Monthly Archives: June 2009

Feather Fountain Pen

Feather fountain pen

Pat and Jen bought me this feath­er foun­tain pen set from their hon­ey­moon to Europe. It comes from an Italian sculp­ture store, Fabris Giuliana in Venice, Italy.

Feather fountain pen writing

The nib is super fine; I don’t think I’ve ever owned a foun­tain pen with such a small nib, which is per­fect, because I tend to have small hand­writ­ing. You can’t even tell which direc­tion the stroke is going. So far it writes a lit­tle rough and scratchy, but with enough use, the nib will break in to my writ­ing style.

I’ve always enjoyed writ­ing. Not just the con­cept of putting ideas into more a tan­gi­ble medi­um, but the act of writ­ing itself, whether it’s on a key­board by night, or flow­ing lines on a sheet of paper.

Summer House Show with Shane Watt and Jesse Dangerously

House show invitation, featuring Shane Watt and Jesse Dangerously

Update: Sign up for the Facebook event!

Attention Ottawa peo­ple! I’m hav­ing an indie music con­cert at my house this sum­mer1. That’s right, it’ll be an inti­mate night of folk and rap songs with Shane Watt and Jesse Dangerously. Remember these two from the con­cert I went to ear­li­er this year, where this awe­some and impromp­tu col­lab­o­ra­tion hap­pened:

You also may have read about Jesse in an Ottawa Citizen arti­cle last month, or seen Shane per­form­ing with Krista Muir over the last few years. Well, I want­ed to see both these artists per­form again, so I invit­ed them to my house. Not only will it be a night of authen­tic music (with anoth­er col­lab­o­ra­tion, I’ve been told!), but there will be free ice cream, and you’ll get to meet my cat, with whom you’ll fall in love2. Shane has also hint­ed that he might bring a spe­cial guest for the night. So come and meet the musi­cians, sup­port local Canadian tal­ent, and have a fan­tas­tic time.

  1. Click the pic­ture above to down­load the invi­ta­tion. []
  2. No, you can­not take her home. []

Strip Club Experiences

It’s been a long time since I’ve been to a strip club. The co-work­ers of my first job, along with the pres­i­dent of the com­pa­ny, were the ones took me to my first. They made it a point to “ini­ti­ate” me when they found out I had nev­er been. I still look back on that mem­o­ry fond­ly, because I was so young and green, and they want­ed to get me over my inex­pe­ri­ence.

But it was nev­er some­thing I did with any fre­quen­cy. You always look at those guys, seat­ing by them­selves at the head of the table with a beer in hand, think­ing, “Is this bet­ter than what you have at home?”

After all, strip clubs are nev­er real­ly about the girls. It’s about being out with your friends, when your par­ents think you’re at a movie1. They’re like con­certs. You could sit at home and lis­ten to a CD with stu­dio qual­i­ty sound, but there’s some­thing dif­fer­ent about the atmos­phere of a live expe­ri­ence.

It’s easy to grow past the appeal of strip­pers though. There’s no per­son­al­i­ty there. Even Playboy mod­els have likes and dis­likes. The fur­thest a strip club goes is by say­ing, “Here’s Porsche, and she used to be an air­plane atten­dant”.

Don’t get me wrong; I love the female fig­ure. But there’s no appeal in a strip­per.

Continue read­ing “Strip Club Experiences”…

  1. Some of them had ring­tones set for their home num­bers, and just the ring would set off a round of teenage spite []