorable for my brood. Christmas magic and all that. Christmas songs, eggnog, turkey, Christmas cookies and what have you. But I'm far beyond being in the moment, the suspended magic of it. Because, well, I have a bloody mortgage don't I? And responsibilities, and don't see how cool a train set is, and usually think of it in relation to how it fits the family budget.

So. It's sobering. Looking at them have their fun. It's great, it makes me smile, I enjoy seeing them enjoy themselves, but I'm never going to get that place they are now.

Course, I can eat as much Christmas chocolate as I want and drink gallons upon gallons of egg-nog without having to give the what for to anyone except perhaps my cardiologist or coroner, which was the Great Freedom I yearned for when i was a child. I could also walk into a Toys R Us and literally buy anything I wanted for myself, now that I don't find any of it remotely interesting. Odd, life.

The dinner was on an island, and we took a water taxi out there. A boat. It's about a 25 minute ride, going out there was choppy as heck, but fun in its own way. Coming back it was pretty smooth, except somewhere near the end where I was starting to calculate how long I could tread water in near freezing water while keeping my kids afloat. Not long.

One was asleep, one didn't even notice we were more pitching at 45 degree angles than merely hitting chop. I'm a worrisome sort, so maybe the other parents didn't think much of it, but if they did, and I imagine they did, it seems like another thing about adulthood. Being the wizard behind the curtain, aware of how all things works (gifts, Santa, possibility of drowning and hypothermia enroute to home), knowing about the bitter realities, worrying about the horrifying consequences, but making no note of it, shouldering it, keeping on.

Mind you, the roast beef was quite good.

It's Not That Impressive

2010-10-29T18:58:00.000-07:00

It doesn't matter what sort of restaurant you go to: the chic one with glass everywhere and the vague impression that the interior designer might have had a short but meaningful fling with slight, well-manicured Japanese man; those BBQ places that aren't really so much BBQ as they are the end product of some highly efficient de-graded beef and chemical food delivery process that would put Mussolini's railway to shame; a small cafe at some long abandoned highway town where the main ingredient in all the food, even the fruit bowl (especially the fruit bowl) is pork fat; one of those chipper new 'hip' restaurants that's just a front for one of those older restaurant chains that you could have sworn had given up the ghost to marching progress and the vagaries of the every changing and fickle North American palate; Dennys.

It really doesn't matter.

There's always a cadre of servers who have, through choice or fate, made that job their life. For good. And for some reason it's the majority opinion of them that taking the order by memory is the bestest, most impressive way to get a big fat tip.

It's not.

It's the best fastest way to get me all anxiety laden, and ineveitably, smirky and self-righteous when you bring me the Moons Over My Hammy rather than the small Coke and apple pie I ordered. This might just be a confirmation bias, it may be that all these servers who shirk from a pen and paper like economists from basic ecological theory, are, in fact, better. But my anxiety of you messing up my order is, objectively, ruining my experience.

And I feel bad for them of course. Them and their mortification for having messed up my simple order of the 'the bacon burger,that's it, just the bacon burger, fries', as if this thing doesn't happen every goddamn day. And how could it not? It's precisely because my orders are so boring, and of course, I naturally exude boring myself, that my order would be as memorable as a Democrat's stump speech.

And I'm sorry for that.

But please. For the love of my very severe craving for a BLT and not, say, a Cobb salad, please write down my damn order.

Herculean Achievements And Other Small Miracles Part II

2010-10-24T13:27:00.000-07:00

I'm not sure where the obsession with trains comes from, but it seems to be universal for kids of a certain age. Thus we have Thomas The Train Engine and Chugginton and those wooden train tracks sold by everyone from Ikea to Toys R Us. Then there are the other incarnations, train rides in shopping centres on small electric carts kitted out to look like 19th-century steam engines, outdoor gasoline-powered mini-trains manned by former engineers and those who have taken their hobby far too seriously.

You don't notice it until you have a little boy or girl who goes absolutely ballistic at the first sign of anything that goes on a track. It's the Blue Car Syndrome with multi-ton uni-directional transport vehicles. Owlet is fairly far past it, but Owl Jr. is deep in the throes of this near pathological mental disability. On the merest hint of one, he drops whatever he was doing (invariably, playing with a small train) and shouts out "CHOO CHOO!", then looks around to see if, perhaps, one has snuck up behind him, or behind me. (A meerkat like response that is much like Owlet, actually, when her favourite shows goes on, as she bellows (yes, bellows) "MOMMA!! TOOPY AND BINOO IS ONN!!!").

So for the second day of questionable childcare by their father, the kids are taken to an outdoor train somewhere deeper in the wilds of the suburbs, bordering on the exoburbs. Somehow, like all jobs that one does day in and day out, it must become somewhat commonplace, watching the jittering uncontainable excitement of little ones as they come face to face with their obsession; the tired, vaguely triumphant face on the caregivers as they set their kids down in the tiny cars for a full five minutes of peace.

It then comes to my attention, as the train is pulling from the station, that the ride is being set up for a night-time Halloween mode. All innocuous children's outdoor activities take on a demonic alter-ego during Halloween. Amusement parks, train rides, petting zoos, you name it, if it's outside, there's going to be a Halloween version that would make small children and lesser men, like myself, suddenly become aware of how tenuous bladder control really is.

This isn't 'billowing sheets and funny jack-o-lanterns', this is 'something scary enough to chip through teenager's jaded skepticism', the same teens who watch horror movies that make the Dresden Fire Bombing look like a mild city-wide heat-wave.

I'm told that nothing is really set up,that it'll be fine for the six or so kids on the train, all under the age of 5. Which, to some extent, it is. But there were a few tunnels a little bit too well prepared for the night's event. Hideous monsters, bloodthirsty monsters glare out, although the lights were dimmed (which made it somewhat worse, actually). It's then that the powers of suggestion, all the powers I could muster, came into play.

Owlet : "The tunnel, it's SCARY!?"
Me : "Nonono, it's not *shudder* scary. Nono. It's fine"

Repeat that conversation about thirty times over five minutes.

Much later, I'm sure Mrs. Owl will be regaled by Owlet's disturbingly accurate memory, "Dadda! Remember when we went on that SCAAARY train!?". After which she will reduce me to ashes with a withering glare.

Owl Jr., of course, simply loved it.

Herculean Achievements And Other Small Miracles Part I

2010-10-03T20:44:00.000-07:00

So, I knew it was coming. The Payback. After carousing in NYC with my fellow nerds for a few days, it was only fair that Mrs. Owl get a chance away from the kids, in Vegas. Yes, Vegas. It's lucky for me that both of us have the gambling habits of a Siberian ermine in hibernation, that is, none at all. Or it's lucky that she's hid her gambling addiction and the second mortgage we are now carrying. Either way, you know, I'm a happy camper.

She went down with some of her fellow mommy friends and they had a grand old time in heat that made NYC seem like a spacious Frigidaire. Killing heat. The kind of heat that's too hot for sand. But hey, who am I to judge if her idea of a good time is to gawp at the living proof, the soaring edifices proclaiming that often-repeated but rarely heeded motto "The House Always Wins"?

By all accounts she had a good time and whatnot and I haven't noticed any undue garnishing of my wages, so it was a success.

But enough about her. This is about me! Me taking care of a 1.5 year old and a 4 year old and a small, furry dog given to frequent, enviable naps.

On Saturday I take them to a free live kids performance of a cartoon. Yeah. I know. They dress up two poor schlubs in gigantic costumes of two popular cartoon characters. The schlubs thenv gesture as the pre-recorded audio shouts out their lines.

That's not where the suffering happens though. No, the suffering happens when you arrive an hour early for a 'free fun playtime' to see only a teeming mass of stoic parents and already squirming kids waiting as patiently as they can for an animated character to come to life on a stage that bears a striking resemblance to the loading pallets you usually see out back. Toddlers and babies waiting are like live rounds in a camp fire. It's a peace with the understanding that Things Aren't Going To Be Altogether Fun In A Little while. Unless the idea of unpredictable munitions excites you.

So we wait. I have Owlet on one knee, Owl Jr. on the other, and Molly in a doggie bag by my side, with a smaller bag on whatever side of me I have left to carry diapers, wet wipes, snacks and water. Closest parent-child combo? About 2 inches. On every side. It was brick wall and a bit of gothic architecture away from being the Cask of Amontillado.

Free kids shows are really something that parents should avoid if at all possible. The 10 dollars or whatever you woulda paid is well worth the peace of mind. What peace of mind you ask? Well, waiting an HOUR with small children, for one. Trying ones best to be polite yet not giving a single goddamn millimeter to any blasted parent and their snivelling toddler if they think they can hem in on your territory, for another.

Ahem.

You see? It doesn't bring the best out in parents. Well, it brings the best out in parents, in that all parents want to give their children the bestest, mostest, everythingest they want. At least til a certain age. I call this the Years When Civility Goes By The Wayside, or the Mad Maxx Years. For some parents, it's a very long time. Up until, say, 30. For others, it's until they're kids are in elementary. I have no doubt this dark and uncouth time will take the better part of my adult life.

It's unnerving and humiliating to find yourself in a tooth and nail fight, albeit surreptiously, albeit covertly with the grand airs of civility. All that high-minded idealistic youth is gone when you're defending your 2 square feet of rubber mat hoping against hope that one kid doesn't meltdown, the other kid doesn't evacuate his bowels, and your dog doesn't start whining because What THE HELL Are All These Kids Doign So Close To ME?!

We survive, there are minor meltdowns, small compromises, but Owlet gets to see the characters gesture about and I try not to imagine what impressive resumes those poor folks in the suits had to build to get there (3 years modern dance, 5 years ballet, 2 years tap, BA teaching, Primary School, CPR 1 and 2).

When we pile back into the car, my shirt is nearly soaked in sweat. The cold sweat of stress, the real sweat of carrying a 1.5 year old and a small dog and pack, the bonus sweat of being a desk jockey who's idea of exercise is moving the mouse enough so the screen saver doesn't engage.

Oh yes, the Payback has just begun.

Other Filler Words According To Socio-Economic Class

2010-09-22T21:35:00.000-07:00

You know how there is a certain youngish girl, who, when describing another girl to girlfriend, will use the term 'oh, but she's really sweet'? That 'sweet' means essentially nothing, it's just a pablum stuffer of styrofoamian proportions. Here are some other Filler Words used by certain groups to describe peers about which there isn't much to say.

Accountants : "Diligent"

Arts Students : "Interesting"

Babysitters : "Loves children"

Commercial Airline Pilots : "Has put in the hours"

Doctors : "Bright"

Judges : "Tough, but fair"

Mechanics : "Ain't afraid to get his hands dirty"

Mob : "Good guy"

Painters : "Unique perspective"

Sea Captains : "Taut"

Science Students : "So smart"

Stunt Persons : "Tough"

Voltron Pilots : "Team player"

Rules of Engagement for the Squirt Battle Flotilla

2010-09-10T15:01:00.000-07:00

I have a friend who likes to use military terms in polite company as if everyone grew up idolizing Robert Mitchum and reading Jane's Tactical manuals for fun. He suggested this topic. After write this up, I'm going to look up what ROE is, exactly, and find out why he was looking at this when he has neither kids nor a pool.

It's hot.
Combatants are in swimming trunks or bathing suits or other such attire that is allowed to be spattered with chlorinated water.
Aggressors shall assault the defensive positions at no more than 45 degrees off the normal plane, or however far the squirt gun rotates.
All battle flotilla equipment is fully inflated by respective parties. No parental help. Chris is not allowed to use his electric air pump.
Sustained fire to the eyes or mouth shall be curtailed to no more than 3 seconds, unless targetted parties have breached such offenses at least as egregious, but not less than: wedgies, purple nurple, visibly relieving oneself in the pool.
Moving of the squirt vessels shall be facilitated by only the flutter kick. Egg-beater or frog-kick are verboten and punishable by dunking or being named Marco for the first three (3) games of Marco Polo.
Creating a 'fire ship' by pushing Mr. Peterson while he's sleeping on his floating chair into the stationary squirt platform is likewise verboten.
Good and bad guys must switch after every round. Robbie can't be Destro every single time.
Waterballoons must be thrown in a 'skyhook' or underhanded.
NO ROCKS.
Yes gravel counts as rocks.
Getting Jenny's oldest brother to play the "Kraken" on the squirt platform is not allowed. Those who do not immediately repel Jenny's brother as he tries to ruin the fun will have an entire lemon squirted in their eyes.
Slurpees are not 'mortars'.
Any attempt by Quint's dad on trying to sneakily teach us Naval History will be vigorously opposed by both sides.

NYC Meetup : Monday Manhattan

2010-08-24T00:21:00.000-07:00

On the Monday, most everyone had gone home. I had taken advantage of Han's really fantastic hospitality a bit too long, I thought, so an outing was called for. Yes. More walking. It was up to me and Bob to wander around Manhattan, the island that I think most people think about when you say "New York City" (well, what I think when people say "New York City" is that El Paso commercial, but that's neither here nor there). The financial district, Central Park, erstwhile meat-packing districts now the fashionable stalking grounds for high priced escorts with rod and tackle still in place, all the glories of NYC, in other words.

I wanted to see the crush of people, the endless sea of NYC that first got drilled into my head by, I think, "Crocodile Dundee". You know, where he has to climb a lamp post to get his bearing? I got a bit of it. I think. But, you know, it's just people. And they didn't walk at a blazingly fast speed that had me at half jog either. Maybe some of Hong Kong's walking speed made it's way to Vancouver, because I didn't really notice a huge uptick of speed. I had visions of being crushed underfoot by overpriced Italian pumps and Oxfords whose sheen could spear a small pidgeon at thirty meters.It might have been the words of warning from my overly cautious big brother, something along the lines of "NYC Will Crush You". But then, he always moves through the crowd like a particularly well-paid security detail for a retired President. Too much marital arts at an early does this to a mind.

We wandered around, Bob being a bit of an old hand at the NYC than I was (then, I think, pretty much anyone was more of an old hand at NYC than I was. I might have slightly edged out a 3-month old from Hungary in a Baby Bjorn, but just). I know I didn't want to see the same ol' same ol. Get pictures of landmarks that have several million shots of them on Flickr or what have you. I wanted to soak in as much as I could of the island, for the few hours we had. In my 30 dollar quickly disintegrating sandals.

I also had to get a knockoff bag for Mrs. Owl. It was a thing she vaguely requested, and me, being filled with the guilt that only young parents can feel when going on a vacation without the family, took it to be a Holy Quest. I was told there might be Bartering.

My family, as I've said many times, comes from South East Asia. Different parts, mom and dad, but that area nevertheless. A place where 'prices' are just 'where to start your haggling from', numbers that get attached to items by the store owner looking at you, and not so much the tag (which is non-existent in the first place). I had to go, get a bag, and haggle. There was all sorts of ancestral and family honour on the line here.

Now Bob comes from the Mid West. Bedrock of community and family values and picket fences and neighbours with lawn envy and very large Ford dealerships. I don't know. I'm going by, as you can see, Hollywood here. But I do know that Bob had a distaste for bartering. And so did I, or so I said. Or so I thought. One of those.

I have recollections of my dad bartering for things where he really shouldn't have, to the eternal burning embarassment to me. Say, aquarium supplies, or Little League fees. I have recollections of my dad breaking down a shop owner (on one of our trips to previously mentioned SE Asian countries) until he paid some unimaginable fraction of a US dollar as opposed to the entire US dollar for, I dunno, a wild boar, a small bushel of pineapples? And then there is the story about the family van. Which is a story for another time.

In short, the act of bartering, as well as the very real uncomfortableness of it all is ingrained deep in me. Like, how I imagine college hoops is to other families, or quilting.

So we reach Canal Street. An area, where I'm assured, all sorts of kitschy NY things can be had, notably things involving a heart or questionable electronics or trashy knockoffs of Italian designers made in Taiwan. Ahhh, America.

It's a heady matrix of shops, really. The sidewalk is crammed right to the gills, quite a bit past it, over the eyes and dorsal fins. One is submerged in knock-off flotsam and crap that makes 'pleather' seem the stuff of Louis the XIV's court. And it's manned by many, many Chinese. Ah, Chinese! My life in Vancouver has prepared me for this! There are entire malls in Vancouver with not a single word of English is displayed and where I can be accosted by any number of merchants who insist on trying to talk to me in Cantonese while I beg off, trying to explain I'm only 1/4 Chinese and that quarter being Haka anyways, so, you can see, I'd never understand you anyways, and them, slowly comprehending, shaking their head in shame and disgust.

Anyways.

So the street is cram full of these store fronts. But these store fronts are just an ENTRY WAY to a long hallway jammed with MORE of the EXACT. Same. Shops.

There's a casual disinterest, as well as a undefinable hostility from the shop owners. A posture I know all too well. It's the thinnest veneer of emotion, just going through the motions. Everyone playing their part until they have a general idea of how far you are willing to go. It's almost rude, but, if you've seen it enough, it's not so bad. I take on the half broken English, short sentences, curt words.

"How much?"

"Thirty five dollar."

"Ohhh.."

"How much you pay?"

"Too much."

"Ok. *pause* Thirty."

*sucking air through my teeth* "Ahh.."

*goes about fixing bags, pretending I'm not there*

"Hm"

"Twenty seven."

"Ahh. Twenty."

"No, no. Can't do."

*I pat his shoulder, nodding* "Ah, well" *start walking away*

*He pauses, then he gestures towards me* "Okokok 25"

At this point I push it too much and am at an impasse. A deal is made later on, for a bag that doesn't look quite like a ripoff of a $10,000 bag and more like an actual $200 bag. I don't haggle so much with this owner because I'm sure Bob has tired of the uncomfortable with my half English and comically abrasive tone.

It's an act of wild optimism to hope to turn a profit on items that your neighbour is also selling, nearly identical, about half a foot away from you. I'm not sure how they do it. Then I see a dozen tourists, possible from the Midwest, who actually pay whatever the shop owner says the price is. I can't help but feel that someone is being insulted in that exchange.

Although we avoided most landmarks, I did want to see one, the Chrysler Building. It may not be as iconic as the WTC site or the Wall St. Bull or the Empire State building, but dangit, I just thing it's so dang stylish. It looks like Ayn Rand novels read. Art Decoish. But you know, without the turgid prose, flimsy philosophy and cruel, cold, competent protagonists. It was great. And I've added to the Internet's current collection of 958 100 292 photos of that building. I'm a contributing member of society.

NYC Meetup : Sunday

2010-08-14T13:27:00.000-07:00

There are certain expectations I had of Brooklyn. The lurking spectre of crime (possibly backed up by Tommy Guns and speakeasys); taxis; high-strung Type-A personalities who's abrasive interpersonal style might be best described as a 'high-impact verbal assault' and which is undoubtably augmented by prescription and not-quite-prescription stimulants.

Now, nobody said it was accurate or based in any sort of reality, unless you count "Wall Street" as reality (you know the movie, the one where Michael Douglas plays a powerful and rich white man who's overconfidence leads to his own downfall?). Anyhoo, that's what I expected. At least a shadow of that.

Brooklyn nearly dissappointed me entirely.

On Sunday we idle around, waiting for one of the nerd-herd to move in a direction so we can all truculently follow. It's brunch at DuMont's Burger. There are about, oh, well, enough off us to take over 2/3rds of the seating. A hang-out for the urban hipsters and high-powered 80-hour work heroes who are trying best to fit in with their precisely in-style for the moment 'casual' clothes which quite likely cost more than a new set of Dunlops, is over-run by the terribly bright, effusively anti-fashion brigade of, well, us.

The server casually asks how we know each other. There is a very, very long pause. Like our cell has just been uncovered. Many of us are, or at least I am, thinking that there is no possible way we can explain our acquaintance without embarrassing her and us and completely stripping down any cool-factor the eatery has gained up to this point and will ever gain for the next 35 years. I think she just walks away. I'm pretty sure she suspects the worst.

Bruce decides he needs a new pair of shoes. A bold stance to take. We can clearly see that his current shoes are not : mouldering, on fire, actually gone and replaced by punctured blisters and hole-ridden socks. What's more, he wants to get gold sneakers (tennis-shoes? kicks? uhm, cross-trainers? what do people call them these days?). A desire for clothing and fashion. Bruce is a pioneer in the nerd community.

So a bunch of us take one of the many, many subways to another part of Brooklyn. Ah, I think, this is where I'll see the rampant crime: the burning cars, the fully automatic assault rifles brandished by grandmas and impromptu militias alike, the vicious, vicious dance-offs. As you can see from the above photo, Hollywood has lied to me, again.

It's quaint and laid-back and has little beach-heads of corporate America between your mom-and-pops and your boutiques manned by over-educated Liberal Arts majors. It's not Victoria quaint, but it's charming. I stop at another shop that's even quainter to get some overpriced toys that no doubt have been 'very popular in Europe' and 'carbon-neutral'. They should really re-name parts of Brooklyn to be more in line with tourists expectations. Like this area would make a marvellous Tea Tree Heights.

And we do more walking. Friday night had already killed any notion of taxis to me. You know, taxis door-to-door. It's shameful that I'm exhausted with walking. Walking, for crying out loud. I live in an area where there are bear warnings and coyote alerts. There are non-toxic-waste infused streams nearby. And yet the walking culture of Brooklyn has defeated me. No snarky cabbies, no cigar chomping, no bits of incoherent advice hidden behind an impenetrable NY accent. Again, Hollywood, are you all lies?

Later in the day we all decide to walk again. This time, though, for a good cause. To Barcade. A bar, obviously, but that's filled with ridiculously difficult quarter eaters from yesteryear. Ghost N' Goblins, Arkanoid, 1943, Marble Madness, Joust, Robotron, Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!.
It's a powerful mixture of alcohol, nostalgia, and societally acceptably nerdery. They even have a laughably inaccurate money changer. One is submitted to the painful ritual of re-feeding the same dollar bill seven times to a piece of technology made when calculators were the size of dictionaries. Confidently at first, sure, but then, meekly, angrily, and finally with a series of rituals which prove that the phenomenon of Cargo Cults isn't the province of Micronesian cultures with a taste for K-rations.

We all try our hand at Mike Tyson's Punch-Out! It's imperative that we all beat Glass Joe. The first opponent you fight, with a name that's perfectly crafted to wreak despair and humiliation upon any who cannot beat him. It's a character that has special meaning, since Ralph, who had hosted the fantastic BBQ, has never beaten him. This is when nerds try and keep their position in the (albeit pathetic) pecking order of video game prowess. While we may be thoughtful lot, we are not, as it turns out, terribly high-minded.

We all beat him, eventually. The night is done, we hike it back home. More walking.

The spectre of crime has been completely abolished, so to with the taxis. I figure if I have to walk it, I might as well take some pictures. Even if it's quite late and I'm really just inviting trouble by taking pictures like, well, a tourist.

I lift my camera to take this shot. It's all neony and low-budget and kinda under-grungy lived in business.

At the last possible moment, out of the corner of my eye, I see a woman walking the other way, right into the shot. I wait, because, well, I'm not interesting in shooting people I don't know. She says, or, er. Shouts? Whatever is the intensity level between a shout and saying something very loud, "Don't you fucking take my picture!".

Well, one out of three ain't bad, Brooklyn.

NYC Meetup : Saturday Get Togther

2010-08-06T22:59:00.000-07:00

Saturday was recovery day. I think I felt nausea for its entirety. The type that makes you think hard about how much you really need that meal, or any meal, for, say, the rest of your life. My body was having its revenge one me for drinking like a 300 lb. Scandinavian who had replaced his liver with an industrial composting plant.

We kinda dazed through the day. Speaking low, trying to remember why we wrote down "Rainbow Ten, Rainbow Ten, The Circus Spins" on both wrists and why the PS3 is crammed with Cinnamon Toast Crunch. OK, maybe not that bad. Just all-0ut toxic trauma to every internal organ who thought it its duty stand in the way of high grade whiskey.

Naturally, for the evening, we have drinking, Rock Band, whatever PC games on the two desktops/three laptops available, and some sort of board game. When I say board game, I mean it in the geek sense, not the normal sense. Normal sense of a board game is a game with, a, well, a board, for one thing. It also has fairly easy to understand rules and is some variant of the ten Parker Brothers games we all grew up on. Games rife with memories of sibling treachery and misunderstood-rules-on-purpose cutthroat maneuvers to the win.

When geeks speak of board games, we're talking about games with cards, maybe not with a board at all. A lot of quick, accurate arithmetic is expected. There is often a working economy of some sort, community and political/socio ramifications for actions taken. There aren't rules, there are rule-sets, or more likely, rule BOOKS. Games like Dominion, or Settles of Catan, or Carcasonne, or any number of obscure types of entertainment wildly popular with people who think logic puzzles aren't fun until a graph of has been constructed. Preferably with Lego™.

Before the gathering a few of us go out to get more booze. This is always a treat for me since the US puts prices on booze that you might find on second rate lemonade in Canada. A 1.14L bottle of fancy whiskey, enough to power a Toureg in a ramble around upstate New York, $50. This is the sort of mind-blowing revelations I remember from traveling. "You pay HOW much to get blitzed?!" It is, as it was when I was 22, a recurring concern of mine.

The night goes off well. There's all the various distractions, plus, at intervals, different groups up on the roof, where its actually cool. The roof is always be slanting, not always the same direction and not for any reason I could make out, but it would slant. This would cause quite a few beverages to spill right in the middle of some mellow, nerdy talk, everyone would jump or as best as they could manage given their inebriation and someone would comment on how sloped the roof was and how hard it was to keep a drink from spilling. Then everyone would take their seats on the ground and put their drinks down.

There are comfortable, relaxed silences, punctuated by some story or anecdote. The topics were wide and varied: pyramids schemes that chipped away at ones already paltry faith in mankind; what makes a thing 'tactical; The South; sunburn; obscure comic artists; digital photography; and I'm sure many, many more.

What was neat to watch was one particular fellow geek, let's call him, er, Asterix. He either took some sort of Toastmasters For Amusing Anecdotes or (as I suspect) paid an actor to take his place at the meetup. Animated is a poor adjective. But getting there. Jack-wired on sweet rock-fudge and Jolt-cola dreams and crashing through the sonic funboundary to arise an electrical mizzen of quizzical buzz-zap would be closer. Performing, in the best meaning of the world. There was shape to his stories,and perfect nuanced actions, presence, counter-point. To top it all his topics were wide and varied and looked like they might make the basis for a script coming out of the indie-film scene in Stuttgart. Informative and funny and slightly strange and quietly scandalous.

Downstairs, in Han's apartment, where all the games playing is going on, Rock Band is in full swing. Taters, who strikes me as the sort who might enjoy 3rd rate Karaoke (no dig on him, I do too), has his time at the mic usurped by his girlfriend who had just finished a marathon set of Pat Benatar. As the night wears, and as alcohol brings down that seemingly invincible wall called Self-Inhibition, the mic in Rock Band becomes a battleground for all the hams (again, I am one too). It's only for the hammiest. And for those who really like The Cult.

I try a few. They don't go off horribly. Not that anyone is listening, because Rock Band is only a performance for the people playing it. A sad, eternal fact. The liquor that I've consumed has taken down the last barrier, and I, filled with the hubris of some cock-sure self that is repeatedly beaten down by experience, select Roxanne, by the Police. This goes as well as you can imagine, if you are imagining a defeathered turkey in a knife fight with an adolescent duck while both are being forcibly stuffed into a Cuisinart. Luckily I find catastrophic failure exhilarating.

At the end of the night some of get the idea to make another trip to the Crocodile Lounge. Memory is poor or judgment is poorer or we just really felt like some pizza. We make it in time, but as we file past the bouncer, a mountain of a man, I can't help but notice he is giving exaggerated, Why Am I Put Upon So shrugs as he counts each one of us. He was the most depressed bouncer I had ever seen.

I felt bad, to put him through so much so I could get a pizza. The day long nausea had pretty much killed my appetite.

NYC Meetup : Brooklyn Death March

2010-08-06T01:08:00.000-07:00

Is it always the case that, while inebriated past any measure of personal safety, and when ensconced in a group of like minded individuals, sound decisions become as likely as Uwe Bolle winning the Palme d'Or? Maybe the fact it was 2:30 AM didn't help our rational brain functions. Maybe the fact that the place we were heading after the first bar promised a free wood fired personal pizza with every beer purchase, maybe... no, wait, it was the last thing.

The Alligator Lounge is about a mile from Han's place, where I'm staying. Which is a bit of a walk for a group of inebriated shut-ins who find walking to Gamestop to get their pre-order... uhm, taxing. A mile. There's one problem, we're still 3 miles to Han's.

I shouldn't complain. I'm from BC. Land of Greenpeace and hippies and hikers and orienteerers. Outdoorsy. But those generalities are just that, an average. Somebody has to be the outlier. To top it all, I'm lucky to have on my feet the cheapest sandals I could find, barring footwear that leaves permanent stains and those that fall apart from direct sunlight. My feet can handle impact stress about as well as a dry mound of talcum.

Good thing I'm drunk.

Stumbling, it seems, doesn't count as walking. And, overwhelmed with braincell-killing ethanol and higher cerebrum smothering heat (even at 2:30), my brain could only process two things 1) the ever increasing challenge of walking upright 2) the exact moment when I was going to skip a few steps in the digestion process and reverse the direction. Nerve-shattering tendon-grinding pain is a far away memory.

We get there, and receive the bright-eyed cheerful staff welcome reserved only for large groups who stumble into a bar 15 minutes from closing. It's 3:45am. We have marched for, well. It was longer than what normal math and your sober understanding of time would indicate. It goes without saying that they had run out of pizza. Put airquotes around any part of that previous sentence, you'd probably be right.

At some point during the March of Death, our general bonhomie and chit-chat was swallowed up by the grim determination to get to wherever the hell we were going (at this point many of us, or at least I, had forgotten). One foot in front of the other. Try not to yak on one another's shoes. Remember you're doing this to have fun.

Berg mentions a story about some SAS march, somewhere dangerous. Let's say Antarctica (no, I don't know why the British Government is interested in killing penguins with outrageously trained military types moving in a two by two formation). Anyhoo, the story goes that people get left behind, but the group is too strained and near death to care or worry.They'd just look behind them periodically, and poof, that one guy with the 100 yard stare and personalized side-arm with hand-made hollow points was gone.

This seemed patently ridiculous to me. I mean, you're walking in a group. Surely you'd sense it, no? It's not like the SAS move in large, anonymous groups.

Yes, this is my round-about way of saying that we lost someone. We lost three people, actually. The SAS have nothing on us.

So we have a drink. Again. Not me, because my body has decided to take this downtime to shut everything down. Higher brain functions. Lower brain functions. Any brain functions. If my breath wasn't so flammable I woulda been the "I Love You Man" guy.

We pull up stakes and hike over to a diner, because nothing staves off nausea like a large stack of Insta-Quik Nearly-Flour-Based Pancake Substitute (I worked at Denny's. I know.). I head to the bathroom, and every sweat gland decides it's a good time to work overdrive. I'd had this before. When I was 19 and thought if you don't feel anything from a shot of Southern Comfort after 30 seconds, why not have another. It is, I later found out (as I had suspected), basically the early stages of alcohol poisoning.

I stumble out and sit with my friends. Just trying not to embarrass myself while looking like I had just gone a little crazy with a spray bottle. It wasn't so much a sheen as a uncomfortable torrent. Zesty, one of the younger, more sardonic types given to the sort of humour that'd make Rickle's proud (an American thing, I think), snickers at this point. Oh, people with high amounts of perfectly functioning alcohol dehydrogenase in their European livers can die in a fire. I'm feeling too sick and near death to offer up any defense. Which would had been feeble even if I was sober (Canadian thing, I think).

So Prime sees how near death I am, and, forgoing hunger, he pulls me up and tells me he's walking me home. Some of us get a move on.

It's a tough walk. The streets are relatively empty but for some reason Zesty bumps into a dude with dreadlocks, poor posture, and a likely sickening trust fund. He looks Zesty up and down and says, "Hey man, it's all cool, I mean, we could be friends, probably". It was the most passive aggressive burn I had ever seen. It seems even the hippies here are American.

NYC Meetup : Friday Night Amazon

2010-08-04T00:34:00.000-07:00

Names have been changed because that's what people on the internet do.
So after the BBQ at Ralph's we all head out. For more drinking, apparently, because having a long drawn out scotch 'tasting' apparently is not enough trauma for the liver.

We nerds are a pretty humble, quiet lot. Mostly. He kinda follow where everyone else is going in hopes of not being left behind (which, in so doing, would bring back so many third round picks of dodgeball in which stood on the line, shuffling, unchosen, along with the exchange student from Estonia and the guy who had an unsettling fascination with abattoirs). I'm not sure any of us knew where we were going. We are not cut for leadership, I don't think. But we are more or less thoughtful, and knew that it was time to leave Ralph to clean up our embarassingly small mess (nerds use coasters); you can only impose on a host for so long. Excepting LAN party.

So we head out to a bar. It was like a hallway that someone had doubled as a liquor cabinet. Then advertised. It was late. My liver was down and out, blood alcohol was running rampant and wildly, and, if we were the more... outspoken sort, I'm sure someone would had been shotgunning beers.

Rowdy for us, of course, is sitting in a circle and frantically trying to find a topic of conversation. Into our group of four of us -- all kinda huddled together like dehydrated cockatoos around a saltlick -- barges... no... crashes in a tall, Amazonian black woman with more confidence than I have after enabling God Mode in Doom.

She was this bright light of unfettered social enthusiasm. She had to be. How does one just kinda walk into a group and start talking? I'm not sure. But she did. And after about three pleasantries, she turned to one of the group, we'll call him, uhm, Brad. She turns to Brad and says, "You're cute".

Just like that.

There is blood in the water, ladies and gentlemen. Now, I don't fear for my life because I have a wedding ring and look like a female body builder who has long since given up the sport but not the eating habits. Brad has a quiet sardonicness which, I think, some people might mistake for a cool, intense interest.

Aha! I think, there's no way this Amazon can keep it up. I mean, we are so meekly returning her ground strokes of conversation she wouldn't be amiss if she mistook us for a highly unorthodox, poorly dressed, lesser known Amish sect. But she drives on.

Out of nowhere, Dotty, one of ours, or so I thought, instantly becomes this woman's wingman. I think there are references to movie stars he may or may not look like. Brad has taken a very quiet, "if I don't make any sudden moves I might make it out of here with my boxers intact" posture. The Amazon takes on some pretense to touch his face. I take some pretense to leave for another group of us.

At some point, the woman gets too greedy, perhaps, and tries to flirt with another from our herd. Brad takes this as a cue to shrug his shoulders up, turn 180, and walk to us.

NYC is dangerous.

NYC Meetup : BBQ

2010-07-31T18:18:00.001-07:00

Friday was a pretty great day. Milled about, played some retro games (Sega Collection for the PS3 (yes, that's right, with the power of two deskstops, four laptops, two PS3s (enough technology to rival worldwide computing power in 1975) we played games which were ports of 80's arcade games made for 90's consoles then retrofitted for 00's consoles)), some PC games, and attempted to play some card games.

Then it was time for BBQ.

We headed over to Ralph's place which was situated in some patchily gentrified portion of Brooklyn. There were Hasidic Jews everywhere, and African Americans, and Hispanics (I'm sure this breaks down further, like how in Vancouver "Asian" covers a wide array, I'm sure there were Senegalese and Mexicans and Chileans and Puerto Ricans etc). Slightly less hipsters.

This dizzying array of multiculturalism, and there was something about the alternately well-worn and tumbled-down nature of the neighbourhood with newer bits, mom-and-pop shops and Banana Republics, every cranny filled with urban decay or the American Enterprising spirit (large and small), that it seemed to fill that bit in my mind when people say "America". America : You Know, Pretty Much Fricking Everything In One Place. Not pithy, sure, but fitting.

So, we get to Ralph's (well, 5 of us take a car, the rest walk. It's not a short walk. We who took the car will bear the Mark of Shame forever). And it's, well, it's like the front for the lair of the protagonist of an 80's action TV show. One suspects that there is a military grade prototype of a street-bike stored behind it, or a man who's secret identity is VR Man.

It's a solid metal plate. Curb appeal brought to you by the A-Team. All around the door it's not so much a neighbourhood as the blasted out remnants of an industrialization experiment gone horribly, horribly wrong. Suitable fellow tenants would be chops shops or Vietnamese tailors who make 100 dollar suits for you with suspect materials and excellent craftsmanship.

But, through the door. It was amazing. This pretty, nicely proportioned house with exposed brick and skylights and all sorts of rich history that is a regular occurrence in America. Again, the wild difference between NYC and Vancouver become apparent, since for us, 'rich history' means architecture that slightly predates Hypercolour Shirts. Ancient history being anything before colour television.

But back to the house. An open, uhm, courtyard, is that the right word? I mean, to describe abodes not from the French Restoration? An open air area past the blast metal plate, then the house, then behind, a backyard made for cookouts and memories and animated discussions about Derrida.

It was an amazing BBQ. The food was great, the people were fantastic, nerds of every shape and colour milling about, drinking and chatting and not having to steer the conversations away from the dreaded question, 'so, do you have any hobbies'?

About 50-90% of our communication is non-verbal, so that makes the meeting of people who spend all their time communicating over voice or typing, something of an event. Lots of silence at the start. Then, as all gatherings tend to go, the conversations started flowing and we're all having a hell of time.

There you are, in the middle of Brooklyn, in a secret lair of nerdiness, drinking expensive alcohol and talking about how goddamn cheap the Spy is and how so-and-so never uses sticky bombs but still dominates the server. It's a small moment of feeling part of a larger whole. The tribe, the nerd-herd, the grouping that's separated by geography but connected by geekery and the perenially societal maligned hobby, video games.

We setup the webcam to connect to the other gamers who couldn't make it. And it gets even better. There are our other friends, zipping through the internet, joining us from their homes from across North America and Europe and Asia. Ecstatic to see us all together, teeming with pasty complexion and awkward social graces.

Hell of a night.

We had to leave, eventually. Things got a little bumpy then. But that's for another post.

Brooklyn

2010-07-29T21:59:00.000-07:00

It's amazing how tightly packed people can get. Sardined and crammed til they're breathing over and under each other, stepping on toes sandals shoes dreams personal spaces. It's like every sidewalk is a misinterpreted sneeze away from a rather bloody riot. Young and old and old neighbourhood and new immigrants.

I kinda like seeing more than the usual Vancouver minorities.That is, Pacific Rim. Korean Japanese Chinese (Hong Kong and Taiwanese and every single possible shade of acculturation that represents the Chinese in Vancouver), Indians (Sikhs, Muslims, Hindu, Canadian-born), Persian. That's the norm, anyways, in Vancouver. People gush about how multi-cultural Vancouver is, but that's really only for a very small subset of 'culture'.

Every other shade is out in Brooklyn. They're so many and the varied. And, since it's Brooklyn, apparently the home of the hipsters, you get that extra strange and weird and sadly predictably subculture. But it's still interesting. It's multitudinal and mosaic and strange and kinda neat and oddly scary.

Scary, sure. I mean, from a distance. But when you get up close you find it's not really anything. Everyone is moving around, trying the best they can to eke out a personality for themselves and a place in whatever number of culture stratas they care about. Sure there are small, and infrequent groups of young men with too little hope and too much experience that make me drop my eyes and give way, but that's the same in everywhere. I think.

There's no room between the buildings. That's the first thing I noticed. No space, no alleys, really, no bit of scraggly pathetic greenery between this property and that. Just concrete on concrete and brick on brick.

And damn, is it hot, and humid, and did I mention how it's concrete from end to end and front and back? Cement, concrete, asphalt, tarmac. Heat is radiated from the walls and seems to hunt you indoors. Stairwells and laundro-mats and bodegas are thick and oppressive and just plain hot.

Little vestiges of shops as evidence of the grusty and grangy past of Brooklyn That Was. And then the even littler vestiges of kicky and upscale shops of Brooklyn That's To Be. Gentrified and pricey and pseudo-grunge authentic.

The whole basket of it all is pretty great though. Everything lives and breathes and there's a dizzying array of life everywhere you look.

Brooklyn.

Airport, JFK

2010-07-29T06:59:00.000-07:00

Have arrived at JFK. It's your standard sprawling, patchily modernized airport. Charming 70's peppered rock themed linoleum, fancy Air Train system which complexifies it's already dizzying multi-ring setup by having only one train working. Meaning you can go from terminal 5 to 6, but to get from 6 to 5, well, yeah, you have to go the entire way around. I'll try and take a picture of their helpful brochure. Even in the most simplified colours and large text, I'm pretty sure it could double as the MRI of a contortionist's circulatory system.

I expected this, I think. A third of Canada, for crying out loud. That's even counting the bits of Canada we cherish especially for its multi-cultural otherwordlyness but never visit, like Yellowknife, or West Vancouver.

The people are, oddly, just people. No one has yelled at me a phrase along the lines of , "HEY I'M WALKING HERE". But then, these are also Airport People. The bright shining happy people who can afford to take a jet powered tube of metal to other parts of the world. Everyone is a bit more docile and well-behaved at an airport. I suppose spending hundreds of dollars to take an 8 hour flight to visit your Aunt Rita you don't particularly care for in Tallahasee has to dampen spirits a bit.

And man alive, is it humid. It reminds me too much of visiting my relatives in the tropics. If it weren't for the stringent air quality controls and lack of crushing poverty evidenced in every direction I turn, I think I'd be hard put to find a difference.

NYC

2010-07-28T22:33:00.001-07:00

It's hard to sum up my feelings about going to NYC. I mean, that's a real world-class city.

I'm from Vancouver. A city that constantly, if embarassingly self-consciously, proclaims itself to be just that. Last time I checked, though, I don't see people walking around NYC with "I HEART VANCOUVER" shirts on absentmindedly. Yesterday, in Vancouver, I saw two NY shirts (they were kinda well-worn and had all the tourist feel of a Nike jumpsuit). No director is shooting in NYC trying to recreate the picture-perfect Kitsilano scene. I suspect there's a dance club in upper Manhattan that has a higher GDP than all of the Lower Mainland.

There's a enormousness about NYC. Movies and books and the collective memory of much of Western Civilization are put in the backdrop of, are created in, are stamped out in the streets of that city. Midnight Cowboy, An Affair to Remember, The Godfather, Wall Street, The French Connection, Guys and Dolls, Independence Day. It's this fountain of zeitgeist, if I may resurrect a buzz word from '02 that has all the freshness of a Pompeii compost heap.

The bustle rustle, the bumble tub grinding tumble of it all. I never thought one could be intimidated by a city. It's just people isn't it? People, sewer system, a city bureaucracy, the police, the justice system, transit, by-laws, parks, sky scrapers, tenement buildings, concrete, cement, glass. But I am.

I've never really believed in the idea of city loyalty. It's part and parcel of the idea that you can take credit for shit you have had no hand in doing anything about. Like being proud you're tall, or your parents are from a certain part of the world. It's silly.

But I can see how one can feel proud about NYC. Like how one, I suppose, can feel proud about Canada. I'm not entirely sure how this is different from city loyalty. Where people from this city hate people from that city or blahblahblah 'TASTES GREAT!! LESS FILLING!!" merry-go-round of idiocy.

I suppose you can admire it. You can admire what a city stands for, what it's given birth to. What culture and personality it fosters. I suppose there's nothing silly about that.

NYC, to me, a West Coast bumpkin, is so many things and everything. Mostly things that aren't West Coast. When I think of the Hippie Annex (California, Oregon, Washington, BC), I think, laid-back, slow, relaxed, live-and-let live, work just enough to enjoy life, organic, coffee multinationals. Fast-talking, fast-moving, striving, dog-eat-dog, no-time-fore-chit-chat-let-alone-to-breathe, Dangerous Streets, grifting, authentic. Also, you know, Crime. With a capital C. The sort you make grungy, lo-fi tragic documentaries about. It's a burden of a city, I suppose, that is filmed so often and, I'm sure, so often inaccurately.

And here I am plunging headlong into it. A city, which the internet tells me, has almost a third the population of my entire beloved Canada.

What's it gonna be like? How am I gonna even experience through this filter of movies books shows? Will I be able to keep myself from craning my head back, shading my eyes, and muttering, 'That's one tall building'?

I hope I'm ready for world-class.

Adventure

2010-07-28T21:15:00.001-07:00

So, it's begun. Sometime while partaking in my hobby I'm mildly ashamed about, I formed a bit of a bond with the people I was playing with. Folks from Metafilter, which seeems, in retrospect, to be the last sort of people I'd cleave to. Not that they are dull, at Metafilter, but they are so full of snark and invective and trenchant analysis as to why that thing you like sucks, it makes it a unlikely source of friendship.

But I have.

Sure, there have been hiccups, and the invaraible flare up of forum drama, but all internet hang outs get those. It's a question of whether the place is left standing afterwards. And it's stuck. Fortunately, miraculously.

Bright, funny, interesting people playing video games and getting angry over strange things like K:D ratios and Team Stacking and things that, granted, likely have analogues in say, a bowling league.

So, it's been three years or so. Playing, chatting, forum drama, jokes, in-jokes, in-in-jokes, baked goods exchanges, Secret Santas, meetups.

And now we are having the Mother of All Meetups. Forty or so of us, descending upon NYC. To play games, drink, eat food that'll cut our lifespan by not insignificant amount.

Yeah, I'm going to Meet People From The Internet.

I've done this before, but locally. After all, the thinking I go through is, "Hey, I'm a people from the internet!". I haven't been disappointed or scared or stuffed into a medium sized cooler smelling suspiciously of chloroform. Which, I"m sure, shocks those less nerdy.

But it all makes sense, you see. It's not that I just met them over the internet. I played with them, suffered trials and tribulations, which, while not say, the scale of the Dresden Fire Bombing or even the hardships make your local SWAT gel, aren't nothing.

We already know so much about each other. Not just personal details, which can be lied about, admittedly. We know some more interesting things. How each other responds to pressure, to failure, to success, to unfairness, to goddman totally overpowered/underpowered updates to our game du jour.

It's damned exciting. Connecting the voice and still pictures to the real, live, breathing mass of fellow nerdery. To meet one's tribe, one's people. Adventure.

Pacino On Flotilla

2010-07-24T12:24:00.000-07:00

Another post I made for the Full Glass, Empty Clip gaming blog. This has to do with the indie game Flotilla, which is a turn-based strategy space combat sand box exploration game. With no goddamn save feature.

It’s a rough galaxy out there.

You go out there, every day.

You flank and open fire and strategize because the galaxy isn’t doing you any favours. You tear at your hair, at the bulkheads, you claw your way past the militant penguins and the looming space hulks because that’s what you do.

And the Galaxy tries to shove back?

It tries to take from you what is your right?

You shove back. Maybe you get another ship, maybe your flotilla gets bigger.

You keep growing.

And you know you’ll kill for that flotilla, for every upgrade you’ve fought for, for every new ship that you’ve won.

Because that’s what you do. The Galaxy isn’t going to be explored by itself. It’s up to you, and your crew.

That’s it. That’s what the Galaxy expects from you, and, damnit, that’s what you expect from you.

Now, maybe I’m too jaded, too old, too damn tired to think differently. I’ve spent too long out in that galaxy fighting the good fight, the right fight. But you shouldn’t have to do all this in one go.

What are we? Robots? Animals? I say we are not. I say we are not that thing which can continue on for hours upon hours. We are flesh and blood. We have laundry to do, and kids to mind, and all the little things that make up a life. The little things that go on between conquests. That’s life, gentlemen, that’s living.

You remember that don’t you?

At the end of the day the Galaxy doesn’t care for your life your place in it. It’s only hungry for your ships, and for everything you’ve worked so hard at for the past 40 minutes. But you can’t give it to them. Not after all the sweat and blood it’s extracted from you, step by step, fight by fight, tooth and nail and fist and bone.

And we shouldn’t have to give it all up. Should we? Because our time is fractured. It’s cut up and divided and pulled, stretched out across the day. We shouldn’t, we can’t.

We need a save feature.

Andy Rooney On Teams and Fortresses

2010-07-24T12:18:00.001-07:00

I'm blogging over at this gaming blog some of my MeFi friends setup. Specifically, some of my MeFi friends who formed Mefightclub, which is kinda the gaming arm of Metafilter, I suppose. This article has to do with Team Fortress 2, so, if you're not a PC gamer, and not hip with all the incarnations of Team Fortress, you can skip this post.

I don’t know what’s happening to gaming these days. In my day you had a fortress, you had a team, and you just went at it. It was like tag or flag football, the bedrock of any small town community. I know community isn’t in vogue these days. It’s one for one and all for none, it seems. I watch the television and it’s not more about team sports, its about the individual stars. A trophy for this, a medal for that.

It seems to me that nowadays, our fortress team games are obsessed with personal milestones. What sort of whacky combination of numbers have to be achieved today, I wonder. When I was younger, you just worried about how many times you fragged, and how many times you got fragged, and that was that. Now there are silly hats and punny little titles given to any number of strange number crunching.

Lately I’ve been wondering if it doesn’t have to do a little bit with things. What I mean is, too many people are in a rush to get things, get into the city, say, pick up a newer version of a pair of pants that have been perfectly fine these past five years. It’s not that I wouldn’t do it myself, if was a little bit younger, a little less wise, but it’s a shame all the same.

And seemingly, the company that, to be honest, makes me think more often of plumbing supplies than video gaming, has attached their weird and wonderful number crunching to getting more things. What’s wrong with a rocket launcher, I ask? Now you want a rocket launcher that does more splash damage, or less splash damage, maybe heats up your car on a cold morning.

It might be a bit much, I wonder.

But things move on, sure as taxes, or your toast getting inedibly dry after an endless conversation with a coworker you don’t like too much. I’m not one to complain about things. But it seems to me that the Team Fortress of today is a little too friendly, maybe, a little less fortressy. I don’t think we ever needed hats to really enjoy the game. We sure don’t need more things.

At least, I’d like to think so.

Look Vs Is

2010-07-11T18:21:00.000-07:00

Idea courtesy of a Mysteriouuus Straaanger with a surprising amount of Ben Gay in his medicine cabinet and a voracious appetite for Reader's Digest "Humor In Uniform".

What He Looks Like : A former Airborne Ranger for the 501st who operates a heavy machinery leasing company while doing heli-rescue work on his spare time.
What He Is : A man who's spent more time in his barcalounger than he has commuting, sleeping and eating. Combined

What He Looks Like : The in-house emotions counsellor at HP.
What He Is : Chronically distant technophobe who has a powerful fear of barber shops and small talk.

What She Looks Like : An army field nurse who has seen more action than a platoon of Foreign Legionnaires.
What She Is : A fundamentalist Mennonite who insists on affecting a Dutch accent.

What She Looks Like : State fair runner-up for "Best Baked Dish Using Rutabaga", 1982.
What She Is : Vice-President for a private para-military outfit that operates mostly in Tangiers.

What She Looks Like : Thirty four year Bogata timeshare tele-rep.
What She Is : Thirty three year Bogata timeshare tele-rep.

What He Looks Like : Primary field researcher for the E. Bola vaccine.
What He Is : Rabid collector of 'WKRP In Cincinnati' memorabilia, Dunkin Donuts Branch manager.

What She Looks Like :President, four years running, of the "Whalebone Supported 18th Century Women's Wear Appreciation Society", New Hampshire Chapter. Office manager of a Fortune 5000 company nearing retirement.
What She Is : Ethnogeographer specializing in cannibalistic cultures, South East Asia.

What He Looks Like : Intelligence agent, operating out of a rather ignored nation-state that sprouted from the former Soviet Bloc. For hire services include assassination, seduction of baronesses, counter-insurgency guerilla warfare, demolitions, light massage.
What He Is : Ostrich farmer.

Art & Crap

2010-07-08T11:50:00.001-07:00

There's a fantastic book out there that I've been meaning to get, Art & Fear. It has great anecdotes and advice about making art, or Art. I have a few nonfiction books to work through, so I'm not overly concerned about getting it just yet, but the book certainly comes to mind now and again. Mainly when I'm writing stories.

It came right to the fore when I was slogging through the 30 Days Project. Hell, or hell-like. Certainly reminiscent of brimstone and repurposed Pan imagery, anyways. Because, as you'll notice, through my thirty posts (15,000+ words(!!!)), and to be fair, through almost every other participants thirty posts, there are nearly no comments. Which, I assumed, was one of the draws of the 30 Day Project. Get feedback, support, community of artists, etc.

Poor naive me of thirty plus days ago.

The whole process helped me with come up with a revelation I call "Art & Crap". Which is tangentially related to the bits of Art & Fear I've read that really rung true to me.

Art & Crap goes like this:
1) No one cares about your crap.*
2) Those who care about your crap will only care enough to tell you how crap you crap is.
3) People will genuinely care about your crap when it's too late.
4) Only you can give a crap about your crap.

Which is kinda related to this. A most excellent comment about the whole creative endeavour by one of my mostest favouritest web comics, Subnormality (the comic is easier to read when you think of it more as a blog with pictures, as opposed to a webcomic).

This rule of mine, that I made up and I'm sure is just a poor rendition of a better observation by a more learned mind is immensely helpful to me now. Waiting or hoping for feedback from people in order to keep you doing your work is the quickest way to drink or an alarming bill at the nearest transgendered clown and pony brothel.

And yet, don't you know, it's something I tend to fall in sometimes. But thankfully I have a little series of pat rules to get me out of it. They may not be entirely true, but true enough for my purposes, anyways.

*friends and family don't count, they pretty much have to either feign interest or develop a rare and temporary vision impairment.

30 Days Project

2010-05-29T09:01:00.000-07:00

This June I'll be participating in the 30 Days Project. Create something new every day, for 30 days. I suspect it was first set up with visual and audio artists in mind: sculpture, painting, music, etc. Art forms that have a relatively high barrier to entry.

Not writing.¹

It was added later, a sort of nod to us lesser creative types. Which, I suppose I should qualify. There's just so many of us, that, on average, our quality has to be lesser, only stands to reason. You can't throw in 6,291 blogs about Iron Man & Hulk slash fic with the odd brilliant pieces and hope to come out with a positive whole number on an arbitrary scale of quality.

So, feeling like a bit of an imposter and in intruder, I'll attempt to write at least 500 words of fiction a day. About what theme, I'm not sure. Maybe just a smattering of different things.

This is a fair warning (and perhaps another bit of pressure upon myself to not abandon it), that the next 30 days in June will be FICTION FICTION FICTION!! A writing genre I was doing with utmost earnestness, but, sadly, with not a small variation of quality. More misses than hits, in retrospect, which likely lead to my sputtering stop.

So, if you don't like my fiction bits, maybe wait until July to tune in.

You've been warned.

¹(Anyone who has a keyboard and is filled with the delusion that people will read their writing voluntarily can, and invariably, will write. First it was Geocities, then mySpace, then that all got pulled into thing called 'blogs' because 'personal website' was a bit too much to remember, then twitter. If there's a platform, and a theoretical readership, there will be people who'll call themselves scribes or wordsmith or some other tiresome phrase and hack away. I am, sadly, one of those people. )

Playgrounds

2010-05-23T12:25:00.001-07:00

We went and saw old friends for a small picnic at Stanley Park. Cold cuts, muffins, cookies, the awkward pause as you try and ascertain whether you're doing the 'brought enough for everyone let's all share' or the 'brought just enough for me and my own, thank-you-very-much' type of picnic.

It was slightly chilly, enough to warrant a wind-breaker, and strong enough that any attempt to cover up one's pudge with baggy garments was sure to be thwarted. Stupid low pressure systems.

We had Molly, a baby and a toddler, and they a little one (1 ish). There were also two playgrounds and a beach to explore. When one has small children, doubly so if one is visiting friends who also has small children, you don't so much 'visit' as you tag team trying to supervise them, all the while attempting some form of small-talk and catch up. I might have exchanged all of 10 words with my old college buddy that was not related to immediate childcare.

It's an experience going to a play ground with a toddler. It becomes this communal parenting situation as you watch other parent's styles, how uptight they are, or lax. Eventually some sort of acceptable average is followed: somewhere between 'put them in a safety bubble of high impact styrofoam' and 'hand them a loaded 9mm with the safety off and trust their judgement'.

It becomes this constant evaluation of risk/reward. Do we risk them breaking an arm to reward them with a little bit of confidence? If they are too shy, do we push them into some 'acceptable' level of risk taking, with the possibility that we topple them into 'heart-explodingly recklessness'? If they are fearless, do we warn them to slow down, again with the possibility that we might make them the sort of overly-cautious person who becomes a 3rd level library clerk for life in charge of the Typing Pool's social committee of which they are the only member?

Luckily I subscribed more to the nature than to the nurture side of child rearing. Barring a really tragic upbringing I'm not going to scar and damage Owlet for life. Hopefully. My rule of thumb is, if the possible injury won't break skin or break a bone, go for it. This, I think, is reasonable. We have friends who subscribe to the 'if the spinal damage isnt' permanent, let er rip' school, and I'm sure we have friends (who would never admit it) who subscribe to the 'injuries only happen to wards of the state' school.

But a public playground is an interesting normalizing influence. Subconsciously or not, parents try to toe the average level of care/freedom. There are those that don't, myopic folks who invariably are getting their visiting rights for the week and haven't the foggiest clue how much they can or cannot let their child do. And there are the 'rugged individualist' parents, almost always dads, who let their 2 year old run full speed through the Striking Zone of the big kid's swings.

Sure, it ends up being slightly dangerous for the poor children, but it's great for the parents, who get to feel like they're doing a good job, and at least gave me something to say to my college buddy other than, 'Oh Christ, are you gonna go get her or should I?'.

Shots

2010-05-16T10:50:00.000-07:00

I have a deathly phobia of needles. Not pointwork or gramophones, but the kind you jab into your arm or thigh. This among other things -- lack of work ethic, not enough free time, self-body image not as damaged as need be-- have kept me from professional body building. Zoroastra help me if I ever get adult-onset diabetes. I tend to get the shakes and start to squirm like The Dude in The Big Lebowski when a ferret was thrown into his bubble-bath.

I recall having my wisdom teeth extracted under general anesthetic. The oral surgeon walked in, all freshly tanned from his likely month-long vacation in some place tropical, expensive, and littered with Sands resorts (it's a sobering thought that the cultures of umpteen number of Melanesian and Micronesian nations are kept afloat by overfed Americans, heat-stroked stupefied and blazing sunburnt, watching disinterestedly to a thousand year old dance while devouring some endangered tropical fish that tastes 'just like chicken').

He had the sort of professional ease and casual boredom that comes from folks who do one or two things repetitively, for vast sums of money. Obviously someone who'd seen quite a few extracted wisdom teeth.

So they get the needles ready, and I start to shake, only a bit, I thought. But at some point the surgeon says, with not negligible amount of alarm in his voice 'easy, easy'. There's a current of panic there, like he just remembered he left his tazer in his six-figure sports sedan (complete with a set of keys attached to a logo keychain that'd make Flavor Flav do a double take). It's then that I realized that my phobia of needles was, er, exceptional?

Several months ago I went to get flu shots with the family.

That is, all in a small examining room, all taking shots.

It's a burden for those of us less self-possessed; for those of us more harried and continuously aware of our shortcomings, that children, specifically, your children, learn by what you do, not by what you say. Many of your actions, likely the ones you least like, will manifest themselves in your brood. I mean, many will not too, and there will be innumerable things that they do that come from the ether, or from their genes, or from Elmo.

But you have to control for the things you bestow them. Fear of needles, terror of doctors, or the innoble memory of their father losing his shit were not things I wanted to bestow to them. Not if I could help it, which, let's face it, I wasn't sure that I could.

So I dug deep, as the sports cliche goes, clenched the jaw, went into the fray. I volunteered to be first, bared the arm, and looked straight ahead. I took the shots. They didn't seem to hurt as much, inner turmoil and the looming spectre of parent failure, I assume, dulls the pain.

So I'd like to say that my fear of needles has been overcome. But it'd be far more accurate to say that my fear of needles can be sufficiently repressed given enough pressure.

The Interior Dialogue of My Children & Dog

2010-05-09T13:18:00.000-07:00

Owl Jr.
Upon seeing the door open to the laundry room, a room which he is STRICTLY barred from. Stops whatever he's doing in the family room, rushes over, totters inside.
"Oh hey, what sort of parties are going on here."

Upon seeing the dog food and water lowered.
"Although I've been told not to splash in the water and play with the dog food multiple times, the ban has surely been lifted."

Molly (the dog)
Upon seeing her food lowered.
"I've been famished for HOURS, what sort of wonderment do we have here for my gastronomical pleasure, a small fillet of sole, perhaps? A rare porterhouse? Perhaps a... Oh. Oh.. Uh. Did you know you have dog food in there?"
Slowly turns around and walks away.

Greeting you after you've left for more than 30 seconds.
"Sweet mercy how I've MISSED you, Where have you been, what trials and tribulations have kept you away!? Life isn'' worth THINKING about without you around.
After about 20 seconds of that.
"Oh god, you're STILL here?"

Owlet
When watching TV.
"There is no other entity on the planet but you oh TV, tell me your bidding."

Aquarium

2010-05-05T23:18:00.000-07:00

I had the day off, so I went to the aquarium with Owlet.

The aquarium -- like any large institution that happens to have a death-grip on some of your fonder childhood memories -- skirts around very serious issues and manages to be viewed, by different people and at different times, to be something between Dachau and a historical site commemorating a local battle and the signing of an important document (that, among other things, ensures that the making moonshine whiskey with Idaho potatoes between the hours of 3am and 7pm for people of non-Irish descent to be completely illegal and subject to fine of four cents or the family's 3 largest hens).

In this case the issue is animal captivity. Particularly animals a bit higher on the evolutionary tree (I've yet to see a protest over the forced imprisonment of a small, relatively unsightly pelagic mollusc). Vertebrate, good, mammal, even better. I'm not one to argue against that, however; in an ideal world we wouldn't have Flipper inside a tank of water barely large enough to pass as an underfunded public pool. I mean, I saw Star Trek IV, for crying out loud.

I tend to be on the other side of the debate, though, and not only because I have small children and trying to find activities that one of you don't find brain stabbingly boring is between nil and whatever the probability is that Boss Hogg will get the Duke boys. It's simply, or so I tell myself, that those indelible memories of youth, that seemingly universal attachment to wildlife that pervades Western culture and I'm sure is responsible for 99% of all conservation efforts, is tempered and cast in titanium when a child visits a zoo/wildlife sanctuary/aquarium.

They are evil, in their own way, but the good they do. I'm not sure you're going to get that with anything else, I don't care how high-def your edition of Planet Earth is.

So we went there and we saw frogs, sharks, tortoises, the largest freshwater fish in the world, otters, belugas, dolphins.... and well, with a 3-year-old, that goes by pretty fast. They aren't there for the spiel or to even read the invariably sparse plaque. They go, are amazed, wonder-struck, bored, then fidget. All in the span of about 5 seconds. They are the fruit flies of novelty.

Owlet also asked questions, nothing mind-blowing, I think one of them had me answering, 'the other one died', which she took in stride. Toddlers, or the ones I've met, seem to take the whole death thing in stride pretty well, I'm not sure when the horror and panic sets in about it. Most of questions she asked were mundane or nonsensical or something she answered herself with logic that defied examination or physics.

But it wasn't her questions that really stuck in my mind that day. We were watching the belugas, and a hosh posh overly-fit mother of some adorable children were making a day of it, it seemed, with snacks and a picnic blanket. One of the kids said something, and the mother replied, 'You shouldn't be asking that question, some questions just shouldn't be asked.'. And I thought, that's either the making of a bow-tie wearing, Invisible Hand worshipping, GOP stalwart or the hippiest scientist bum ever.

Used Bookstore

2010-04-20T19:01:00.000-07:00

I love used-bookstores, because I'm a cheap bastard, and supporting authors directly makes me feel all queasy and capitalistic inside; but moreso because they often only carry the 'good stuff' (particularly if in a densely populated area).

It's a bit humbling, of course, when one can't find a single book on their 'to-read' list, it's either the books you want are so sought after that nobody ever sells them; or when they do, they are snatched up; OR, a big OR here, your literary tastes sucks. Which, well, granted, I can't disagree with.

There's that great atmosphere of intellectual expansion in a used bookstore. They got your over-degreed Liberal Arts staff, and over the murmur of some progressive punk band from the 80's you can hear terms like 'Proustian', 'proto-liberal idealization of free-will' and other such heady thoughts that I've never gotten my brain around. But being awash in a limbo of grad students and intellectuals (both pseudo and real) one can figure out where one might stand in the continuum of 'thinkers'. Apparently I fall somewhere between 'guy who has really deep thoughts while getting high in the 7-11 parking lot' and 'Uncle Fred getting kinda poetic and deep about 'Nam right before he gets outrageously racist'.

I know this. I don't want other people to know this, though.

So what if I don't have skinny jeans or know the difference between Hemingway and e.e. cummings (one was a doctor, one was macho as hell, I think) or refer to headphones as 'cans' or have a list of preferences, that, if you were to have any of them, would signal an immediate and irrevocable shunning. I don't wear a blazer with a hoodie and I still suspect Modest Mouse to be a lesser known hero in early Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle comics.

I mean, I'm not that person. But I also have no desire for the general used bookstore population to think it, or, barring that, for them to write me off as some sort of staid, ramrod straight Tom Clancy-idolizing Military Budget-supporting far-right kinda person.

It was with some trepidation that I went to the front counter to get some help. I have, as my previous post can attest, gotten into Patrick O'Brian. So I asked the beardy, ironical t-shirt wearing assistant manager-esque fellow behind the cash register if they might have some. There was a slight pause, as he realized he might be dealing with One of Those Readers (this being a sub-race of readers who read things Slightly Untoward or Crassly Commercial), then he said, 'Oh, you mean those, naval books?'. He waved vaguely around the corner. Naval as in 'military', as in crufty, as in. Well.

I tried to maintain my composure, although the idea to blurt out, "I don't know art, but I know what I like, and that ain't it" while motioning towards his rack of Sandman, did cross my mind. I quietly collected a few O'Brians; then remembered I had some books I wanted to sell. Without thinking I emptied the 10 or so books I no longer wanted. Another staff member, a shorter youngish lady with 'simmering post-doc' written all over her face quickly went through them. In what can only be calculated to lessen the pain of intellectual ostracization, she said, 'These are still yours", pushing 9 books back.

Which is a shame, because I was kinda thinking I'd about keeping the Eggers book.

Dude, Brad's Back In Town and He's Getting the Guys Together! Some Things You Might Need

2010-04-14T19:21:00.000-07:00

an ostrich feather, a small gibbon with a subdued gag reflex, fifty-two dollars in quarters.
Portuguese bleach, fishing tackle, Moose.
an Esperanto handbook , cinnamon, all outstanding warrants cleared.
a recently cleaned gasoline tank, left-handed brass knuckles, an unusually large avocado.
gift card for Big N' Tall, two blenders (one hand, one standing), an empty stomach.
a zip cord from a WWII era paratrooper, a sony walkman (cassette) with a cheetah print velour cover, two bucks.
a strong magnet, a switchblade comb, Diana (who used to be Kent).
the libretto to Euridice, an incontinent Macy's clerk, a new car battery.
Vaseline, the soundtrack to Quicksilver, a passable grasp of market Hungarian

Book Review : Patrick O'Brian

2010-04-08T21:54:00.000-07:00

If you are red-blooded male of a certain stripe, the sort that likes Band of Brothers and Braveheart in which violence is visited upon bad guys and good guys form the sort of blood-brother connection that we office drones perpetually attempt to re-enact with company wilderness survival courses, whitewater rafting, or an open bar at the Christmas Party; where men of unusual heart and charisma lead other men to their peril, maiming, or worse; if you are, in short, 99% of all men, then I'm sure you've seen Master and Commander : The Far Side Of The World.

It's the story of a small British man-of-war around the early 1800's that has to pursue a much larger brig around South America, guns blazing, storms a-wrecking, men a-maiming. Terror and danger from the enemy, from nature, the tight lashing together of men who must or die. It, like so many of its ilk, hits some raw, primordial nerves, at least in me. Mastodons and hunters and all that.

So that movie, is actually an amalgamation of two books (of twenty) about Captain Aubrey and Dr. Maturin and their many adventures during the Nelsonic era of naval warfare. They are by Patrick O'Brian, an Englishman who lived in France and who had a predilection for reading source material from the National Maritime Museum for his inspiration. He was also a former intelligence agent and the biographer of Picasso. One of those writers of an entirely different age.

Much has been written about O'Brian, hailed as one of the greatest novelists, let alone historical novelists, of all time. I won't waste pixels going on about that, but about how something so utterly foreign, English 19th century naval dominance can hold any interest to me. I've never been terribly interested in history, or sailing (beyond a puttering a small Lazer around a lake), or the densely archaic language of medicine and biology during the Leeches are A Good Idea WHAT and So What's All This About Evolution Then era.

And yet I am drawn in. But O'Brian doesn't make it easy. He writes very much in that period, one gets the feeling you are reading a Jane Austen book without all the women and marriage business. It's the bit of Austen's novels that chronicles the dashing Lieutenant before he settles down and is pursued by, or pursues sharp-minded ladies buffeted by social pressures, mores, and their own individuality. The bit with the guns and the swords.

Everyone speaks as I imagine they would, not much is explained, not in the way of terms or very strange grammar. It's a bit like a good science fiction book where terms are thrown about, and either you figure it out from context or flounder in the effort. I get the feeling the O'Brian was so well versed that he just mentions things in passing. Thankfully when sea-going technicalities are of the most importance to the plot, O'Brian will expound.

There are quite a few phrases that are endearing in their candour, although through perpetual usage they likely mean no more than a 'sure' and 'whatever' in that time. But to the ears of any modern reader, they have their charm, phrases such as 'never in life', 'with all my heart', 'above all things', 'upon my honour' have pleasant, bare sense to them. Welcome in a modern time of sarcasm and indirection and faux-hip-wink-and-a-nod-kitschy-but-cool, sorta.

It also helps that Dr. Maturin, while also being the ship's surgeon and a naturalist, is also a spy for the British government. He's an idealist and cunning and vastly intelligent. There's ruses and counter-ruses, planting false information and discovering double agents.

Aubrey is jolly and a genius of a sea-men, if a bit dull in other respects. A man of action, of appetite and brimming with all those qualities that sum up a leader. He struggles to climb the ranks of the Navy, and meets fortune, both good and outrageous.

They are tremendous friends, who are so unlike they almost define each other in contrast. Their bound is music, another topic about which O'Brian shows a well-educated mind.

In both the intelligence work and in the direct action of whatever brig Aubrey happens to be in, there is a certain understability to it. That is, if you were to talk of ships today, there'd be AWACs and tomahawk missiles and it would very soon degrade into an appreciation of technology. In the Aubrey-Maturin book, things are so primitive that it's relatively simple to understand things straight away. When Maturin is found out to be a spy in one place, of course he will not be found out in another place because news takes a fair bit of time to travel. A ship that fires guns by being propelled by gunpowder is not far removed from bows and arrows. The differences and the contours that make the battles and intelligence intrigues engaging are human differences that can be grasped instantly.

So many things depend on the better qualities and baser in people. Greed and avarice, shame and pride.

It's a thumping good time, and I've been completely pulled into it. They are all good, but you can't go wrong with starting from the beginning, Master and Commander. I give the series ten broadsides out of ten.

Pumpkin Patch

2010-03-09T20:05:00.000-08:00

In October (yes, I take a while to get back to posts I start), we went to a pumpkin patch to get our gourd for Halloweeen. If don't know, pretty much any large event that might bring families are large, commercial affairs. Trinkets and goodies of questionable healthiness are sold in every sodden mud-caked square inch of field. There are local bands who butcher rock classics to include the word 'pumpkin'. No, I will not regale you with titles. Let's just say it's like having your nostalgia regurgitated through the candy-corn-crusted nether regions of a gourd from camp hell. It's not a pleasant experience.

It was quite an event. There was mud, and mud on mud, and dirt that looked somewhat dry and not hazardous but just turned out to be convincingly light-coloured mud. There were also corn-mazes, because if there is anything you want to do on a cold October day, it's to get lost in rows upon rows of cow-grade maize and endless trails of, well, mud.

During our tousle getting out the door, we forgot Owlet's proper wet gear. So in the drizzle, we had to assemble a Frankensteinian abomination of Owl Jr's clothes, some stuff left in the drunk, and a small but unwieldy umbrella; it might have been fashioned after a frog. And that's when it hit me, or was reinforced, as I gazed at our friend's children, who were wearing matching yellow slicker of some sort, how much children's fashion isn't so much about looking stylish, at least, for most parents; but more about ensuring your child doesn't look like an unamusing, tragic extra from Oliver!, which Owlet surely did.

It's not like she cared, she just wanted to get going. Going to whereever we were going to run too fast and get ridiculously dirty and have her parents freak out as new parents always do. The thing about dirty kids, is yes, on one hand, let kids be kids and get rough and tumble; but on the other hand, when all they have to get to is the car, they act as these impressive dirt multipliers, getting more things dirty that will surely have to be cleaned faster than you can repeat "OH GOD PLEASE DON'T TOUCH THAT". For me, it's not so much the fact of a dirty child. If she doesn't care, I don't. It's just the eventual time sink of trying to clean from our cloth and pleather seats something that looks like a cross between regurgitated grass and sculpting clay.

Or maybe I'm just a very prissy father, whatever.

During the course of wandering the mud fields looking for the right pumpkin, I saw a bunch of workers drive in a tractor, and unload pumpkins. Because we were in a mud field, not a pumpkin patch. The real pumpkin growing was done in some off-site lot, or imported from Argentina, or grown in a sinisterly lit warehouse with steel drum vats with supervisors who's middle name was 'von'. Or maybe I'm getting my imagination into overdrive because pumpkin-fueled family cheese can only push a man so far.

At some point, the kids were led to a straw field where they threw straw at each other and got the sort of dirty I can get behind, non-transferrable. I took many shots, and eventually got a keeper. So I guess the trip wasn't all bad.

Whew!

2010-03-02T23:06:00.000-08:00

So, it's all over, that great spectacle of human striving, that culmination of a nation's hopes and dreams, all on the international stage of sport. A showcase of our country, our culture, yes, but moreso a near sacred rite about competition itself.

I'm speaking about, of course, the Men's Olympic Gold Hockey Finals. Oh, we can blather about ice skating this, speed skating that, moguls, boarder-cross, aerials, but it's all just preamble to talk about the hockey. At least in Canada.

And thank god Canada won eh? Not that I'm any massive hockey nut (even though I did follow the hockey and did watch the gold medal round). But my country is. I've tried and failed to think of comparative obsessions, but I'm not sure they quite match. Japan, for instance, really loves ski-jumping. Malaysia loves badminton. New Zealand is tied to rugby. Most countries are frighteningly involved with soccer. And, speaking with American friends, I can't quite find how to frame a Canadians relationship to hockey. It's perhaps like Texas and football. Or Boston and baseball? I'm starting to lose my way, because I'm trying to talk about sport, and unless are talking about Super Spike V-Ball for the NES, I have very little to say with any coherence.

This is a country that cheered most loudly during the Winter Olympic closing ceremonies when the old theme song for "Hockey Night In Canada" played very briefly, in a montage. A country that has played street hockey since forever, ice hockey if they were lucky, and has obsessed about the sport for generations. A country where all sports pale in comparison, fade to the back.

A country that is assailed with messages from the media (or reflected back, I'm not sure which), that hockey is our national game, is our game, is what makes us Canadian, is the reason we trapped fur, made maple syrup, put our policemen in red and insist they be mounted, stormed Juno beach, invented universal healthcare, and speak two languages.

So, yes, I do say thank god we won gold. Because we do care about the sport a helluva lot. Not that Americans don't deserve to win. But you got so many sports as it is; and hockey, while violent and all that, likely doesn't hold a candle to football or baseball or basketball in whatever region you're from. No American newscaster would ever use a phrase like, "As the nation reels from disappointment.." when talking about a hockey tournament, not with a straight face.

But we would.

Oh, we would. There'd be rending of hair and a measureable dip in GDP. A further dip in the birth rate, car sales, church attendance, community involvement, choir recitals, Elk lodge AGM attendance, you name it, it'd feel a dip.

But we won. There was spontaneous honking on at every intersection, waving of flags, a surge in that little felt emotion, Canadian patriotism. Waves of people flooding downtown with maple leaves on sweaters and hats and shirts and painted in sundry places. Canadians being even more friendly than usual.

God we love our hockey.

Casting I'd Like To See But Never Will

2010-02-26T16:23:00.001-08:00

Greg Kinnear
Plays a grizzled ex-cop turned private detective with an ex-wife who hates him, kids who hate him more. When what he learns threatens to break the thin blue line, he's only got his wits, his underground contacts, and a 1978 Seville packed with weaponry from his days in Vietnam to sort things out.

Wil Wheaton
In a world without hope, in a life without a future, Wil Wheaton is B-Line, a down on his luck freestyle crunk artist who survives by his love of the street, and the rhythms that beat in his soul. Featuring a soundtrack by Jay-Z, TuPac, Ice-T, and Lil John, this is the b-boy movie of this generation. And for all generations.

Tom Cruise
Billy Boynton never had much luck with girls. He never had much luck with work. He never had much luck with anything. In this art-house indie film released straight to the web, Cruise plays a poignant, quiet role as a small man, living in a big world, just trying to carve his own little place of happiness.

John Cusack
Conan the Barbarian, a remake.

Michael Douglas
Toddy Michaels works out a meager living as an Assistant Clerk II at megacorp. Not having relations with models and not being the captain of the industry. This film follows his sorry life until death. At some point he tries to start a hobby chicken farm.

Guide To Vancouver #2: The Olympics

2010-02-13T12:03:00.000-08:00

It's upon us. The heaving behemoth of advertising, world sport, international goodwill, and backdoor cronyism, The Olympics. The Winter Olympics, so, I suppose, no need to get too excited. Unless you're from a country that is almost as synonymous with snow as Antarctica, Siberia, or Christmas Coke commercials. It's a Big Deal here. This is the Olympics Canada does relatively well at. Canadians pride themselves in living in cold, inhospitable climates. Naturally we'd excel in the Winter Olympics.

Sport, particularly amateur sport, involves getting very very serious about increasingly trivial things. For example:

Cross country skiiing spiced up with target shooting.
Jumping, but not by skiers perse, it's more by gymnasts who happen to use skiis to get lift.
Large rocks. Slid very slowly. To targets. Brooms are involved.
Using gravity and ice to go really really really fast. Have a different one for sitting, sitting with friends, standing, short, long, bumpy.
Moving on ice, horizontally.

It's not secret I find most sports baffling. Olympics is no exception. But there's another side of the Games that's even more frustrating. The billions of dollars I, as a taxpayer, will have to pay over the coming decades. It seems every budget, for the villages, security, venues were ten times over budget. Ten times. A lot of the uproar from the left and far left has been, "This might not be the best time to pay public money when all our social services are going down the drain.". Hard to argue with that.

However, some people say that the Olympics really will put Vancouver on the map. I'm not sure it really needs to be on the map any more than it is. And it's not like Nagano and Torino are blustering powerhouses of economy now.

I'm not so naive to believe either side, to be honest. This is a massive world party where the most elite athletics get to compete for accolades and glory and whatever it is that athletes compete for. And time for every citizen to feel unbearably connected to some downhill skiier they had not known about until 1 week ago.

I don't mind SO much that we bleed ourselves dry for a massive world party even if it is for negligible, unmeasured benefits. It's a once in a lifetime thing, the Olympics are. A time for Canadians to do something we rarely do (notwithstanding Internet debates about healthcare and backpacking across Europe): be patriotic. My country, right or wrong, type of thing. Glowing hearts, pride.

What makes it a little hard to swallow is that many corporations that will make tons of money, the untold millions that go to the IOC for I don't know what, and the average Joe, stuck with the bill. But it's a good thing it's going on in Canada, since the Winter Olympics is, to be honest, for the vast majority of Canadians: "Large World Hockey Tournament With Some Other Sports".

And you had so many rah-rah millionaires edging to get the Games here, you had corporate backdeals and people in positions of leadership with more ego than sense hoist this cost upon us. That kinda gets in my craw. But then, hey, possibly 2 golds in hockey on home turf. Rah rah.

First Ride

2010-01-28T00:59:00.000-08:00

I grew up surrounded by rich Taiwanese and Hong Kong kids who drove Integras and Supras and RX-7's. Well, maybe not surrounded. There were plenty of normal Canadian Asians in my highschool and university, but the unbearably spoiled ones were damn conspicuous. Maybe it's this that influenced me to get something that, under a dense fog and a few shots of whiskey, might be construed as a sports car.

Then again maybe I tried to get a sporty car because it was my first damn car and I was young and dumb(er).

It was a 1985 Honda Prelude, white. It was an SE (slow version), not an Si (not as slow), but the people who sold it to us painted the damn bumper white (only available in the Si) so it looked like, well, an ass-ugly Prelude SE with a painted bumper.

They were as shady as an Italian in any film depicting 1930's New York and were very, very Russian. They might have been Ukranian, actually. All I knew is they had a thick accent and that far away look that made every day cruelties and injustices not something that bothered them overly. Thick hide, is what I'm getting at. Like maybe they were involved in illegal military action in a country whose borders hadn't quite been resolved or or maybe their closest friends went blind drinking methanol. Something hard went down in their lives at some point. Or maybe they were just gangsters. Just hard because that's what the work required.

I'm not sure how I remember it, but I do remember my dad remarking how they were 'trying to sell quite a few cars'. Which seemed odd. If you are selling several used cars and you don't, in fact, have a Used Car Lot and a garishly sterotypical coat then you're likely operating in the gray zone of everyday commerce.

Luckily my dad was an immigrant too. Maybe not from the same part of the world but I think immigrants all over North America understand each other a little better than they understand Westerners. To wit, life is Hard. Money is money. Haggle with both hands and don't blink.

I was left in the car, sitting in the drivers seat. It sat low. Real low. Vertebrae snapping low. Low enough that one had to get used to gauging the speedbump height. So I sat there, admiring my first real Ticket To Freedom. They haggled for about an hour. Later I found out it was over about 25 bucks. I did not find this unusual.

It eventually broke down. That's how I learned about timing belts. Our family isn't much into cars, so all my car lessons are expensive and fraught with confusion.

But all in all it was a good little car. It had a stick shift, which, to be honest, was pretty much the only thing I cared about. It cornered pretty well, not that I raced it at all, or have enough skill in driving to know what a really good cornering car does. But I knew It wasn't a floaty mass of turgid springs and body roll like my uncle's Mustang, or the family Dodge Caravan, so that was enough for me. It also, I guess, went from 0-60 in slightly less than 10 seconds, but I drove that thing like your great aunt drives her Toyota Tercel, carefully, worringly, with the softest and most gentle hand possible. Because to me I realized it wasn't a SUPER RAD FAST CAR WAHOOO, it was A Way To Get Out Of The House. Which is really far more exciting.

Things My 11-Month Old Can Do That Is Unacceptable For 47-Year Old Accounts Manager Brad Diaderod Currently Enjoying a Stopover In Muskegon, Michigan

2010-01-18T21:52:00.000-08:00

discover leftovers in folds of clothes, proceed to eat it.
with slow, deliberate precision, find an unidentifiable piece of lint on the ground, then contemplatively eat that too.
drop Cheerios™ on the ground, one by one.
be startled by vacuum cleaners.
obsessively hold onto furniture while walking.
hesitantly reach out to every dog he sees.
giggle uncontrollably for apparently no reason at all.
expect strangers to smell his head.
eat like Robocop.
lean violently away or towards someone, depending on his disposition to that person.
cry when sleepy.
slowly approach the TV until face is squished against it, ensuring 129% of daily radiation intake.
stare at strangers, unblinking, while drooling.
continue doing whatever he was doing when others attempt small-talk.

Things I was pretty sure everyone did until I found out no, it was just me.

2010-01-07T15:54:00.001-08:00

Thanks metamonk, for the idea.

Beat-box to musicals
End every order to a waiter with 'etcetera, etcetera, etcetera'
Mistake Halloween for Christmas.
Flip off crossing-guards.
Hold an undying suspicion that peanut brittle is really dehydrated peanut butter.
Regularly behead all the Animal Crackers™, make a hunter's trophy room from the box.
Pronounce Pterodactyl with a 'p'.
Use cowboy placemats.
Wonder why everyone on The Office lost their accents.
Use the e-brake when braking foot gets tired.
Talk to infant son exclusively in the voice of Soundwave.
Use CB conventions when using cell phones on the road, over.
Think PETA was a celebrity softcore channel.
Think Kinkos was something else entirely.
Give directions to bus drivers.
Play Sudoku with letters.
Watch anime muted, with Happy Days audio playing over.
Write down favourite bumper sticker slogans.
Drink whiskey in the shower (during the summer).
Watch the LPGA with the volume cranked.
Laugh during Pulp Fiction.

Keyboard Function Keys That Didn't Quite Make It

2009-12-23T12:14:00.000-08:00

Thanks stresstwig, fount of ideas and facial hair.

"Inform Miss Penny That One Of The Vacuum Tubes Has Blown, BLAST IT" - yelling was more efficient and cleared Babbage's blood of dangerous humours.

"YELLING" - Functionality was merged with Caps Lock.

π - use of circles and any calculations with circles was seen to be a sign of a weak mind, weaker constitution, and a moral fibre that was entirely suspect.

"Definitely Nazi"/"Most Likely Nazi"/"Carrier Pigeon Error" - Enigma was a very specialized machine.

"Nuke It" - Part of the original DARPA spec, it was thought that there may be a need for more safeguards.

"Check Connection Time to BBS " - Ones parents always needed to use the phone before this became an issue.

"Power Down Memetic Cyclotron " - Can't think of a reason, honestly.

"Toggle" - Apparently in Urdu this means an imaginative way to soil ones underwear whilst balancing on an inverted sun umbrella.

My Dog's Suggestions On A More Orderly Household

2009-12-23T11:38:00.000-08:00

Thanks metamonk, for the idea.

Just leave the food on the ground, seriously. Let's not delude ourselves into thinking I care whether or not food is in the dog dish. It could be beside, or, let's be honest here, inside a toilet, and I'll still eat it. Clinging to a rather disgusting belief that I care either way is an insult to both of us.

Accept that I will slobber on anything and everything. Especially the children. Just tell yourself it's better to have e-coli infused dog slobber on them than the spackle of mucous and food that was there previously.

Why are you throwing away dog bones? They dry out and can puncture your garbage bags, leaving a mess everywhere. Just throw it on the ground. I'm sure someone will dispose of it properly.

Invest in scented candles. Much better than dog baths. I like the way I smell, you hate giving me baths, win-win.

Dirty laundry isn't. It's a marvellous treasure trove of fascinating smells. Please pile it high and everywhere. Tell visitors it's a 'living post-humanist look at canine-hominid cohabitating symbiosis'.

You know what's better than giving yourself a manicure, which is sure to leave human skin droppings (ewww!) and various files and things scattered about the home? Scratching juusut behind my ear, my hair acts as a natural and gentle exfolia-aaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhh.

Take a nap.

Go for a walk.

Take another nap.

The dishes can wait.

Christmas Family Letter 2009

2009-12-16T00:19:00.000-08:00

The year, as is the case when you get a certain age, has passed us by faster than you can "Bon Jovi's Slippery When Wet was made TWENTY THREE years ago?". And so it has. This year has been slightly more eventful than others.

We've had another child on January 16th, 2009. A boy this time. A somber, serious boy who will look at you with soulful eyes full of life's regret and the eternal struggle of self-actualization until you play peek-a-boo and he kills himself laughing. He's a mystery. His birth was little on the long side, but everything came out swimmingly, we were out of there in record time because we've done it before and as much fun as hospitals are, they're no place to raise a child.

What else is there to say about him. Well, he's a baby, he doesn't have a whole lot of opinions. He likes to crawl, he likes to hold things and stand up. He's really into objects. He'll be crying bloody murder like someone has just suckerpunched him with a bag full of nickels, then you'll give him, say, a Tupperware container, and he'll be as content as, uhm, well, a baby with a Tupperware container, I suppose.

He's the quiet, understated sort. Or at least, he's quiet in relation to Owlet.

Owletis even more of a firecracker now that she can speak in full sentences. A strong enough grasp of language has lead to bartering and pleading and, more often than not, commanding. While the word 'bossy' is often whispered or just said outloud, we, proud parents, prefer to think of her as spirited! Enthusiastic! Decisive! Bossy! No, wait, not the last one.

She's in a whole whack of activities. Dancing, gymnastics, swimming, and a few hours of preschool. It's fun to see her flail about at different activities and discover the joys of sport and athletics that her parents never quite got a grasp of.

Everything now is pink, princess, fairy, purple, ballet, butterfly, chocolate, and tea. Often times all at once. As much as I'd hoped she'd be kinda agnostic towards the entire 'Princess' thing, she's gone full bore. Hopefully when she's older and rebelling against the perfect image that Media and the Disney Conglomerate try to brainwash into young girls she'll remember the time I took her down the aisles of boy toys and she looked at me blankly before racing towards the aisles of pinky, fluffy, toys that seem to make her oh so very happy.

Owlet loves her brother a whole lot. She's adept at making him laugh, and they'll often sit there laughing and laughing and laughing and I know not too far in the future they'll still be laughing and laughing and laughing but it'll be at me and I'll grumble something incoherently before making shoddily constructed bird feeders in my wood-shop. But what's important is that they seem to be hitting it off. They both find each others pretty darn interesting.

Molly is going with me to work now, which mean she gets to have naps outside the home, which is a nice change for her, I suppose. I'll take her upstairs from the bowels of the building where I stare at a computer all day, to the clerks and program officers and whatnot who all love her to bits. Echoes of her name will ring through the offices as people realize she's come for a visit, "Molly!" "Molly's here!" "Is that Molly?". Course, I've worked there coming on 9 years and I'm sure none of them know my name. I wouldn't have it any other way.

I'm still at Corp. ABC. At some point they'll try and nail a plaque on me and declare me a heritage building. I'm still doing programming. Let's move on before you fall asleep.

Mrs. Owl is almost done her maternity leave. She feels as if she hasn't done anything this year. And besides birthing our second child; caring, feeding and clothing and entertaining a baby and a toddler; not having a complete night's sleep in a year; and putting up with me, she's completely correct.

She keeps herself busy taking Owlet to all her activities, having play-dates and tea-time with her friends, and dreading the time she'll have to go to work. At least it's part-time. Which will be good since she'll spend most of her time chasing around two energetic small children and counting the hours until she can go into work and take a breather.

And that's all the news that's fit to print for this year.

May the new year find you all healthy and wealthy and wise, and if not that, at least under the influence of a full night's sleep.

Things I Would Do For Fun If I Had More Moxie

2009-12-15T11:47:00.001-08:00

Buy a security guard outfit, stand in the foyer of a very swank theatre, wait for the opera intermission, then bustle about, pushing people aside saying, "Move along, move along."
Sneak into a gynecologist's empty patient room, then scream at the top of my lungs, "The baby's going to come outta WHERE?"
Drive at exactly the speed limit. High-beam and honk at others that don't.
Make a buncha mix-CD's featuring Grandmaster Flash and the Funky Bunch, New Edition, Ladysmith Black Mambazo, and Cannibal Corpse, put a barcode on them, and sneak them into the library CD section.
Sing the national anthem at the top of my lungs, with a few incorrect words, give a ribbon to the first person to correct me.
Put 2 chairs and a desk, interview style, on the street. Put a camcorder on a tripod. Interview any and all people who sit with me. Alternate between an interview for a legally suspect and highly dangerous job, a celebrity interview (with questions intended for John Voigt, circa 'Deliverance), naturalization interview for Luxembourg.
Go to McDonald's, ask to see the manager, order Combo 1, haggle.
Get on a bus with a ghetto blaster blaring Bing Crosby's White Christmas at full volume.
Wear a utilikilt, stand in front of the women's washroom, pointedly refuse entry for anyone who doesn't not, in fact, have a skirt.
Get a three-piece suit, get a haircut, briefcase, better posture. Go shopping at the local organic co-op. Complain about the prices.
Protest Greenpeace, just cuz.
Stand in the middle of a busy street, offer free hugs, ask for tips.
Go to a Volkswagen dealership, try and get as much info as I can about the current Jetta, try and drop the word 'Nazi' as casually and as often as I can.
Buy a moleskine notebook, strike a conversation up with a hipster, try and find an excuse to bring out my moleskine and open it up, revealing pages after pages of pasted in Cathy comic strips. Ask him which one is his/her favourite.
Open up a stall selling peanut butter jelly sandwiches.

Guide to Vancouver #1

2009-12-14T08:55:00.000-08:00

The Olympics are coming up.¹

That's why I'm going to do this series of posts, where I'll expound on my general overview of the city I live in/around/in a suburb of: Vancouver.

Vancouver is, first and foremost, a city that seems to be always ranked near the top of this and that livability study. It's also tiny. A hamlet. 2.5 million people live here, if you include the suburbs. 600k if you count only Vancouver proper. This gives most of Vancouverites a bit of a complex. A phrase you'll hear often is 'world-class city'. Maybe too often, maybe too forced, usually coming down from some chamber of commerce or some captain of some industry. We're constantly preening and trying to make ourselves a little more important than we are. True 'world-class' cities, like a CIA operative or someone who actually enjoys Christmas cakes, never have to proclaim it. I don't think you'd ever hear someone from Paris, or London, or New York, expound about how 'world-class' their city is. I mean, here's a hint, when Hollywood is shooting a film in LA pretending that it's Vancouver, then you'll know.

If you like the outdoors, rain, and relative low crime rate, Vancouver is not too bad. If you take umbrage with ridiculously high cost of living with lower than average salaries, have a touch of SAD, or are expecting theaters and museums on the level of truly large city, Vancouver is not your destination.

It's fairly boring, fairly nice. Fine for me, fine for people who like safe, boring living. Also, actually, fine for people who like their bit of gangland warfare. We seem to have little flarings of that, every once and a while, I guess we have a booming trade in mary jane, which leads to organized crime having kerfluffles, but I suppose not enough to hurt 'livability' ratings.

The drugs thing is pretty major, in many ways, and in only some ways that I have any handle on. For instance, there are quitea few growops in and about town. And not in the run-down part of town either, in $900k houses in nice parts of town, subdivisions that feature the word 'Heights' or 'Pacific'. I think it's safe to say we have an above average number of hydroponic supply stores. And I can't believe there are that many gardeners who simply must have their hothouse tomatoes year round.

Weed, especially, is largely tolerated. So if you are at some outdoor event, say, fireworks or One of The Ten Days When It's Not Precipitating In Some Way, you'll get a whiff of that really charming 'mossy grass being burnt under a poorly supervised butane torch' smell. I'm more of a live and let live guy, really, and when it comes to things you can use to decimate brain-cells, I'd much prefer to be in a group of totally stoned patchouli chewing THC-imbibers than any number of drunks. In general.

There are really a ton of things to complain about in Vancouver, possibly more than there are to boast about. I'll hit on more of them in upcoming posts.

1 It's awash with controversy, on one side people ecstatic that we are 'on the world stage' and 'make our mark on the map'. On the other side, calls that money has been funneled from social services and money ear-marked for the most vulnerable in our society. On one side, the opinion that this'll really rake in money for the province and country. And then on the other, the realization that most corporate deals are going to companies south of the border, and that local communities are going to be in debt for this world party for a looong time.

I try and stay neutral about these things. I think they both have points. I have no doubt that the public will have a debt, and that private companies will have the lion's share of the profits. But, I mean, they are the Olympics.

Let's not dwell on that.

Cooking

2009-12-01T00:13:00.000-08:00

I like to cook. I'm not much of one, but some of our friends tend to think I can . The trick to this is learning how to do the big dishes; the type that have been trodden into our Western Subconscious as Real Cooking. Think June Cleaver or any meal as depicted in safe and painfully wholesome Disney movies. Turkey, roast, rack of lamb. Large portions of vertebrates prepared well. I can't bake to save my life, or do much of anything other than roasting animals, but I still bask in the small glory within our circles of friends of Someone Who Won't Burn Water.

There was a certain reader in mind when I wrote this, my little cooking tutorial. Then I realized that this person might think 'learning to cook' as being able to prepare a 6 course meal and dessert cart using nothing less than a Coleman Stove and a rather heat tolerant teacup. I will then presume this little post is for those of you just taking the plunge. Who wish to brandish a spatula with grace and aplomb and who's idea of 'going wild' in the kitchen isn't just adding ketchup to your Mac N' Cheese.

When I cook, I generally go by a handful of rules. Now these rules are written with one objective : Make Stuff Taste Goood. If you have other objectives, you'll likely have different rules. Say, if you wanted things to be Healthy, or interested in Using Semolina In Everything, your rules will be different.

So, with that in mind, in no particular order:

FAT IS TASTE
That clogger of arteries, that most hated and revered of all cooking ingredients, fat. Fat in the form of butter or lard or whatever you have on hand, is the foundation of taste. A good steak is a well marbled (fatty) steak. Recipes are invariably 1000% better when you replace it's ingredient of half-half organic no-fat soy with cream. Those fish only served in fine restaurants? Fattier than a State Carnival deep fryer.

I had to attend a potluck way back in my single days, I didn't really have anything GOOD to make, so I just made mac and cheese. I added real cheese, substituted cream for milk, and added entirely too much butter. It was a hit.

INGREDIENTS, INGREDIENTS, INGREDIENTS
More than half your cooking is done in the grocery. Fresh over frozen or dried, choice cuts over that that slab of government beef that may or may not lead to certain, mouth frothing death. Even using, for instance, fresh basil over some dried Mrs. Spice concoction is massive improvement.

USE A REFERENCE
For me this is the venerable Joy of Cooking, a half-ton tome that has stood the test of time and fallen souffles and too-rare roasts for the past several decades. It's very old school, which I like, and covers almost anything you'd think of cooking.

It covers quite the detail on topics that you'll eventually need to learn, like what cut of beef is best for roasting, how to make a pie crust from scratch, what's the diff between a pancake and a crepe. All sorts of food nerd things that you'll want to know so you can regale your friends just before they suddenly spot someone they just have to talk to across the room.

SEAR
When cooking meat, use high heat to sear the outside and seal in the juices. Then cook at a lower temp to finish it. I'm surprised at how many old school cooks (mother-in-law, for example) who just never learned this, and spend hours tending to their roasts, basting and fiddling.

That's it, I think. Well, I'm sure there are others, but that's probably too much already. So go forth! Burn water! Add fat! Bask in the glory!

100 word fiction

2009-11-18T16:03:00.000-08:00

So cheesoning saw this, and decided I should post an entry. In the 600+ long list. Between me writing this draft and saving it yesterday, and me thinking about finishing this post, the contest has reached 850. Ergh. Chances of winning, vanishingly small.

But I like having these arbitrary limits, it gives shape to my writing.

Anyhoo, this is my entry. It's steampunky, because cheesoning DEMANDED it:

The electro-transmogrifying-intransigent-polychine came alive. Rattling brass pipes, enormous thrumming copper kettle drums all deafened Frank to the tiny alarm he had set up. Too quiet, it turns out. Almost too late.

With an embarassed shuffle perfected by all Continental Engineers, Frank shimmied down the jury-rigged ladders to the belly of the beast. The financial backers and politicians watched with restrained alarm.

"It's moved, hasn't it?" shouted someone.

Frank hit the alarm twice. Nothing doing. It kept pealing away.

"Ah, no. Never will, I'm afraid." He waved vaguely to the North Sea. "Something found, in space."

Another Halloween

2009-11-01T16:52:00.000-08:00

I manned the door for this Halloween. I live in a rather large townhouse complex filled with kids and young families and the burgeoning terror of intra-strata political strife. It's a great community, people know each other and there's always some sort of community event planned for the big holidays; the easy ones, anyways, Summer, New Years, Halloween. They stay away from the touchy ones: Christmas and Easter, say, or any pagan sun holiday expropriated for messianiac desert religions.

Being in such a large complex means plenty of kids. Gaggles and straggles and gangs of them. Gawky rebellious and punk in a way that only youth can be punk; young and exuberant and screamy as pre-teens simply have to be; awkward and confused and just along for the ride as toddlers are (pretty much all the time, actually).

Experiencing Halloween from the other side is, something. As a man, there is the constant effort to not appear to be the Creepy Predator That Your Parents Warned You About. Whether that be walking in the same direction as a woman on the way home at 2am, or giving out packaged glucose to minors, one needs to not scare other people. Not in the goofy 'oh you got me good with that fake vomit and pretend heart attack routine', but the 'honey do you have the cell phone and can you dial 911'.

So, there's very vague smile, a happy Halloween, and a close of the door. Men cannot engage in the banter that makes Halloween for most kids. "Oh, what are you? What's that again? Ohhh, scary pirate!" etcetera. These are the usual back and forth from moms and grandma's and the like. I think that if I get to a respectable age, and perhaps get some reading glasses and a nice tweed sports coat, I might be able to pull it off. But right now I just try and keep it brief and to the point.

This isn't so bad, actually, since for most trick or treaters coming through, we seemed to be at the end of their trip. They have a listless look. Their pillowcases and plastic Jack O' Lanterns brimming with the exciting possibilities of childhood obesity, their makeup smeared, their masks abandoned. Some don't even say 'trick or treat', they just kinda yell incoherently and mumble thanks.

I think there might be a lesson about life in there somewhere. Perhaps an allegory about work and the brass ring. Maybe something about 'you can only have so much money and then after that it's smeared make-up, and dead stare, and the a scramble to enjoy your spoils before the Big Sleep'.

Or maybe I shouldn't be chowing down on teeny tiny Mars bars after 8 pm.

Don Draper Brands Low Corrosion Metal Stamped House Exteriors

2009-10-28T15:35:00.000-07:00

Don Draper is the lead character in Mad Men, a swanky 60's cool drama about advertising.

It's a war out there. Every day, on the job.

Anyone can live in a house, but a man wants to reside in his castle. And while there, he needs everyone on his side. Everyone pulling with him. And to where. To where is he taking his family?

To the future. It's not a new world of gristle and grime, of steel and coal. It's plastics, rayon, aluminum.

Aluminum Siding.
Your home, your castle.

Site Cleanup, Feedback

2009-10-23T00:07:00.000-07:00

I've applied my rather sparse design skills to this blog. Removed a buncha stuff on the right, tried to make it as clean as possible.

And like a grown child-actor of a once wildy popular family sitcom, I crave attention and feedback. However, I also know that commenting on blogs can be weird, especially if you don't have a lot to say; and posting just to write 'good post', or 'this sucks more than a suckington vacuum on suck day' does seem to be more bother than it's worth.

There has also been times where my friends or e-friends or whoever have said in passing that 'such and such' post was great. This is... good, except that if I had never crossed that off hand comment by chance, I'd have never have known. The majority of my stuff gets zero comments. Ixnay. Niet. Nein. Zero. The heterosexual rating for a Liberace show. The number of humvees at a Greenpeace protest. The number of people who avidly watch both "Mad Men" and "Deal or No Deal". The rural authenticity of "Blue Collar TV". The street cred for comedians who host any show that begins with "America's Funniest...". The chance that any good, innovative, groundbreaking TV show will last on Fox. The number of post-grads who'll NOT correct you when you refer to soccer as soccer. The number of real lesbians in the porn industry. The number of art house directors who cite Jerry Bruckheimer as an influence.

On top of all this, the posts that people will say they like are, invariably, ones that I just churned out,slowly, painfully, and whose quality is somewhere between middling and mediocre, to me. Which makes my whole 'Best of periodically' kinda suspect. Sure, I like it, but that's not who counts, right?

So, few comments + need for feedback + no real idea of what's good == Outbrain! A ratings doo-hickey widget. See the stars at the end of each post? Just click and rate. It'll help me find which posts are weak, which are good, what to keep doing, what to cease at all costs.

Aaaand, if you read regularly, and have not added yourself to the Google Connect /Friends thing, please do.

Strip Malls

2009-10-19T20:08:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Daniel Greene for the photo

Strip malls have always held a certain sad mystery for me. The center of small town activity, beaten up and painfully hopeful.

They bring to mind sun-cooked parking lots, over-designed laundromats, and fake-Chinese restaurants that feature, of all things, smorgasbord. The small-time fast food franchises trying to take hold. The Salvation Army, the runty clothing stores that seem to only carry 'depressingly working class attire sure to draw ridicule in the big city' clothes. The perpetual 70's decor and aesthetic.

It's full of a weird hope because it has so many small business owners scrabbling for success.

It's the juxtaposition :

1) nameless, dry hand of capitalism figuring out traffic flows and population densities and demographic consumer habits then deciding to make COMMERCIAL MULTI-UNIT MIXED-USE ZONING FOR 18.2% PROFIT GIVEN CURRENT FORECASTS.

2) The undented, shining and perfect ambitition of individuals.

They're both the same thing, in a way, but one goes about it in a decidedly sterile, Overpowering Empire sort of way, the other is the elbow grease and sweat and tears and hiring your own teenagers to mind the shop path. The Empire and the Rebel make odd bedfellows.

Isn't it part of any kid who grew up in the suburbs? That's sort of your first hang out, I suppose. Chewing on hyper-sweet corn-starch infused ADHD revving candies and chugging a small tub of pop. Trying to figure out what you wanna do ('what do you wanna do?', 'I dunno, what do you wanna do' etc). The hazy crawl of everyday commerce sluggishly pouring around you. It's there that you usually fall upon the realization that your hometown is 'a hole' or 'a ditch' or whatever colourful euphemism comes to mind when one equates safe neighbourhoods, low crime rate. and middling public school standardized test scores to the heaving quicksand of staid small-town boringness.

It's the place of so many first jobs, when that kid in your realizes how much work sucks, and how much suckiness awaits you in adulthood. Deep-fat fryers, the drone of gossip, the unbearable idealism of high school car wash fundraisers.

It's a weird juncture, a strange porthole from one world into the next. Sad. Mysterious.

Shake It, Baby

2009-10-14T20:01:00.001-07:00

So my good friend spruce (aka Jeff) forayed into that limitless mire of hipster fashion, that bog of sarcasticaly appreciated t-shirt design, threadless. He's an artist, as you can see (and by the by, entered some 24 hour comic something or other, and made this very cool, very quirky, very spruce comic ). He's got a great style. I always get the impression that many of his characters are Dali-inspired Gumby-dolls infused with malevolent intent. There's a pliability there, and a quirky fun that you only get when you arm a serial killer with a very strong rubber band, I imagine.

Anyhow, he created this from scratch. From nothing. That whole creative process thing is terrifying and weird and I think is put under too many words and thinking; and, like zen or your first wedgie, can only be really be known by experiencing it. Nevertheless, I'll attempt to blather on a bit.

When I asked him about his design he was vague. Like, he drew it and whatnot, then thought of a back-story. Like whatever was driving the creation of it and whatever he later lacquered on as a 'story' were completely separate.

That's pretty cool.

You read critics and people who 'care' about art or music and whathaveyou, and they tend to analyze art and meaning until it's desiccated husk would be too dry for The Economist. But, it seems that more often than not, there's just a 'oh shit lets just go ahead and do it and worry about the details later' approach. In a world of checklists and how-to books and endless self-analysis and re-analysis, there seems to be some truth in this method.

There's this old samurai saying that I'm sure I got off some anime or samurai comic or anime samurai comic, and I can't find the quote, but the gist of it is 'given the option between an elaborate feint, the awesome dude will just charge straight ahead'. Paraphrased there, a bit. I think the original is a little more formal and mentions cherry blossoms. But the heart of it is to DO, I guess. Less dithering.

And, as you can see by this t-shirt design, this creates more awesome.

If you think it's as super rad as I, then please go to Threadless and vote.

Bowling Alone

2009-10-09T00:50:00.000-07:00

Thanks to
UTKChristie
for the photo.
It's strange. You hit adulthood. You live in a neighbourhood and get married and have children and whathaveyou. But you never, or at least, it'd been my experience, have those friendships you did in school. That clamouring crowd of like-minded individuals, all bursting with excitement and energy and the undaunted optimism. A buzzing outlook tempered by anxiety and parental expectations and the blazing possibility that you just might have a charmed life. And, just as likely, that your life will crash in a multitude of failed tests/interviews/jobs and you'll end up one of those pitiful characters featured in Coen Brother's films.

One moment, you don't have time for all the people you know or are interested in knowing. And in the blink of a year or ten, you're in a perpetual hamster wheel of commute/work/family/Weekend Activity Planned By Extended Family.

There's that somewhat seminal book Bowling Alone, that looks at the fall of civic engagement and group whatever. The takeaway is that no one is joining bowling leagues, no one is squeezing themselves into their monkey suits to go to Elk Fundraiser or hob-nob at a Rotary function. There is almost no way to add more friends to whoever you glommed onto at school, and whoever you may work with.

I mean, where is my Barney Rubble? Where is my Jeremy Piven? Jeremy Piven, as you probably don't know, played what I consider to be the epitome of 'best friend' in two movies that I should feel embarassed for liking but don't: "Family Man" and "Serendipity". He was funny and odd and warm and shared in-jokes with the leading men that showed a closeness you only get through years of knowing each other.

It's likely a losing strategy to compare my social life with those constructed by cocaine and adderall addicted screen writers trying to get six figures for their latest script about the heart-warming strength of the family and about how love really can conquer all, even if you have John Cusack as your lead. But there's something in me that recognizes Piven in those films.

It's like Plato's shadow on the cave wall. It's maybe this imaginary reflection of an ideal that's only pulled out to sell more beer and week-long Alaskan fishing trips. Or maybe it's a representation of what we think we should have. That bond between men. Metaphorically speaking.

As all my semi-deep rants seem to end up in a hap-dash evolutionary discussion, let's go there. Back during our most formative years, tens of thousands of years ago, hunting and gathering as hunter-gathers are wont to do, there had to be friends right? Hunting together, making sure Baak didn't get gutted by a sabertooth or that Tarkuk got his fair share of the mastodon. It was a bond formed on real stuff.

What I'm saying is that call for close friends is not coming from nowhere. Social monkeys that we are. But there is no hunt anymore, there is no grind to strengthen that stuff between men.

I'm not sure where I'm going with this. Possibly to a Al Pacino monologue, I think.

I saw "I Love You, Man", recently. And damnit all if I wasn't the main character. Socially separated and without any number of dudes who he could call friends. His painful attempts at trying to cultivate guy friends hit a little too close to home. Having 'man-dates', keeeeeripes if that didn't make my skin crawl through my ear and die on the shelf of my brain pan. But his continued awkwardness on what was cool, what was 'right', what was 'guy-appropriate'.

Yeesh.

I dunno what happened, jobs happened, maybe, schooling happened. Life and kids and the stuff of being an adult happened. That vast sea of free time that we seemed to have to go to McDonald's or awkwardly stand in line at club vanished.

It's all pretty confusing. All I know is I don't got no Piven.

My Unbeatable Script Idea

2009-09-26T17:06:00.000-07:00

Ok, here it is, it can't fail, it's only a matter of how many billions it'll pull in. You ready? Are you sitting down, perhaps with some Peak Freans and a nice mug of Sanka? It's gonna blow your mind through your chest, your colon and leave a gaping hole where your vestigial tail (that your parents had removed because "No son/daughter of theirs was going to live the life of a circus freak, what with child labour laws being what they were, and how saturated the Monkey Child market is with the regional circus circuit...") used to be.

Alrighty, so the story revolves around Francis, a hemp farmer and interpretive banjo avant-garde conceptualizer who travels three months of the year to Africa to help them run clown schools for the deaf and those susceptible to renal failure.

His partner and love of his life, Jessica, is a folk-singer who plays free shows for Sandinista Rebels and the Society of WW I Half-Track Repairmen. On her time off she crafts beautifully made stained-glass windows for neighbours, friends, and a homeless man who, while looking craggy and utterly without the benefit of modern psychiatric phramacology, is actually very kind and gentle at heart.

They lead a life of warmth and laughter and fill it with quirky friends and a non-traditional yet heartwarming interpretation of the extended family.

Then one day, Francis meets William, a high powered hedge fund manager, champion polo player, and second captain for a nationally ranked yacht team. William, through a series of very low-key and understated adventures, exposes Francis to the rat-race of broken dreams, high grade Columbian White, and 30-something Type-A personalities who are already working on their third angina. He's drawn into a lifestyle of power and six-martini lunches.

Before Francis knows it, he's sold his hemp farm, divorced Jessica, and used exotic financial tools to bilk the African clown schools out of every dime they ever had and then parlayed that money into seeding a venture capital firm which helps build companies that sell and distribute, piecemeal, former Soviet Russia's war machine.

Next is a time-lapse series of events, showing him going through his insanely structured life filled with high-priced Italian cars and higher-priced women. Cross-fades of him laughing hysterically and him sobbing in unhinged peals of deepest anguish, all, of course, in front of some sort of stock-trading computer. Several shots of him in a daze in luxurious rooms surrounded by various indescribable sex and/or drug paraphernalia.

The end of the movie will have him meet up with Jessica, by chance. They don't recognize each other. She has dropped her previous lifestyle and has become a high-powered music executive. The movie closes on them having empty, meaningless sex, each focused in the middle distance while Joe Cocker's version of With a Little Help from My Friend plays over Jessica's immaculate $178,000 custom-engineered Bose stereo system.

Calgary

2009-09-22T23:40:00.000-07:00

The entire family went to Calgary this past weekend. Used the Air-miles™, packed the bags with twice the amount of anything we'll need, and three times what we've ever thought of wanting, and took that one hour plane ride the the Texas of Canada.

Now, I mean this in a slightly derogatory way, but only if you're one to take affront to being called brash, loud, and in possession of far more ego than is healthy. I mean, people wear cowboy hats, in public, and not just during Halloween.

There is a very respectable showing of that slightly irksome sticker "Support our Troops" on seemingly every car. Now here I am, getting political, which I try to avoid as I know little about either side and am generally disappointed whenever I get behind one or the other. But "Support our Troops" has that... that strange air of meaning something very important and then meaning nothing at all. Like 'All Natural', 'Neutral Viewpoint' or 'Mainly Bug-free'.

Who doesn't support the men and women who put themselves in harm's way? But how? By voting for officials who will keep putting them in harms way? By sending them gift baskets? By thinking good thoughts? I guess on one side it's a bit... it sounds like the whole bumper sticker thing is made by cynical neo-cons to create a wedge issue, on the other, it certainly makes one remember that there are troops somewhere, representing our interests (hopefully), and trying as best as they can to avoid injury or death. It's good that there are reminders about that.

Wow, I really typed myself onto the fence on that one.

Back to Calgary. Land of the oil barons and conservative politics. Rodeos! Steak! Things vaguely western! To me it's miles and miles of undulating (I think our friends who lived there said it was.. rolling foothills? They just looked like slightly less flat prairies, to me) hills filled with McMansions and hyper efficient highways.

American highways. Those beasts of concrete that take up twelve more lanes than they should and are spaced so far apart that you need a rest area half way through an on-ramp. Maybe you are American, Imaginary Blog Reader, so you know well of what I speak.

In Vancouver, our highway system is cramped, utterly tiny, and painfully congested. It's like the worst of Europe and the worst of LA in a small, rain soaked area of the Pacific Northwest. Whereas most roadway systems in North America have a super fast highway that circles the city and allows for ingress and egress. Vancouver has one tiny highway, which stops short of the city proper, so one has to go through normal roads to get into the city. It's just as hectic and as brain embolism inducing as it sounds. (A happy by product is that the entire Lower Mainland has really excellent population density).

Onto this constellation of asphalt and yellow lines we drove our rental car. We were happy with a subcompact, that's what we drive at home, a little Mazda, just as much as we need, we figure. The Calgarian at the rental company looked at us, our two brood, and upgraded us to a 'full-sized' car, free.

Full-sized certainly is, especially when you are talking domestic cars. We got a Dodge Charger. Which is part muscle car and part 'good lord why is there so much leg room in here do they think we are transporting giraffe-spider hybrids?'.

I grew up with Dukes of Hazzard so the idea of driving a muscle car was kinda thrilling. Massive eighty ton monsters of road. Chunky road slicks! WELDED DOORS! Mrs. Owl didn't take too kindly to the idea of "Daisy Dukes", however.

Those big cars aren't terribly responsive though. I'm used to small city streets and a top speed of, oh, say, 90 km/h (no, I'm not converting it, go look it up, ya dang Yankee). You hit 100, our Protege5 lets us know that things are 'not cool', we hit around 120, and there had better be a swarm of locusts and a monsoon of frogs on our tail because we are going a Certifiably Dangerous Speed. Things shudder. RPMs on the motor are certainly audible. Air keens through the less resilient windows. This is how I'm used to driving.

In the Charger, you move the steering wheel, and just about after you toasted your bagel and got through the trickier bits of the NY Times crossword, there might be in indication that the car has acknowledged your request and is on its way to possibly altering course. One gets the sense that you need a sergent-at-arms or a quartermaster or some other titled position in order to steer it. The use of sextant would not be surprising.

And then I got onto the highway. At some point, while gliding easily along, I glanced at the speedometer, that told me in no uncertain terms that we were going 110, and that, if it wasn't too much trouble, could we get to driving at some point? I punched it up to 120 just to see if I might hear the engine at some point. I think it may have purred. Of course, since I was on an American Style highway, it appeared I was going about 20km/h, in a school zone, through a bit of pudding, in low gravity, while running my car on good-thoughts and tightly wound rubber bands..

So, there are definitely some good things about a Charger. Suicidally fast speeds. Smooth ride. I think at some point I thought I might look pretty rad in a cowboy hat, and saying 'yahooo'.

Ready, Fight!

2009-09-22T00:20:00.000-07:00

I'm part Asian, but where I grew up most of my life, that's pretty much == "10000% asian holy-crap why dont' you have an accent and know kung-karate!? " Asian. My Junior High had, uh, 3 Asians, I think, if we are counting me, which I rarely do.

I moved Grade 10 to some city school. The mullets weren't as rampant, and the 1972 Camaros and '82 corvettes were replaced with cars that were so riced up they made "The Fast & The Furious" vehicles look like your grandma's K-Car. With the beeping reverse. Supras, RX-7s, s2000s, cars that had wheels that were more expensive as my first car.

Oh, and the school was about 90% not-white (where not-white is Indian or Asian (where Asian is Korean, Japanese, Filipino, Chinese (where Chinese is all the way from hard core Honger who comes to school in a Mercedes 500 SL to the CBC who doesn't know Dim Sum from KFC's boneless wings))).

It was a slight adjustment for me.

One of these adjustments was dealing with a school that was about 50 feet from an arcade. For some reason, the kids from Hong Kong were really really really really really good at Street Fighter II. There were two big screen games set up, and two more just plain cabinets. The reigning champ would sit, slumped, with the arrogant Triad gangster air that is hard to describe, and stay there until he was bested.

At some point a dot-matrix printed Street Fighter II Bible was circulated. I kid you not. there were moves and combos and ... just.... Think Game Faqs except more obsessive and crazy.

The moves these kids did were, I daresay, things that most nerds have not seen. Here are things I"ve seen them do:
-freeze Guile (during which you cannot hit him, he's in the middle of a high kick, i think)
-mute the game (yes, by some game combo hackery)
-reboot the game (no, not by reaching on the top of the cabinet)
-turn Dhalsim invisble (this was before the SF version where Dhalsim could go invisible. He couldnt' attack, he just disappeared)
-do the infamous Invisible Throw (Guile would do a Medium throw movement, and even though the opponent was far away, they'd just fall down and take throw damage).

It was a heady time. This was, as far as I can tell, the Asian equivalent of early 80's Breaking Dance Offs. There were strange rituals, like, if you won the first game, you 'gave' the second round to the other player; that is, you played the 2nd round hard, but when the other player was almost dead, you'd just took your hands off the controls. Breaking this ritual was... frowned upon.

Anyhow, that's my story of the Super Awesome Hardcore Street Fighter II I grew up with.

Garage Sale

2009-09-13T23:53:00.000-07:00

It's a strange mutual delusion, garage sales. All you wanna do is get rid of your crap: a 1992 poster of a Chevrolet Corsica; hulking plastic toys that had brief yet rabidly followed cartoon series; candlestick holders that, now that you have kids, are just a trip and mistimed fall to be featured in next month's "Holy Crap What's That Impaled In a Youngster's Skull" Quarterly supplemental; a shag carpet sampler.

We know this stuff is junk. Undeniably, objects that will never ever be used in any capacity. But somehow it seems too useful, or maybe too kitschy (this means ugly, but in a nostalgic way) to just throw in the garbage. This stuff just skirts outside the confines of real junk and earns its place on the Shelf Of Storing.

The Shelf of Storing is that little cubby hole or perfectly situated storage rack in the pantry that would just be great to hold something you'd really need if it wasn't carrying your complete collection of 1981 Hot Wheels and a replacement bulb for an Easy Bake oven. It's something you see every day until you find yourself asking yourself why is it that you have to reach over that box of Slinky's every time you want to get a can of tomatoes?

Garage sales are spurned by that desire to reclaim the Shelf of Storing. That most perfect and ideal spot of storage that, if reclaimed, would make your life as organized and well-run as an Ikea catalogue (Storage & Bin Solutions, p. 872). You'd also start throwing dinner parties, and making all your food from scratch too. Maybe buying a small plot of land just outside the city and doing all your own organic farming...

And yet, somehow, when we see a garage sale, we somehow think we'll discover treasure there, an unrealized wonderiffic find of unbearable value. A baseball card worth millions, a Mongoose BMX, a Van Gogh. We know, somewhere deep down, there's an Antiques Road Show expert just waiting for their moment to shine.

It's a symptom of our own blindness, or a retreading of the phrase "Another man's junk is another man's junk in about 2-3 months or whenever he gets around to having his own garage sale." . We can't be as dull and as stupid as the average Joe. Yet, you know, math never lies, the average Joe is as dumb as the average Joe. Odd how that works.

In other news, I got this totally rad 80's Battlestar Galactica Basestar! Damn, it's sweet. And all for 2 bucks at a garage sale! The guy didn't even know what he had. Hehehehehe.

Victoria

2009-09-01T23:13:00.000-07:00

For the first time, in, well, ever, the Missus and I went out for a night, that is, overnight, without the kids. For those of you without kids, I'm sure you're thinking of one thing, for those with kids, you're thinking what we were thinking, "Uninterrupted sleep!"

Whereas the world often thinks of Vancouver as 'pretty' and 'quaint' (if the world ever thinks of the hamlet of Vancouver, at all), Vancouver is a pit of despair, grime, and abject villainy compared to the capital of British Columbia, Victoria. Named after a German who nevertheless epitomizes Britain, Victoria is a place for, as they say, "the newly wed and the nearly dead". Weddings and pensioners abound.

It's a city that looks like it was painstakingly crafted, brick by brick to be the quaintest, most flower basket festooned city in all of North America. There are little pubs that must've cost a fortune to look 'just right', where 'right' is whatever the prevailing opinion is about how an Irish/Scottish/Whatever pub looks like. There is history too. Of course, in BC, history is anything that's lasted more than 50 years.

It's remarkably safe. The homeless folks are more dread-locked hippy than 'scary and perhaps forgetting some meds' types. There are gardens and hanging baskets and well-painted architectural details. It's difficult, if not impossible to find the 'bad' part of town. I narrowed it down to 'any place that hasn't had a coat of paint in the last 3 months', or 'any street that my wife tells me is 'bad''. It's bewildering.

We went over there for a wedding. One of those stunning affairs peopled by the youthful and brash, those optimistic and idealistic beacons of joy and verve that make you wonder when you ever were that. Damn. Perky. We had become the staid, quiet, and somewhat tired thirty-somethings who watched the wedding with distant, half-remembering smiles. It's odd, going to these things. A bunch of strangers who all know two people very well, or are obligated to know them. It's an ultimate test of mingling, making pleasantries and acquaintance with clerks from Fred Meyer's or bankers from Wickitaw, everyone looking dapper everyone asking the same questions. Usually giving the same answers, come to think of it.

I can barely handle those things. It's an extroverts paradise, and only tolerable to this introvert by partaking in the open bar and by faking it. And there is always the Inner Circle, the groom and bride and all their best friends. The best you can do is try not to be too intrusive as they have their last party as wild kids, unfettered by tragedy and life's small injustices. I always feel a little odd. I feel like I'm taking up a space that maybe could have been taken up by someone closer and more important. Invariably, this is true. But I don't mind being part of the crowd. Why I can' t be part of the crowd while at home, safely away from small talk with strangers, I'll never know.

It wasn't all bad, of course. The Missus had a great time. Victoria is really a great place to visit if you like peace, quiet, and hundreds of years of iron-willed British World Domination reduced to High Tea at the Empress for $55/head. And, if you can believe it, they had their wedding at the Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters. Which, in reality, is some coal magnates hunting lodge/man-castle that blah blah blah, family tragedy, blah blah blah, heirs to the fortune killed or offed or succumbed to dysentery, blah blah blah Canadian Military bought it for a song.

It was no Hearst Castle, mind you, but still, pretty damn awesome. Wood paneling and overprice light fixtures never fail to impress.

There were other niftily nerdy things about our trip.

Oddly enough, our hotel (which wasn't Xavier's School) was situated in some sort of nerd enclave. There were about 4 comic book shops and a Games Workshop, which looked to me to be a D&D... uh.. store? It was pleasant to wander through, and try and recognized old heroes I used to collect, and flinch at the bizarre representations to the female form, and physics defying homages to spandex. And gravity, actually.

There were nice little niches for indie comics that featured artists I had heard of, or thought I'd heard of, and which all made me feel less cool for not really being too interested in it all. The comic shops and whatnot are places where I should feel at home, where, nerd-man-child that I am, should be home at last. Oddly, not so much.

On the way home to the hotel, I stopped by this place, which had pretty much every single toy I had played with or (more likely) toy that my friends had that I coveted. Quite literally in every display were these amazing magic talismen of nostalgia. And they were all pretty reasonable, (like say, 15 bucks for Hocus Pocus). They also had these little art installations, like say, a steampunk AT-AT. Or the Alien from the same movie made out of nuts and bolts.

So there were things for the Missus,and things for me. And during one of our many walks, just wandering around the pretty stores and cobbled streets, I saw the highlight of the entire trip. I think this could be the highlight to any trip, actually, but I'm not sure if seeing him means we were I'm in the dodgy part of town or not.

First Bike

2009-08-23T14:45:00.000-07:00

What was your first bike? I grew up in a largish family, last. This means that while I may have been the 'baby' (a moniker and reputation no self-respecting sibling would cotton to), almost everything I ever had was a hand-me-down. I think, actually, I got my first new NEW bike in my 2nd year of university.

But, back to first bikes. Your very very first bike? What was it? Did you dream about it, have a Sears catalog cutout that you kept under your Star Wars pillow case, know every minutae and every word of the sales copy? Was it a Schwinn ten-speed? A Mongoose BMX? A, heaven forbid, Huffy?

I don't recall ever really wanting anything for an inordinate amount of time (the hope I'd get some newest-fangled thingamadoodle was quashed pretty early and often), and a bike was no exception. I saw BMX Bandits, sure, but I don't think I ever thought of having one of those. I wasn't cool enough or adventurous enough, and besides, turning on the TV to watch Electric Company got me winded.

My first bike was some sort of banana seated ... fixie? Is that what they call them? It had coaster breaks, so you could do wicked skids with them. The tires were a type of cheap foam or solid rubber so you NEVER had a flat tire. Of course, it had all the smoothness a sliding town a gravel road infested with speedbumps on corrugated iron sheet during an earthquake, but that was besides the point. The banana seat made me feel like I was riding a chopper.

The next bike that I can remember, I'm sure I had many hand-me-downs in between, was a 5-speed cruiser that me and my friends called "The Red Elephant". I was 12, 13ish, the Elephant was built for an adult man with an overactive pituitary gland. It had these enormous wheels that I swear would not seem out of place on those turn of the century high wheel bikes. These things turned and it didn't so much roll as MOVE THE EARTH UNDER IT. It was quite easily the least cool thing I had ever owned (which is, well, saying a lot). The plus side was that, since this was during the height of the mountain bike craze (and nobbly tires), and owing to the aforementioned enormous (and, actually, road slick, razor thin wheels), it was harrowingly fast. The route from my house to the elementary was down a street/highway workaround. There is no sidewalk, just a paved shoulder. While it was dangerous, it was super fun to go screaming down that road to school, going indecent speeds at a height that would immediately get me three tickets or a fast track career path if I worked for a medieval sultan.

I don't ride bikes anymore. The thought of getting on one makes me sleepy and the thought of trying to learn all the new lingo makes me almost comatose.

But damn, bikes sure were fun, weren't they?

The Last Time

2009-08-18T23:06:00.000-07:00

Looking at my collection of Autobots in my cubicle (the ones who make Hyperion, if you must know), a re-occurring thought, uh, occurred. We never think about it, but there's always a Last Time for something, right? Say, I used to play with Transformers, but one day, one day it was the very last day I'd ever transform Optimus and make that transforming noise. There's no real sense of occasion, it just stumbles across us, and soon we're listening to "Misty Mountain Top" by Zeppelin and trying to grow a respectable mullet. Optimus forgotten, the rad awesome voice of Soundwave a glimmer of a memory.

And one day, you give up Zeppelin, and move onto Sound Garden, or Ice-T, or Street Fighter II. There are these ephemeral hobbies and interests that take up so much of our world and our time, that shape how we see the world and what we see of it. I don't think that, while in the throes of some wicked Joe Satriani lick or finishing the last panel of a Power Pack comic, that we ever consider that we'll never do it again. We'll never give it the care and attention it demanded from us.

At some point, these past-times become nostalgia, which then become fodder for next year's Michael Bay Breast and BOOM-BOOM ExxxTRAVEGANZA! It's something. I'm not sure if it's sad, per se, but it's evidence of the ever rushing passage of time all around us while we fly fish haphazardly in its waters, assured that we will never move, ignorant of the impermanence.

But easy there, before I get too philosophical and have to write an unpublished polemic on space-time and our reality in it and rise to the assistant district manager at a local fast food chain. This isn't some deep and profound insight. You can never go back home, as they say. True enough. You can never quite watch a 297 pound man jump 6 feet off a top rope and absolutely believe it's real again, you can never get those butterflies while trying to get your car in gear on uphill red light.

But there is a transition from there to here, isn't there? A Last Time.

Except for assembling Hyperion, this robot is fricking sweet.

Richmond Night Market

2009-08-05T18:04:00.000-07:00

thanks to ydhsu for the pic

This past weekend we decided, to hell with curfews, likely meltdowns, a napalm powered cranky toddler with lungs of a robotic screaming dinosaur, we were going out. OUT. As in, out of the home! When it's nighttime! We are a young and semi-but-not-really-free family! We can do whatever the heck we want! Maybe even swear, or eat fast food! Course, we didn't want to go too crazy. It's not like we were going out to the local indie movie festival followed by a Slam Poetry competition and finished by a after-hours rave at a disused grain elevator. But, you know, something semi-exciting!

We settled on the Richmond Night Market. Apparently the largest night market in Canada, which, is, well I'm not sure that's saying all to much. In a country where the weather is lethally cold, malarially humid, or 'meh, you call this summer!?', I'm not sure we can say we lead the charge in Night Market..ing.

Richmond, for those of you who don't know, is an expanse of flat land which goes in every direction as far as the eye can see, or to the mountains, whichever comes first. It's population is overwhelmingly Chinese, even for the Lower Mainland. This is like saying Zimbabwe is overwhelmingly African, even for Africa. Or that parts of America are overwhelmingly armed, even for America. There are parts of Richmond that have, I think, nothing but signs in Chinese. These swaths of the city desperately need an Occidental Town, where people can buy pot roast and overpriced but on the non-legal action side of the law merchandise.

Where was I?

Ah, Richmond Night Market. Where every form of trinket and bauble can be bought, cash, no refunds, 'tax included'. If you're into Hello Kitty or Asian cinema at all, this is the place to be. If you are wondering what people do when they buy commercial-grade 28 slot DVD copiers, well, this is the place for you too. If you are in the market for cheap knockoffs that most likely will disintegrate in your hand if exposed to rain, sunlight, wind, or, you know, use, then come on down!

The entire ground is packed with enterprising souls with a contact in Hong Kong and the ability to set up an outside awning. They have that look of 'it's my father's tent, I just want to go to the mall, but I'll pretend to mind the shop'.

The food fair is where it's at, however all manner of Vietnamese, Korean, Chinese or fusion cuisine you can think of. Dim sum? Got it. Bubble tea? Is there any other kind!? Oddly cut fried potato on a stick? You betcha! Mini-donuts? Why not! It's a place where MSG, adult-onset diabetes, and mild angina get together for a PARTY!

It was a nice get away, if hot. We saw, and those of you who are new parents will giggle in recognition, the sun set for the first time in... well, it felt like years. There were no meltdowns, oddly, and thankfully, enough. The food punishing to the body but awesome. I think we got some trinkets, which have since been lost, tossed, or spontaneously exploded under a stern stare.

K.I.T.T.'s Diary Entry : Day Off

2009-07-15T22:06:00.000-07:00

8:03 AM : Michael has gone to the beach. He told me to "take a load off, you know, just let it all hang out". I'm certain I don't know what that means, and if Michael keeps hitting those donuts, I'm sure he'll know it all too well. Leather jackets do not stretch well.

8:39 AM : Tried a 'car wash'. The machine, some behemoth of a thing, tried to touch me. I've made a note to get my missiles reloaded by the Foundation.

10:21 AM : Michael phoned me on his wristwatch, asked me, "How it was all going, good buddy." That watch is not for small talk. I am not amused.

11:55 AM : Tested my oil slick deployment mechanism. Not far from where Michael was swimming, coincidentally.

12:03 PM : Tried listening to some Bach or Mozart on the local classical music station. It's been replaced by two 'shock jocks' who are terribly interested in a young celebrity's mammary glands. Miffed.

1:44 PM : Feeling... spritely. Clipped a small VW Bug that was going a bit too slow in the fast lane.

2:19 PM : Ran a red light. Ran through a dump truck. Indestructible exterior still working.

4:42 PM : Finally evaded police. Less than 30 dead. This 'letting it all hang out' can be quite bloody. Just have to go swing by the carwash to get the blood off... Oh damn.

Greetings to Invading Alien Empires by Kale Hashling, president, Int'l Quisling Society

2009-07-08T21:21:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Faux Real, for his inspired BLAG idea.

Greetings New Overlords (or Insectoid Hivemind or Robotic Carnivourous Enslavement Franchisers or Bombastic Militaristic Despotic Regime Of Unimaginable Power)!

Well hey there! Didn't think you'd be here so soon. This is a mighty fine planet we got here, it's got rivers and lakes and oceans; forests and jungles and tundras. A vast array of animal and plant species, that, while diminishing at alarming rates, are still pretty impressive. There's not a small amount of rare minerals to be harvested from any manner of buildings and installations. Or, if you so desire, right from the earth's mantle. Yeah, that's right, we still got some right in the rock! How quaint!

Our people are smart and work hard when given the proper incentives. We can survive under a number of conditions, or make suits to do so without slowing down your entire regime and/or empire. Our lack of any substantial telepathic or telekinetic abilities makes us almost a perfect slave race!

Now, I know what you're saying, there's quite a bit of degradation already around here, what with the toxic chemicals and rampant deforestation, the corrosion of the topsoil, the acceleration of greenhouse gases and runaway global warming. But we've only just begun! This planet has hardly reached the devastated wasteland of a dry burned-out husk of a world yet! People aren't dying immediately when being exposed to our star's radiation! An animal can live it's entire lifespan out in the open air without choking on particulate matter! It's almost pristine, on the scale of things.

Sure, sure, you can see our innumerable number of civil wars and turf battles and small scale battles bespeaking of unimaginable cruelty, vice and evil; but that's just you not looking at the opportunity the right way! Well, if you are in any way warlike, and let's face it, you can't get even three parsecs in this galaxy without taking to the good ol' laser blaster a little bit, well, we can serve as ample fodder. We have initiative and bring a certain imagination to our killing. What you see as barbaric we see as plucky and inspired! And if you aren't so much into wielding the good ol' space destroyer, as it were, well, every highly advanced civilization needs their guards, am I right? Those poor saps you throw at enterprising rebel uprisings or marauding space pirates. We die quietly but not without a fight, as I'm sure you've noticed from your own... experiences.

But hey! Look at me blabbering on about a planet I'm sure you know quite well. Let me say what I can offer to you. A certain amount of respect, for one. I respect the natural order of things. That is, a race which can fire mini black holes and arm all their infantry with high energy particle-beam cannons probably has a right to rule over us puny humans with our nuclear warheads and evangelical TV stations. Secondly, I know the people, it's customs. And, even if you are planning on wiping our memories or implanting devices to make us little more than very delicate robots, I'll have you know I'm well versed in what a human body can and cannot take. Say, for instance, humans cannot walk through molten lava, strange, but true!

I'm not asking for much. A small city, maybe, a few hundred of my own slaves, perhaps.

And, if it's not asking too much, if you could take just a little longer when torturing or killing Sam Anderson, branch manager for the Gap down the street, I'd really appreciate it.

Car Names That Never Made It

2009-07-02T12:20:00.001-07:00

I have, it must be said, all the knowledge about auto-vehicular petrol-powered combustion-engine carriages as one who might have been paying attention elsewhere (for the life of me, I can't think of what) when Manly Interests were passed out. I like muscle cars, and Cars That Go Needlessly Fast, as much as the next guy, but I'll be damned if I know what a cam is, or why it has to be dual or overhead. This, however, has not stopped my friend cheesoning from recommending a topic about cars.

1987 Chrysler Kamikazee (Station Wagon)- Thinking that it was the culture that was drawing American consumers to Honda's and Toyotas. Liking the idea of a 'divine wind' moving family units about, executives greenlit this car line immediately before it was caught by an intern.

2001 Honda Ascend (12 mpg SUV) Featured real time NYSE ticker, PDF delivery of Fast Company, Business 2.0, and Red Herring, and self-inflating tires.

1975 Ford Unassailable Bastion (5 mpg 389 hp Sedan) 100% American Pig Iron with a 300 gallon gas tank. Touted to go 1500 miles between fill-ups.

1959 Mercury Victory (Wagon) Designed to never ever, ever, ever, ever break down.

1994 Yamaha Breakneck (motorbike) A competitor to the Ninja.

2008 Lincoln Bull (SUV) With over 9000 safety features it was posited to be uncrashable.

1978 Ford Super Pinto (sport sedan) Like the pinto, but with a much larger gas tank for long hauls.

1983 Harley Davidson Traction Their first foray into super fast sport bikes.

Creatucturing!

2009-06-23T11:21:00.000-07:00

My workgroup asked me to write an office-buzzword compliant email. Er, for fun, I hope.

I’d like to kick-start a bluesky iniative to start an end-to-end process re-imagineering of how we do our client-centric enterprise software deployments. There’ll be no gold-plating at this webinar. Nothing but down to the bone, boots on the grounds, eyes on the level thinking that’ll paradigm shift how we do our outside the box creative restructuring (creatucturing!).

Think of it as a way to touch base with all stakeholders, so we can go forward while keeping everyone in the loop without having to run a flag up the pole. A solid group meeting where we can all re-integrate our pro-active thought showers and our reflective extra-norma revolution memes.

This is a heads up.

At this moment in time it’s just a call to arms to get us all singing from the same sheet. If we really want to push the envelope and get 360 degree thinking involved in our dynamic work flow processes, this is the only way to get all our ducks in a row.

If we find some vertical shift-progressions to be taking a wide arc in our time box, we can, of course, take it offline. It’s just a time to ping and incent everyone to really drill down and delayer our improvement portfolio.

Borrowed Culture

2009-06-16T05:02:00.000-07:00

I was at my friend's baby's birthday. Those bastions of parenthood where nobody is having a riotously good time but most everyone is having a pleasant time and small talk is kept to the same subjects and nobody imbibes too much alcohol. Good times for parents comes down to how much you can proffer your child to someone else and perhaps relax your brain muscles and worrying bones for a little while. The plus side is that the blissfully unaware toddler/baby neophytes think that chasing after alarmingly fast and danger-oblivious children is fantastic fun, at least for the 1-2 hours they do it, so it's really a win-win.

Anyhow, my friend had some memorabilia from the company they work for, from when they had business in India. Let's call it MegaCorp. So MegaCorp has an India branch, and they use a tiny cricket bat to symbolize this. That is, cricket = India. Which got me thinking to how so many cultures take various things from other cultures, and over time, decide that this borrowed thing is really The One Thing Of Which We Are All Very Proud Of And Certainly Not From Another Country. Like, say, England and tea, or curry. India and pretty much anything from England. Philippines and corned beef and spam (yes, nice choices there). Finland and tango (another head scratcher). Japanese and baseball. Swedes and hockey. French and jazz. Russia and ballet.

It's a weird amalgam where fierce national loyalty adheres to something completely foreign. Maybe it's a testament to how meaningless nationalism is, or what a strange illusion it all can be. I remember a discussion with a coworker and talking about curry, they quite strongly identified with it, him being English and all, this made less than no sense. But I suppose there is little sense in fierce loyalties. Doubly so if they are mixed with nationalism.

But I repeat myself.

Closet Trekkie

2009-06-11T21:33:00.000-07:00

During a backyard chat with one of our neighbours, the new Star Trek movie came up. Me, being a resident nerd, was naturally prodded as to my undying excitement and unfettered joy regarding it. I'm not a huge Trek fan. I watched The Next Generation with my family when it first came out, it was like Family Ties except with less cunning and more phasers. I skipped most of the other series except for a bit of Deep Space Nine, and then only because it had Hawk from Spencer for Hire (he was one bad ass mofo (possibly more than Tubbs)).

So, obviously, in revealing all this, I suppose to the average normal (non nerd), I am a Trekkie. But us nerds know what a real Trekkie is. They have memorabilia, they go to conventions, they know at least a few passing phrases in Klingon. Not that there is anything wrong with that, but I'm not a Trekkie.

In any event, one of my neighbours looked at me slyly and said, "You're a, a 'Trekkie'", as if accusing me of harbouring a harmless if slightly disfiguring form of hepatitis. She has this light European accent, and said it with such pitying derision, I felt my cultural wherewithal being challenged; although, to be honest, I've been upfront to my neighbours about my utter lack of cultural knowledge, a ponderous adversity to culling any sort of zeitgeist or being hip with who the Algonquin [sic] Five [sic] are, and why they are important, and why the name just makes me think of the Council of Elrond. Nevertheless, I will not be accused of something I'm not.

It's a cross, that us nerd, us introverted elite, bear. Yes, we are socially awkward and avoid any undue social gatherings. Yes we have odd and vaguely childish preoccupations which, if you really cornered a normal and asked them about it, they'd have to confess it was pretty rad. But we like to be derided and ostracized for things we really are into.

We take an odd pride, I think, in these impolite and outlandish hobbies. It's not that someone cosplaying Babylon 5 is without social awareness. It's not that two people re-enacting the Black Knight from Monty Python and the Holy Grail think it's hilarious to the general public. We love it in spite of the normals. In spite of being called odd and weird and chronically virgin. In spite of being pitied and pidgeon-holed and generally laughed at.

Like, I'm terribly into PC gaming, or odd web comics, or software engineering practical theory (yes, yes, I know, oxymoron). I don't mind being avoided at cocktail parties for this. I don't mind my parents trying to veer any conversation in polite company in a wide berth around said subjects. I do, however, take umbrage with dealing with the normals baggage about stuff I'm not particularly into. I think that's fair.

It was hard to convince this neighbour. I decided in the end it didn't really matter, a nerd is a nerd is a nerd, I'm sure they think. Besides, anyone who knows that the serial number for the Enterprise was NC-1701 isn't entirely innocent of Trekkie-hood.

Update On The Brood

2009-06-01T18:10:00.000-07:00

Owl Jr. is now 4 months, so he really doesn't have a lot of interesting things going on. He eats, he sleeps, he evacuates his bowels. He is of the age where he has just discovered his hand, so most of the time he's sitting in his seat, watching his hand move in front of his face like a stoner, and you just know he's thinking 'Whoaaa, did you guys see that? It just like-- whoooaa there it goes again.' His expressions are limited to glee, probably from passing gas; devious scheming, I don't know why; and his usual expression of deep, deep depression. Yeah, I don't know what's up either.

Owlet has become more vociferous and independent as she's gotten older. She's now the ripe old age of 2 years, 9 months. She absolutely must do everything herself, even the things that might get her maimed or killed... especially those things. I try and keep her from doing those things. Mostly.

I cede to simple, non-lethal things she wants to do herself.

After getting her ready to bed one night, I'm carrying her to the bathroom for a tooth brushing and she says "ME WALK! ME WALK!" then proceeds into a semi-meltdown. I drop her faster than Fox drops a promising and innovative new TV series. We're halfway down (a very short) hallway, and she insists on taking a few steps to the doorway of where we started and only then walk to the bathroom. In my mind I start to think "What are you, a chil-- ohright."

She has few silly phrases. These might be sacharrine on honey on sugar sweet, so, read at your expense:

On seeing Molly (the dog) curled up sleeping, she'll say, "Molly's a circle!"
Anytime she sees something that she knows she's not allowed to do, she'll get super expressive and say, "When me older, me do that!". I was cutting vegetables for dinner, she said, quite eerily, "When me older, me have knives." Uhm, kay.
I must use this phrase more than I think I do, because she's started saying, 'Oh good LOWD', quite often.
When stalling to postpone bedtime, she'll exclaim "Me need water! Me need crackers!", etc. She was caught in the act of just making stuff up when one night she said, "Me need... uhmmmm something..."
If you ask her the time, it's always 'Six twelve'.
The bottom lip of pout comes out at the SLIGHTEST provocation.
Thank god she has a fervent imagination. If she is really upset, or near meltdown, all I have to do is point somewhere, make up an animal, a colour, a name, and say what it's doing. For some reason she utterly believes me, and looks over, and starts chatting with it. For example, "Owlet, look over there, it's a blue elephant, and he's got a banana cake, he's asking if you want some." Man, imagination bordering on hallucination must be aweseome.

Mr. Steven's Thoughtful Consideration On How To Spend His Day Off

2009-05-16T14:46:00.000-07:00

Mr. Steven's is the main protagonist and narrator of the most excellent book, "Remains of the Day". It might help you to think of Anthony Hopkins at his most restrained and polite while you read this.

It has come to my attention that while it was, indeed, lovely to spend time in Coventry last year, it being the home of Eliot and being a wonderful metropolis still possessed of small-village England that, I think you'll agree, is essential in this age, it might perhaps be time to reconsider how I might spend my next sabbatical.

There's something to be said about the roar of the engine, don't you agree? Twenty First Century barrelling down upon the gentlemen of England, and indeed, the gentleman's gentleman. One should be steadfast in ones ways, to be sure, but there's something to be said for foresight, and the courage to embrace approaching trends, no matter how low they might seem at first.

We can't all keep our desires lashed against the very idea of progress, as the life of Lord Dufferin in Punjab can attest. And I being of very modest mental gifts, can only shift with the coming seas. I might be wrong, of course, nothing would surprise me less than if I found myself in error, but I do believe, in whatever humble capacity I can do so, that the upcoming
M-M-M-Monster Truck Rally Motor Sport Spectacular and Hooters Pageant 2009 might be a worthwhile event to attend.

I'm of the age that I do not need to explain myself, but, as my employer, I think you should know where I'm going and why, even if where I'm going is the only place on the entire Island that has over 10,000 horsepower of pure adrenaline filled edge-of-your-seat excitement. It might be hard for you to understand, and indeed I think I might take some time digesting it myself, how a wet t-shirt contest to determine the 'perkiest' Hooters waitress in South Wales might further my progression and growth as an Englishman and a humble subject of her Majesty.

It's a question that puzzles me but is not, I think, outside of my grasp, should I pursue it long enough.

Newsletter Meeting

2009-05-07T05:07:00.000-07:00

The work newsletter I've been writing for had their editorial board meeting a few weeks ago. I volunteered to attend; the horrors of meetings long since worn with time and ignorance.

Maybe it was morbid curiousity, maybe it was the unreasonable belief that I'd some how come out of my shell and start contributing and brainstorming and gesturing manically towards trenchant Power Point slides. Maybe the solitude of staring at a computer screen for weeks on end had gotten to me. Maybe I was hoping that I'd enter in a smoke-filled room thick with the heady brew of cross-talking think-tanking and creative outbursts the likes of which haven't been seen since Hollywood did their impression of a New York newsroom.

Ah, I know why I really went. It was to meet people who had almost certainly actually read my articles. I mean, they'd have to, in the course of doing layout of editing or whatever it is that editorial boards do. And sure, maybe it'd only be in passing, or by accident, or just to ensure I hadn't mentioned how the entire world banking system is controlled by a race of hyper-intelligent fruit flies with sinister intentions.

Because on the other side of this keyboard here, furiously torturing metaphors and constructing complex barely intelligible sentences with hope, spit, and bailing wire, there's very little feedback. At the newsletter, there's almost none. I get a little kind note from whoever I submit to, and that's pretty much it. My work group sometimes comments, tells me how it's not the shittiest thing that has every molested their eyes, but you know, they pretty much have to say something.

At Periodically.org High Quality Thrice Inspected Original ASCIII Nettube Products I get the occasional comment, but mainly am egged on by the Google Followers (if you read regularly, and haven't added yourself, er, here's the hint).

There's always that bit of madness and neurosis that inhabits every hack that compels them to write. But the idea that actual people read it, and maybe don't shut down their web browser and kick their computer for assaulting their verbal brain centers, well not immediately afterwards anyways, is the drug that keeps one writing.

So, that's why I went, I think.

It went as expected, everyone really quiet since none of us work with each other on a regular basis, everyone being overly polite and no one making too many hard decisions. This is how I imagine every meeting to go, actually. It was pleasant, though, to see the faces of the other contributors and editors and whatnot. I felt like I wasn't just writing off 500 words and sending off to the ether.

And it might have been my imagination, but I think I may have gotten the faintest glimmer of recognition from some of them, as if they may have remembered that I had written an article for every letter since it had been revitalized. There was no back slap and the jocular handshake of journalistic bon homie, nothing of that sort. But I wasn't greeted as a total stranger. I guess not all meetings are bad.

A Fate Worse Than Death

2009-05-04T05:10:00.000-07:00

So I've been added to a Facebook spam list by one of my former classmates from that YA fiction class. It's related spam, anyways, Creative Things Going On Aboot Town That Are In Someway Related To Him. At least, that's how I read it. And maybe it's not a spam list, but when you send an invitation out to 121 'close' friends it's hard to feel like the invite was really personalized, you know?

Anyways, I was invited to a fund raiser for a literary magazine I'd never heard of. Not that I know of many literary mags. And I'm pretty sure the mark of a good lit mag is that no one has heard of it. Street cred, as I understand.

There was a nagging part of me that told me I should probably attend. Images of hanging out like Hemingway with all his writerly friends, discussing... well, whatever writers discuss, Post-Modernism, Derrida, liver cirrhosis. I had in my verdant imagination an idea of a culturally rich group of peers all riffing off each other. Discussing meaning and plot and illusion and intention. I tried to silence that ever present pessimist in me who knew that it'd just be a place for all the young hip cats to hang out and be ironic and possibly 'hook-up' with each other. Occam's Aftershave, "Given a set of possible and wildly wonderful reasons for a group to exist, the reason most likely is hooking-up".

But, yes, well, I'm an idealist. It perhaps helps that I keep myself socially sequestered from most of society most of the time. This keeps me from reality and all it's rude awakenings.

So, in a move that I'll ponder over for years to come, I decided to go.

Peer-something something! Creative co-working.. thing. There's a knot in my stomach though. A thick, hairy knot covered in razor-wire and small, shaped explosive charges: I Am Not Cool Enough. This will surprise no one who visits this blog or who has had halting, embarrassingly stilted conversations with me.

I was a Science nerd in undergrad. Arts undergrads were that much cooler, and Fine Arts undergrads were the coolest of the cool. I think the certainty of under/unemployment creates an aura of mystery and danger, don't you? Anyhow, that's who'd be at this thing. Fine Arts undergrads. People who see films, not movies. People who use the term 'slam' when discussing poetry, and think that words should not only be read, but spoken. Pall Malls, I'm sure, are smoked for their sheer irony. Same goes for Pabst beers. It would be a den of meta-ironic post-modernist pseudo-faux hipsters. A DEN, I say.

Going there would be a fate worse than death. I came to that clear conclusion the closer and closer I came to the butchershop-converted-to-art-space.

And I came close, I came within viewing distance of the Den of Hipster. But I could go no further. They were not my tribe. I was not drunk enough. I certainly was not nearly cool enough.

If it was group of nerds doing a late night showing of Robocop 2, maybe. If it was a gaggle of programmers discussing the futility of dynamic languages used by heterogenous coworkers with varied coding ability, I could grit my teeth and bear it. But, this. This was too much.

I'm glad I know my limits. And I'm even more glad that I went home straight away. Serves me right for answering spam.

Sentences That Imply Their Opposites

2009-04-28T09:03:00.000-07:00

As usual, I rely on my friends and random commenters for my topics, for I am weak in imagination and possess a paucity of originality not seen since Hollywood discovered the Sequel.

This week's idea came from metamonk. I can't link to him since he has no web presence to speak of. No real presence either, now that I think of it. I imagine him to be the sort who knows all about high energy radio waves and how much concrete you'd need to go 'unnoticed'. He's also the sort, although he's never said it, who's quite comfortable using the phrase 'off the grid'.

This is what happens when you spend the most formative years of your life reading books on espionage, apparently.
Onto the topic: Sentences That Imply Their Opposites

I don't want to be mean but...
I'm not in it for the money...
Comic book collecting isn't just for kids and 40 year old virgins who live in their parents basements, you know.
This won't hurt a bit.
Far be it for me to suggest a change, but...
It's not you, it's me.
Normally I don't watch that show, but I was flipping through the channels and...
I'm pretty slow to anger.
I'm not one to notice looks, usually.
I don't pay attention to celebrity news.
Man, I hate how cars are such status symbols now.
Hey, before you head out home, can I talk to you for just a minute?
I'm not a violent man.
Strip clubs are so lame.
I only read the classics.
Barry Manilow? My mom must've forgotten that CD.

Enthusiasm

2009-04-24T05:03:00.000-07:00

Joe Smith, the head administrator here, is leaving, after many years of faithful service. I have only one recollection of him, which I squeezed for all it was worth to write a decent column for our newsletter. Yes, he actually did do this.

Enthusiasm is something we all aspire to have, in some way. It keeps work fresh, coworkers fired up, and adds a bit of pep when your mind wants desperately to go on cruise control.

Not all the time, of course; no one wants to be the perpetually perky upstart who needs 37 cups of coffee and 2 hours of Elmo just to get out of bed in the morning. The sort who causes everyone to roll their eyes and start speaking sarcasm as their second language.

But some enthusiasm, even the odd outburst of Bright-Eyed and Bushy-Tailedness is good. Even welcome.

And if there is one word that best describes Joe Smith to me, it'd be 'enthusiasm' (the good kind). There's one instance that comes to mind, where he had to get us rank-and-file enthused.

I mean, there are many ways to rally the troops, as it were. You could stand up and spout off an endless series of speeches that, while perhaps entertaining to some, don't exactly inspire. You could send out craftily worded emails with clever clipart; which would entertain a number of people, maybe not for the reasons intended, and it too would fail to inspire.

Or you could, if you had the moxie and, dare I say, gumption for it, don a super hero outfit, have a comic made of you, and call yourself Captain Positive! That, I'd put to you, inspires far more enthusiasm than anything else.

I didn't even see his transformation in person. I only heard about it, read the comic, and saw pictures. But, even one degree of separation from such a gutsy display of enthusiasm, I was impressed. How could you not be? It's pretty much the definition of 'giving 110%'. It's all the staid corporate phrases broken down and made into something real and applicable -- in the form of ill-fitting spandex and a motorcycle helmet, I'll grant you -- but pretty darn neat, all the same.

And now that he's off, possibly back to the land of Oil and Cow, he's leaving us with that image, that burned-in-the-retina image of a administrator hell-bent on getting, and giving the best to his staff. A man with no compunction for ceremony. A man charged with a hefty dose of enthusiasm. A real Captain Positive!