thundering blissful: May 2004

May 30, 2004

intermission?

I.
I can't.
It's just.
Well.
I guess.

Fuck, whatever.

On hiatus.

Back later.

May 28, 2004

stuff!

I am fairly sure that extended periods of time at home cause me to
revert back to being, oh, 16.

The Dreamcast
The Radiohead
the wanton disregard for nutritional content.
the sudden desire for a newish gaming console.

in happier news, am volunteering with Naf and Spencer and
others this weekend; looks like it's going to be fun*.

*by which I mean tiring and laden with awesome stories; I mean,
there's a man named Zull involved!!

May 25, 2004

2 dreams, 1 meme, scads of confusion.

dream #1:
I move back to Vancouver. Alone. And live in an apartment on Kingsway (between Slocan and Earles) above a Chinese restaurant. Nothing particularly strange happened. Just the setting that was odd.

dream #2:
go back to the old high school to brush up on my biology, and find that I'm not the only one there. for some reason, me and a bunch of people I graduated with are there, getting ready to dissect fetal pigs (note: we actually did this.) but there's a number of details wrong.

the teacher (same one I had in grade 12) is wearing a polka dotted dress.
snootiest person I knew in high school is making googly eyes at the ultra-nerdy russian-accented guy in the grade below us.
nobody I remember liking during highschool (aside from the teacher) was there

it was significant amounts of bizarre, and the other bit I can't remember specifics of was right up there in strangeness content. I guess watching Angel marathons right before bed is a bad idea.

meme:

gerald` may explode without warning

M
EXPLOSIVE

From Go-Quiz.com

May 24, 2004

(untitled)

barefoot.
warm cement.
cold air.
popsicle in hand, I step on to the grass.
wiggle toes.
sigh, a little closer to peace.

"WHAT THE FUCK DUMB BULLSHIT YOU TALKIN' BOUT YOU CRACK-ASS SLUT?!"
"I SAID, YOU BITCH, THAT YOU SLEPT WITH MY MAN!!"

peer over the hedge to watch two teens stomp by, swearing like sailors and taking turns out of a bottle in a bag, heading towards the elementary schoolgrounds next door.

shake head.
breathe.
consume popsicle.
look at the sky; lost among the cables and poles is venus.
another deep breath; wondering when I won't be here.

cold cement.
cold air.
popsicle eaten, I head inside.

May 23, 2004

parting thought

there's something utterly relaxing about opening up to someone.

May 22, 2004

crossposted to indiemixtape

made a CD for driving.

no specific theme, and some of it's not terribly indie (OMG!!), but I figure the 33% CanCon evens things out.

Spoon - The Way We Get By (2:40)
Coldplay - Amsterdam (5:19)
Young and Sexy - Young and Sexy (4:17)
Broken Social Scene - Anthems for a Seventeen Year-old Girl (4:35)
The Shins - Pink Bullets (3:51)
Walkmen - We've Been Had (3:29)
Death Cab For Cutie - A Lack of Color (3:35)
Metric - Calculation Theme (3:31)
Wilco - Ashes of American Flags (4:44)
Hawksley Workman - Safe and Sound (3:58)
Interpol - Leif Erikson (4:00)
Modest Mouse - The Ocean Breathes Salty (3:45)
Matthew Good Band - Strange Days (4:25)
Radiohead - No Surprises (3:48)
The Decemberists - Grace Cathedral Hill (4:28)
Doves - The Man Who Told Everything (5:47)
The New Pornographers - Loose Translation (2:59)
The Streets - Empty Cans (8:13)

May 21, 2004

something of actual consequence.

I realize that I haven't seen a lot of people for a while, and that
one of the reasons I started this was to keep people updated on my
condition.
so, how am I?

- bored.
- broke.
- still jobless, increasingly frustrated.

+ driving more. might book a road test soon.
+ physiotherapy is helping.
+ I bought a new razor. It's very red.

that's about it.
see you at the Decemberists, if not before.

so that's where codswallop comes from...

The English-to-American Dictionary

May 20, 2004

(single tear)

sad comic moment

yeah, I'm a hopeless geek.

May 17, 2004

worse than expectant parents

haven't settled on a name yet - it'll keep changing for a while.
jail! shame! wrenches! only makes sense to a select
few, and it's not all that funny, anyway.

testing

so, apparently I can email entries to my blog.
which is exactly what I'm testing.

breakfast thoughts

can a pancake have too many M&M's?

I'm about to find out.

edit: I think it can, but I came nowhere near the threshold. I suspect there's a candy:batter ratio that one has to stay under, and only more testing will reveal it.

May 14, 2004

notes to self:

shave more often
bring up being 19 less, especially when talking to cute girls.
get drunker and start more fistfights.

for all my hipster friends

enjoy.

even if you're not a hipster and just know a bunch of them, read the comic. it's funny stuff.

May 13, 2004

more words for life.

"...we are here to help each other get through this thing, whatever it is." -Dr. Mark Vonnegut

Kurt Vonnegut's Cold Turkey, courtesy of Matt Good.

pseudo-moblog photographic wankery.

really, that's all this is. I got to granville island well before I was supposed to meet people for the One Man Star Wars Trilogy (which was great), so I busted out the camera and took some photos. On the skytrain, I scored the "drivers seat" so I started fiddling with the camera modes and took some photos. I'm still not entirely used to the size of the camera, and I keep reaching for the focus/zoom ring. Old habits, I guess.

thumbnails don't seem to want to work, so here's a list:

all images are 640x480px, and somewhere between 16 and 46 kilobytes.

May 11, 2004

weird dreams

I've been sitting on this post since this morning, because I still can't figure it out...

had a dream last night, involving me getting caught evading fares on the Skytrain station, and trying to make a run for it. Entirely normal, given how much fare evasion I commit in my newly UPassless life. Run out of the train, fake Skytrain cops hot on my tail, off the train platform, down a flight of stairs, past another platform, and then dow-- hold up, two platforms?!

in a half-asleep (but thoroughly bewildered) state, I replayed the dream as best I could, and tried to piece together where this imaginary station would've been, using the scenery and any other cues I was able to pick out of my dream, and came to the conclusion that Patterson station had had Royal Oak station put on top of it, and the whole damn thing was moved out to Boundary and Lougheed.

And there I was, evading fares.

fun times, redux

went to the beach with a pair of high school friends last night. Conversation topics ranged from the standard "what are you doing" to the unfortunate lack of green in sunsets to the origins of the Oxford English Dictionary, to Iain's Illustrated Oxford Dictionary and how awesome and useless it is at the same time. After the (spectacular) sunset, we headed to Koerner's*, where we started off with some Okanagan Springs Pale, which, of course, brought about discussion about the Fair. Patricia had enjoyed herself vastly (and still hasn't finished her synopsis), and Iain missed it due to a paper he had to write, which meant he had to stay in Victoria. Switched to Darkwoods Nut Brown afterwards, which was, well... educational. Very smokey, caramel/barbeque and no aftertaste. Like, none. It was weird, and we sipped cautiously at first and then gave up and started throwing it back before it got too warm. Somewhere in there, we switched from Big 2 to pool. I left there at about 20 to midnight, got on a B-Line, took some blurry shots from the Skytrain, and got home just before 1.

Fucking North Delta.

The long and short of it? I feel a lot better about most everything than I did yesterday, and there's a few jobs that look interesting that I'm going to go apply for now...

here's some photos:

*we were 3 of maybe 10 people at Koerner's, and we were ID'd by the same guy who let me in at the AMS elections results thing with Jordie's ID, and was at Dave Tompkins' when the underage jokes began. He did a double-take on the date, which amused me greatly.

May 10, 2004

ye gods

I don't know how much longer I can do this.
the constant stream of resumes and cover letters is tiresome and more than a little depressing.
no word back from anyone at all, not even the video store (yes, that video store).
I can't do this again; another jobless summer will drive me up the fucking wall.

...back to jobbank and newspapers and word, and maybe this time I'll find something, or something will find me.

May 09, 2004

slowly! learning! CSS!

yes, this is nothing more than a lightly customized template, but I'll make it different, I swear.

in the meantime, what do you think?

stopping to digest

I've given most of yesterday's binge a listen-through, and I've divided them into rough categories, all of which are fairly self-explanatory.

[Updated: Monday, May 10] listened to the other stuff, added a new category:

Fuck, Why Wasn't I Listening to This When It Came Out?

Pavement - Terror Twilight
Pavement - Slanted and Enchanted

Love at First Listen:
The Walkmen - Bows and Arrows
Death Cab for Cutie - Transatlanticism
The Shins - Chutes Too Narrow
Metric - Old World Underground, Where Are You Now?

Affection:
Ted Leo and the Pharmacists - Hearts of Oak
British Sea Power - The Decline of British Sea Power
Modest Mouse - The Moon and Antarctica (not the rerelease)
Les Savy Fav - Inches

Will Probably Grow On Me:
The Walkmen - Everyone Who Pretended to Like Me is Gone
Modest Mouse - Good News For People Who Love Bad News
The Wrens - Meadowland

Probably Won't Grow On Me:
Muse - Absolution
Mars Volta - De-Loused in the Crematorium
Buck 65 - Talkin' Honky Blues
Erlend Oye - DJ Kicks (one amusing track, though)

May 08, 2004

binge!

every now and then, I go on a music ~~downloading~~ "acquiring" spree. I'm in the midst of one of them, gleaned from references on other blogs, ecstatic reviews (both media and personal), and things I should probably already have listened to, given the way other people talk about them.

so far, I've got:

Modest Mouse - Good News For People Who Love Bad News
Modest Mouse - The Moon and Antarctica (not the rerelease)
Ted Leo and The Pharmacists - Hearts of Oak
Pavement - Terror Twilight
Pavement - Slanted and Enchanted
The Walkmen - Everyone Who Pretended to Like Me is Gone
The Walkmen - Bows and Arrows
British Sea Power - The Decline of British Sea Power
Muse - Absolution
Mars Volta - De-Loused in the Crematorium
Death Cab for Cutie - Transatlanticism
The Wrens - Meadowland
The Shins - Chutes Too Narrow
Metric - Old World Underground, Where Are You Now?
Buck 65 - Talkin' Honky Blues
Batman - Arkham Asylum: Living Hell

recommendations?

May 07, 2004

five in heavy rotation

repeat on your own blog.
or not.
whatever.

5 songs you find yourself listening to a lot of, lately. I suppose the "all one's music + random play, then write down which ones come up" meme involves a larger sample, and thus is more reflective of your musical tastes as a whole, but I like this because it provides a little insight into whatever's happening with you right now.
Or maybe that's just me.

regardless:
1. The Decemberists - Grace Cathedral Hill
2. Young and Sexy - Life Through One Speaker
3. Interpol - Obstacle 1 (Arthur Baker Mix)
4. Squarepusher - Tetra-Sync
5. Matt Good - Bright End of Nowhere

what is this saying about me?
I tend to put on the Squarepusher (or any d'n'b, really) when I'm trying to get things done, and the rest of the stuff is pretty mopey.
thus, my life is currently 80% mope and 20% bouts of frenzied work (or, rather, trying to find work.)

...on second thought, the Obstacle 1 remix is pretty good for rocking out to, so make that 70% mope, 20% work, and 10% rocking out.

May 06, 2004

what is it about trillian, word, soulseek, and neil that result in me getting nothing done?

oh, wait, no, it's just neil.

May 05, 2004

geek thoughts.

I spent three hours last night freeing my uncle's PC from spyware/malware/"HOT FREE GIRLS JUST 4 U" (it's funny because he's a priest), only to find that some of it decided to take bits of critical data with it, so that his video drivers didn't work.
Checked to make sure that there was nothing hugely important, and then performed a clean install of Windows XP.

Firstly, a 2.2GHz P4 with a fresh install of Windows is pretty hot (given I run a 700MHz Duron, and there's too much random shit on the HD to do fresh installs of Windows. Maybe I'll remember to partition next time.) Secondly, Windows Update is absurd. After setting up his DSL (for some reason, it's a whole lot slower in Surrey), I went to the Windows Update site to see what needed installing. IE crashed because there were so many updates required. Ridiculous.

I then went on to install a firewall, an anti-virus program, an alternative browser, and two anti-spyware programs.

The point?
I really shouldn't have had to. I realize that a large portion of Window's problems come from people searching for holes because it has the largest market share, and that I'm not enough of a geek to talk about how to fix the problems (Jay? Jordie? Matt#1?), but if you can release patches constantly, can't you predict areas of vulnerability and fix them beforehand?

...fuck, whatever. I'm saving up for a Mac.

May 04, 2004

another one falls, another one falls, another one starts a blog

a) I'm sorry. That was gratuitous and unnecessary.
b) Tara has a blog now, solely due to the peer pressure power of Neil and myself*.

*the peer pressure power of Neil and myself isn't very large, Tara wanted one from before.