thundering blissful

this way madness lies

2012-01-01T23:09:00.000-08:00

I've been doing this since 2004, and see no reason to stop.

1. What did you do in 2011 that you'd never done before?

I travelled a lot, to the point that I spent something like a solid month out of town. I had the same job at the end of the year that I had at the beginning, shot a bunch of weddings, got promoted twice, got a phone number over Twitter that turned into a texting crush that's since turned into a baffling/delightful relationship (albeit a long distance one,) I met someone else's parents as the boyfriend, mailed cookies all over the place, and started making serious exit plans.

2. Did you keep your new year's resolutions, and will you make more for next year?

get out of debt: partially
reduce the amount of clothing I own: yes.
wear clothing that would pass without comment any time in the last 60 years: not so much?

2012 is pretty simple: leave. the city, the closet, the nonsense.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
Yes!

4. Did anyone close to you die?
Thankfully, no.

5. What countries did you visit?
I went to Portland, once, but I also went to Montreal, Saltspring Island, Nanaimo, Kelowna, Montreal again, and then Toronto.

6. What would you like to have in 2012 that you lacked in 2011?
debt freedom, a Belleville address, fewer hours spent in flight.

7. What dates from 2011 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
montreal trip #1: bits of Nash, the Johnnies, exploring the city, jokes about daggering; constant furious texting.
valentines day, the godspeed concert two days after, the morning after the concert.
phone calls from fernie (the city), train trip to portland and all that entailed, weekend visits and seeing the Mountain Goats, sneaking out of post-reception madness in Nanaimo to see the dude, inadvisable three-day overnight greyhound trips (gigantic waffles! goats-milk gelato! being judged on hugs!) montreal trip #2 and seeing Wilco. A whirlwind tour of Toronto, seeing people I hadn't for far too long (Jess, Goh, Hayles, Jake,) and the growing realization that it was a place I could live.

also: all of the weddings.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
ten months of a long distance relationship, two promotions at work, eight weddings survived. Also I grew a sweet beard.

9. What was your biggest failure?
my debt load isn't as small as I'd like, somehow.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
not really?

11. What was the best thing you bought?
delegate fees to Nash 73 and a plane ticket to Montreal. honourable mentions: new phone, train tickets to portland, hot-wire.

12. Whose behaviour merited celebration?
They know who they are.

13. Whose behaviour made you appalled and depressed?
They know who they are, too.

14. Where did most of your money go?
debt, travel, wedding gifts, single malts.

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
travel, concerts, Aidan.

16. What song will always remind you of 2011?
James Blake, "The Wilhelm Scream." or The National, "Wake Up Your Saints."

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:

a) happier or sadder? happier.
b) thinner or fatter? fatter, which I'm working on.
c) richer or poorer? richer; I got promoted twice.

18. What do you wish you'd done more of?
Admitting, working.

19. What do you wish you'd done less of?
waking up alone.

20. How will you be spending Christmas?
At home, getting ready for Boxing Day madness at work.

21. Did you fall in love in 2011?
yes. [insert expletives here] yes.

22. How many one-night stands?
None.

23. What was your favourite TV program?
Community, Good Eats, Avatar: The Last Airbender. TV's not something I consume a whole lot of anymore.

24. Do you hate anyone now that you didn't hate this time last year?
Nobody new.

25. What was the best book you read?
man I did not read nearly as much as I used to, but The Pale King is probably at the top of the list for obvious reasons. Photo-book-wise, I was surprised that Annie Leibovitz At Work was actually fairly informative, and I still want to make basically everything out of the Baked cookbook.

26. What was your greatest musical discovery?
I'd seen Wye Oak a couple of times previously, but I got my hands on the My Neighbour/My Creator EP and then Civilian, and they were both really, really good.
The Rural Alberta Advantage, while not new strictly speaking, acquired serious playtime, and somehow I left it until 2011 before getting into Elliott Smith.

27. What did you want and get?
I fell in love, found a viable-though-not-ideal career, and some technological bullshit.

28. What did you want and not get?
A little more freedom, knowledge that things will function at home in my absence.

29. What was your favourite film of this year?
Drive, since I didn't watch anything.

30. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
26; I went out on the Saturday after for dinner/karaoke/beers and then went to Portland with Aidan the week after that.

31. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
being able to find myself next to Aidan more frequently than once every six weeks.

32. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2011?
more cardigans, chambray, and fuck-you chinos, better ties, more texture.

33. What kept you sane?
I'm not really sure.

34. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
Tom Hardy, with Chuck Hughes (yes, the chef) a surprisingly strong second.

35. What political issue stirred you the most?
Occupy, SOPA/Access Copyright, Jack Layton's passing.

36. Who did you miss?
I ran into a lot of people I hadn't seen in a while via the eight weddings I attended and while part of the experience left me missing people, part of it also made me realize that we're not so much growing apart as we are carving our own ways, and that's actually pretty alright.

37. Who was the best new person you met?
Aidan's the obvious one here, and I can see him rolling his eyes as he reads this, so I'll exempt him for obvious reasons.

new kids: John Cameron and Emma Godmere from CUP, Camille and Calvin and Mike from work, Ginny from the Ubyssey, and Aidan's friends Jake, Ryan and Jess.
people I got in touch with again, which don't count as new per se but are noteworthy: A bunch of people in Toronto, Thor, Keltie, and my on again/off again nemesis Chris Berube.

38. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2011:
Twitter: who knew it would get you a boyfriend, a couple paying gigs, and a place to actually connect with friends?

39. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year:
the cities love is cold and the cities love is hard
 locked into our veins from the first September's frost
 January snap and the April winter thaw
 rough and tumble summers underneath the midnight sun

— The Rural Alberta Advantage, Good Night

or

I'll make a living telling people what they want to hear
 It's not a killing, but it's enough to keep the cobwebs clear

Cause it's not a perfect plan 
It's not a perfect plan 
But it's the one we've got.
— St. Vincent, Champagne Year

2011-12-07T18:09:00.000-08:00

so I alluded, aggressively loosely, to something happening that I wouldn't talk about now back in January and then spent eleven months not talking about it.

hi.

at a conference that neither of us had any real reason to be at, fueled by ridiculous texts and drunken post-danceoff get-low-offs, I met a guy. weeks of texting later, we got our being-in-the-same-cities act together and had beers, photowalks, first kisses and a proper dinner/concert/drinks date (that ended with much impropriety, in the best way.)

ten months, six cities, three weddings and more fossil fuel than I care to admit to later, we're still together, which is nice. and new. and occasionally terrifying.

today's been one of those days; working retail xmas makes it impossible to get away, and boyfriends family being in either Victoria or Kelowna has left us scratching heads after more than a few "well, what about these days?" conversations, when we look at our proposed orbits (and hope for crossed paths and the chance to let all other concerns lay eclipsed,) and find no place where they might intersect. Until this point, we'd been pretty good about seeing each other every 6-8 weeks, and I can't get away from work until mid/late February (which is convenient for other purposes,) which would put it up to three months (read: too damn long.)

so now I'm listening to songs about falling apart, and wondering what to do. fuck.

atemporaliad

2011-04-13T00:24:00.001-07:00

I don't always know what day it is, and it bothers me.

Part of it is a side-effect of working in a weirdly well-lit space, basically underground, with a flow of people working on some rhythms so minutely related to whatever time it is as to be meaningless. The other part of it is the more worrying bit; some deep-seated and elemental resignation of cyclicality to the endless barrage of humanity in varying levels of consumer need/distress that herald un(known/wanted/pleasant) vistas of the same disquieting banality.

elision

2011-01-19T14:51:00.000-08:00

there's a lot I don't talk about on the internet, at least not in public forums, especially in an age where idle googling is de rigeur, and the acquisition of a place to spew 140-character thoughts is necessary and upkeep/update is equally mandatory; a combination which holds all sorts of potential for downfall, and not even in the expected ways¹. Ultimately, I guess people are crazy and distressingly resourceful and anything I'm not comfortable with now (let alone any attempted future self projections) stays under my hat, or locked down elsewhere, or bandied about inside conversations that aren't recorded (to the best of my knowledge.)

anyway: I do enough lying by omission, so I think it's time I had somewhere to exposit, and seeing as there's like five people² who read this any more, I figure it's a good enough spot.

anyway: onward.

___
1: witness someone in danger of losing their job over the most tenuous of links to a parody video from one camp of vicious rivals at another— a pair of tracked IPs and a borrowed account lead to a rollover, and there goes the neighbourhood.
2: I'm closing in on 500 people following me on twitter and I don't know why they're there, but I can say with confidence that I've met about half of them.

2011-01-03T23:16:00.000-08:00

there's a lot to be said about me and Spencer, a little less than that about how much I miss having the guy around, and not a whole lot about the not-Spencer-accompanied bits of my day, but mostly I wanted to talk about this:

just after we were seated at the crepe place, and before we started discussing things ranging from credit limits to future plans to parental surreality, we both took off our coats to reveal plaid shirts with button-down collars, sat down, popped our respective cuffs and rolled them up to the elbow. The conversational stride wasn't broken, the cuffs were pretty much identical (across all four arms), and I didn't even consider it until later, when it made me smile.

2011-01-02T00:30:00.000-08:00

I don't know what I want, any more. I should probably fix that, and then work towards it.

That said, sitting up in bed listening to the Radio 3 playlist¹ while reading old end-of-year posts and sort of hoping someone stumbles on to MSN so I can spew a list of unsureties at them while I skim tweets and debate putting up play-by-plays of my days on this, again (it turns out this was a very accurate title, except where I said one year, I meant five and a half.) are a lot more appealing than applications of effort towards actual long term goal progression.

...there's another thing to fix.

___
1: it's a smart playlist: songs I've listened to 35 or more times, excepting the ones on my Top 25 Most Played playlist.

step-ball-change and a pirouette

2010-12-31T00:58:00.000-08:00

1. What did you do in 2010 that you'd never done before?
got my braces off, was unemployed for four months, applied and was accepted for a job with a major corporation, stopped going home for three to five day stretches, went to the Yukon for a day on a press junket, went to Edmonton for a weekend for work, got drunk with my counterparts at another university, went to/covered the Olympics, got a real press pass for the Paralympics, went on a five-day bender, made plans to leave this city, agreed to shoot multiple weddings, housesat, kissed someone I knew better than to kiss, made out with smokers (ew), made ice cream.

2. Did you keep your new year's resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
I don't know, I don't think I made any. This year, though, yes: get out of debt, reduce the amount of stuff I own, buy only clothing that could be worn in the last 60 years without comment.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
Yes!

4. Did anyone close to you die?
Thankfully, no. Close to someone I am close to, though, yes, and that was tough.

5. What countries did you visit?
The US.

6. What would you like to have in 2011 that you lacked in 2010?
better life balance, a partner, better financial literacy

7. What dates from 2010 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
New Year's and Al cuddling, the Olympics from opening to closing and all the events, parties, press conferences, and mf'ing junkets in between; the trip to Edmonton; calling Keegan to tell him he'd won a Johnny; birthday and birthday bender; the last night in Ubyssey Haus; #kmac; quiet times with Lougheed at Benny's; bears, beers, weed and rejected advances with Al, Marielle saying she had cancer, Marielle saying she beat cancer, perogy night, pride with Kristen, ice cream adventures with Kristen, seeing The National, Sufjan, Joanna Newsom

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
I survived the Ubyssey, I got my braces off, and I make a damn fine ice cream.

9. What was your biggest failure?
I continue to be unable to motivate myself without a fuckton of caffeine, I lost marks to anxiety, I fucked up at the paper, I'm paying off a $7k visa bill.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
Does it count as injury when you're recovering from surgery?

11. What was the best thing you bought?
the ice cream machine, but maybe boots.

12. Whose behaviour merited celebration?
They know who they are.

13. Whose behaviour made you appalled and depressed?
They know who they are, too.

14. Where did most of your money go?
Braces, mortgage, debt, camera gear, jaw surgery, plaid shirts.

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
Music, freedom from braces, working for Apple, getting closer to being totally out.

16. What song will always remind you of 2010?
The National, "Runaway."

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:
a) happier or sadder? happier.
b) thinner or fatter? fatter, which I'm working on.
c) richer or poorer? richer, because current job pays literally twice what the old one did (not hard, mind you.0

18. What do you wish you'd done more of?
Admitting, working.

19. What do you wish you'd done less of?
Commute, settling.

20. How will you be spending Christmas?
At home, getting ready for Boxing Day family gathering.

21. Did you fall in love in 2010?
Love no, like yes, crushes on dudes I work with a little.

22. How many one-night stands?
None.

23. What was your favourite TV program?
Community, 30 Rock, Parks and Recreation, a little Mad Men. TV's not something I consume a whole lot of anymore.

24. Do you hate anyone now that you didn't hate this time last year?
Nobody new.

25. What was the best book you read?
The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet

honorable mentions: Zero History, Surface Matter, Excession, Momofuku, World Press Photo 2010, Oryx & Crake + The Year of the Flood.

26. What was your greatest musical discovery?
The Wooden Sky, James Blake, and Janelle Monae.

27. What did you want and get?
A job, rid of braces, a little more normalcy.

28. What did you want and not get?
A little more freedom, knowledge that things will function at home in my absence.

29. What was your favourite film of this year?
Inception by default; I don't think I saw anything else.

30. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
25; it was a production night, so I worked late, then drank and played chatroulette bingo, and then drank some more.

31. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
I need to go back to UBC so I can leave it.

32. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2010?
Threadless shirts, cardigans, corduroys, plaid, and selvage denim.

33. What kept you sane?
I'm not really sure.

34. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
Joseph Gordon-Levitt, mostly.

35. What political issue stirred you the most?
A lot of the stuff surrounding the Olympics, homelessness as a whole, and mental/health stuff.

36. Who did you miss?
Most everyone from AUS/ACF. We seem to have grown up and apart.

37. Who was the best new person you met?
More Ubyssey kids: Arshy, Virginie, Micki and David.
A bunch of people from the Gateway, as it were, and even more from The Company.

I spent time getting to know some people a whole lot better; Kristen, Keegan, Kai, and Lucas are all people I appreciate vastly more than I did this time last year.

38. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2010:
Save money. Even just a little. It'll come in handy.

39. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year:
Sorrow found me when I was young
Sorrow waited, sorrow won
Sorrow they put me on the pill
It's in my honey, it's in my milk
— The National, Sorrow

or

We see you trying to
Be something else that
You're not, we think you're nice

The circumstances
Of what I thought, I
Could see it now
I wouldn't be so
I wouldn't feel so
— Sufjan Stevens, The Age of Adz

2010-06-20T13:09:00.000-07:00

last night, I was apologized to by someone who, during their time on AUS Council, voted to censure me as an ACF Exec after the whole fair shutdown fiasco... in the middle of a dinner party.

I hadn't thought about it in years, aside from thinking it was sort of amusing at the time, but, well, that happened.

(if it wasn't clear: I have no idea how to feel about this.)

clear cache

2010-05-25T18:30:00.000-07:00

not so much a facelift as some lesser surgical refreshing on the front; I didn't toy with structure so much as I fiddled with web fonts and css shadows and altered coloration.

the name is from only skin (but you knew that) and it's likely to change.

that said, it took me something like three and a half years to fiddle with the look of this since the last time I said I didn't like something, so it's perfectly possible that I won't touch this until, um, January 2014.

also: if you're still reading this, leave a comment? I feel like I'm shouting into the dark here (and that's not always a bad thing) but knowing someone's out there would be nice.

i know your mechanisms

2010-05-22T17:02:00.000-07:00

using this as a thing to do instead of working on that thing I wanted to work on.

damnit, old habits.

things I didn't say today

2010-05-18T15:40:00.000-07:00

"the last time I put any real effort towards what you feel are priorities for me I ended up not only wishing I was dead but taking steps to get there, so you'll have to forgive me for not giving a fuck about what you think I should be doing with my life. if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go babysit your daughter now, as she is demanding my attention."

terrible idea du jour

2010-05-14T23:52:00.000-07:00

art show, all from/of/on buses/skytrains/etc.

the name? sic public transit gloria mundi.

I'm terrible, I know.

swallowing the shine of the sun

2010-05-14T16:12:00.000-07:00

it's one of those stupidly gorgeous days in Vancouver, and where I should be shorts-clad and out in the sun I am shorts-clad in a library, sitting next to a stack of books and in front of a computer, where I've spent three hours, now, half-heartedly applying for jobs in between researching someone else's cancer.

there's a photo project coming out of it, too, and I'm more than a little worried about how to approach that whole gong show, but for the time being, I'm going to get my head around one thing at a time.

got another thing comin' undone

2010-05-10T00:00:00.000-07:00

I'd be lying if I said I wasn't sorely tempted to play World of Goo instead of typing this up, or even closing the laptop and calling it a night, but it's been a while, and frankly both gaming and sleep are overrated.

I've been job hunting again; neatly stacking experience and skills into little hireability towers before placing them in front of faceless employers on the other end of an ad and waiting to see if their inquiries topple said buildings, or if they remain, wobbly but triumphant and hopefully bearing an offer of work. So far, it's been all crumbled towers (and self-esteem, a little, alongside.) It's maddening, in it's own way, and as I watch the number in my chequing account steadily dwindle, I push up metaphorical sleeves (chalk it up to another disproportionality or just a dislike of fabric on my wrists, I guess, but my sleeves are generally rolled up) and spew resumes, not so much tilting at windmills as much as emulating them.

In the midst of this, I started thinking about all the skills I can't ever put on a resume but have served me well, or the ones I have but wish I didn't. Take, for example, the reading of body language; there's no place on my resume for the phrase "will read how you react to things by the set of your shoulders, where you put your weight, and where you're looking," but it's a thing I can do (and is sort of convenient, to be honest.) More dubious is the whole closet-related skill set; pronoun management, event detail alterations, the occasional obvious checking-out of someone who's uninteresting but convenient, and, of course, the lying. Telling the big ones, the little ones to keep the whole thing plausible, the occasional obvious one as to suppress suspicion as to how unfortunately good you've gotten, quietly fearing the day the center stops holding and the gyre swallows you alive. Worse than those are the ones I barely admit to even myself, the mental equivalent of circling wagons or of a herd of elephants enclosing the vulnerable members inside a circle when predators surface.

I think it's elephants that do that.

Regardless: present me with a rising tide of anxiety or wait until one presents itself, inevitably at some inopportune moment, and it's like someone puts me on autopilot: occupy the head in figuring out what the trigger is, and move quickly enough to satisfy the body and lizard-brain desires for flight. It's my own personal rodeo, but it's inside my head, and falling off isn't an option.

I found myself riding one today on my way to shoot a concert; disembarking from the train and idly wondering if I would make it to the venue in time, and the next thing I know, I'm on the street weaving through a crowd of jersey-wearing Canucks fans; the tunnels and escalators simply erased from memory while things got handled. It's not the first time it's happened on my way to a show in the recent past, and I'm more than a little worried that it won't be the last, which is darkly funny since, well, I'm worrying about an anxiety disorder.

On the upside, I suppose: if I'm in a dark comedy, I'm not in the soap opera. Small favors, right?

2010-04-23T00:02:00.000-07:00

it continues to weird me out that I can string sentences together with a minimum of fuss while I'm walking around, but park me in front of a desk, fingers hovering over home keys, and I am suddenly rudderless, requiring nothing short of miracles to get things out. Is it the notion of moving words through fingers, transforming one set of electrical impulses from inside my head to another set broadcast freely into a cloud of data, with the exchange point being mediated by pure physicality or something else entirely?

stranger, though: this was the first Thursday morning in which I've woken up in my own bed since the end of December.

2010-04-03T13:34:00.000-07:00

You live again
in the shuddering light
of these images
this valediction:
you are running from a rising tide

I have 10000 images to process, but there are words.

soon.

looking deep inside (but I don't want to look so deep inside yet)

2009-12-31T00:46:00.000-08:00

as always, my year-end survey meme thing. Hi.

1. What did you do in 2008 that you'd never done before?
went to a conference, got laid off, almost hit a moose, made out in the office, broke things off before they started, shot a book, shot a new year's party, became the photo editor, shot a show in a bank foyer, made a huge mistake, had jaw surgery.

2. Did you keep your new year's resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
I didn't settle, and eschewed pants, so yeah, I did.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
No.

4. Did anyone close to you die?
too many people, too quickly.

5. What countries did you visit?
The US.

6. What would you like to have in 2010 that you lacked in 2009?
Sanity, sig. other, a manageable debt load, a return to UBC.

7. What dates from 2009 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
New Year's and the walk to Broadway/Granville, NASH Awards Gala, the day I got laid off. Two weeks of solid shooting, new job and then the AGM. Snow on my birthday, the last Kerrisdale Alpha party (I still have a scar), MeFi #10, lantern fest with Marielle, day 1 at the Ubyssey, Imagine, Had a Glass/Olio/Warped all in 28 hours, Pride (oof), jaw surgery, funeral.
Of special note: the day I quit all my non-photography jobs.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
I realized that I could make a living off just my wits and photography, I got ahead with freelancing, and I didn't get fired. Or kill myself. That's probably the biggest one.

9. What was your biggest failure?
I continue to be unable to motivate myself without a fuckton of caffeine, I lost marks to anxiety, I fucked up at the paper.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
Does it count as injury when you're recovering from surgery?

11. What was the best thing you bought?
Tossup: 2x 580EXII vs 7D.

12. Whose behaviour merited celebration?
They know who they are.

13. Whose behaviour made you appalled and depressed?
They know who they are, too.

14. Where did most of your money go?
Braces, mortgage, tuition, camera gear, jaw surgery, pants.

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
Music, eventual freedom from braces.

16. What song will always remind you of 2009?

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:
a) happier or sadder? sadder.
b) thinner or fatter? thinner, which comes of not eating for four days and then being on liquids for the following three weeks.
c) richer or poorer? poorer.

18. What do you wish you'd done more of?
Admitting, working.

19. What do you wish you'd done less of?
Commute, settling.

20. How will you be spending Christmas?
At home, sans parents, eating pizza (barely.)

21. Did you fall in love in 2009?
Love no, like yes.

22. How many one-night stands?
None.

23. What was your favourite TV program?
BSG, Mad Men, Heston's Feasts. TV's not something I consume a whole lot of anymore.

24. Do you hate anyone now that you didn't hate this time last year?
Nobody new.

25. What was the best book you read?
Infinite Jest.

honorable mentions: Geek Love, Run, When You Are Engulfed in Flames, How to Eat, and The Visual Display of Quantitative Information.

26. What was your greatest musical discovery?
The xx, Kraftwerk, The Rural Alberta Advantage.

27. What did you want and get?
Material stuff, space, etc.

28. What did you want and not get?
Material stuff, freedom.

29. What was your favourite film of this year?
I don't know, I don't think I went to any movies; if I am sitting in one place for 1.5 hours I expect to be somewhere else when I leave my seat.

30. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
24: we ate dinner at Swiss Chalet and then went to the Coppertank and then to the Astoria. It snowed, for some reason.

31. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
I need to leave UBC.

32. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2009?
Threadless shirts, cardigans, corduroys, and selvage denim.

33. What kept you sane?
I'm not really sure.

34. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
Uh, most all of the cast of Battlestar Galactica.

35. What political issue stirred you the most?
A lot of the stuff surrounding the Olympics, homelessness as a whole, and mental/health stuff.

36. Who did you miss?
Most everyone from AUS/ACF. We seem to have grown up and apart.

37. Who was the best new person you met?
More Ubyssey kids: Geoff, Michael, Jonny and Ashley W.
Service BC types: Derek, Charmaine, Nina, and Nicole.
People I got to know better: Al Smith, Gord, Justin and Thor.

38. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2009:
Do it right the first time, save yourself the hassle.

39. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year:
What do I share?
What do I keep
from all the strangers
who sleep where I sleep
The Strangers by St. Vincent

or: That secret that you know
But don't know how to tell
It fucks with your honor
And it teases your head
Blood Bank by Bon Iver.

into a white and soundless place

2009-12-28T01:29:00.000-08:00

my uncle died. I went to his funeral, and made vague overtures about the whole thing on twitter and tumblr, but didn't really say anything about him, so I figure this is a good a place as any to do it.
I guess, really, there are four vignettes that encapsulate my knowledge of him not just from our uncle/nephew relationship but also what I got told about when my parents decided to tell stories of their childhoods, half a world away. Here goes:

He was eighth of ten children, the youngest son (and three years older than my mom). They grew up close, and even after my parents married my dad referred to him, jokingly, as his second father-in-law — even after they emigrated to Canada, my uncle kept tabs on my dad, a little.
moving across the world strikes me as a fundamental act of either madness or faith. My parents did it with sponsors shortly after marriage and before their first child, literally starting a new life together. My uncle did it with my aunt, two teenagers and a tween, after 22 years (!) of a stable government job, moving from pre-instability Fiji into mid-90s northern California, with all its attendant madnesses, gaping pits of culture shock, and a whole lot of loved ones who went from a 16-hour flight to a 16-hour drive away. I can't get my head around it.
they moved over in 1995, and we visited once or twice a year (and vice versa); not always the most traditional of vacations by any means, I remember one Easter weekend in 1998 or 1999, we piled into the minivan and drove for 18 hours straight to see my uncle for his birthday (two days before mine), stayed for two days, and then drove back. Somewhere in there, my aunt made crab curry with habaneros instead of jalapenos, and we all wept and ate snow crab and regretted it in the morning.
He called, pretty much weekly, usually just to ask how everyone was, and what we'd been up to. The timing was such that he usually caught me as I stepped in the door while my parents were out running errands or on the night shift this week and so we got to talking about as frequently as him and my mother did. He was also more supportive of the photo hobby/side gig/gambit/eventual career than my parents were at first, and asked me to email him photos of babytron fairly regularly. (which I did; he met babytron this August when my sister went to visit him well before he took a turn for the worse. I didn't go for fear of missing a production night and cannot adequately relate how much I regret this.)

The last one is why, at the funeral, sleep-deprived, upset, and lacking most of my ability to speak (and all of my ability to speak Hindi) when my mom came over and looked at me, swollen and despondent, she reached for a hug and asked as she broke down again, "who's going to call us now?" I lost it. It's also why I dread phone calls a little because I know who it isn't and who it won't be (no matter how much I want it to change,) and in future, it's why I won't be putting work first for a long time.

gonna cut someone

2009-12-19T00:09:00.000-08:00

man, everything blows this week:

I sound like a stupid baby; I got a haircut today and enunciating was a fucking ordeal.
two more editors left the paper. This makes three since the beginning of the year, and this time there are no clear replacements in sight.
the bits of my face that don't hurt are completely numb, which is terrifying; it's still too early to say if anything is permanent (and I hope none of it is)
one of my maternal uncles died. I wanted to go see him post-op, but he didn't make it. This was precisely two months (to the day) that my aunt (also maternal) died in Fiji. This is truly something I don't want to come in threes.

the last one makes the rest of them pale in comparison, and it's also why I'm off to California for 36 hours tomorrow. The worryingest bits: I don't look like my passport anymore, I can't talk very well, and there's titanium in my skull now. I hope my doctors notes are enough; I've heard enough about the TSA to be wary.

I've got chemicals; wish me grace (and cue the M83).

2009-12-18T00:43:00.003-08:00

this is honestly just so I can right-click and save as: srsly

2009-11-24T00:33:00.000-08:00

in case it wasn't immediately apparent, this whole surgery thing is ramping up the anxiety; I commented to someone on MSN that I'm looking forward to the end but not the means, since the means keep getting uglier.

[sigh]

glowing young ruffian(s)

2009-09-26T20:35:00.000-07:00

I guess it would have been that funny in the not-irony irony way if it wasn't heartbreaking; standing on a 99, half-drunk, admitting that things were far from ideal, and they'd gotten harder, but that somehow both of us were more worried about the other. Surrounded by strangers who were undoubtedly catching the wrong end of this conversation,¹ and letting the brave faces slip because the effort was painful and we were safe with each other. Hushed tones and averted gazes from us as the sadness we'd been revealing obliquely and in parts came together, were focussed on and then defocussed²; the whole too much to behold. Remembering the discussions we had before I started the effexor about the nature and value of sadness, and the necessity of valleys to make the peaks meaningful. His references to a dark period before we'd met, of thoughts and actions that he didn't regret³ and the ways and means of our shared states.
Off the bus and inside for a pit stop, an offer of bourbon deferred⁴, and then to the bar. Quiet reassurances exchanged, unilateral apologies for multilateral failures, the soft familiar patters of our respective strides. Before stepping in, a half-second to file these thoughts away and to put brave faces back on, blinking at their unfortunate familiarity before diving into the sea of distractions provided by a table full of friends.
It's the dwelling that gets you; in one spot for too long and it's the other kind of head lock, trapped in worst-case scenario planning⁵ and the creeping horror of an impending loss⁶.

What came before: a cancelled concert, a shuffling of plans, a realization that it had been too long, two phone calls, a meeting point and then a meeting. From there, a long and public hug⁷, a walk down to 2nd and then a Canada Line trip up Cambie to 25th; both of us too lost in conversation to steer towards dinner until we decided on a place that was about a block from our starting point. Noodles, dumplings, additions to the party, a trip to Firefly. Large beers in a kitchen, waiting for confirmations, cherries and soba and hobgoblins in said beers, and then a walk to pick up a bicycle, the promise that we'd see you soon, a walk to the bus stop, a saddening of eyes and a slow fade to the airing of our woes.

What came after: suspension, revelry, disbelief that a bar closed at midnight, the houndstooth couch and bourbon manhattans. Three hours of chatter, and my hitting of a wall. I crashed in the den⁸ at 3 and failed to let him sleep while I snuck out at 10 to head back to the job I had been successful in not thinking or talking about. A barrage of text message apologies trailed into ephemera, and then I was back on the clock.

The point, I guess, is that I'm still fairly angry that one of the best people I know and love dearly has to deal with a whole stack of painful nonsense but that being able to at least be there was something I can and will be doing more often. You should join us.

Notes:
1. As if there was a right end.
2. Defocus like a lens; take the edges away and let it fade slowly into nothing. The size obscured, the edges dulled. It's easier to avoid, this way.
3. With effort and as part of a greater no-regrets paradigm.
4. Not refused. Merely deferred.
5. Both of us.
6. Again, both of us.
7. Good hugs are hard to find.
8. During my first tour of the place: "This will be the den. Also, your room when you need it."

2009-09-08T09:55:00.000-07:00

so it turns out that Twitter is a poor venue for self-talk.

excuse me while I try not to freak out over the next ten days.

snippets

2009-09-02T10:20:00.000-07:00

stored for future reference:

spencer: Reasonably well
gerald: aw
gerald: I can't say I mind watching the baby
gerald: we get along
gerald: there are mild adventures
gerald: it's not like I'm having any
gerald: children, I mean
spencer: Currently or ever?
gerald: short-term, certainly
gerald: ever isn't planned
gerald: not opposed, to be honest, but you know... mechanics.
spencer: fair enough. There was just a tone of finality. But there's always surrogates or adoption
gerald: both of which fall under "mechanics" as requiring planning, accomplices, etc
gerald: a hint of madness (and not my regular sort)
gerald: one day, maybe
spencer: Ah, I thought you meant mechanics in the bits and parts sense
gerald: that was the joke
gerald: but there was some truth in there to, unwittingly
spencer: Aha

racing like a pro

2009-08-14T23:17:00.000-07:00

after what can only be described as a series of poor-verging-on-surreal choices, I have survived what I feel to have been my first freelance/photojourno trial by fire.

an approximate schedule:

2130 - leave to meet Culture kids at the Lamplighter
2215 - get to Lamp, do the rounds, see Kaitlin and Aleks in addition to Culture kids + Lougheed. Shoot the Raccoons and a singer-songwriter that Kaitlin knows.
2300 - leave lamp, head to Bourbon
2310 - arrive at Bourbon, am blown away by The Heard.
2330 - say hi to Abra, wish her a broken leg
2335 - say hi to Piper, apparently engender envy of Piper's vocal lesbian fan club.
2345 - shoot Piper's set.
0005 - see chad, say hello.
0025 - leave for red room
0045 - party in the red room; it turns out I know four groups of people there (ex-Ubyssey, CiTR, Aleks, and Lougheed).
0110 - it's Steve Louie! I like him.
0120 - The Clips throw down an amazing farewell set.
0210 - we leave the bar.
0240 - me and Lougheed catch an N17
0310 - back at Ubyssey Haus
0320 - bed
0715 - up again (!)
0747 - miss the 4, get on an 84.
0804 - miss a 7, get on a 4.
0816 - on the 253 to Park Roral
0840 - at LDB at Park Royal
0845 - meet James from Had a Glass (v. cute, well-built but so friendly that it's not at all imposing)
0900 - start shooting wine bottles
0945 - finish shooting wine bottles
0955 - London Drugs pit stop.
1005 - on a 253 to downtown
1030 - coffee #1; venti Pike Place
1035 - 44 to Ubyssey Haus
1040 - so many emo kids
1100 - walk to Ubyssey Haus, check email, tidy up.
1110 - half of Haus wakes up; are bewildered to hear about 0715-1100 period of my day.
1115 - convalesce, a little.
1145 - head to office with Justin
1230 - after a little light internet, leave office
1300 - Justin picks up a cheque, I say hi to Marielle
1315 - Coffee #2 (Jeremy's Blenz: "give me an enormous drip coffee, please.")
1330 - part ways with Justin, eat lunch.
1400 - make way to site
1430 - I'm in and tweeting.
1550 - Brokencyde
1615 - Bad Religion
1645 - Streetlight Manifesto
1715 - NOFX
1730 - loaf in sun
1815 - Alexisonfire
1840 - leave site
1900 - Ubyssey office
2040 - parent pickup
2130 - home

inside 24 hours I shot eight bands from two festivals in four venues (and on three stages in one venue) in addition to a trip out to West Vancouver to shoot wine bottles, for a total of three shoots and 1200 frames with a short break for a little under 4 hours of sleep, fuelled only by grim determination, obscene amounts of caffeine, and a sub-par noodle dish from the VIllage.

I feel spectacularly worn out in some ways; my shoulders ache from the weight of my gear, my shins from walking and my elbow will undoubtedly be next. I'm occasionally incoherent from sleep-lack, and I admit to a shorter fuse than usual. Sitting here typing this, showered and full of ice cream, I realize that this is the blissful kind of tired, and that I honestly haven't felt this way since I worked on shows.

It's a good feeling, and I'm glad to have it back.

welcome, ghosts

2009-08-08T23:55:00.001-07:00

given that long-form thoughts stay here, short ones go to twitter, photos go on either on flickr or to facebook, is it any surprise that my impending photoblogs will also go somewhere else entirely?

the recent works blog is coming along, and the portfolio side requires some tweaking to bring the look and feel into alignment, but I think they'll hit the prime time soon.

feel free to comment on the unfinished forms, though.

sea change

2009-08-05T19:32:00.000-07:00

I gave notice today, and my last day will be almost exactly six months to the day I started. This has been the last in a long string of jobs I've held since 2006 that can all safely be described as settling.

I think I'm ready, but there's really only one way to find out.

...here goes.

spare thoughts

2009-07-27T22:36:00.000-07:00

rereading Julie+Julia, it's weird how much of this whole blogging thing is about externalizing one's interiorities, and taking one's voice (issues of occupancy aside), wrapping it in CSS+(X)HTML and simply shouting it into a void. I guess it's not that surprising that someone else's exposed insides might attract comparison and identification and occasional connections, but it doesn't make it any less wondrous.

twitter's been even stranger, that way. I don't hold back about anything which seems foolhardy given that it's #3 hit for my name but I think it's just that I'm tired of lying about it, maybe. Either way, it is what it is, and as inconvenient as it would be to get disowned ahead of schedule, it's slowly become something I am less petrified by and approaching some level of readiness for, which is all sorts of fucked.

shymalan-esque twist on above: the baby. I could probably get by without the adults, but I can already tell that bowing out of babytron's life is going to wreck me. We get along, and I like being an uncle, to some extent. Better get quality time in while I can, then.

highly concise desert island albums

2009-07-07T21:56:00.001-07:00

thor is applying for the red bull music academy, and says

they ask questions like "list your favorite 10 albums and tell us why" and give maybe 15 lines for that

this works out to 1.5 lines per album so I thought I would give it a shot. Thirty words, including album names. Here goes:

Radiohead — OK Computer: first album I received, and one that sparked a lifelong love of music.
Okkervil River — Black Sheep Boy: inherently nerdy (named after a Russian short story), nobody else has been quite so able to gutpunch me in the emotions.
Wrens — The Meadowlands: I moved to the suburbs at 18, and despaired in the manner of teens believing they were inimitable. I was wrong, because they'd been there, too, and made an album that saw me into my 20s.
The National — Boxer: is it weird that they make me nostalgic for a life I never led?
Joanna Newsom — Ys: behind the endlessly divisive voice lies inventive compositions rooted in the music of ages paired with lyrics depicting tales more vibrant than any Disney joint.
...and you will know us by the trail of dead — Source Tags and Codes: one verse sealed it: what is forgiveness / just a dream / what is forgiveness / everything"
Bjork — Homogenic Live: Joga was made for orchestras.
Mogwai — Government Commissions 1996-2003: cheating, sort of, but this is the only way to get Like Herod and Helicon I on one album.
Autechre — tri repetae: I found this years ago at the local library, and it was my gateway drug into IDM.
Sigur Ros — Agaetis Byrjun: a man plays guitar with a bow, and another sings with the voice of a whale. 900 pairs of cheeks in the Chan Centre find themselves moistened.

anyway, there's that: poorly thrown together, but mostly remarkable as a piece of writing not rooted in AUGH I HATE EVERYONE, nor one excessively dissected before being put up for the world.

home and in a daze forever

2009-07-03T23:55:00.000-07:00

Recent advice, summarized: Write your way out of a thinking block—because you'll never *think* your way out of a writing block.

Merlin Mann

with the above in mind, here goes:

It's hard to move between two contradictory ideas of normal, and as much as the commute between works out as the overlap between both circles in this Venn Diagram (leave it at two, for now), it too becomes its own grind, and the days when I don't have to deal with the transition (either way) are few and far between.
Wednesday morning I woke up on a couch at the Ubyssey house, saw nobody awake (but remembered our breakfast plans) and so read Infinite Jest until things picked up. Someone else saw me doing so, and grabbed Anathem and we sat on the couch occasionally touching but worlds away, buried in words and shrouded in silence.
Later that day, I spent a solid hour doing it again, but in a room full of people who'd seen me reading before breakfast and thought, "I haven't done that for a while. Why not?"

[cont.'d, some days later]

I got through 150-odd pages of Infinite Jest (which is manages to satisfy and tantalize simultaneously; get wrapped up in the joys of constructions and realize that the plot beckons farther down the rabbit hole.) which I haven't been able to replicate, either in state of mind or in circumstance— it feels, most days, like my time in the house is regarded as pretty much up for grabs, and so any time spent in relative stillness is due for usage.

A couple weeks ago, I got pulled away from rather a lengthy and difficuly round of photo editing (cloning a shirt down to cover an expanse of belly unbecoming of grad photos is a huge pain in the ass.) to stand around in the back lawn and hold pieces of lumber. As "it'll only take ten minutes" turned to forty with no end in sight, I pointed out that I had work to do, and that it was paid, and I needed to get it done.

There was an eventual point to this, rooted in displeasure and the awkward relationships of parents and adult children (rendered stranger through living together, cultural assimilation differences, and my constant and low-level dread about being outed/disowned ahead of schedule) but it seems needless to hash it out when all it's going to do is infuriate and then sadden (in that order.)

Instead I'm going to hit the button and walk away, deep breathing before thinking is buried in body-tasking; practice for all the things I'm going to leave one day.

unfortunate observation

2009-07-01T23:54:00.000-07:00

I wasn't home for 38 hours, and then I was, and then everything either of my parents said to me was an imperative.

I was wondering why the time away felt so much like a vacation, and now I have my answer.

2009-07-01T23:35:00.000-07:00

not this, not now, not again.

[sigh]

put the sounds of your house in a song

2009-04-27T23:08:00.000-07:00

last week marked the last party in Kerrisdale Alpha, and also the last party wherein Al and Jordie have been roommates, an arrangement which had existed for most of what I think of as my adult life.

It's weird to realize how much that space, and the access thereto, changed things for me. It's been pretty much the textbook definition of safe space (esp. after Gavin's party, wherein I made out with Gary and lost my glasses, leaving me metaphorically and literally stumbling into awkward new territories.) I've slept it off, chatted over breakfast, came in to hang out, stored, lost, found, and made myself at home in every definition of the word. I worked my first show off that couch, fleeing V-Fest at T-Bird to return, shower, sleep, and leave again. I've spent at least four New Years in the last five years with Al, Jordie, Rob or some combination thereof. There's been shelter from snow and adventures in baking, post-bad-date moping, laughter and sadness and drinking and some of the best people I know.

We gave it a grand Viking funeral, with a room filled with balloons and a house filled with joy, and as I closed the door behind me for the last time, I felt a weird pang of sadness for the times we wouldn't be spending there any longer.

So: on to better things. I didn't leave my identity in one place again, which was nice, and I've lined up another couple places to crash, which is sensible. Time moves quicker than it used to, it seems, so I should go do things and not write about them.

It's been a wild ride, party house. Thanks for the memories.

band-aids

2009-04-12T22:11:00.000-07:00

I ended up at karaoke last night for the fifth time in three weeks (seriously: a birthday, the post-AGM celebrations, ducking into the Gallery, ending up at not-Hoko's again, and then the Biltmore), but only last night was there any actual talking, and it was most definitely uncomfortable truth hour.

in the midst of an excited exchange about everyone's new homes, I let out a defeated sigh about my continued existence in suburbia and suddenly all eyes were on me, with the usual litany of why can't/won't/don't you move out? and as much as I want to say fuck, yes, let's go, I know that I can't just yet, that part of it is that I'd like to leave on good terms and part of it is that I still don't feel whole, and that were anything to go wrong again I'd much rather be here than out on my own, to some extent.

Part of it is cliché "first generation children operate in two sets of social realms" but then you add in the whole queer thing and suddenly I am a Venn diagram of identity sets and operational expectations. It seems silly to want to align them a little better before another round of turmoil, but I do, and will try.

There was substantial support for just going whole hog and pulling the band-aid off all at once, so to speak-- operating on the assumption that reconciliation was inevitable and that time and knowledge was all that was needed for my parents and their peers to adjust and accept. The problem is that the one test case doesn't bear that out, and it's difficult to explain to people just how weirdly insular the family-cluster is, as odd as it seems.

I could just work in the extra ten hours a week I wouldn't be travelling, reconnect with friends and make an actual go at a relationship and just leave this life behind. It's a tempting thought and one that doesn't stand up to scrutiny; as much as it frustrates me, I know that it's not a tie I'm willing to sever and I'm not alone in it, (as my sister and el babytron are here basically every day and that's pretty unorthodox, to be honest.) so that remains an idle fantasy.

I realize that at the end of the day I want this to happen on my terms and not for reasons of convenience. I also don't want to come out as a means/attempt of hurting them, and part of that is knowing when and how to bring it up (myself out? no idea) as well as having the logistical side ready. Being about to put myself into a sizable debt hole which I regard as all sorts of necessary evil, I can't proceed thoughtlessly here.

I'm going to keep thinking, then.

grace and chemicals

2009-03-29T14:41:00.001-07:00

it's weird how much these three words have resonated with me since I first heard them in an M83 song. I think I will write more on this when I'm not in the middle of Ubyssey production.

Yes.

on a good mixture

2009-03-21T23:13:00.000-07:00

there's a lot to be said about the Battlestar series finale that aired last night, and I won't be saying it here. Looking back (to yesterday, admittedly) it was less about the show and more about the showing. I watched it at Goh's place, with a couple of other guys from the paper, and absolutely demolishing beers.

Demolishing.

I cried a little, we laughed a lot, we got drunker and cast awkward toasts to absent friends and idle notions, discussed the people we work with and who'd do whom and where things would go next year and moved conversation from inside couches to outside balcony (along with the vices.) and realized I'd blindly lucked into yet another fantastic group of people.

went to karaoke (high), ran into but did not speak to richard (I was very singularly focused on getting cash from the machine. I swear.) and spent the rest of the night drinking beer and singing badly.

Back to Jordie's to sleep, and now I am home, post-hangover and wondering what it was I was thinking of in the first place. I think I just wanted to memorialize this, one of the first days I went through without the usual litany of anxieties-- I am dealing with serious future-planning stuff (photo editor! raising freelance rates! more clientele!) and doing pretty alright, given that earlier versions of me would have self-handicapped and nothing would have happened.

Maybe growing up isn't so bad, after all.

things I didn't put in a facebook meme:

2009-02-06T00:04:00.000-08:00

7. I spent half of 2006 and most of 2007 on antidepressants.
8. I came off said antidepressants the hard way, when I decided that this wasn't a good idea and then spent three weeks tapering down my dosage and another three days in withdrawal.
10. I am a terrific liar. The reasons for this are many, and it pains me to do it, but it's easier in the short-to-mid term and I'm getting disowned in the long run so whatever.

rael-izations

2009-02-02T00:53:00.000-08:00

Autechre: opera for robots?

I put it on when I want to do something else; it ends up soundtracking a commute more often than any circumstance wherein I put it on just to listen to it, but now that I am giving it a fair shot, I'm liking how it feels; how it seems to skirt the edge of something and then careen away wildly to bury traces of emotion between a pile and a driver. It doesn't make conventional sense, and doesn't map in any way I'm used to, and I think I like that.

like a little drop of ink in a glass of water

2009-01-28T01:02:00.000-08:00

reviewing the archives, I notice that this has been the third time I have announced a resurrection.
maybe it'll stick. here's hoping.

thinking out loud, you said, I'm overwhelmed

2009-01-28T00:24:00.000-08:00

I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop, for some cataclysm to rear its ugly head and send me back into prior paralyzed depths of my ridiculous anxieties, to return to the space I took so long to get away from.

I watch myself more astutely, now. Sometimes it's to keep a lie alive; nouns are edited and verbs omitted, timestamps skewed and intoxication temporarily ignored. More often, though, it's to spot the signs in case of disaster; am I sleeping enough? what's my diet like? why am I worried about what I'm worried about? Sometimes I feel like a miner who too focused on the canary, runs the risk of falling down the mineshaft.

I brush against them, sometimes, as I root for missing socks, the lone rigid object in a drawer full of fabric tubes; the childproof lid and orange bottle reminding me of a simpler time when all I had to do was take with meal and do not operate heavy machinery. I don't have a record of those days; they passed in a vague haze of office work and utter apathy punctuated with occasional bus treks from Langley to somewhere that didn't suck and periodic episodes of catastrophic doubt. I don't miss them.

I wonder, sometimes, if the easiest thing would be to start up again, to let the days wash over and by me in some obscene parody of a time-lapse montage as I sublimate my own desires and let my life be lived for me again, because today was a bad day and school is hard and work blows and I can't keep this up and and and everything is no good.

Then I remember the bottle, and I remember how I stopped feeling like things were so bad, and then I stopped feeling like myself, and then I stopped feeling altogether.

The bottle stays in the sock drawer. I will only throw it out when it is an empty gesture, not because I might need it and can't be trusted not to cave, but when I don't need it and have no use whatsoever for it.

That day is getting closer.

well whatever, you do this

2009-01-28T00:05:00.000-08:00

I find myself compelled to write at inopportune times; it doesn't help that I will get myself all jacked up on caffeine and then do things I need to focus on because of my atypical reaction to large doses of stimulants, then find myself distracted in new and exciting ways.
So far, this has led to the addition of a business card blog (!) to my RSS feed, at least three bookmarks about CSS grid layouts that would necessitate a full teardown and overhaul of any web project I was on before it could go live, and about two pounds lost to fidgeting.

There are a lot of things that I have gotten good at whose necessity and proficiency I am mostly alarmed by, and along with lying (I am the best liar you know.), I'm now used to building distractions into my workflow; it doesn't help that I have three to five things on the go at once, and there are notifications popping up at inopportune moments but it makes me wonder if/when I hit a wall on this front, and suddenly I stop being able to pay attention to anything at all.

It's a worrying notion, and I realize now that I carry a couple of low-level worries with me at all times which carry the potential to grow alone or in concert and return me to the space I occupied before-- all passed deadlines and learned helplessness.

and now I'm rambling. This post is shelved.

facial horrors

2009-01-21T14:32:00.000-08:00

yesterday at the orthodontist, they filed down my front teeth, which makes them smooth and leaves me a little closer to someone with normal teeth. My mouth feels weird again.

cold boot

2009-01-15T01:00:00.000-08:00

went to Saskatoon with the Ubyssey, had a blast, learned a lot and slept a little, came home starry-eyed and full of (urban) fervor. that's another post entirely.

Returned home, and the next day I called the ol' bookstore to see when I was in next to find out that hours were cut by 1/3rd and that I had no hours on the schedule, that I might be able to go on EI, and that boss was v. sorry but that there was nothing she could do.

Moped around for a couple hours, simultaneously hanging out with sister and niece (who was happy to see me, apparently) and being all frown-like when my sister asked me how much I had in checking, in savings, and on my Visa. She's been the financially sound one for as long as I can remember (working in banks will do that, I suppose) so I answered and she said I'd be fine, which got me thinking: well, now what?

I have a pretty solid idea of where I don't want to work, and a decent one of where I do, so while a job hunt happens, I have a lot of freeish time, suddenly. There's a possibility of EI while I'm off, and so maybe it's time for a sabbatical-- I could get my online presence under control, get on top of my distance ed, and do more shooting as a whole; freelance, paper, and just for kicks.

So what's standing in the way? I'm not really sure. I guess it's time to find out.

kickstart

2009-01-04T01:07:00.000-08:00

I do this yearly, hiatus or deadblog or no, and maybe this will mark the return from two years of not writing.

1. What did you do in 2007 that you'd never done before?
Got As in distance ed, marked 12 consecutive months at a job, bought a zoom lens, started making money off photography, went to Pride, shot shows, stuck to a five-year plan.

2. Did you keep your new year's resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
No and yes.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
Yes. My sister.

4. Did anyone close to you die?
Yes.

5. What countries did you visit?
The US.

6. What would you like to have in 2009 that you lacked in 2008?
Sanity, sig. other, a job that I don't hate, a return to UBC.\

7. What dates from 2008 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
Odd Balls (NYE, Pride, Halloween), Pride as a whole, closing Seymour (and getting drunk with Ashley) the day I got my grades back, Radiohead, Okkervil River interview, Canada Day, starting at Davie, the birth of ye olde niece, Ubyssey 90th, New Year's at the Lotus. Night's at Al's and mornings at Art's, Corn Maze and Jess' whirlwind tour of the city, motherfucking snowed-in Boxing Day.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
I got As in some courses, I got ahead with freelancing, and I didn't get fired. Or kill myself. That's probably the biggest one.

9. What was your biggest failure?
I continue to be unable to motivate myself without a fuckton of caffeine.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
Yes but I didn't go mad again.

11. What was the best thing you bought?
Tossup: 580EX/17-55 2.8/IS

12. Whose behaviour merited celebration?
They know who they are.

13. Whose behaviour made you appalled and depressed?
They know who they are, too.

14. Where did most of your money go?
Braces, mortgage, tuition, camera gear.

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
Music, restoration of sanity..

16. What song will always remind you of 2008?
Blue Tulip - Okkervil River

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:
a) happier or sadder? Saner.
b) thinner or fatter? Definitely fatter, working on it.
c) richer or poorer? Richer.

18. What do you wish you'd done more of?
Admitting.

19. What do you wish you'd done less of?
Commute, settling.

20. How will you be spending Christmas?
At home.

21. Did you fall in love in 2008?
Love no, like yes.

22. How many one-night stands?
None.

23. What was your favourite TV program?
Battlestar Galactica, 30 Rock comes in a close second.

24. Do you hate anyone now that you didn't hate this time last year?
Nobody new.

25. What was the best book you read?
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

honorable mentions: White Walls, Consider the Lobster, Wild Sheep Chase, Cloud Atlas.

26. What was your greatest musical discovery?
Frightened Rabbit, The Dodos, St. Vincent

27. What did you want and get?
Material stuff, space, etc.

28. What did you want and not get?
Material stuff, freedom.

29. What was your favourite film of this year?
Wall-E

30. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
23: I don't remember, probably I went drinking.

31. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
I miss ACF. A lot.

32. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2008?
I like selvage denim. I bought something like four pairs of the stuff.

33. What kept you sane?
I'm not really sure.

34. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
Uh, most all of the cast of Battlestar Galactica.

35. What political issue stirred you the most?
American election/Prop 8

36. Who did you miss?
Most everyone from AUS. We seem to have grown up and apart.

37. Who was the best new person you met?
More Ubyssey kids: Goh, Keegan, and Trevor Record; Carl, Jake, and Endie from BW; Ian and George and Fife from roadie-ing, and Kristen, Chloe, and Marg from RBF.

38. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2008:
This is worth doing right.

39. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year:
The Notwist: Good Lies-
let's just imitate the real
until we find a better one

alternately, Radiohead: Nude-
Now that you've found it, it's gone
Now that you feel it, you don't
You've gone off the rails

recycled:

2008-06-03T23:11:00.000-07:00

this is from the LJ, in January:
up again, down again, out of my head
I'm not sleeping again.

It's weird to be going through it all again, to recognize the patterns and sidestep the usual caltrops, only to find three more in their place. I need the meds, I hate the meds, I think they're the wrong ones but they're right enough to get me through a day without an idle thought of something spectacularly dumb (and something that I couldn't get right, although whether that was last-ditch self-preservation or sheer incompetence is an exercise left for the reader.)

I don't want to be here, I think, is what it comes down to, but I have too many balls in the air to simply leave, and as much as I want to think that the journey to a space where I can do that is worthwhile, I still can't seem to get it together. Mostly, I guess, I'm paralyzed because the choices are pretty much equally unappealing:

- stay the current course: wrong meds, distance ed until i return to UBC, work so i can pay for it all, etc
- get off the drugs, see where things go from there; attempt to stay course listed above
- go crazy
- another round of doctors and poking (literal, metaphorical) another attempt to fix me (tighten that bolt; keep his marbles in) and maybe success, maybe this again.
- crazy hippie bullshit (acupuncture, incredible amounts of weed)
- doing something dumb to retain control (squid tattoo, ill-advised piercing, etc)

they've all got their pros, they've all got their cons, they've all got me realizing that I should have used a list tag on them, and that this was a good exercise. I had a Moleskine book for recording this sort of thing and I filled it up. I guess it's time for another.

the ghost of you lingers

2008-05-23T15:56:00.000-07:00

thoughts, assorted, below.
___
have become a social smoker, it seems. had a couple colts last night with some dudes from BW and woke up with the taste still in my mouth this morning. I dunno why they always seem like such a good idea at the time. will have to stop, to be sure that I can. addiction is too easy; reliance remains something I have problems with.
___
Other habits remain - have caffeinated pretty hard in preparation for (re)doing econ assignments but have not yet the point where I am together enough to do it and I don't know why. It would be easier if I could figure out the root cause and address it but I don't see that happening without counselling or possibly fullblown psychiatry.
___
Thinking about travel again, and how 2010 might be better spent raking in money than by getting out of town... this requires a mild alteration to the travel plans by either pushing back Emily Carr or by moving travel to summer breaks only; will cross that bridge when I get to it.
___
missed shooting National/Modest Mouse/REM because I didn't check my email soon enough. Must figure out way to do that like a Blackberry, without actually having to get one. Clunky fuckers.
___
schedule:
bbq tonight, chez rob.
late night/early morning study times (1-5am, probably)
m83 tomorrow night
work on 4th sunday (wolf parade)
jamie lidell sunday night (with abra, possibly chad)
doesn't hold a patch to this week last year, which was: end of v-fest, bjork @ deer lake, sasquatch.
so it goes, I guess.
___
fuck me, the camera was a good idea. why i didn't do it sooner is beyond me.

on passing

2008-05-11T02:07:00.000-07:00

I am a terrific liar.

It's an unfortunate development and a dubious skill and I would give it up in a moment, but not yet. There are times when I need every iota of it to pass as someone I'm not and to do so convincingly, and I hate the situations but I think I hate myself more for it.

Today was one of those times; as much as I try to rationalize I wish it wasn't.
Tactics were pretty simple; deflect relationship questions by talking about work, keep conversation topics to sports, beer, cars, and comics, and ogle passersby badly.

It's good practice; if/when I go back to concert production it'll come in handy.

[sigh]

tripartite

2008-05-08T23:27:00.001-07:00

not quite ready to talk about job news. all in good time.
___
have realized that clean breaks are impossible, and that for the most part, it's bad habits I need to break, not some ill defined aspects of my personality and identity. thus, changes are ongoing and it's important that I keep up the progress but it doesn't need to stress me right the fuck out.

___
resultantly, writing on skytrain again. snippets, mostly, in the moleskine that used to be denoted for marking up breakdowns. extracts follow:

...skytrains pair compression of distance with removal of personal space; windows ground passengers while reminding them of how far it actually is. add windows and suddenly everyone faces outwards (or steadfastly ignores them, to focus in, down, away. motion brings sickness, some times.) Been doing this so long that it's become prosaic.

scenes:

passing over and by an elementary school; peer down to vignettes of playground life - swings, balls, pecularities: one boy bounces a ball across a netless but fenced court and across from pitcher stands another. he wields a hockey stick half again his height and swings a lumpy arc as a building passes between us and resolution never comes.
skytrain cops embark; doors slide shut behind them with a synchronicity that belies repetition and possibly weariness. Fares checked to find that everyone obeyed the law, today - are they relieved? Underutilized? Restless? Cop shows have taught us nothing, I think.
sidenote to above: utility belts aren't nearly as awesome when in the actual world.
argyle sweater, tortoiseshell wayfarers, selvage jeans (cuffed, possibly with a square), suede wallabees, and ipod touch. Two-day beard, slight frown (with the way the world is, or what shuffle hath wrought?). Torn, here; do I want to hit him, or hit that? I am a terrible person.
guy at door, and i want to make this about his shirt. four vertical panels one tequila/two/three/floor, each portraying an knockoff Speedy Gonzales, prompting me to think "wuss". More interesting is the wearer than the item, though. Sunworn creases and careful goatee; chin up and eyes down as he looks out the window - sunset over the industrial zone between downtown and northeast vancouver. Grimaces as we slide into a station, shape of his shoulders suggesting a prior trespass, and as the doors whir open he casts another tentative glance and steps out. Paths here aren't crossed as much as they're tangents. Transit turns us all into loops.

It feels overwrought, more than a little clumsy and with a tendency to repeat tone and form. At the same time, it feels really good to be putting things out again. T-Shirts remain the final frontier; I think I can hack having an Exacto knife handy at all times, now, so I think it's time to make the shirts I have promised so many for so long.
___
last thing: this muxtape thing is some fun. I am (obviously) here: heeeraldo.muxtape.com.

eversions

2008-05-02T15:38:00.000-07:00

I seem to have turned my sidelines into main ones, which is a promising development. Michelle asked me at Jordie's party when I was going to start making money off the photos I took, which to be honest was a bit of a surprise.

I bought the camera thinking I would have an exciting expensive hobby, being a grownup and all; barely six months later... this! I suppose that part of it was that I approached it on a lark, and really only associated going pro with people who have crazy gear and the experience to use it right.
Somehow, it never occurred to me that they had to start somewhere, too. There are times to muck around and there are times to buckle down and get the goddamn shot. As long as I know which is which, and how to get what I want out of a camera (and the people in front of it) I'll be just fine.

The impending BA Psych is becoming increasingly useless for what I want to do, but with so little left on it, I may as well finish and GTFO. UBC is rapidly becoming a place I no longer wish to frequent, and now more than ever I am ready to move the fuck on.

Plus, I have to meet Matt in Guam in two years. Can't do that without getting through this.

2008-04-27T20:00:00.000-07:00

jesus.
did I seriously just put Matt Good lyrics as a post title?
shit, when I did I turn sixteen again.
Fuck.

anyway: May is a break from fiction. School books, Web books, and that's it. No lit, no comics, no pulp or scifi or food writing (not fiction but still.)
it's time to shift from consumer to producer, and while I won't be writing necessarily, it'll still be output.

Three days to go... better get through this last book, and then one more spin through Pattern Recognition. It's like an old t-shirt... and now I have two copies in case of disaster.

one foot in front of the other

2008-04-22T19:31:00.000-07:00

can't seem to get anything done in the house; tiny panic-fuelled burst of efficacy today has drained into lethargy and feverish RSS feed checking.

c'mon c'mon. I'm better than this.

april update:

2008-04-06T22:10:00.000-07:00

Take meals to work
more meals taken, but not at 100%

No more refined flour or sugar
close but not yet.

Go to gym.
nope.

Finish off current distance ed classes, figure out next 9 credits thereafter
did the second half but not the first.

Put up portfolio site, get business cards made, finish pro bono projects
getting there but not yet

Move GTFO money into high-interest savings account
turns out it was already there.

Write (and stick to) budget.
nope.

Get forms and receipts for sending off, send off.
part one, yes. part two, not yet.

buh-wha: year 5?!

2008-03-29T21:56:00.000-07:00

this was the year i stopped, and then started again. there were some demons wrestled, some truths faced, admissions made, and some growth. it hasn't been easy, but i'm still here, and i don't see myself stopping again.

pressure valve

2008-03-26T01:10:00.000-07:00

I am feeling bottled up lately; there are things missing and other things that haven't filled the void, people who I miss being tired of, and a general lack of a lot of people who I used to be in constant contact with, whose tangents have run in directions away from mine.

I am a sad panda, but not in the way I used to be.

glowing young ruffian

2008-03-18T01:31:00.000-07:00

been thinking about space, again. spurred partially by Spook Country and its locative art phenomena - a response, presumably to the rise of ubiquitous computing [cue Vanessa, "Damn, girl, you biquitous!"] and so, the ability to access anything from anywhere becomes pared down again to being able to access certain things only in certain places; although the data floats freely, it only coalesces on specific spaces, dowsed out by the forked stick of GPS and EV-DO (or EDGE or HSPDA or whatever). I don't know if it's feasible, but it served as a bit of a starting and focal point for two separate trains of thought. (sidenote: it's a quick read if you haven't read it already, and you can borrow mine if you really want [paperback is probably due soon])

first: Entertaining idle thoughts about spaces and tags (graffiti and folksonomical), I ended up walking by SPEC, where I had the comedy-of-errors interview which led to me spending the afternoon on Kits beach, reading and eating Thai food and watching Jamie Bamber (aka Apollo) idly run by. Passing that, I hit the corner of Maple and 4th; across the street is the site of the post-ACF-12-cleanup dinner at Los Margaritas, down the street was Zulu Records, where I picked up the infamous Squarepusher ticket, and nearby was gravitypope, site of my temporary obsession with Medium Shoes (now, sadly, out of business).
There are a lot of places that each carry their own space/time association, and while they're largely welcome (and informative when they're not) they're largely inescapable for me, especially in the city.
There's a map in the comic Fun Home that lays out a characters life - born here, grew up there, died in this spot, and all within a relatively small number of miles of the same town. It's a fictional character, but it seems so plausible, and it's not a map I want to be trapped by, posthumously. It seems likely on some days more than others, and somehow it is both enticing and repellent; possibly reflective of a divided outlook on risks vs security or tied to the strangely logical notion of a fear of success (more on this later).
Either way, I have come to the conclusion that I want to markup another city; in the sense of extensible languages and not paint markers; I imagine it wouldn't be too hard given GPS-enabled cellphones and cameras; if cameras have become embedded in other technologies (of dubious quality most times, but not always) then GPS might not be far behind. Of course, given the space-bound (!) backbone required for GPS to make any sense, the location-via-cell-tower method could be a more usable stand-in.

fuck me, I'm rambling. Point was: I think I invest too much of my identity in civics; although nobody wants to be from Surrey, leaving so much of myself in East Van and on campus was hugely unhealthy. I don't know how to fix it, short of self-redefinition and the gentle restoration of self-esteem, but I'm trying.

the steep approach

2008-03-13T19:48:00.000-07:00

I'm drawing again, which I think is a big deal; it was pretty much the first thing to go post-SNRI and between that and the photography/HTMLing, I feel a lot closer to myself. The diet, while occasionally difficult to moderate, has so far adjusted well to the white flour and sugar removals; next step is to up the leafy/dark green veggies which shouldn't be too hard, especially if I keep remembering to take lunch and not get stuck eating downtown, which (obv) is terrible for me, unless I go to the make-your-own stirfry place (and that's frankly just sort of disappointing.)

Work sucks; I won't deny it. I'm well liked and the job is easy, but I need to GTFO, or as Dan Savage would say, DTMFJ.

School... is okay. I've been avoiding it and I need to stop doing so.

I miss people.
I am seeing some folks and have also made new(ish) friends via the Ubyssey/new AUS kids/UBC Insiders, it's not at all the same; maybe I actually am turning into a curmudgeon.

Fuck it. Time for Smash Bros.

Project Unfuck

2008-03-05T09:07:00.000-08:00

I wanted an easy way out; some sort of colossal "Unfuck My Head" that would basically set things up so I could knock them down again - no panicking, no nonstarter status, no endless feelings being trapped by myself.

I got the first one, at least. As for the others, I came to realize that there might be more to this than I thought at first. There's no telling without visiting a proper shrink and getting a proper diagnosis as to whether I am just an enormous underachiever or if it's ADHD or something equally buzzwordy and ridiculous.

It came with a healthy dose of side effect, both physically (metabolism down, weird cravings up) and mentally (weird things to sex drive, no creativity) and generally wreaked havoc, with the only upside being that I felt in control of myself, again.

So I stopped. Tapered down, and realized that I spent a year and a half on pills that were helpful, but not a cure-all (though they were explained to me as such) and also that I needed to do this the hard way.

...which brings us here.

This marks a beginning, I think, of several things. The first of which is the abandonment of the mild superstition I have of writing things down here, because then they don't happen. The second is a concerted effort to make shorter-term goals and deadlines that are within a longer-term framework; I tend to do one without the other, which curtails effectiveness.

Lose the gut. Get back down to a 32

Get back into school, kick its ass.

Derive sole income from web, photography, and concert production work

Restart sensible savings plan

Clear out personal debt

Get back money I am owed (by insurance, mostly)

Take meals to work

No more refined flour or sugar

Go to gym.

Finish off current distance ed classes, figure out next 9 credits thereafter

Put up portfolio site, get business cards made, finish pro bono projects

Move GTFO money into high-interest savings account

Write (and stick to) budget.

Get forms and receipts for sending off, send off.

wish me luck.

toes, dipping, waters, so on.

2008-03-01T22:19:00.000-08:00

As Rob once pointed out, we default to talking about music now, when previously it would have been the weather; at least within the people I know (and like enough to regularly talk to). Accordingly, then, it would only make sense that I fall back on a music post as a reintroduction to the medium.

Thus: Five in Heavy Rotation - Post-Leap-Day edition.
It's five songs I've had on repeat, or I've been listening to in my head, or singing in the shower; heavy rotation doesn't always mean that it's in a form that is trackable via Last.fm. Here they are, and also a little bit about them.

Okkervil River Song - Okkervil River
Newest addition to my Okkervil River collection (surprising, I know) - I've listened to it six times in a day and will probably do so a couple more times until I know the words. I've heard it in podcasts, and once live, but it becomes something else when applied directly to the skull. It's a paean to unsustainable self-reliance (which a certain person has previously yelled at me over MSN about), lost love, and the importance of working towards dreams. Plus, it made me tear up a little the first time I heard it.

Racing Like a Pro - The National
For some reason, this album is tied tightly to my Murakami binge, and the weird alienation plus sub versus conscious mind motifs that the author loves carries through into this particular track. I love the palpable tension and the careful use of strings in the background. It's also a reminder to not settle, which was a New Year's resolution I made with Al, and probably the one I will end up keeping to more than the others.
Plus, for the longest time, I thought the chorus was "your mind is racing like a pronoun" which made no sense but appealed to me anyway.

Bitches in Tokyo - Stars
cross off all the ways I failed you
because I failed you
but I'm still in your blood
you're still on my blood.

[if you have to ask...]

Gouge Away - Mogwai (Pixies cover)
"Hey! You got Scottish post-rockers in my early-90s pre-grunge!" It's perfect; sludge and accents nailed to serious drums and Old Testament allusions.

Stella Was a Diver and She Was Always Down - Interpol
In Pattern Recognition, William Gibson writes about "psychological prophylaxis", or the act of restoring emotional normalcy by resuming daily tasks; it seems fitting that the act of reading the book (and listening to an album that I played while reading it the first of countless times) would act as a normalizer on my part.
Lately, though, this song makes me miss a trio of people, all of whom I have gone from functionally constant to now sporadic contact; two through circumstance and one through some sort of weird clean break on the other party's end.
At the end of the day, I guess there's nothing to do but wonder about ducks in faces at 240 knots and move on.

Downloads up here. It'll come down in two weeks.

2008-03-01T13:58:00.001-08:00

I think, sometimes, I don't write because I don't want to augment future memories of this time; I'm not happy with a lot of things.

At the same time, it seems a bit like cutting off my nose to spite my face and ultimately having a record of mistakes made and lessons learned would only be useful in the longer term.

I guess I'm back, then.

blow me, 2007!

2008-02-17T23:57:00.000-08:00

better late than never, I guess.
time to relapse.

anywhoo: standard year end meme follows:
1. What did you do in 2007 that you'd never done before?
Spent a full 12 months out of school, did only distance ed classes, got fired, temped, bought a DSLR, went to Sasquatch, went to a bunch of queer events, drank so much I blacked out, worked retail, bought a Mac.

2. Did you keep your new year's resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
No and yes.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
Yes.

4. Did anyone close to you die?
No.

5. What countries did you visit?
The US.

6. What would you like to have in 2008 that you lacked in 2007?
to move forward with the five-year plan. It really was a lot of decompression.

7. What dates from 2007 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
I can't be arsed.
Fair, birthday, New Years, telling my parents about drugs, MBP Day One, Sasquatch, V-Fest, Okkervil River... the day we killed the fair.

would I like to forget the summer? yes. will I? probably not.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
Being control, walking away, letting myself be helped.

9. What was your biggest failure?
There were a lot.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
Yes.

11. What was the best thing you bought?
Tossup: 30D/MBP

12. Whose behaviour merited celebration?
They know who they are.

13. Whose behaviour made you appalled and depressed?
They know who they are, too.

14. Where did most of your money go?
Braces, mortgage, tuition, etc.

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
Music, restoration of sanity..

16. What song will always remind you of 2007?
Mistaken for Strangers - The National

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:
a) happier or sadder? Saner.
b) thinner or fatter? Definitely fatter, working on it.
c) richer or poorer? Poorer.

18. What do you wish you'd done more of?
Admitting.

19. What do you wish you'd done less of?
Commute, settling.

20. How will you be spending Christmas?
At home.

21. Did you fall in love in 2006?
Yes. No. I'm confused.
Hold me?

22. How many one-night stands?
None.

23. What was your favourite TV program?
Battlestar Galactica.

24. Do you hate anyone now that you didn't hate this time last year?
Nobody new.

25. What was the best book you read?
Special Topics in Calamity Physics.

honorable mentions: A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, Kimberly Elam's Grid Systems and Typographic Systems.

26. What was your greatest musical discovery?
The National, Battles, The Twilight Sad, Grizzly Bear.

27. What did you want and get?
Material stuff, space, etc.

28. What did you want and not get?
Material stuff, freedom.

29. What was your favourite film of this year?
No Country for Old Men.

30. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
22: ACF Staff Dinner.

31. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
Stable neurochemistry.

32. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2004?
I like sweaters.

33. What kept you sane?
Effexor, 150mg, once a day... at least it did until I stopped taking them, started again, and then tapered down.

34. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
Uh, most all of the cast of Battlestar Galactica.

35. What political issue stirred you the most?
I wasn't stirred a whole lot, in retrospect.

36. Who did you miss?
Most everyone. We seem to have grown up and apart.

37. Who was the best new person you met?
Pretty much everyone at the Ubyssey but especially Brandon, Matt Hayles, Paul, and Kellan; Sean from temping @ Credential; Gary from Metafilter.

38. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2007:
This is worth fighting for.

39. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year:
The National - Racing Like A Pro:
Your mind is racing like a pro, now
oh my god it doesn’t mean a lot to you
one time you were a glowing young ruffian
oh my god it was a million years ago

V-Fest, in Facebook Updates:

2007-05-23T23:45:00.000-07:00

May 14
Gerald is router shopping. 12:09pm

May 15
Gerald is PAing at V-Fest. 10:22am

May 16
Gerald is back from the orthodontist. 11:19am
Gerald is still PAing at V-Fest. 7:33pm

May 17
Gerald is continuing to PA at VFest... now with pirate socks! 10:05am

May 18
Gerald is PAing... now with Tony Seaver! 9:36am

May 19
Gerald is PAing in the rain. 9:06am
Gerald is displeased with himself. 10:51pm

May 20
Gerald is PAing... doors in an hour! 12:06pm
Gerald is working with and/or basking in the presence of the main stage manager from Coachella. 6:28pm
Gerald is post-Guinness. 11:09pm

May 21
Gerald is overslept and grumpy. 9:06am
Gerald is testing wireless connections on T-Bird's upper field. 12:50pm
Gerald is fixing phone lines. 2:22pm
Gerald is eating a Spongebob popsicle, having fixed phone lines. 4:20pm
Gerald is le tired; show's over and now it's beginnings of teardown time. 10:33pm

Yesterday
Gerald is still at T-Bird; V-fest is all done but for the shouting. 10:56am

Today
Gerald is still tired after 14 hours of sleep. 1:51pm

---
It was a good first gig to have; I learned a lot and I can't say enough good things about a large number of people. As well, I think it's something I want to do more of... here's hoping.

2007-04-25T16:26:00.000-07:00

so it's laundry day and I'm home alone.

thusly, I am sans pants. Don't judge, you know you'd either do it in my shoes or have done it already.

In any case, I saw the mail truck, and thought, "oh! I should go get the mail."
And promptly ran upstairs to grab my keys and head out.

I was literally one foot out the door before I remembered I wasn't wearing pants.
Faced with the decision to either put pants on or leave it until later, I opted to leave it; I remain pants- and mailless.

Whee!

last night

2007-04-16T21:51:00.000-07:00

um. wow.
last night was more than a little ridiculous.

I got out of the house on the pretenses that I had a date with a girl; her name was Sara, she was in Forestry, we weren't really sure if we wanted this to go anywhere so we'd give dinner a shot and then I was going to go out with the gang and then crash at Gav's.
What was actually going down was that I was heading to Costa's, changing, going out for the ACF Staff Dinner, and then we were going out after that.

of course, what happens after then doesn't reaaaalllly matter, and so I will relay a couple conversations I had:

"hey Gerald can you tie my tie for me? it doesn't look right."
"sure, Corbett, I'm on it."
"yes! I know a gay."
[Corbett dances]
"do you have an 'i know a gay' dance?"
"maybe."

[after Sarah's iron spilt water]
"Sarah! i wet your bed!"
"dammit you, didn't you do a test patch?"
"...I thought that was hair dye."
"wait, you're right."

"damnit, I hate this tie. I want a nice thick one like yours."
"don't we all."
"well, except for Sarah."
"that would explain why she puts up with you."
"actually, it's why she doesn't like me so much."

[while attempting to tie corbett's tie for him]
"okay, there's no other way for you to do this than to stand behind me and reach around."
"...you want a reach-around? stupid low mirrors make this difficult. I wonder if Sarah's room is going to be any better."
"well, let's find out. Sarah! Gerald and I are going into your room and he's going to give me a reach-around!"
"Don't wet the bed!"

"na-ked! na-ked! na-ked!"

"this jacket is so soft. I don't want to let you go!"
"makes two of us."
"no, seriously."
"I was being serious."

shortly after the above conversation, pretty much the entire room decided that they needed to stroke my jacket. It was... endearing and awkward, neatly rolled into one.

and this was all before we got to the macaroni grill; the rest of the evening is up on facebook, but here's a drink tally for posterity:

2 shots Jager
2 Liquid Cocaines
2 Mystery Citrus Tequila Shots
1 Glenfiddich 12-year old
1 Irish Car Bomb
1 Jack and Coke
1 Mystery Shot (Butterscotch Schnapps + Kahlua)

That I didn't die is a minor miracle.

Anyways, there's a Birthday the Second for all my peeps who aren't on ACF Staff (and those who want to get ridiculous again), starting at the Mongolian BBQ on Broadway and Macdonald on the 27th at 7pm and then moving either to Honey for Mod Club, the beach, or the King's Head for a joint thing with C. Anderson.
Knowing us, though, something entirely different will happen.

eesh, or possibly hoo-ah

2007-04-13T22:39:00.000-07:00

Looking back on four previous years of post-Fair-posts, it's interesting (to me, mostly) to remember my frame of mind when writing what I did, and also to reflect on what's ended up sticking from the past four.

Also, I've now worked five Fairs. Jesus.
All five have been on or heavily involved with ProdComm.
Two were spent on Upper Plaza (on a stage that no longer exists.)
One was backstage, running PMO.
Two were up in Control.
All five have had me wanting to be down on the field taking care of things as they occurred at some point during the day.

Two (point five; the year I did PMO I took some Control stuff off of Ari's hands) have been on Exec.
Three have been without my parent's knowledge or consent, which boggles my mind; why is it okay to spend the day drinking and the next day hung over and playing video games (as was this year's excuse) but to run the show and help with takedown (ie, what I was actually doing) is verboten? Whatever.

In any case, a list of ten conversations I had either on the day of, on the field, or in pre-Fair meetings and such:

"Corbett to Control."
"Go for Control."
"I found a newt."
"Like, a salamander newt newt?"
"That's affirmative."
"I, uh... wow."

"Costa to Control, radio check."
"Loud and clear, Costa."
"GET THAT NIGGERFAGGOT OUT OF HERE!!"
"Corbett to all staff: Red card!!"
sidenote: see here

"Hi Mom. Yeah, I'm having fun. No, I haven't had too much to drink. I've been getting lots of water. After this? Probably to Graham's; that guitar game of his is pretty fun. Yes, I'll call before bed."

Bock: "I'm Gerald. Blah blah blah I like men. Blah blah blah threats."
Gerald: "I'm Ian Bock. Blah blah blah I'm tall. Blah blah blah I quote Family Guy."
Gerald: "We may as well complete the trio. I'm Tyler. Blah blah blah I've absorbed Corbett's bitterness and Gerald's vulgarity."
Tyler: "Holy shit you're right! How did that happen?"
Gerald: "Osmosis."
Ian: "I can't get the gay that way, right?"
Gerald: "No, but we have shared drinks before..."
Ian: "Aw, fuck.

"Seriously, dude, what happened with this weather? What the hell did Tyler do?"
"I dunno... but I'm gonna cut their dick off when I find out."
"Uh... Corbett? Tyler's straight."
"Yeah, but it's fucking snowing in April. He must of gotten into some seriously kinky shit."
"Like what? Taking my humps too seriously and boning a camel?"

"What the fuck do you mean did I bone a camel? I've never fucking seen a camel in my life!"
"Look, T-Bone, all I'm saying is that it's snowing in April. I don't know what you got up to, but don't do it again."
"I. Didn't. Fuck. A Camel."

"What do you mean Corbett would break me? I'm bigger than he is!"
"Alright, Bock, let's put it this way. You're a husky; big and friendly and fun and probably good at pulling sleds in Alaska..."
"Yeah, definitely that last one."
"...but he's a badger, and if we were to say, stick you in a barrel as the metaphorical representation of your post-chloroform marriage, he's way more tenacious than you are and he has claws. And he's angry. Yeah, you're bigger but that doesn't matter to him."
"Well, now that you put it that way, I'm a little afraid of him."
"Understandable."

"You sir, are cruising for a defenestration."
"What does that even mean?"
"I will push you out the window."
"Oh. In that case, I'll be on the field from now on. Far away from windows."

"Get that niggerfaggot out of here!"
"Sarah. Jesus Christ, Sarah! What is wrong with you?! What if there were niggerfaggots around? How do you think they would feel? Seriously, you awful awful person."

"Die in a fire."

bonuses!

"I love when people conform to stereotypes."
"What do you mean?"
"Turns out that the media guy was talking shit about me to anyone who would listen... including my assistant. It's a fag move."
"Yeah. Wow. That's pretty bad; I mean... I can't say it but I agree with you."

"Breaker Breaker this is Sam Roberts to Control."
"Go for Control, Sam."
"Hey, just wanted to say thanks for all your hard work; you guys did a great job and I had an awesome time."
"It was a pleasure to have you, Sam; you rocked the crowd pretty hard and it was a solid set."
"Thanks, buddy. You take care. Over and out."
"That's a big 10-4, Sam."

It's these silly one-off one liners and awful trash talking that I tend to take away from this; the experience and the relationships and the conversations re: being weirded out when Graham hugs you are also valuable, but it's the fact that I can walk up to about two thirds of the staff and drop "I heard what you said." and bring on endless fits of giggling is great.

It also occurs to me that I didn't touch on how awesome the staff is, the fact that I have nicknamed Virginia's little sister Balls (nickname and callsign.), matching aviators for A-Team that were then adopted by roughly half the girls on staff, the fact that John Hallen now knows my name, a first year that makes me look like a rank amateur when it comes to unflappability, and the fact that I apparently terrify people without meaning to.

Come find me, people; these stories require in-person transmissions.

point form

2007-04-05T22:03:00.000-07:00

- didn't get little sister's job. Dunno if it was because I don't know ASP or I wasn't gay enough.
- shoe store sucks. manager had boxes dropped on her, was concussed. now that I think about it, it's a hugely unsafe workplace and I want out.
- ACF is about to take over. My parents either don't know, or haven't let on that they do. I'm either a spectacular liar, my parents are really that oblivious, or they're even better liars than I am.
- I wrote a safety plan. A full blown fucking safety plan, and yet I still can't tell them.
- Asking people what they want is a bad idea.

argh and/or bah.

2007-03-31T17:42:00.001-07:00

you know it's not going to end well when your day starts off with putting contacts in backwards.

finish safety plan

draft design for client

put up sample work for Little Sister's

get done in time to go out

somehow I doubt the last one is going to work out.
bah.

the more things change...

2007-03-30T23:30:00.001-07:00

...the more they stay the same.
This marks four years of blogging, of ups and downs recorded for some sort of posterity, and as much as I think sometimes that it's pointless and indulgent and wholly unnecessary, I've continued regardless and there're no signs of stopping -- maybe it is a good idea.

funnily, my problems remain pretty much the same: parents don't like me doing Fair, my sister drives me mad, I hate the bus, and I don't know what I'm going to do with my life.
there are new twists, but at the core, it makes me wonder if I have changed as much from my seventeen-year-old self as I like to think I have.

Anyway: onwards to Year Five. I hope it's better than Year Four was, because I really don't want to think about the alternative.

PS: leave a comment re: your favorite/most memorable post. I'm curious to see what you all say.

mwa-ha!

2007-03-25T21:08:00.001-07:00

so I installed movable type... now, do I want to move all this content over there, or should I make it some sort of design-thoughts-only workblog?

open letter

2007-03-18T22:51:00.001-07:00

Dear Movable Type,

I will install you, and then I will use you, and you will be the backbone of my website. There is no point in resisting with your silly 500 Errors - I will upload in your finicky ASCII-not-binary mode, and I will run your CGI scripts to ensure that my provider has the necessary perl scripts and then you will fall to me. There will be pwnage.

Simmering discontent,
Gerald

Addendum: one CHMOD, and that shit fell faster than Rome to the m-effing Vandals.
Post-Addendum: the cavalry seems to have arrived, in the form of a hash that doesn't match up. Not hash like the drug, but hash as in a code encoded from the contents of a file so that you know you've got the right file.

bah

2007-03-16T21:35:00.001-07:00

Dad's here, standing behind me cleaning out his desk (for the third time this week; how he manages to accumulate so much that he seems to be throwing more out than ever doing anything is beyond me but that's a story for another time.)

unfortunately this means I can't work on the ACF Safety Plan, nor on the slightly more intensive ACF Disaster Plan that the Fire and Rescue guy (who, in retrospect, looked an awful lot like Horn-Rimmed-Glasses Man from Heroes) asked me for, and instead, I am going to go downstairs and play Wii when I'd rather not (shock!).

Also, this means that I have to carry the drafts around fairly carefully, as Corbett (badly) drew a penis on the cover page, with a little speech bubble that reads, "I'm Dicky!"

Don't get me wrong, I'm far from mad at Corbett, nor do I hate having to do the Safety/Disaster Plans (and along the same lines, the Comm Protocol) but that I'd like to be able to show my parents and work... publically and to say "I'm going to an All-Heads Meeting" and not "I'm going for coffee."

It's a lot of important work and that I have to do it so furtively is enraging, and I hate that I've become such a good liar as a result.

Anyway, time to go and do nothing when I should be doing something.

Fuck.

trial the second

2007-03-04T13:48:00.000-08:00

after this chat:
me: i think i want to go for an almost 1700s-map feel
Spencer: that would be neat
with a squid consuming a ship
me: with sort of a parchment tone to the backgrounds, sIFR'd fonts that look like they came out of an actual press, and yeah, menacing-ass squid.

I freehanded another attempt in flash:

thoughts?

for nicki

2007-03-02T23:49:00.000-08:00

this is what I was talking about - the jpg makes it crappy but the concept remains.

you's a ho

2007-03-02T15:23:00.000-08:00

well, I'm a ho, actually.
a consumer ho.

having received my Source payout, I went and bought the following things:
- two domains (archteuthidae.ca and giant-squid.ca; nothing is up on either of them)
- an iPod shuffle (blue, named Humboldt, using a gift card and some cash)
- Sasquatch tickets (jesus!)

...now, to get my (X)HTML on...

2007-02-25T20:12:00.000-08:00

I've told the story of Graham's birthday cake a couple of times, but I lost the image that I had the Dairy Queen people put on it for him.

after some rather strange Google searching, I found it again - it's called "Bad Day on the High Sea" and it's by an artist named Brandon Bird.

take a look - it's pretty awesome.

buh-wha?!

2007-02-24T18:35:00.000-08:00

only today did my dad notice that I have two pairs of glasses.

are they really that similar?

what goes around, etc

2007-02-21T20:20:00.000-08:00

some of you may remember this post in which I experiment with... Bluetooth headsets (sorry, couldn't resist) and where I decided that I had no real need or want for one.

A couple weeks ago, my brother received a free headset from Telus, decided he liked it better than the one he had, and now I am the mostly puzzled owner of a RAZR-styled headset. I don't know if I'll put it to any actual use, but at least now I can out-douchebag anyone I want!

...I'm pretty sure that's not a good thing, though.

unsent.

2007-02-19T10:51:00.000-08:00

I almost called last night.
Almost reached out, out from the witching hour and into your pale dawn, the opposite of a drunk dial; intoxicated exuberance replaced by sobriety and just-add-water sadness.

Certainly unexpected, after a day spent with Rob's grace and my chemicals (see also: M83) all smiles and silly jokes, peering at ridiculous knives and fondling a 5D before returning to simply relax.

Later, though, the injustice struck and I lay in bed, unable to sleep, stuck on the edge of a sadness that needed to be felt or ignored before anything else could happen and I numbly picked a selection of gut-punch songs on the iPod, reached for headphones and saw the phone, thought of you.

Decided against it in the end, as a disservice to my fledgling strength and your careful solitude - though your dependable cadence and audible gesticulations would have been a lift, they could just as easily have been a crutch.

In the end, it didn't matter; the raincloud passed, I watched Looney Tunes until I fell asleep, and now this is nothing more than memories committed to the Internet; a lesson for future and an offering to Google.

new sidebar link

2007-02-14T11:41:00.000-08:00

so I've been reading Achewood, a mildly surreal webcomic about talking cats who drink a lot. Now that I've finished plowing through the archives, I've added it to the sidebar, and you should check it out.

I went to pick a favorite one to put up as an example and ended up reading the archives for twenty minutes, so it's all good!

of mice and men...

2007-02-10T22:23:00.001-08:00

what was supposed to be a fairly straightforward evening of drinking followed by hanging out on friday was anything but, and here's a point form post before I go pass the fuck out.

- whiskey + smash bros in MASS with lougheed
- Red Knight
- people I knew at Red Knight: Joel, Huff, Jen+Dave, Lana,
- meeting of new kids
- science boy
- running into of highschool folk
- an event at the Cheeze shutting down on time
- back to MASS to grab things before heading to Jordie's goodbye thing
- Alex pukes. A lot.
- me and Lois play smash bros, chat while alex sleeps it off.
- at 12, give up and leave them
- Brickhouse
- Lynley!
- interesting discussions (re: industrial design, I hate musicians, etc.)
- taxicab chicanery

molehills, mountains, etc.

2007-02-07T21:02:00.000-08:00

I still can't figure out what I want and while I've been taking some time off and doing more school and also some attempts at figuring out, my lack of job and apparent "antisocial and attitude problems" (read: I'm either not home or not watching TV with the rest of the family because my CSI threshold is lower than everyone else) have led my dad to contemplate kicking me out of the house.

...and then everyone wonders why I'm never home.

face update:

2007-02-03T22:08:00.000-08:00

what's new in my mouth, you ask?

there's a tooth coming out
I have to go for a consultation regarding my jaw
my dentist thinks I'm in for more intense surgery than I was planning
flossing continues to be a huge pain
the dental assistants think it's nine kinds of funny to suggest I get ridiculously colored ones
If I have a short time between appointments, I just might.
or one I just thought of: going yellow and purple come Fair time.

actually it's a terrible idea and there's no way I'm going to get anything but the neutral ones, but I thought you'd all enjoy the mental image.

thunderstruck'd

2007-02-03T21:37:00.000-08:00

I'm not entirely sure what to write about last night; I got hammered and behaved appallingly, to some degree - I drunk dialed Rob and probably offended Neil and had quite an interesting chat with Dan.

that said, it was probably the best thing I could have done; it's been a long time coming and I think it'll help me break out of this weird, mildly complacent rut I've been in.

Also also: it's mildly alarming that I can be "oh god why did I drink that last beer goddamnit will someone stop the world from spinning" drunk and yet still tell the tour guide story about the Nitobe Gardens, down to the imported maples, and the fact that he's on the 50,000 yen note. I may have forgotten about how it's supposed to be like the Milky Way, but it's alright because we were being quiet.

Also³: I met Tim's roommate - we didn't talk much, and he definitely didn't set off anything on Ye Olde Radar.

Also⁴: I'm pretty sure I made a capillary action joke at Foreplay (where I won no sex toys, and I GOT ID'D AT THE CHEEZE WHAT THE HELL.)

5HR: January 31

2007-01-31T22:32:00.001-08:00

Five in Heavy Rotation - those songs that temporarily put themselves on repeat, demanding to be heard and leaving just enough of themselves bouncing around to require one (or more) repeats.

Today's edition includes (and will be up for download later):

Wintersleep - Insomnia
Guillemots - Trains to Brazil
Man Man - Van Helsing Boombox
Broken Social Scene - I'm Still Your Fag
Swan Lake - All Fires

in other news, I hate my computer and am thinking about building a new one.
*grumble*

cellular shenanigans

2007-01-31T09:54:00.001-08:00

I really need to start adding pictures to my phone listings; I almost called Claudia (of Ubyssey/Joblink fame) instead of Claudia (ACF Exec) yesterday intending to either discuss or leave a lengthy voicemail regarding the lineup.

Failing that, I should just add tags like the above... now that I think about it the idea has some promise.

like a monkey with a miniature cymbal

2007-01-30T08:58:00.001-08:00

first staff meeting last night for XVI.

we watched the video from 11 and I recognized half the people (Graham with purple hair! Spencer on front gate! Ollie!) and then introduced the fair and our positions and whatnot.

...ye gods I feel old.

also I missed 24 and am torrenting it now but if anyone says anything, heads will roll.

testing testing

2007-01-27T19:46:00.001-08:00

I can't quite figure out what it takes to make my Recently Updated box update - it's running a feed from my last.fm profile but it's not working exactly as expected. I thought it would be all but live but I'm guessing that it only rereads the feed when I publish a new post, which is sort of lame.

all systems blue

2007-01-25T21:46:00.000-08:00

so blogger has a new backend, and in the name of science, I thought I'd give it a shot and see what the big deal was.

I'd already had the chance to play around with it to some degree when designing Elections Insider and I didn't really like what I saw; it took the previous notion of "design your page, and then inject our code" and replaced it with "ground-up solution! hoo-ah!" which makes some things easier, but makes most personalization harder, especially with the weird live colour preview system which isn't documented and requires a little bit of reverse-engineering if you want to add any variables of your own.

It did keep a copy of the (admittedly stale) scrapheap design so I can switch back if I want, but for the time being I'll probably keep poking at the thing and reporting back.

life lesson #13483

2007-01-24T20:48:00.000-08:00

there's much debate re: Joanna Newsom, most notably where Warren Ellis referred to her as a yowling autistic playing the harp with a brick and then got chewed out for it. as well as Ys' place on multiple year-end list and heck, Emily making it fairly high up Pitchfork's 100 Songs of the Year.

...damnit I lost my point.

oh, wait, here it is: I like it. It's not immediate, and it's not something I would put and leave on repeat (like, say, the Guillemots' Trains to Brazil) but it works for me and I found myself captivated earlier by the following verses:

Anyhow - I sat by your side, by the water
You taught me the names of the stars overhead that I wrote down in my ledger
Thoough all I knew of the rote universe were those pleiades loosed in december
I promised you I'd set them to verse so I'd always remember

That the meteorite is a source of the light
And the meteor's just what we see
And the meteoroid is a stone that's devoid of the fire that propelled it to thee

And the meteorite's just what causes the light
And the meteor's how it's perceived
And the meteoroid's a bone thrown from the void that lies quiet in offering to thee

in closing: give things a shot, no matter what your favorite tastemonger may say. who knows what'll happen

just a box in a cage

2007-01-21T22:53:00.000-08:00

I can't help but wonder if I've used this post title before.

anyway: I'm not writing much, and I've been wondering as to whether I want to keep this whole shebang, but I've noticed that all hiatuses and rather long bursts of non-activity tend to lead to more promises to post more, and then more hiatuses.

Maybe I'm just a sporadic writer, or I fell out of whatever mindset is necessary to catalog and/or monologue about whatever my day included.

That said, I do like having an outlet (although I don't really like how the blog looks at the moment and will eventually get around to fixing it.)

also: is it weird of me to consider setting up a domain just so that I don't have a bog-standard gmail address? I mean, not exclusively but more along the lines of including it in the 'pro' column on the mental pro/con chart.

sidenote to Sarah:

2007-01-12T18:45:00.000-08:00

the pens were a good idea.

how not to lead.

2007-01-12T14:01:00.001-08:00

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Stephanie Ryan <auspresident@xxxxx.xxx>
Date: Jan 12, 2007 1:57 PM
Subject: [aus-list] A Simple Threat From Your President
To: aus-list@xxx.xxx.ca

Next week better be the best Arts Week ever.
If it's not I will kill you... all.
Remember Whistler, I will actually kill you.
--
Stephanie Ryan
Arts Undergraduate Society President
e. auspresident@xxxxx.xxx
c. xxx-xxx-xxx

fuck you, 2006!

2007-01-01T22:17:00.000-08:00

standard year end meme follows: go forth

1. What did you do in 2006 that you'd never done before?
Kissed a guy, came out, worked full-time, bought a console within a month of launch, had psychological counselling, used anti-depressants, had an RRSP.

2. Did you keep your new year's resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
No and yes.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
Clearly no, because I can't remember any.
[In retrospect, Tara did but I can't say we're close anymore (sadly)]

4. Did anyone close to you die?
No.

5. What countries did you visit?
The US.

6. What would you like to have in 2007 that you lacked in 2006?
To move out.

7. What dates from 2006 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
I can't be arsed.
Fair, birthday, wisdom teeth out, braces in, missing Spencer leaving, moving in, first night in own. fucking. bed., counselling, work, WUF, day one on drugs, Thompson Rivers, spelling bee, etc.

would I like to forget the summer? yes. will I? probably not.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
Being control, walking away, letting myself be helped.

9. What was your biggest failure?
There were a lot.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
Yes.

11. What was the best thing you bought?
Wii.

12. Whose behaviour merited celebration?
They know who they are.

13. Whose behaviour made you appalled and depressed?
They know who they are, too.

14. Where did most of your money go?
Braces, mortgage, tuition, etc.

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
Seeing people, Debutante Ball.

16. What song will always remind you of 2006?
Another Radio Song - Okkervil River

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:
a) happier or sadder? Sadder.
b) thinner or fatter? Maybe a few pounds fatter.
c) richer or poorer? Richer.

18. What do you wish you'd done more of?
Admitting.

19. What do you wish you'd done less of?
Commute, meetings.

20. How will you be spending Christmas?
At home.

21. Did you fall in love in 2006?
Yes. No. I'm confused.
Hold me?

22. How many one-night stands?
None.

23. What was your favourite TV program?
Battlestar Galactica.

24. Do you hate anyone now that you didn't hate this time last year?
Nobody new.

25. What was the best book you read?
The Elements of Typographic Style.

Close runners up include the Virgin Suicides, and How to Be A Domestic Goddess

26. What was your greatest musical discovery?
The Pipettes, or the Hold Steady, I guess.

or Sufjan. Hard to say.

27. What did you want and get?
Material stuff, space, etc.

28. What did you want and not get?
Material stuff, freedom.

29. What was your favourite film of this year?
The Science of Sleep

30. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
21, and nothing, due to exams.

31. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
Stable neurochemistry.

32. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2004?
I like sweaters.

33. What kept you sane?
Effexor, 150mg, once a day.

34. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
Uh, most all of the cast of Battlestar Galactica.

35. What political issue stirred you the most?
gay marriage reopening, Quebec-as-nation, etc. I wasn't stirred a whole lot, in retrospect.

36. Who did you miss?
Most everyone. Living in Surrey and working in Langley makes it hard to see people.

37. Who was the best new person you met?
uh, Luc and Jules from work, Ben King, and Julie Patrick.

38. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2006:
everyone falls; it's the getting up that defines you.

39. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year:
The Dismemberment Plan - Gyroscope: If he spins fast enough then maybe the broken pieces of his heart will stay together / but any gyroscope can spin forever, yeah / happiness is such hard work, and it gets harder every day /and it can kill you, but no one wants to be that tacky about it, yea / if you spin fast enough than maybe the broken pieces of your heart will stay together /but some things I’ve seen lately make me doubt it.

.

2007-01-01T21:43:00.000-08:00

breakdown to follow, but for now:

so much hangover. SO MUCH HANGOVER. I'm pretty sure I drank nough for, like, three last night.

note to self: make these bad boys:

2006-12-06T21:05:00.000-08:00

A La Cuisine!: Macarons (IMBB 10)

it seems like things that aren't work are mostly: attempt to get hands on Wii. Fail miserably. Bake. Repeat.

on the upside, the stories are getting better, and at some point I'll be able to buy one of the fuckers.

oh, I'm working on drafts for a couple sites, too - it should be a pretty interesting December.

three things

2006-12-04T18:05:00.000-08:00

- interview wednesday for a project management assistant position.
- my Frakkin Cylon shirt came.

trials and triibulations

2006-11-25T11:16:00.000-08:00

was fifth in line for four Wiis this morning at Zellers
Future Shop, Best Buy, Toys R Us and Superstore were all out.

bleh.

five in heavy rotation:

2006-11-18T23:32:00.000-08:00

I sort of thought about pitching this as a feature to Streethawk, but the simple fact of the matter is that I am too entangled in other things at the moment (baking, overtime, not-schooling-when-I-should-be, financial planning, cute boys at work, the redesign I keep going on about, etc) to really put enough into it to satisfy myself and by extension the editors.

That said, I'm going to put one up, because it seems like an easy way to ease back into writing, and though I am typing all day, I'm not writing and starting again is a good thing for me; halfassery here leads to fullassery in things that matter (shirts, photography, etc)

so here they are:
Herbert - Something Isn't Right
Despite the title, I think there's a lot right here; the interplay of the vocalists, the endless sound-collage that Herbert crams into every sonic nook, and the gently groovable beat have landed this song a large number of repeats. Also the line "cover up / it's an Allied slaughter" appeals to my mildly twisted war-joke sensibilities. I wonder if Herbert would find the squid cake funny...

Sufjan Stevens – The Predatory Wasp of the Palisades Is Out to Get Us!
I didn't really like this song until I heard it live, and along with John Wayne Gacy, Jr., it's become stuck in my head on repeat. It's hard to pick out any one thing that really, really stands out because it's all quite nice. I think it's the bit near the end "though we have sparred, wrestled and raged / I can tell you I love him each day" which is reminiscent of the end of Stars' Your Ex Lover is Dead but not really. Now, if only it was a waltz.

Radiohead - Like Spinning Plates (I Might Be Wrong version)
The guy who sits next to me, who listens and enjoys to most everything I put on during the day, asked me for my opinion on Amnesiac. I commented that while it was interesting, I thought a lot of the songs got a lot better live, and he asked me to demonstrate, so I played this. I'd forgotten how much I liked LSP live, and live Radiohead in general, so this popped back into rotation.

Ellen Allien - Alles Sehen
Previously mentioned cubemate turned to me halfway through this song, incredulous: "was that R2D2? Awesome."
He's also a big fan of Push, "so this song consists entirely of the words 'push', 'kick', 'your', and 'ass'. I like that."
Berlinette is good music for mindless typing to, and paired with the above quotes, it goes on at least once every couple days.

Ellen Allien and Apparat - Metric
[thump] [thump] [waaaaaaaaaaow] [strings]
While I have to remember to turn the bass down before I play this one, or my cube becomes the stationary version of That Guy In The Civic At The Intersection, there's something about this track that just works, be it in the bass, the subtle tension, the gorgeous string bits, or in the robot-cycling-down whooshes and whirrs that also occupy the song.

the downloads'll go up later; I'm going to read for a bit and then call it in so I can get up bright and early to go pick up a Wii.

whee!

2006-10-16T21:18:00.000-07:00

glarkware :: frakkin toaster -- NoN -- ships late nov

this doesn't get to me until november, but goddamn if I'm not excited now.

braces, day 90

2006-10-16T20:34:00.000-07:00

I'm not actually keeping count or anything, merely noting via Wikipedia which day of the year July 18th was (199) and which one this is (289) and then doing the math.

that said: I can live with this. The only real problems are the speed at which I go through toothbrushes, flossing and financing, and those are relatively minimal and I can see the effects already.

In retrospect, I should've taken monthly photos, but it seems like that would be making a bigger deal out of it, and while I'm quite pleased that this is a large positive change, there's no use fetishizing it.

I am, however, approaching the point where my jaw misalignment is pretty apparent, and while that's progress of some sort, it's also moving closer to the infamous jaw surgery, which promises to be a) painful, b) expensive, and c) will mean I can't talk for roughly ten weeks.

I'll cross that bridge when I get to it, I suppose.

wrapped up in books

2006-10-13T21:34:00.000-07:00

it's weird to realize that impulse-buying novels has become an avoidance mechanism and even stranger to make an effort to stop, but here I go.

the last six books for me to read are queued; three novels, what is apparently the best typography book written in a long time, the second of three photography books from Ansel Adams and then a re-read of Pattern Recognition, for nothing more than the flow of Gibson's sentences.

after that, I intend to move from almost solely consuming back into creation; I'm looking forward to getting my photographer's eye back. Also I find more practice helps my writing get better; both in terms of content and deliverance.

for now, I'm going to go finish Wind Waker and then shelve the Cube for a bit; while I admit to shifting gears rather abruptly, it's no excuse to leave things unfinished.