May 30, 2007

A Weekend with Darren

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I had Darren over from Toronto for the week­end. We were going to do a movie marathon at the the­atre — three in a day — but the movies all sucked. Disturbia? Georgia Rule? Please. Instead, I bought the first sea­son of Six Feet Under, and we fin­ished the roughly 11 hour sea­son over two days. Now I can re-watch it with Bronwen and lend it to Pat. To be hon­est, I’d seen up to the sec­ond sea­son before, but I was too stoned to remem­ber most of it.

Thumbnail: Air-tight tea container

Thumbnail: Chai tea

Darren also gave me a nice tea con­tainer. It’s rather large, since I buy my tea 50mg at a time, but bet­ter too big than too small. He also got me some chai tea, con­sid­ered a well­ness blend. When I asked him what for, he couldn’t give me a rea­son. I love gifts for no reason.

We shared our tat­too ideas, and his was the Chinese char­ac­ter for love on his back. Darren and Bronwen are the some of the few peo­ple I can talk openly with about love. We’re such hope­less roman­tics. We tell each other that we’ll never be mar­ried, not to be self-depracating, but to be hon­est with our­selves. We have our ideals, and we’ll never set­tle for any­thing less. It’s com­fort­ing to know that we’re not alone in our quixotic beliefs.

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August 11, 2005

An Odd Mood Lately

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I spend my time squar­ing away every­thing in my room so that I’m com­fort­able enough to write. The extra cables are gone, as well as the ran­dom receipts and bus trans­fers that some­how end up on the car­pet. My mir­rors are all in place, mak­ing the room seem twice as big, but I when I look I only see myself, slouched com­fort­ably in my chair, hood over my head. Even Dolly has won­dered in to lay her­self flat on the empty floor. By the time I’m done clean­ing, I’m at a loss for all the things I’ve been try­ing to get into well struc­tured paragraphs.

A new episode of Trailer Park Boys is play­ing on Showcase, and I’m watch­ing it with the sound off because too much infor­ma­tion would ruin the fourth sea­son, some­thing I’m deter­mined to see in order from the begin­ning. Ricky’s in a high school, com­pletely out of place as a thirty-something man in shop class try­ing to make some hash or grow some weed or har­vest some kind of nar­cotic, and this only adds to my amusement.

I’ve been let­ting my hair grow out, à la Matt Heafy in the video for Pull Harder On The Strings Of Your Martyr. Somehow, I’ve only now dis­cov­ered that my hair nat­u­rally grows towards the front, and by brush­ing it for­ward, it still looks respectable when I haven’t had it cut in a month and a half.

I’ve been in an odd mood lately. Thoughts branch off in my mind, but noth­ing seems solid enough to fol­low through. Inspiration always comes the day after today.

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July 1, 2005

I’m Going Back To Basics

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With work hours, gam­ing with (or against) John, and extra-curricular com­puter activ­i­ties in most of my free time, my right arm is devel­op­ing a reoc­cur­ring ran­dom ail­ment. Some days it’s a pinch­ing, some days it’s a numb­ness, some days it’s a weak­ness. I know that they’re all bad signs, and I’ve been stretch­ing reg­u­larly (the exer­cises that Loo showed me), but I can’t really seem to give up my com­puter time. I never under­stood why she wouldn’t take a break from her mas­sage ther­apy prac­tice, even though it was bust­ing up her wrists, but now I do.

I have the entire long-weekend to write, but it’ll be in a water-logged note­book get­ting close to retire­ment, to take some stress off my arm. I’ve had this note­book for over five years now, but the wear has long started to show.

The orig­i­nal plan was to head to John’s cot­tage for the long-weekend, but it turns out that it would be almost 12 hours of trav­el­ing, which isn’t even worth it if I took an extra day off. Trolley went home for the week­end, so I’ve got the house to myself. There are some Canada Day activ­i­ties going on, but recent deal­ings with bull­shit peo­ple have left me anti-social.

I’ll also have the chance to watch the first sea­son of Battlestar Gallactica, which Jeff thought­fully gave me at the house­warm­ing party. I’ve been extremely impressed by what I’ve seen so far. Most of the camera-work, even the scenes in space, are hand­held. It’s gives the entire show that reality-tv feel, as if we were inno­cent observers stand­ing on board the ship. The music is beau­ti­fully tribal, as opposed to the dated orches­tral scores of most other sci-fi series. Especially well-written are the char­ac­ters in the crew; alco­holics, can­cer vic­tims, boot­leg­gers, but most of all, they’re human.

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March 12, 2005

Books, Games, TV, Movies

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I haven’t been able to get into any­thing in the last lit­tle while. Keeping myself occu­pied has been dif­fi­cult. There are dis­trac­tions every­where, and I don’t think this will end until I move.

I’d really like to get into a book, but I’m never in the mood for what I have avail­able. I’ve decided to take a break from Thus Spoke Zarathustra, which is why the Zarathustra ses­sions are on hold. I zeal­ously read it when I was search­ing for a greater mean­ing to the prob­lems I was going through at the time, but now I’d pre­fer to read some­thing that’s eas­ier to get through. I still have my copy of Doctor Zhivago that Christie gave me, but I would need to be in a cer­tain cul­tural mood (i.e. Russian) to enjoy it, and I’ve read enough Russian lit­er­a­ture in the last five years to keep me sat­is­fied for the next lit­tle while. I’d like to start Moby Dick again (and pos­si­bly even fin­ish it this time), but I want to be a lit­tle more set­tled in my life before I try read­ing such an epic again. I’d try to fin­ish the Story Of O, but I gen­er­ally try to stay away from hard­core erotic lit­er­a­ture when I’m on the bus or before I go to sleep. I’m not in the mood for sci-fi right now, which is too bad, because John got me a copy of The Butlerian Jihad a few years ago at Christmas, one of the only thought­ful gifts I’ve ever recieved from him. After read­ing Tigana I can’t get into any other fan­tasy books, because they all seem shal­low and cheesy in com­par­i­son. I’m in the mood for some­thing mod­ern, so maybe I’ll go to Chapters and pick up a copy of The Stone Diaries.

There aren’t any decent games to get into at the moment. I don’t com­pletely agree with the new match­mak­ing poli­cies intro­duced in the 1.17 patch of Frozen Throne, so I don’t play on battle.net any­more. Usually it’ll be a tower map against John, or a big free-for-all with Trolley and Aaron, but noth­ing com­pared to how addicted I was to Starcraft or TFC. I also know bet­ter than to get into some­thing like World Of Warcraft if I want to retain any sem­blance of an actual life. It’s tragic to not be able to play what could eas­ily be one of the most sig­nif­i­cant games of the next decade, but I’m not will­ing to take that risk.

There isn’t any TV I can get into lately either. I’m wait­ing for the fourth sea­son of Trailer Park Boys to come out on DVD. I’ve watched the first sea­sons of Arrested Development and Clone High over and over again. I’m wait­ing for Trolley to recieve the first three sea­sons of Six Feet Under to come in through Zip.ca before watch­ing it. I got half-way through the sec­ond sea­son with Louise, but it started to get point­lessly depress­ing. Maybe this is just in con­trast with shows like Trailer Park Boys and Arrested Development, where peo­ple who are placed in the worst sit­u­a­tions still man­age to keep their chins up and their hopes high.

The only thing that has been able to keep me occu­pied is music, which has been com­ing in at a reg­u­lar pace. After hear­ing Cochise by Audioslave, I wasn’t too impressed with what has become the after­math of both Soundgarden and Rage Against The Machine breakups. Perhaps this is due to the fact that I’ve always been on the Nirvana side of the Cobain vs. Cornell debate. Some may think that grunge died with the dis­so­lu­tion of Soundgarden, but Nirvana fuck­ing started it all, mock Pixies band or not. In any case, my first impres­sion of Audioslave’s sound was that it was flat and repet­i­tive. What else can be expected from a bassist known for mim­ic­k­ing the main gui­tar riff in flag­ship songs like Bulls On Parade and People Of The Sun? I had been lis­ten­ing to Audioslave’s Shadow Of The Sun from the Collateral sound­track for two weeks now, but it was only two days ago that it really hit me. And yet I’ve been going through so much music lately, that the song becomes as sig­nif­i­cant as any another I’ve decided to keep.

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December 20, 2004

Trailer Park Awesome

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I was plan­ning on writ­ing some­thing else, but had the sug­gen urge to con­fess that I was watch­ing Trailer Park Boys with four other guys yes­ter­day and it was the Christmas spe­cial where Jono is all preppy and Randy is giv­ing hand­jobs for cheese­burg­ers before he becomes assis­tant super­in­ten­dent, when Bubbles is sit­ting with his present in his lap given to him by his par­ents before they left him when he was young, and Ricky tells him to open it because they’re his fam­ily, so I started to cry but no one noticed, and I can’t stop think­ing about how fuck­ing stu­pid it is, and I won­der if any­one ever believes me or thinks I’m doing it for atten­tion or what­ever because it makes no fuck­ing sense to me.

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May 28, 2004

Train 48

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There are three rea­sons I watch Train 48:

  1. Zack gets into the most hilar­i­ously fucked-up situations
  2. Krista Sutton in busi­ness attire (even though her hair is sorta stupid)
  3. Only losers watch Train 48
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February 19, 2003

The Day Has Been Bright And Warm

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I spent the week­end at Trolley’s place and had a great time. We just hung out, played Gamecube, and watched some movies. I’m not sure if I over­stayed my wel­come, but I’m sure that any good host is able to blur that fine line. It’s good to have another friend that I can con­nect with. Wheaties and Ian went ski­ing at Tremblant, and although I was invited, I felt like I wasn’t pre­pared to spend over $100 on a lift ticket with rentals.

Trolley also intro­duced me to Crank Yankers, a hilar­i­ous show on Comedy Central. The con­cept of the show is that peo­ple make crank calls, and both the roles of caller and reciever are played out using pup­pets. The crank calls are usu­ally very orig­i­nal though, some­times involv­ing a third party (such as a mother pick­ing up the phone while her son is call­ing about a penis enlarger). Everything is very well done, and the actors are able to impro­vise their lines with per­fect pre­ci­sion depend­ing on what an unwit­ting par­tic­i­pant says. My favourite
series of crank calls are by Spoonie Love, the res­i­dent playa (played by SNL’s Tracey Morgan). Sometimes he’ll call a news­pa­per to place a clas­si­fied ad, and his mes­sage will involve bust­ing a dou­ble hor­i­zon­tal on someone’s ass.

Thom lent me his Pantera DVD, 3 Vulgar Videos from Hell. The music hasn’t been that great, but the behind-the-scenes and con­cert footage is good. It’s also mes­mer­iz­ing to see the con­fi­dence that Phil Anselmo exudes at the con­certs, the way Danko Jones or Kid Rock seem to in their music videos.

I was awak­ened by Dolly scratch­ing at my sheets this morn­ing. As soon as I lifted them up, she went under­neath and tried to sleep on my stom­ach. Unfortunately, my thin frame didn’t pro­vide much of a foun­da­tion, and she slid to one side, but even­tu­ally fell asleep there any­way. It’s the first time she has been com­fort­able enough to sleep under the sheets, instead of beside my head as usual.

I stum­bled across the site of an intel­li­gent girl who writes about things in rela­tion­ships not com­monly dis­cussed, and who hap­pens to inhabit the same city as I do. I enjoy the pol­ish and depth that her edi­to­ri­als have, but I think it’s her open­ness that I can appre­ci­ate most. It’s always fas­ci­nat­ing to find out a female opin­ion on some of the more taboo sex related sub­jects, instead of the opin­ion which other guys believe they know.

The entire Columbia Space Shuttle inci­dent has made me feel like we’re still very prim­i­tive in our explo­ration meth­ods, and that we should sim­ply leave well enough alone until we’re ready. It’s like we’re try­ing to break the sound bar­rier again, and peo­ple are sac­ri­fic­ing their lives in the pur­suit of knowl­edge. I sup­pose that if they’re will­ing to make that sac­ri­fice, then their deci­sion must be respected. Otto Lilienthal would be proud.

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February 14, 2003

Emotional Rollercoaster, More Mid-Terms, Etc.

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This week has been such an emo­tional roller coaster. I can’t describe the odd moods I’ve been in, the twists and turns my mind has been going in. I feel lost.

I have three mid-terms tomor­row, one of which I feel con­fi­dent about. I tried des­per­ately to study dur­ing the three days I had off, and only one of them (today) had any progress what­so­ever. I think it’s just my study envi­ron­ment, com­bined with my cur­rent emo­tional fluc­tu­a­tions. I tried to study in the SITE build­ing today, watched the sun go from east to west, and felt my mela­tonin lev­els drop. I feel burned out already. I def­i­nitely need this read­ing week.

Speaking of which, I most likely won’t be going home for the week. I’ll prob­a­bly try to hang out with Trolley or Thom. I don’t have time to change the dates on my train tick­ets, or even get a new ISIC. I’m not even sure if I’m elli­gi­ble, since I’m a part-time stu­dent when not con­sid­er­ing my hon­ours project as a course.

My progress through Moby Dick has been non-existent lately.

I’ll have to catch the Married with Children reunion spe­cial on Sunday. I always found the show to be amus­ing when I was a kid, though I never laughed out loud as I would if watch­ing a funny show nowa­days, like Family Guy. I think I was just mys­ti­fied by the open­ness with which the sex­u­al­ity was dealt with, some­thing that I never grew up around. I’m sure the spe­cial will remind me of the sum­mers I spent at home long ago, some­thing I’d rather remem­ber for my inno­cence than my ignorance.

I’m down­load­ing Full Metal Jacket. I still can’t get over how bril­liant the entire film was, pos­si­bly the best dis­play of genius on film I’ve seen so far. I still haven’t decided whether I should buy it though, since it’s not quite a movie I can relate to, which is gen­er­ally the cri­te­ria I use to build my collection.

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