west studio architect weather

lacrux

2011-12-14T12:16:00.002-05:00

last night i had a dream that i was on a large outdoor field in the middle of the night and there was a giant thunderstorm about to break. i was watching two teams of really good looking girls getting ready to play a game that was half-lacrosse half-rugby, and it looked really fucking awesome. both teams were dressed up like skeletons and wearing actual skulls for helmets. i was informed they only played during nights when there were thunderstorms. they were really attractive girls. i really really wish this game and these teams existed in real life.

bug vomit

2011-12-13T13:06:00.003-05:00

last night i had a dream that i was in some fancy restaurant in some random tropical country. at this restaurant you had to make a sizeable donation up front, and then they'd bring you exotic food based on how much you payed. anyway i got to my table and there was this long, narrow metal plate where you put down money. i put down $190 after careful consideration. a waiter came and took the money, and i stared off into the jungles and oceans and stuff nearby.

then another waiter showed up with a little grill, maybe 2 feet long by 8 inches deep, and it was mounted in this little self-contained unit, like a miniature hibachi. there were coals tucked away under the grill. and there were three really big, weird, evil looking live bugs laid out on this grill. they were a bit bigger than my outstretched hand, and had lots of hooks and claws and spikes and they all looked poisonous.

the waiter flicked a switch or something and suddenly flames burst up from the grill and the insects all started roasting, and they were writhing around and trying to attack the grill and going insane. the middle bug kind of looked like a little green snake with stick-bug arms. their shells were all hardening. the little green insect suddenly made this weird jerky movement and a portion of it's middle body sort of tripled in size, like a little grenade had gone off inside of it.

so then the flames were turned down, and i was staring at these three insects, now dead, all contorted in their death throes, and i was staring at the waiter trying to figure out if he honestly expected me to eat these things. he was looking at me steadfastly, so i pointed to the bulge in the middle bug and asked what the hell went on there.

the waiter looked at the bulge and said "that is where the bug vomited", and i said "you want me to eat bug vomit" and the waiter said "its congealed, it is a delicacy".

so i cracked open this disgusting sharp bug around the midsection, and this disgusting pus-like substance bubbled out of it and it looked like oatmeal was boiling out of the bug's inside. there was this other thing inside the bug, it looks like a long black piece of jelly. i pulled that out of the bug's stomach, and it turned out to be this giant rotting black maggot that was full of blood. the waiter kept looking at me expectantly.

i looked at the first bug, which had a great big curved hook at the end of each leg, like a scorpion's tail, and when i touched it, the bug very slowly wrapped one of its claws around my finger, and it was an absolutely revolting feeling. i guess this bug was still just barely alive. then i threw up in my dream, and woke up shortly after, and then my girlfriend told me that if you throw up in your dream it means you're getting rid of stress or something. i'm not stressed, though, that's the funny thing.

bat demon

2011-11-18T11:46:00.002-05:00

last night i had a dream that satan turned me into this giant bat-demon thing, and i had red eyes and i killed all my friends. i was about 12' tall. at one point i was chasing another creepy monster up several flights of stairs in what appeared to be a bell tower. the other monster was essentially a ghost in a monk's robe, and it kept looking down over the railing at me and shrieking. it was pretty messed up!

"the pool mother teresa"

2011-05-30T09:02:00.002-04:00

sorry i haven't updated this thing in forever. it's not that i've stopped dreaming, it's that i'm busy most of the time and never near a computer

last night i had a dream that i was swimming in an indoor public pool. a lot of nice people were hanging out and everyone was having a good time when suddenly this woman started flapping down the hall from a few hundred yards away. she was dressed like she was ready for church, and kept slipping as she neared the pool. i was standing at the edge of it and had a good view of everything. everyone got that "oh shit" look on their face. finally the woman arrived and stood sort right next to the edge of the pool and said in a loud, sort of pleasant voice: "is steve here?!"

and everyone kind of looked away or pretended not to hear. and it didn't seem to affect the woman at all. then she said "oh, ok - is john here?!" and again everyone kind of shied away. she kept trying to look everyone in the eye. then she said "is dave here?" and i had the sense to keep my mouth shut. undeterred, she continued to run down a healthy list of common names until my curiosity got the better of me, and i finally interjected and said that i was 'dave'.

the woman turned to me with a delighted glance and immediately started a well-rehearsed speech that i still sort of remember. it was something about how valentine's day was coming, and this was a time of the year that we should have love in our hearts, and how our salvation depended on the love of jesus christ, and then she really started laying the jesus talk on thick and everyone kind of gave me one of those "now you've done it" looks.

i don't enjoy being preached to, so in my dream i waited about 30 seconds patiently and then did the only natural thing and dived into the pool. the pool was crowded and i swam to the other side of it, under water, and popped up over there. undaunted, the woman ran all the way around the pool and continued her little diatribe. i ducked under the water again and swam to the bottom for a while, so that she wouldn't be able to see me, and then very discreetly surfaced for a few seconds to catch my breath, and then went back under. the woman kept running around and around the pool but eventually we ended up at opposite ends, and i quickly jumped out, unseen, and went into the lobby of the building and hid behind a large column.

the pool was closing and everyone was getting out and pretty soon there was a large crush of individuals, including this lady who was doing her 'is brian here?!' routine. once everyone was gone i ducked back into the pool only to find the doors locked and a janitor on the inside cleaning up. i banged on the doors (i was still in my bathing suit and i'm assuming it was february) and finally the janitor let me in. he seemed pretty pissed. i told him that i had to make a run for it because some crazy woman had started vigorously preaching to me. the janitor's expression changed dramatically, and he looked amused and said "oh, that's the 'pool' mother teresa", she comes here all the time. she took a nasty spill a few years ago and hasn't been the same ever since." the janitor then suggested i go change and get all my stuff out of my locker (adding that my lock had probably already been cut) and then come back because he had something he wanted to show me. i followed this advice and when i returned, fully dressed, the janitor had set up a small projector.

on this he then played a short, weird video that involved a young man running alongside a set of train tracks that went through a covered bridge. about two hundred yards behind him was the pool mother teresa, yelling out all sorts of thing about the lord and jesus and god and flailing wildly. the young man made it to the end of the covered bridge and hid around the corner. he didn't look scared, but he looked upset. the 'cameraman', i guess, was standing right in front of the man, so you could see his face, and further back in the covered bridge you could see the pool mother teresa getting closer and closer and closer. suddenly a large dip in the tracks occurred, and the pool mother teresa sort of just fell into it and disappeared from sight. the young man turned back and sighed in relief.

at this point the janitor turned the film off and was laughing heartily, and then i started dreaming about something else.

catching up

2011-01-08T10:34:00.003-05:00

last night i had several strange dreams that all tied into each other, but it ended up with what i can only describe as an adaptation or possibly real-life version of something that reminded me an awful lot of the writing style of wilde or fitzgerald. all the characters had these effortless mood swings and were capricious or carefree or condescending all one after the other with hardly any cause. while watching this unfold i had the same sort of doubts about the plausibility of these people, like you do when you read a book like gatsby or confederacy of dunces or dorian gray.

at any rate i had been jogging uphill through some woods in the country and approaching the edge of what i figured to be a reasonably large town when i saw off far in the distance a man in a parking lot talking to a woman he had just bumped into. i immediately knew that this man was upon 'hard times' or however you put it. he was in his 50s perhaps, it was a possibility that he was homeless although i gathered he had put together some sort of operation where he had an individual place to sleep at night. i got the impression he was one of the last true romantics, but not a very good one. he was waving a piece of paper in front of this woman that had a picture of a beautiful little cottage by the sea and he was asking her to drop everything and come with him. he owned this cottage, he said, and he was an aspiring writer, and he would write all day and she would do what she felt best, and they would live together peaceably and leave the hum of everyday life behind them.

the woman saw that the man was harmless and she humored him, and then he really turned on the charm, which wasn't top calibre but not terrible, either, and i knew that a very small part of this woman was listening. the man struck me as the kind of person who would try to get a stranger to suddenly dance with him, and i felt like that's what he wanted to do with this woman in the parking lot, and do something unexpected and try to get things closer to the way he wanted them. as i mentioned, a tiny part of this woman wanted to, but the rest made up the majority and she said goodbye somewhat cheerfully, somewhat pathetically, and somewhat sadly all the same time.

then, from my forest, i watched this man sigh and shrug off what i could only believe to be the latest in a series of defeats, suddenly smile as though what had just happened had no effect on him whatsoever, and then he made his way off to a house about an hour away. this happened instantly in the dream but i was provided the information that getting to the house took him several hours and was quite a feat in itself seeing how little money he had. i also knew he didn't own that cottage nor even knew where it was.

at the house (i was still watching this from the woods) i learned that he was visiting his sister. she was related to him all right, but more pragmatic and therefore a little more fiscally solvent. she had the house and was also in the middle of her life. she had a great sense of humor like her brother, but it was tied back and everyday life had restrained it and made it somewhat meaner which is probably the only true thing about this dream since that does happen in real life all the time.

she was somewhat seriously involved with a man who also possessed a great sense of humor, slightly less cut, but still sharp. i don't mean to give the impression that they were sarcastic people. they were great, creative people with good hearts and everything, but had certain standards to uphold all the time in order to keep in good standing with the rest of the world. the brother was totally unbridled, and the second man, who i will refer to as the fiance to make things easier, was funny as well but more successful.

so these three sat around the table, and there was a fourth person there but i couldn't tell who it was, and wasn't given any information about him, so i'm wondering if maybe it was me. this fourth person needed to be there almost as a referee of sorts. the brother started talking about the sea, and swirled off into all sorts of delicate prose about life. he was periodically checked by his sister. in these occasions the fiance would interject with some sort of sly statement that would both show his support for the sister's opinions, and also allude in a very small way to their modest wealth and how they were better off.

the sister then interrupted and spoke of how she wanted to buy a horse, how she always wanted one, and how as a child her parents would never let her have one. she said that now that she was capable (and one felt there was a lesson in this meant for the brother) she would soon be purchasing a horse and actually turning a dream into a reality.

then the brother started talking about how he was a poet, and how he was writing a great book. he was saying this grandly, as though addressing a whole audience. he talked about how he was near completion (i knew he hadn't even started) and discussed how he would wait for bursts of creativity to strike and then write until his fingers bled. somewhere around here his sister lost her patience and snapped at him, saying that the book hadn't been started and that he had been saying this for years. she said he would never every actually do anything, just talk about it. she was frustrated.

there was a pause at the table, almost awkward, and then the brother pulled out that picture of the cottage and waved it at the fiance. "i own this", he said with a flourish, and when the two of you are in a better mood you will come visit me and we will talk and laugh by the sea.". the fiance, who really did have a good sense of humor, said "absolutely!" and saluted. the brother regarded the fiance with a bit of a sardonic eye, looked at his sister, and said in a voice filled with both melancholy and wisdom "i was that horse, you know." the sister looked at him quizzically, and once again i was given the impression that this man was a complete romantic but just so hopeless at the job that he couldn't even get his analogies right. i knew he wanted to suggest that he, himself, was something that people could never have, but couldn't quite put the metaphor together in a way that wouldn't confuse everyone. i really started to like him at this point, though.

the brother said then a lavish good-bye to the fourth person, so actually it wasn't me because i got the feeling he was talking to a woman. he used a lot of french expressions for parting and got most of them wrong. he kissed his sister on the cheek and shook hands with the fiance and left. we were deep in the country so he disappeared into the forest.

the sister and fiance got up to clear the dishes and the fiance said "it's early - do you want to go have a beer somewhere and dance?" and he grabbed her in the kitchen and began to swing her around and she laughed. things started getting kind of hemmingway at this point in the dream. i knew that the fourth person knew it was time to leave, and i wanted to get back deeper into the forest as well and leave these two people alone. the sister finally pushed the fiance off of her and opened the kitchen door that had been there the entire time and outside i could see the sun glinting off the tips of a million little waves.

this is one of the few dreams where i felt that i actually slept long enough to see the whole thing through.

mcdonald's jail

2010-11-18T14:36:00.002-05:00

last night i had a dream that i had invented the "mcdonald's jail" for petty asshole criminals. it was basically the most embarrassing place on earth. if you were some common thug who robbed an old lady at knife point or something you went to mcdonald's jail where you were the laughing stock of the world and you had to wear a diaper and eat shit & butter for breakfast and basically it was just one huge humiliation after another. most of the people who went to mcdonald's jail ended up becoming complete psychopaths and later were secretly euthanized, but because mcdonald's jail was videotaped 24/7 and broadcasted publicly on the internet other petty criminals were absolutely horrified at the thought of having to go someplace where they wouldn't look 'cool' or 'tough' and as a result the crime rate dropped like you wouldn't believe.

anyway after that i became very well known for the 'shaming' methadology, which became widely applied in other practices. i don't remember all the details, but i remember the "elementary & high school for hillbillies" opened up and it was basically a small institution where angry, stupid kids who killed cats for fun had to get a tooth knocked out and wear overalls all day, and all this banjo music played 24/7 from loudspeakers and regular people would just wander around all day and laugh and tease these kids for being illiterate and stupid. at the expense of a few bad apples the standard of education went through the roof.

i think there was also a fat camp that was basically a glass house on a giant balancing board, and all these angry fat assholes would basically spend their days rolling around and trying to regain their balance and when feeding time came they had to do some dehumanizing degrading nonsense like make little piggy noises in order to be allowed to eat sludge out of a trough with no utensils. again, all of this happened at all hours in front of a crowd of spectators. everyone else got thin, real quick.

pretty soon after a couple of years crime was non-existant, everyone was healthy & educated, and the camps/schools/jails were slowly extinguished from the public eye and eventually disappeared entirely. people cherished and appreciated the world around them with a respect not seen since ancient days, and the dawn of a peaceful, quiet, happy existence began.

antarctic palm tree lightning

2010-11-15T09:32:00.003-05:00

last night i had a dream that i went to antarctica in an undersea vehicle. i was given this little device with a small black screen that showed what was above me. the black screen showed thousands of tiny white dots, which i was told were 'small things' above me, such as bacteria, small animals, air pockets in the ice above, debris, etc, and then there were small white circles which i was told represented larger bodies like trees, stars, large animals, icebergs, etc. the submarine-thing i was in was represented by a small white circle as well, and i was told to try and navigate underneath as many dots and circles as possible.

so i did this for a while and i noticed that everytime my circle came in contact with another object on the screen, my circle would increase in size. it kind of reminded me of two bubbles joining up together to form a bigger bubble. i also noticed each time this happened my submarine-thing would jolt suddenly and i'd get the feeling we went up a few feet.

fairly soon all i saw on my screen were circles representing a millions stars overhead. i was looking intently for anything else when i saw these gold feather-like shapes suddenly appear on the screen for a split second. it was pretty but i had no idea what i was looking at. suddenly it occured to me that it might be lightning. i got excited and got out of the submarine and climbed upwards through ice.

when i finally emerged onto the surface of the antarctic, it wasn't anything like i expected. it was pitch black, and i remember thinking it must be that time of year when the sun is perpetually below the horizon. there were a handful of scientists all hiding in caves. the ground was a mixture of ice and sand. i was standing at the edge of what appeared to be an enormous crater. in the center of this crater were maybe a dozen giant wax palms, all of them at least 150' in height. overhead lightning was striking every second or so, and hitting the tips of the wax palms. each time a tree was struck a huge shower of sparks would go flying everywhere, and the sky was suddenly lit up by the light. down on the ground the ice and sand would shake and a hole would open up somewhere and spit out a geyser of sand before closing up. the whole thing was kind of nightmarish, but really great.

after witnessing this for a minute i realized that the lightning wouldn't strike me, because i was so short compared to these wax palms, and i grabbed a video camera and ran out into the middle of the crater. the scientists all cried for me to come back, and i remember one was lying face down in the ice and looked dead. i stood out in the middle and videotaped these palm trees being struck by lightning over and over again. whenever i felt the ground beneath me begin to quake i'd run out of the way and then videotape the hole and the sand geyser that came out of nowhere. it was really active and massive and violent and awesome. i did this for like a solid half hour in my dream and just had a great time.

arctic submarines

2010-09-27T16:19:00.003-04:00

last night i had a dream that i was sort of a present-day captain nemo. i had built a submarine that could stay under water for years at a time. it was more or less shaped like a regular submarine, except there was a 100-foot-long glass shaft hanging from the belly of the machine, and an elevator inside that would take you to the bottom were there was a small observation deck. the general shape of the submarine was sort of like an uppercase 'I'.

anyway i had made all these plans to spend 6 months below deck observing the hidden secrets of the ocean, and it was in the newspapers and there was a big gala the day i crawled into the submarine and disappeared into the depths

i remember i wanted to go to the mariana trench and start my explorations there, and quite quickly, and quite suddenly i made a discovery. a large cavern in the mariana trench led me to a hidden 'secret' ocean miles under the earth's crust. this ocean went almost to the center of the earth!!

so i jules verne'd my way down there and put the sub on autopilot and took the elevator to the bottom of the glass shaft and just stared at all sorts of weird and fantastical shit. it was pitch black down there and the headlights from my sub were the only sources of light. pretty soon i was completely lost. i felt like i was in space, and i couldn't really tell if i was upside-down or not even though gravity was still working.

eventually i noticed there were giant ice meteors in the water, and i realized that because i was so close to the center of the earth, a relatively distance for me covered an absolutely enormous distance back on dry land - by submarining 20 kilometeres i could end up underneath a portion of the earth that would be 20,000 kilometers away from my starting point (i hope you understand what i'm getting at). so i had accidently made my way into the part of the secret ocean underneath the arctic, and it was freezing, and there were watery ice-meteors everywhere.

i decided to slowly surface and pretty soon got lodged in ice. i wasn't super worried. there were white ice sheets above my head and they looked like they contained huge pockets of air. i somehow drove the sub into one of these air pockets and stepped out.

now i was in this weird wintery wasteland, with snow and ice underfoot, and snow & ice all above me, and along the walls (the whole cavern was miles long) little holes with dripping ice water were to be found. my sub was sort of nosing out of a patch of icy water in the middle of this cavern.

i turned on a flashlight and the beam reflected off all the surfaces and the whole cavern was lit. i started exploring and was fairly certain the cavern was occupied by something, but i never found out what, because this was around the time that i woke up.

haunted church

2010-09-24T14:13:00.007-04:00

last night i dreamt i attended this murder mystery held in a 'church' belonging to one of those crazy david-koresh-esque zealots. anyway this idiot woman kept preaching to a group of teenagers about how god was going to take care of them all when she suddenly had a heart attack. she sort of collapsed and i yelled out "someone call an ambulance!"

a bunch of people clad in white quickly shuffled in and put the suffering idiot on a stretcher. "wheel that woman to a hospital, quick!" i shouted

one of the servants in white looked at me and said "we don't believe in hospitals!! god will take care of this!!" and then to the children, "put on your happy hats, everybody!!"

the children all pulled out these giant thick woolen toques and jammed them onto their heads, and pulled the brims down until their eyes were covered. then they all procured earmuffs and stuffed those on as well.

the woman having the heart attack was going into these great big spasms, and everyone was yelling out things like "don't touch her!! she's in god's hands!! god'll take care of this!! don't you worry about a thing!!" when suddenly the woman went completely limp and her arms fell to her sides.

at this point all my friends, who were in various parts of the building trying to solve the murder mystery, all came running into this room. they all quickly pointed at the body and started making inane guesses at who might be responsible.

"that woman in the white coat over there strangled her!" shouted one of my friends. "i think it was that woman in white - it was poison!" shouted another. one of the women in white shouted out "for the love of god, wheel her out of this room!" and this was done

as the body was being wheeled out the women in white started tapping the children on their heads, and they began to remove those absurd earmuffs and hats covering their ears and eyes. one kid was really quick with this and caught a glimpse of their preacher or pastor or whatever being wheeled out on a stretcher, and said "hey is mrs. white hurt?!"

then another kid yelled out "oh man, why are you wheeling her away?" and a third teenager said "is this what's going on everytime we put on these hats?" and a fourth said "god dammit i thought good things were happening when we put these hats on!!"

my friends were still yelling out things like "i think SHE did it, and i think she stabbed her right in the guts!" and "i bet she was cut end to end with a sharp knife!" and "i bet she was slowly burned alive!!" and "they were going to rip her skin off in great big sheets" and other horiffic statements that were only fueling the teenagers' confusion and indignation

the women in white, feeling that they were losing the children, yelled out "have faith, children! all will be well!! everyone find a partner and give them a big happy hug!" and i watched these teenagers sort of turn to each other and one said "i don't want to do this" and another said "dude, i actually fucking hate you" and then everyone's voice began to get louder and louder and more chaotic and eventually the women in white all began to scream in these piercing high-pitched voices and then i woke up

snow butter fort

2010-09-14T13:42:00.002-04:00

last night i had a dream where i had made this incredible discovery - if you mixed a pound of butter with a bunch of snow, the snow became like 1000x stronger and stickier and malleable and would allow you to make really amazing snow forts!

of course this doesn't make any sense in real life

i also had a sort of nightmare. i was biking down a street in a strange city with two random people, a guy & a girl. we went up a hill and into this little area that i took to be a business district. the girl said she needed to stop and go to the bathroom. i decided i wanted some water. the dude stayed and watched the bikes. the girl & i went up to like the 15th floor of the building and she disappeared into the bathroom, and i went to the opposite corner where there was a water fountain. it was like a sunday or something and the building was completely desolate. i spent maybe five minutes at the water fountain. when i looked up there was this really deformed human just sort of sitting at a desk and staring at me. she was so deformed i wasn't able to tell if she was actually human or not. she had a face that had been super stretched out and elongated, it was so weird. i tried to yell (something i have extreme difficulty doing in dreams) and this seemed to spook the deformed girl, so then i got this idea into my head that i could scare her away, and then i was woken up.

plant gravity magnetism

2010-07-07T14:13:00.005-04:00

last night i had an awesome dream where i had made a breakthrough in particle physics. basically i had chucked out the idea that electrons were 1 dimensional and pushed that there was a spatial grid within atomic structures, so like just a big organized piece of space between electrons and neutrons and all that shit. but i think my breakthrough had to do with these independent fields that were created and plotted on this grid whenever there was symettry present within the structure (at any level), and these fields weren't quite gravity, but sort of instead just represented gravity and acted an awful lot like a miniscule gravitational field. essentially i guess these fields would sort of be like the 'graviton' or whatever, but basically it was this symmetry that propelled a gravitation-like field, not the field itself.

anyway i know this sound retarded but i did in my dream to show this was arrange a bunch of baby plants in a circle, with one plant in the center, and then arranged another set of plants in a grid, and another set in different manner still bearing symmetry, and i had each set of plants wired together for some reason i can't imagine, and what i did was track how gravity was affecting these plants as they grew. so basically the way a plant would grow (or the way anything in the world would happen if you got down to the brass tacks) depended on how much symettry was present. so basically there weren't any force carriers, there wasn't even a strong or weak interaction, how the sub-atom worked in the plant was based on symmetry between the protons/neutrons, how the atom worked was based in the symmetry of other atoms, how the plant grew was based on the symmetry of earth and other planets, etc etc etc.

it was bizarre

dude who vaccuums the floors

2010-07-05T16:42:00.003-04:00

this poor guy at my work, he's got to be about 35, ugly as sin, i think he's eritrean, anyway he comes in with his vaccuum around 5pm every day to clean the offices in the building where i work.

he also usually comes in about 20 minutes early because i guess he wants to wrap up early and get the hell out of there, and i certainly can't blame him for that.

anyway because of this our schedules overlap a bit and i end up talking to the guy every other day or so. and his daily life is RIDICULOUS. ridiculous in that he's always on the verge of being fired or victimized in some manner or just generally chastized. what's amazing about this, though, is that he's always really upfront, and, well, almost brazen about how his shitty decisions and work ethic are keeping him on tenterhooks 24/7?!

it's really bizarre. last week he came in all flustered and briefly flopped the nozzle of his vaccuum over the floor, while telling me he was inches away from unemployment due to his getting drunk and leaving one of the doors unlocked overnight. another time i remember him telling me his fourth or fifth wife was going to bring him to justice because he spent his cheque on cigarettes instead of child support. there's never any remorse in his statements, just a matter-of-fact, almost inquisitive sort of demeanor about it, like he's just an observer

anyway he's super into football so the world cup has been a fresh torment since he's got about a dozen jobs (all of which have him on thin ice, apparently) and has to keep calling in sick to watch the games. he was here not that long ago (unusually early, even for him), and was telling me about how last weekend's choice sneaker purchases have resulted in the summoning of a collection agency by the hydro company. he also mentioned that a manager of sorts did a walk-through of our building, and that his work was so shitty in comparison to that of his peers (who handle different floors), that he was nearly let go on the spot. this man then winked at me and said "but i was tired, huh?" as though everything was under control. he then let slip that he owns two cell phones in a dashing attempt to keep his current wife and mistress from discovering each other - an action that has jeopardized his credit to the point where his already-shaky loan application was denied for the $350 used automobile he's set his sights on.

he's across the hall right now, actually, and i can see him cutting corners in the empty office opposite mine, sporting some fancy new racing gloves or some horseshit, and despite all this the only thing i'm certain of is that this little shop of horrors is a national treasure.

i need a mattress rap video

2010-07-05T09:50:00.002-04:00

last night i had a dream that i was watching the makings of the shittiest rap video in the history of the world. it was called "i need a mattress".

first of all, we were in some derelict house with no furniture. we were in the living room and there were four mattresses on the floor. two were regular single mattresses, two were small mattresses for kids. they were lined up from smallest to biggest.

then this family of five walked in, and the mother and father lied down on their mattresses, and two of the kids lied down on their mattress, and then this awful 80s beat started up and the remaining kid started dancing around and rapping 'i need a mattress! i need a mattress! i need a mattress!!'

then while this kid was making an ass out of himself the smallest child got up and it suddenly became apparent that his pajamas matched the mattress belonging to the mother. so a bunch of dudes from the crew all rushed in and grabbed the mom by her wrists and ankles and swung her right out the window!!

then the dude directing the video sort of leaned over and whispered to me that this was unexpected.

2010-06-28T14:12:00.000-04:00

antelope wedding

2010-06-26T14:49:00.003-04:00

last night i had a really canadian dream, i was in this sort of snowy-spring landscape, where the ground was peppered with patches of white. there was a tv announcer standing next to be in a suit talking about influential people of canada who had stood where i was standing, and it was all very hinterland's who's who. i was staring off into the distance and every 5 seconds or so a big deer or mountain goat or something would suddenly reveal itself and shake the snow off its antlers and then run down off into the woods. it was really pretty and i was almost making a game out of it. then i was told to climb to the top. things became very native american and i climbed, with totem polls crawling out of the ground and weird faces carved into the trunks of birches and stuff. pretty soon i came to the top, and it was this impenetrable wall of tree and rock, with a small little hole in the bottom that reminded me of a doggy door. i was too big to climb through the hole, but i could open the flap and peek inside, and just looked amazing on the other side.

then a lot of my friends showed up and suddenly there was a wedding happening, (which seems to happen in real life anyway whenever my friends get together anyway) and i remember whoever officiated the thing really pissed off a lot of people, but afterwards i was looking at this one picture of the whole affair, and it basically was a single photo a couple of feet long that showed all of my friends hanging out in smaller groups, or playing down by the water, or sitting in the grass while animals and insects went by, or climbing stuff. it was a really good photo.

not the most exciting dream.

fontifier.com sucks, this is why i don't pay for things on the internet

2010-06-17T16:08:00.004-04:00

never, ever, ever pay for anything on the internet, ever. this should be a cardinal rule indoctrinated into the masses as soon as they're able to comprehend language.

the first sample is from the jpg i uploaded to fontifier.com. the second is what the font actually looks like. they charge $9 for this service. it's based out of the UK i think. if so, we should have never bailed you guys out of WWII.

what the fuck is wrong with my newspaper

2010-06-07T13:37:00.003-04:00

god almighty what the hell is wrong with the ottawa citizen. soldier dies?! chrysler recall?! NOT NOW

the best is when i clicked on this front page news it redirected me to the TECHNOLOGY SECTION, which is evidently where the citizen believes it's trash/raccoon-related blurbs should be.

anyway, the article opens up with "reporter" glen mcgregor explaining that
'Almost every morning since the end of hibernation season, I’ve opened my front door to find the bandits have staged a co-ordinated assault on our organic recycling.'

why the hell this man hasn't figured out maybe he should move his trash to a more discreet location is beyond me.

christ almighty. if you read the end of the article he says the raccoon uses his teeth and applies a 'little archimedes' to prop open the bin, referring, of course, to archimedes, a man who did not invent the lever

faking art

2010-06-02T10:16:00.002-04:00

i was flown down to MIT labs in boston (or cambridge or whatever) a few weeks ago and caught some of the art fights on campus. since then i have been thinking a lot about art, and how i can both cheapen & profit from it.

these thoughts were compounded last saturday at brunch when i saw a bunch of oil paintings of the abstract and 'nature-y' persuasion. they were being sold for over $500 each, and there were at least a dozen on display. it looked like they were selling.

upon first glance i thought to myself "these look pleasant" but after staring a little harder i realized that i didn't really like anything about them other than the color schemes used. most of them were either trees or squares or what looked like lava.

anyway i think i can fake this kind of art, despite having no talent in the field whatsoever. i think i can use a set of criteria or instructions that do not require any artistic ability to come up with a bunch of paintings that i can sell for $750 each at some fancy restaurant and a bunch of rich morons will hand me fistfuls of money which i will use to buy another drum kit.

this might turn into kind of a long post. first i need to establish audience, which will be rich yuppies who hang out at starbucks and listen to iron & wine and do everything in their power to live in the golden triangle of ottawa. they either have money or come from money.

then i need to figure out what they like. i immediately settled on BIRDS AND TREES but am a little hesitant to go forward with this because i feel like BIRDS AND TREES are liable to become an unpopular trend any second now and my rich audience will revolt. not sure yet.

here are some things i think my audience would pay good money for:

(polaroid series, preferably with birds)

(random abstract art)

(squares)

(collages, especially with birds)

(prints, again with birds)

(indie 'folk art', preferably with birds instead of fat bearded men)

--

now some of this shit is really hard to do (i think). however some things, like collages, i think i'm perfectly capable of manufacturing.

the next step i think is to then label or categorize the styles of art that my audience would like. here's what i can think of off the top of my head:

1. heavy, thick, textured paintings. the kind of thing where you could run your finger over it and it's all bumpy and shit.

2. series. people like having 4 paintings that all make sense together. if these paintings can be mounted in a long, narrow vertical strip so much the better.

3. giant paintings. this is probably expensive.

4. paintings with physical objects pasted into them. i can't stand this sort of thing, but people seem to genuinely enjoy paintings that have sticks or leaves or lockets or whatever glued into them at random.

--

the next thing i need to do is figure out what i'm capable of. i can't draw worth shit, but i'm sure i can use photoshop or photosketch (if it ever returns) to morph someone else's drawing into something unique to the degree where i won't be sued. or conversely stick with public/common images that can be used legitimately.

i think i am capable of collage, although i would have to come up with a method or algorithm to determine what goes where.

i am not a photographer, but i do own a camera so i think that makes me a photographer by today's standards. i am quite capable of taking a picture of a parkbench or a blade of grass growing through sidewalk cracks or whatever.

what i need to do now is take a look at my subject, my style and my run-of-the-mill abilities, and settle on a couple of methods for mass producing "art". ideally i will have something like 15 pieces that can go on display. we'll see how this goes.

british ravioli

2010-06-01T09:21:00.001-04:00

picking up with that last post, a few nights ago when i had this dream the second half involved me standing in a dark field with my girlfriend and my cousin, and i was showing them some of the pictures i took from nicaragua and colombia. my cousin took the camera and somehow played all the photos together so that it looked a bit like a movie, and it seemed really interesting to all of us and we decided to go somewhere to watch it. my cousin suggested this italian place in the woods, and then promptly disappeared.

so my girlfriend & i jumped on some bikes and started biking deep into the woods. it was dusk and there must have been about a thousand wolves roaming around. because the forest was so dense we had to bike on what use to be a river bed, but was now just a stony sort of path. we kept scattering packs of wolves. fairly soon we arrived into the heart of the forest and there were all these enormous stone houses everywhere. they were all built on piers, but some of the piers had no footings, and they just sort of hovered in the air.

eventually we came to the biggest stone house of them all, and this british dude in a cape answered the door and ushered us in. his living room was so big that there were giant trees growing inside of it, completely unencumbered, and a smaller stone house in the midst of those trees. however, we chose instead to go upstairs, into this large wooden room. as we went upstairs we had to pass through a large stone room that contained an enormous brass tub sunken into the floor. a giant iron tube descended from the ceiling over the tub, and out of it was spilling tons and tons of tomato sauce. it was pretty cool.

once upstairs the british dude sat us down and took out this flat iron plate and put a glass dish on it that was filled with what appeared to be water. however i was later told it contained a very rare helium-infused oil that was lighter than any liquid on earth. then he took out this dark burgundy mass and dropped it into the oil. i was given a spoon and told to stir. the dark blob was extremely viscous and i could barely puncture it with the spoon. i had no idea what i was doing. the british dude in the cape told me to keep at it for a few minutes, which i did, and then suddenly the burgundy mass violently diffused into the liquid and disappeared altogether. the liquid was now this amber color and smelled really good.

the british dude had been frying up toast and covering it in this meat/vegetable concoction and then draping the whole affair in sheets of pasta. he took this and poured some of the amber liquid over it and handed it over to me. i took a bite and it was delicious. thus concluded one of the less exciting dreams i've had.

i died from shame

2010-05-30T10:08:00.005-04:00

last night i dreamt that there was this really nice old dude who just had the absolute WORST LUCK ever and his whole life was just one giant embarrassment after another. it was really terrible to watch, but really funny at the same time, but christ did i ever feel bad for this guy.

anyway towards the end of his life when he was this grey-haired, kind old gentlemen, he was still suffering one bad stroke of luck after the other, and when he died somehow his tombstone was botched and it just said "I DIED FROM SHAME" underneath his name. and then, of course, somehow he didn't get buried in the graveyard he wanted to be buried in (which was super important to him), but ended up next to a highway or something.

ANYWAY, then this goddamned movie director for disney shows up and they're filming one of those really really shitty straight-to-dvd movies, and it was about an underdog soccer team rising to the top, and it was just awful, and they built a prop soccer stadium around this poor guy's tombstone. and if that wasn't bad enough, the actors and actresses all decided the script was too retarded, and they got in a big fight with the director, and they all quit, and out of spite the director decided to still film the movie!!! without any actors in it!!

so basically then in my dream i had to watch this movie, and it was just these sweeping, silent views of the grass and a little hometown scene, and during any dialogue there would just be two camera shots in an empty room, and it was altogether ridiculous, but then during the big playoff montage suddenly that fucking andrew w.k. 'lets get the party started' song starts blasting in the background, and there's all these big zoom-in shots of the prop soccer stadium, and all these fast-action shots of an empty stadium and empty nets (where actors would presumably be playing an important game), and it was just that goddamned LET'S GET THIS PARTY STARTED LET'S GET THIS PARTY STARTED PARTY STARTED and these constant shots of this poor guy's 'I DIED FROM SHAME' tombstone in the middle of the field, and i was basically just cringing with embarrassment for this guy and kept thinking 'god, the curse's still on!!'

then i woke up, fell asleep again, and had this awesome dream where this dude invented a new kind of ravioli that involved fried toast. i'll talk about that one later.

beastie boys vs kids in the hall

2010-05-25T11:28:00.004-04:00

last night i dreamt that the beastie boys and the dudes from kids in the hall released some never-before-seen stuff that was basically unreleased songs from check your head but with the kids in the hall doing the music videos. it was fucking nuts!

anyway they had this grand opening for it in hawaii, and i flew there to check shit out, and it was like sunny beaches everywhere and these super high-rise hotels and condos along the beach front. i took an elevator up one to like the thirtieth floor and looked down from a balcony, and there were a few hundred cars all parked on the sand and a ton of people were out there partying. there was a dude in his 40s standing next to me, with what i presumed was his daughter, and she looked like she was about 7 years old or so, but really really articulate, and they were almost kind of joking around.

then i looked the other way, into the ocean, and saw this giant tsunami wave approaching! so i ran down and was yelling at everyone to get to high ground, and finally people started paying attention, but all they did was stand on their cars and scream for help.

pretty soon i had to bolt and i climbed up this giant wax palm and the tsunami wave broke right underneath my feet and i watched all these people and cars get totally fucking destroyed and spun around and suffocated.

CASH VALUE

2010-04-30T10:35:00.000-04:00

last night i had a dream that i won one of the 'better' prizes in some sort of competition that sprite was having. I checked under the cap and saw that I had won a prize that was more or less geared towards gamers. it involved a flight to australia to test out some crazy new console with some people who i guess were famous in the gaming industry. i have not really touched a video game since the super nintendo came out, and wasn't really interested in this. i was, however, totally down with flying to austrlia for a week. i called sprite's 1-800 number and confirmed the win, and asked if there was some sort of cash equivalent for the prize, and it was like $2800 or something, and then the rest of my dream got really boring while i tried to figure out if i could have more fun taking the $2800 and buying tickets to australia myself, or if it made more sense accepting the prize and then just bailing on the gaming portion of it. i remember it boiled down to whether or not i could successfully disentangle myself from this whole gaming horseshit. it was really kind of a boring dream.

fish explosion

2010-04-14T10:29:00.001-04:00

a few days ago i dreamt that my family owned this very very old table covered in runes. we got a bunch of self-proclaimed 'clairvoyant' assholes to examine the wood and give us their interpretation, but most of it amounted to things along the lines of "you are in for a great adventure" and "you must be careful" and all that.

so we roped in this really old dude with a beard who was suppose to be the modern day nostradamus or something and he ran his withered old hands over the table and then told us in grave tones that we needed to pay close attention to the news. he said that tomorrow we would hear of meteorites striking earth, and that we'd have to go collect them and put them on the table, and then the day after we'd learn that nine new species of tiny fish were discovered, and that we'd have to collect those little guys and dump them on the table as well. apparently we had to do this before the full moon which was in about a week.

so sure enough the next day meteorites struck earth and we just assumed this as proof that the old man knew his shit. so my family went traipsing off into the goddamned blue and sure enough we collected these nine little fragments of smooth oval rock which were supposedly the meteorites. we dropped them all on the table and to our amazement they all arranged themselves into a little 3x3 grid, as though magnets were involved or something.

then the next day we learned that nine species of tiny fish were discovered in the amazon, so we had to fly down there and collect samples of those. we kept them in these little jars and brought them back to the table and all the little fish jumped out of the jars and each one fell on a rock and they all went still. i remember my sister was curious and lifted one off the rock and it immediately jumped to life and wriggled around until she put it back down on the stone, and it went still once more.

now i should explain that this table was in our backyard or something, at the edge of a city that i have never seen before. it was a giant city divided into two main parts separated by a large bay, kind of like panama city. both areas of the city were very modern, with lots of skyscrapers and prominent architecture. the bay in between was smooth and wide, and at its shore was a large forest with a path through it that connected the two parts of the city.

anyway the day came when there was suppose to be a full moon, and it was really unusually dark all day long - one of those weird days you get every few years where you actually call your friends up and tell them to go outside and look at the sky, and wonder if the world is going to end. in the late afternoon the clouds became almost black, and a great storm arose over the second part of the city. we were all in the first part, huddled around our stupid table with the fish and everything, when suddenly the tv turned on. the old dude was there and publicly broadcasting that everyone who wanted to live needed to immediately go to the nearest circular table (like ours) and place one hand on it. they must NOT place both hands on the table, and above all they must NOT let go.

everyone at this point had been following our actions in the newspapers, and everyone believed this old guy, so pretty soon we saw hundreds of thousands of people all running around to the nearest table (most which were outdoors in my dream for some reason) and everyone was crowding around them and putting a hand on the table and it was like some giant party game. across the bay in the second part of the city several people were braving the storm but most people were inside holding onto their tables.

the the storm became insane. lightning of all colors began exploding and the clouds seemed to get lower and lower, and it seemed like the storm was taking the form of a giant gaseous ball that was engulfing the second part of the city. then, magnificently, the full moon began to rise - except it wasn't rising from the horizon, it was coming out of the bay. it was huge but somehow fit, and the storm surrounded this giant white moon and i could still see around it to the other part of the city. i started getting really nervous, and suddenly my entire family, despite having put so much effort into all these assinine preparations, said "we should get out of here. we should go to the forest."

so we all left our table with the stones and the little fish and went to the forest. there we had a bit of a family discussion where a few of my uncles and grandparents were concerned that something bad would happen to anyone not putting a hand on the table - they weren't concerned for themselves, but were worried about all the grandchildren, and especially my little cousins. they decided that i should take all my little cousins back into the city and get them to put a hand on the table just to be safe.

so that's what i did, and everyone was really scared and in awe at the same time. we were all staring at this crazy moon-storm-what-have-you when suddenly i heard this whirring noise and noticed that our table started to move. it began to rotate, so that me and all my little cousins had to start walking around in order to keep our hand on it. everybody else's tables started rotating too. everyone was walking around while this giant moon and lightning storm was still rising out of the water. it was like a big game of musical chairs or soemthing. the tables started rotating faster and faster, and soon everyone was running as fast as they could. some old people couldn't keep up and had to let go. a lot of smaller kids obviously had to let go. i felt like people were yelling out "DON'T LET GO - WHATEVER YOU DO DON'T LET GO" and i got worried for my littler cousins who were getting flung off. you could only use one hand, too. it was getting ridiculous.

pretty soon there were only a few hundred of us left on the table. when my last little cousin was flung loose i yelled out "go back to the forest and stay with your family! i'm going to see this thing through!!" and i reached over the table with my arm and grabbed the opposite side so i had a better grasp. i was getting spun around at a tremedous rate, and i could tell there were still a few determined people left.

then the rotating table began to turn so that it became perpedicular with the ground, and lifted up about 20 feet into the air. the other tables followed suit. there were still a few determined people (mostly in the prime of their life, and in good shape) being swung around but grimly holding on with one hand. the whirring got louder and i felt like something was going to happen. the noise was getting tremendous and suddenly there was a voice in my head that said "let go".

so i let go and flung into the forest just as these two enormous explosions sounded off. my hands felt super super weird - painful, but not painful in the same way, like when you hit your funny bone, or when your skin feels really sensitive. i looked up in bewilderment and saw two giant balls of fire, one originating from each part of the city, head towards the opposite part of the city across the bay. the two balls crossed each other over the moon and struck in the heart of each part of the city. there was a massive explosion. everyone still clinging to a table was disintegrated into dust. everyone who had been flung free ran out of the city to the forest, where most of us now were. we watched as both parts of the cities seemed to explode, although all the buildings and parks and trees were still standing and unaffected. two great fireworks of shrapnel seemed to explode over each city and come towards the remaining population in the forest. i grabbed some people and tried to cover them, but seconds before we were all enguled in flaming wreckage it too disintegrated into nothingness.

everything them calmed down. the storm abated, and the moon rose to it's proper height and place in the sky. everyone was standing in the forest wondering what the hell just happened. someone asked if anyone had seen the old man, and we all thought that seemed like a good avenue of explanation, so we searched for him. we found him hanging out on top of this mountain, looking like moses, and we asked him what the hell just happened. he explained that every thousand years or something the city needed to purify itself, and that everyone who was left clinging to a spinning table was a terrible human being who had commited murders and stuff. he said this is why children couldn't possibly hope to hang on to the tables. he seemed really pleased with things, and so did everybody else in the forest, except for me. i remember everyone sort of grouped off into familiar groups and everyone was smiling and had this whole "let's go home" grin on their faces as they shuffled off back to the cities, but i was completely, utterly horrified by the entire thing and couldn't get it out of my head when i woke up.

notes from south america

2010-03-25T13:22:00.001-04:00

a short list of selected notes from down south, jan-april 2010

blue lines show where i went!

View south america trip in a larger map

the creature and the dictionary

2010-03-11T15:48:00.000-05:00

last night i dreamt that some dude was trying to get me killed so he sent me into this dank cave or something and told me to go find him this book

so i went into the cave and it was creepy but i immediately saw a table with a book on it

most of the dream was really hazy but the book stood out in great detail and clarity

it was titled "the creature and the dictionary"

so i opened it up and it was a dictionary full of words that didn't exist in the english language, followed by these really abhorrent definitions. i remember i was fascinated by them, and was also sort of convinced that this might be a dream and this might be a product of my subconscious, so i tried my best to memorize as many definitions as i could. memorizing shit in a dream when you know you're dreaming is tough. it's like trying to map down the shit that swirls around in your head when you aren't paying attention.

anyway i remembered five definitions. don't remember the words themselves, but they were like ABZHONN and TURHSA and made up words like that.

these were the five definitions i remember:

WORD 1: the compulsion to eat one's self
WORD 2: a catepillar gone mad so that his coccoon shakes with fury
WORD 3: the icy cold grip of a dead child
WORD 4: the absence of compunction brought on by loss of money
WORD 5: insanity caused by the incessant buzzing of a fly in one's head

there were HUNDREDS of entries like this. i wish i had remembered them all.

anyway at this point i just wanted to wake up and write down these definitions, so i ducked out of the cave and went back to the dude who sent me there in the first place. i threw the book down and all the color drained out of his face. he started to shake, and finally told me he hated humanity and had sent scores of people to this cave knowing fully well that they would never return. apparently i was the first person to return, and since i brought him the book, he was now certain that whatever lived in the cave would come after him and his family and the townsfolk.

i woke up and wrote that shit down in my cell phone real quick before falling asleep again.

2010-02-17T22:29:00.000-05:00

this happened a few weeks back in nicaragua, but needs mentioning

so i gave a bag of laundry to this random fat woman who told me to come back to her house at 5

so i came back at 5, and i shit you not, my goddamned clothes were like spread out on the fucking road and this even fatter girl was hosing them down on the street

so i was like "um, my clothes?"

and the lady was like "come back tomorrow"

so i came back the next day, and the woman retreated into the depths of her house, and slowly began to pull my clothes out from god knows where. 1 shirt at a time.

and they´re all inside out and look like they´ve been trampled by elephants and the lady takes the first shirt and presses it against my arm. it´s like mildly warm and damp.

and she says "this shirt.. this one right here.. this one is not dry. all the others are dry. not this one."

and i said "okay"

and then she folded it up and put it in a plastic bag. then she went back into the shadows of the basement of her house or whatever and came out a moment later with another inside-out shirt. this one, too, was pressed against my arm. it was also damp.

the woman looked at me and said "this shirt.. this one right here.. this one is not dry. all the others are dry. not this one."

this process repeated itself for every item of clothing i owned, minus my towel which she had apparently lost. (she found it the next day, to her credit). she also charged me double for whatever reason. it´s okay. i am not going to let three dollars bother me, and who knows, maybe she´ll get aids and die.

anyway part two of this story occurs in panama. i went to grab a shirt from the plastic bag. even though it was inside out i could tell it wasn´t one of mine, and it struck me that this woman was somehow still screwing with me thousands of miles away.

so i unfold the shirt a little bit and look down inside and all i see in big letters are

"DAVE"

and i was like, "amazing!! this is a shirt i can really, you know, GET BEHIND!!"

so i whip on the shirt and turn around and look in the mirror

and of course underneath "DAVE" it said "MATTHEWS BAND"

christ

2010-02-16T17:37:00.000-05:00

hahaha alright so i´m sitting in a comfy chair, watching the simpsons. that episode where bart says "i do what i feel" and the whole town takes note and throws that "do what you feel" festival. the episode ends with homer watching mcgarnagle or whatever and the tv is saying "you´re off the case!" and mcgarnagle says "YOU´RE OFF YOUR CASE!!" and then the chief says "what does that mean?" and then homer yells out "IT MEANS HE GETS RESULTS, YOU STUPID CHIEF!!!!"

anyway so i´m watching this episode and all i can hear is a helicopter in the background, which isn´t unusual, only this one seems to be getting louder and louder and louder

so finally i´m like "god dammit" and i throw open the double doors that lead to the balcony

and there, out of the fucking blue is this fucking helicopter just BARRELING towards the hostel!

and everyone´s like "holy shit!" and i´m just standing there watching this helicopter making a beeline for me

and just when i´m about to, you know, flee, it suddenly plunks it ass down in this soccer field like 30 feet away. there were little kids playing soccer there, too!! and because it´s like a dirt field, about a thousand pounds of dust flew up and all these screaming kids had to run for cover!!!

anyway the stupid thing is still out there, i just wanted to write this down before i forget. i hope there are more simpson episodes.

i love this place!! here is a stitched picture i took of the ocean, about an hour hike from where i am. the water here is awesome.

2010-02-09T22:01:00.000-05:00

man what the fuck is up with colombia currency?! not only is it hyperinflated, someone up there sat among a ruined city and thought to himself, "okay, if the 1,000 peso bill is going to be burnt orange, let's make the 10,000 peso bill a nice rust color"

as a result i keep fucking dishing out 10k peso bills instead of 1k and everyone's having a goddamned field day as a result

except for PEPE.

PEPE, pronounced peh-pay, is, according to him, a "good boy.. pepe's a good boy" because he actually returned a 10k bill to me after i doled one out trying to give him 2600 pesos. i'm not joking. he was actually saying "pepe's a good, good boy". i thought i was going to pass out. he was like 15 years old. i actually PATTED HIM ON THE HEAD. it was the most surreal thing that's ever happened to me. i gave him a small propina for his honesty

but the thing is, i was kind of drunk yesterday morning when this happened (not my fault, and an entirely different story altogether), and i couldn't really remember much about the situation other then someone saying "pepe's a good boy" over and over. that sort of thing sticks in your head

so later in the afternoon i was wandering around the city walls and got stuck on this one part, and then somewhere in the depths below me i heard this rough voice yell out "NO SALIDA!! AMIGO AMIGO!! NO SALIDA!!!"

so i hopped down and there was this dude, maybe 30 years old, wearing like the first oakleys ever made and like a NO FEAR hat on backwards and what little hair was exposed was totally slicked back and this dude was just too cool for school. and he was sort of desperately trying to explain to me that the wall i was hiking led to a dead end.

so i thanked him for his trouble and he pulled down his super gay shades and looked me in the eye and said "i remember you, amigo.. i remember you... do you remember me?"

and i looked this full grown man in the eyes and i said "pepe?"

and he said "who is pepe? i saw you yesterday across the street"

and of course that made a lot more sense

model home answering machine laughter

2010-02-08T12:34:00.000-05:00

two nights ago i dreamt that i was conducting some sort of weird social experiment

i think i was pretty much grown up like i am now

anyway so what i did was build this little model house, about two feet high. it was like a nice cottage-y sort of place, two stories, fairly large. i built a bit of a landscape around it. the whole thing was housed in a closet in the downstairs of my actual place. the lanscape had a hill at the top (house at the bottom) and there was a gravel road lined with a couple of laterns that went down the hill to the house. there was a lot of flora and folliage around. it was really pretty, actually. i made it perpetually dusk, like i got the lighting in the closet set so it was always a little dark outside. then i lit up the inside of the house with some LED lights or something, and i found a tape deck which i hid in the wall of the closet somewhere and had a tape of cricket chirps and ocean waves perpetually playing. so basically you opened up this closet door and there was this little house shrouded in twilight with crickets chirping. because all the lights in the house were on you assumed people were there.

then inside this house all i did was place one of those old answering machines inside. i made it so the roof could be easily removed so i could change the answering machine tape frequently. i changed it like 4 times a day (this was part of the experiment), and instead of saying something like ´leave me a message´ i just said something along the lines of ´hey, this is dave, tonight a couple of us are going to be watching the game at so-and-so´s pub, you should come hang out´. i changed the message everytime i knew where i was going to be. i also made sure to play a tape that just had background noise of people talking and laughing whenever i recorded a message, so it sounded like i was already in a busy place.

so anyway sooner or later some friends started commenting on how often my answering machine message was changed, and i was like "yeah, you should come check it out." and they were all like "what do you mean, ´check it out´? check out your answering machine?" and i was like, "yeah!!" and they were baffled but consented

so i brought them to my place and told them to check out the downstairs closet, and they went and opened it up and saw this quiet, picturesque model house in the woods with the lights on and the streetlights being all nice and everything. and i told them to call my number, and they did, and then from inside the house you suddenly heard a beep and then all these people talking and laughing and my voice saying ´hey, we´re not at home, we´re over at my friend johnny´s place´ or something along those lines, and all my friends were totally dumbstruck by it. it was evident that this was one of the weirder things they had ever seen, and they didn´t know what to say.

but the thing was, this whole production or whatever you want to call it totally stuck with them. and then i remember calling one of those people, and instead of a ´leave me a message´ message, his also said ´hey, i´m going to the library for a bit, you can meet up with me there´, also with laughing and talking in the background. and then another friend had a similar message

and THEN, when i went over to one of their houses, someone said ´hey dave, check this out´, and showed me the closet in his bedroom, and he had ALSO made a little model house in the model woods with all the lights on and an answering machine inside.

and i was like ´do you have any idea why you did this?´ and he said "no, but it really makes me super happy" and i was like "i know, right?! isn´t this weird?!" and he was like "i have no idea why this makes me feel better about everything.."

and then pretty soon everyone started doing this, everyone had a little ideallic model home in some corner of their house or apartment, with an answering machine inside that played an ever-changing message saying where that particular occupant was expected to be for the next few hours, with laughter and talking in the background.

i think it caught on, but i woke up around that point and really thought long and hard about what the hell this dream could possibly mean.

2010-02-02T13:15:00.001-05:00

i am reminded of a story told last week when some friends were doing their best to cross into honduras. they were approaching the border in their car when suddenly two men came jumping out into the road, screaming at them (my friends - we shall refer to them as A, B and C for the moment) to stop.

A pulled over in a hurry and rolled down the window. the two guatemalan men starting wildly gesticulating that they could not possibly even begin to THINK about crossing the border without first having their car sprayed ´for seeds´.

"for seeds," exclaimed B in alarm, "what?"

in poor english the two guatemalan men exclaimed that there were certain seeds that could not be imported into honduras without devastating effect to the country. seeds who could affix themselves to a vehical with a tenancity not seen since biblical times. seeds that simply could not be allowed to pass.

the two guatemalan men started jumping up and down because they were so worried about these seeds. they began screaming at the top of their little guatemalan lungs that the car absolutely needed to be sprayed or else all hell would break loose once in honduras. A & B looked at each other and timidly asked exactly how much this would cost.

"$40!!" shrieked the guatemalan men, still flailing about as though they were on fire.

C consented, pulled out his wallet, and took out two twenty dollar bills. The two guatemalans salivated briefly at the sight, snatched the money, and both began shouting into a large bush some twenty feet away.

Out of the bush a third guatemalan appeared, holding a common garden hose. He meekly walked up to the car and began to shamefully sprinkle a meager amount of water over the car. A, B & C all sat and watched as this poor man slopped his hose over the vehical while staring at his shoes and refusing to look anybody in the eye. The other two brash men had also adopted a quieter demeanor, and the three of them began to slowly circle the car and sort of give it a loose washing with the corners of their sleeves, all the while looking utterly embarrassed. B likened the experience to a tribe of indigenous people performing a dark ritual around a corpse.

at this point a woman came out of nowhere and literally yelled out "WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING?!?" at A, B & C, and the three men bolted off into the horizon.

2010-01-17T11:52:00.000-05:00

so i bussed down to antigua to see this volcano

the bus ride was awful. some dude sat down next to me and i was like, `okay, you seem reasonable, you dont smell weird, you aren`t talking to me, etc etc etc` and then this dude`s 15 children all come on board, and he hasn`t bought a ticket for a single one of them so he basically got them to `GATHER ROUND and all sort of just lean on him while still standing up?! then he sort of half-assedly threw his arms around his progeny and just fucking passed out and started snoring!! and all his kids just stood there for the entire 10-hour bus ride and just whimpered a bunch!! i felt awful!! what the hell kind of father is that?!?! BENEVOLENT PROVIDER MY ASS.

it ruled. volcanoes are awesome. we were suppose to get a guide with a gun, but these `guards` are like 15 years old and about a third of my size. so i went up with two other giant adventurous dudes and it FUCKED RULED.

basically you get up about 2000 meters and hit this cloud forest, which is fun. then the forest disappears and everything turns to volcanic ash and it starts to smell dangerous and the ground gets warm and you get really nervous. then you get above cloud level and are rewarded with the site of a smoldering volcano on one side, and a couple of other volcanoes in the distance on the other!!! then you see goddamned lava!! then you get right up there until you cant stand the heat and your shoes start to melt!! then i roasted some marshmallows. i just needed to bring them down to about ankle height and they roasted. it ruled.

good times!!

2010-01-14T19:40:00.000-05:00

god dammit i fucking hate hippies!!!

so i had to take some sort of bus ´tour´ to guatemala because apparently its impossible to do this by yourself. anyway one sketchy bus ride driven by the most indifferent fat man ive ever seen got us to some sort of poo-brown river. then the indifferent fat man waved us out of the bus and pointed down to the river. he even accompanied us for about twenty feet and then turned around and marched back to the bus.

we wandered around, asked a few people what the fuck was going on, they all told us to go back and talk to the indifferent fat man.

so we go back, he´s long gone, everyone´s milling around looking retarded when suddenly the fat guy jumps out from behind a tree down by the river and starts whistling and waving his arms in the air.

so we rush over there and he pushes us into this long boat on the poo-brown river. i know for a goddamned fact that this is the border between mexico and guatemala, but for some reason we cant just cross to the other side, we need to fight the current for like fifty miles.

finally some people on the other side become visible and that shitfucking asshole in the back throws a goddamned tarp on me!!! this happened like 5 years ago when i was crossing into guatemala from belize!! god dammit!!!

so im writhing under the tarp and making my objections as audible as possible and suddenly the tarp is removed and im thrown off the boat into the jungle.

theres a bunch of giant sketchy looking guatemalans all clutching fistfuls of quetzals and calculators and yelling out in poor english that i ABSOLUTELY MUST EXCHANGE MY PESOS WITH THEM RIGHT NOW RIGHT NOW RIGHT NOW. they proclaim that there are NO BANK MACHINES IN GUATEMALA and that the GUATEMALA BANKS WILL NOT ACCEPT PESOS and the IMMIGRATION OFFICE WILL NOT ACCEPT PESOS.

so someone (possibly me) says in an obstinate voice "LET ME GET THIS STRAIGHT. YOUR COUNTRY´S NATIONAL BANK WILL NOT ACCEPT CURRENCY FROM THE COUNTRY IT BORDERS. CORRECT?" and everyone looks a little disconcerted and someone else (possibly me) then starts complaining about how i left a perfectly good bottle of tequilla in the hostel in palenque because this is suppose to be a goddamned OFFICIAL CROSSING into the country and not this snake-oil salesmanning of perfectly respectable white people.

anyway so then i had this brilliant idea and pushed my way through the sketchy currency converters and climbed this little hill. last time in guatemala i am fairly certain the goddamned TOWN BAKER stamped my passport with a little stamp he found nearby. anyway this time the immigration office was this little shed in the middle of nowhere. so i stood in line and then everyone stood in line and some random dude showed up and said OF COURSE WE ACCEPT PESOS and then the converters all looked down at the ground and shuffled off into the jungle, presumably to plot kidnappings

so i pay my $5 to get into the country

OH FUCK

yeah so getting OUT of mexico i show up and say I´M LEAVING THE COUNTRY and the dude gives me the form to get IN the country and tells me to go fuck off. so i actually fill out the first name, last name part before i realize what the hell´s going on, and then go back to the dude behind the bars at the office and wave the entrance form in his face and tell him DUDE I´M LEAVING, I DIDN´T JUST APPEAR OUT OF THE FOREST. and he gets all cross and starts telling me because i began filling out the form i need to finish it?! and i keep telling him i´m not filling out a second entrance form?! and we go back and forth and finally he stamps my passport and then writes something down in it, and i rip up the form and bail

yeah so back in guatemala, i pay my $5 and then ask where the nearest bathroom is. they actually have a decent one, working toilet and all. its got four walls and a tin roof and everything. there´s this big wooden cabinet behind the toilet. i urinate and flush and then this fucking FAT CHILD jumps out from behind the cabinet with this big bucket of water and just dumps all the water into the toilet and then starts screaming for propinas!! god dammit!! and i´m about to get all chris hanson on this little pervert when it occurs to me that i have a canadian loonie in my pocket so i give it to the fat child and instruct him to use it to barter for butter crackers or whatever it is he seems to be living on.

god dammit.

tikal was pretty fucking awesome, though. good way to spend a day. i´m currently on the isle of flores, which is in the middle of a lake that reminds me of canada. there is nothing better in this world then canadian summer at a cottage on the lake. preferably with friends and a barbecue.

ive taken tomorrow off to do some school work and cancel my phone and pay my hydro and mail postcards and do all the stupid beaurocratic nonsense that piles up when you arent at home, and one of those tasks includes backing up all my pictures so i´ll post some then.

right now i´m going to go to los amigos and sit by the fire and the lake and watch rare documentaries on central america in a hammock while girls bring me these enormous buckets full of strawberry and banana smoothies full of rum and cane sugar.

2010-01-10T18:25:00.000-05:00

overnight to puerto escondida. spent the day swimming and wandering around. slept in a hammock. woke up early this morning and went to the valley of water only to find about 30 wild dolphins jumping around. got in and a couple broke off from the pod. they kept their distance but we were definitely interacting. it ruled. drank some lemon juice and some watermelon juice and some tacos with guacamole and fried cow brains, and then took a few buses a few hours south to mazunte, which is where i am now. it fucking rules. one of the best beaches ive seen, plus really nice big 8+ foot waves.

having a blast. another day or two here, and then back into the jungle. the population here is 400 i think. the australians are in another village about 3 miles south of here, population 700. life is good.

2010-01-07T15:57:00.000-05:00

we have a van. as soon as that kid comes back from jail or whatever we´re booking it out of mexico city and driving in the dark to oaxaca. god dammit. hate waiting. love life.

2010-01-06T21:09:00.000-05:00

man some dude sitting next to me in the plane was EMPTYING SUGAR PACKETS into his little cup of pepsi!!! fuck me!!!

mexico city rules. went to teotihuacan because i studied it in school. aloe vera looks downright dangerous and carnivorous when it gets over 10 feet tall. those little cactii with the little ping-pong paddle leaves that look like little green pancakes eventually turn into the leaves of trees with knobbly trunks. gross spiders spin webs in between the spikes and make coccoons around themselves in the middle. took a nap on top of the pyramid of the sun.

found hard currency in a bag of chips. great incentive.

skinny whiny chinese kid may/may not be dead by now. dude was worried about everything.

having a good time. cant wait for the beach.

a band of mayans decked out in full costume and headgear were heya-hoya´ing all over the place and making fires and cleansing people with clay pots full of white smoke and throwing herbs everywhere, and then there was this dude with a disney headband and a red track suit just sitting there trying to peddle his wares and looking utterly dejected.

dudes sit around here with signs professing their trades. (electrician, plumber, etc). some of them lay down the tools they´re proficient in, indicative of experience i guess.

others fill up stolen walmart shopping carts with oranges, the rinds still more green than anything else, and bolt a juicer to a big slab of wood which they lay on top. it rules.

got my breakfast out in a field. dude juiced some oranges for me, went out back and cubed up a papaya, then went out to the honeycombs, grabbed a comb or a sheet or whatever, smushed up some honey with a dull knife, threw some granola over the papaya, then dabbed a thick smudge of honey on top. all i could hear were bees and all i could smell were oranges.

life rules. hit up the toy district. architecture here is nothing short of staggering. museum de bella arts, holy shit.

got kind of drunk and went out to an amusement park. the food here is unreal, too. i dont know how to pronounce any of it, but one of my favorite things to do here is point and push pesos into the hands of people making food.

trying to figure out where all the punk shows are at. "the dangerous part of town" is the only answer ive gotten thus far.

hung out with a dude who just wouldnt shut up about 2012. im looking forward to it for the same reason i looked forward to y2k; bunch of dumb inbred rednecks all hiding in their root cellars with stockpiled cans of beans while the rest of us went out and partied. we need more events like this where the religious masses all cower under doorframes and wait for the horsemen and the rest of us can go out and have a good time.

just wait until i figure out how to post pictures.

edit: sick tagging abounds

train fight

2009-10-01T08:53:00.000-04:00

i had an interesting dream last night. i was at this train platform that connected people to all parts of the world. it was a really dirty/dangerous place, and situated in northern africa, i think. it was bright outside, there weren't many trees, and the whole place (which i got the impression was acres and acres) was teeming with the worst people imaginable. everyone was trying to rip each other off and it was one of those places where a clueless white western dude would immediately lose the shirt off his back.

anyway the platforms were organized by how safe the destination country was. so if you wanted to take a train to canada or germany or the usa basically you had to wait outside in the sun for a pretty nice train to arrive. if you wanted to go to the philippines or nicaragua or whatever you had to walk down these grimy steps into an underground platform and hope you didn't get robbed and wait for this dirty train.

then, if you wanted to go to sudan or the darian region of panama or something you basically had to go even further down into this really atrocious platform. this platform was closed off by these great big metal doors that opened for about ten seconds every 10 minutes, so you had to wait to get in, or out. then you went down into the center of the earth practically and waited for your train, which at that point basically consisted of an engine, a series of wheels, and a platform that you jumped on to. a lot of death occured down in this platform.

anyawy i went down there just to check it out and immediately fell upon a large group of thieves and murderers and other interesting people. i made it clear that i was armed, and that i had travelled to shitty places before, and that i wasn't some retarded north american that didn't know anything about the world. they sort of cleared up their attitudes after that, and viewed me a bit more as a co-conspirator.

one woman i saw was walking up and down this underground platform holding all these pictures of lions, tigers, pumas and other full-grown giant cats, all of them being petted or hugged by white people. i asked her what the hell she was playing at, and she told me to watch. she went up to some unfortunate/innocent looking dude and struck up a really bizarre conversation.

she told the guy she worked for a group that takes care of big cats that have been swiped from the rainforest after their parents were poached, or sold to circuses or rich families etc etc etc and were one way or another been subjected to some form of abuse and then seized by the authorities. her group was now looking for volunteers to help take care of these animals.

the dude, who was obviously a clueless tourist heading to fucking sudan for some goddamned reason, looked really interested and asked where & how much. the woman smiled, glanced at the man's ticket, and said that there was no cost, it was volunteer operated, and that there was a facility based in sudan. she really sounded legit about it. the man now looked downright excited and said he was interested. she gave him a card with the name of another man on it, made a call, and said he would be met with once he got off the train.

they concluded this ridiculous transaction, and a great disgusting platform train rushed by, slowed down, and then a whole horde of terrible-looking people jumped onto the platform, along with the man. the train sped off.

i returned to the woman and asked what she got out of this arrangement, and she told me that her organization, while under the guise of charity and 'big cat rehabilitation', was mostly a front for a secretly-taped "tv show" she distributed through the black market. she said there were cameras all over the facility, and that within days the man would have been savaged to death by the cat assigned to him, and that people payed good money to watch the carnage. she then took me over to a large doric column that looked older than the train station itself, and all over it were these posters featuring cartoons (done in political-cartoon style, like in the early 1900s in france) of tigers carving people up with giant butcher knives, while underneath were these obvious slogans like "man can NEVER live against the tiger" and "a tiger will ALWAYS kill a human". it was actually pretty sick advertising. i wish i could draw because then i would have given it a shot when i woke up.

yardbrain COMPENDIUM

2009-09-10T11:45:00.002-04:00

for fun i put issues 1-6 together as a small book

if you're interested in a copy get in touch! it cost me like $9 + shipping i think

also scary

2009-08-31T10:18:00.000-04:00

and since i just remembered it, this is the worst nightmare i have ever had in my life

i was in my ex girlfriend's bedroom, and there was this green light pouring out from the hallway. i couldn't tell what was producing the light but it scared the life out of me. finally i got out of her bed and slowly walked to the door. i took a deep breath and walked around and into the hallway, and there was this green orb just floating by the ceiling in the hallway, and this is what was producing all the green light. i have never been that scared/upset in my life.

fortunately my girlfriend woke me up and she said i was like a having a fit or something, and it took like ten solid minutes to calm me down. anyway that's the scariest thing i have ever dreamed about.

pit

2009-08-31T10:07:00.000-04:00

last night i dreamt that i was on one of those flat boxcars on a very short train going through a sketchy part of some horrible country. anyway there were a lot of dead bodies on the tracks and we kept running over them and it was really morbid. there were about 7 of us standing on this boxcar. i remember one body was lying across the track and his head looked like a giant tomato because all the blood had been squeezed out of his body and went into his head.

so anyway the train stops and everyone gets off and we're now in like the 'bad part' of this country and we're walking down these tracks in the dark and there are just corpses EVERYWHERE. it seems like this is the dumping ground for murders. finally we get to the end of this alley and there's a fence and all the cop cars on the other side, and we all jump the fence and suddenly we're all 'safe'

then my friend jenn is like 'dammit, i left my stereo back there!' and i was like 'are you fucking serious?!' and she was like 'yeah, i just need to run back there and turn it off, i left music playing'.

and i was like 'come on!! really?!' but she insisted, so we went back over to the dark tracks, and found her stereo and turned it off. only thing was that there was now a second stereo next to hers, also playing similar music, and we were both really creeped out that someone had come and put it there.

as we're about to leave we found this video tape, so we ran back to the 'safe' zone and popped it into a video player. the video was FUCKED. it was a picture of this lush green mountain, and it started at the crest of the mountain and slowly went down to the base. at the base there were 8 tiny little black shapes at the edge of this huge pit that had obviously been dug with the aid of large machines (it was like a perfectly square pit)

the camera zoomed in and soon i realized that the black shapes were dead bodies that had been wrapped in black cloth. it was really scary for some reason. then the camera zoomed into the pit, and it was full of wriggling bodies all covered in white cloth. the camera kept zooming into the pit, and went right up to the faces of the wriggling bodies. they were people, but they were super diseased and you could tell they had lost their sanity & reason, they were missing teeth and had sores on their faces and their pupils were super dilated and they were just smiling and groaning and vomiting and staring right into the camera. their limbs were wrapped tightly to their bodies so they could only wriggle around like worms. a few of them were dead, and the dead were all on their stomachs with their heads up & eyes forward, and had what looked like spongy vomit pouring out of their mouths.

yardbrain 6

2009-08-29T15:17:00.002-04:00

last one for a while! yarrrghrghgrhgrhbrain 6!

download: http://sheepshearing.googlepages.com/yardbrain6.pdf

just keep going!

2009-08-13T11:07:00.000-04:00

i had another weird nightmare last night. all of my nightmares seem to revolve around intervals of time

anyway i was on this weird little houseboat and totally lost. i was floating around in this little river in the middle of the woods, and there were a billion other little rivers and streams and tributaries everywhere and i had absolutely no idea where to go or how to get out of the forest.

anyway so i'm floating around aimlessly when suddenly there's this 90-year-old man just standing by the bank somewhere. so i bring the boat over and ask this old guy if he needs any help. he just shakes his head. then i ask if he needs to go anywhere. again the dude shakes his head.

then i ask him if he knows how to get out of the forest, and he points down the river and tells me to stay on it for three days.

so i was like 'really? are you sure?' and the old man gives me a stern look and says 'yes, go down this river for three days'.

so i leave him and i'm heading down the river and the night passes and i wake up and everything looks kind of different. the morning goes by and the early afternoon comes and it starts to get stormy. i'm starting to doubt the old man's advice when suddenly i see this little kid standing by shore. he can't be more than like 6 or 7 years old.

so i bring the boat over and i've got this weird sense of deja-vu and i stop by the kid and as him if he's alright. he nods his head. i ask him if he's lost and he shakes his head no. then i ask him if he knows how to get out of the river and he gives me this awful smile and says "i told you, go down the river for three days'

and then i practically have a heart attack and feel totally creeped out and jump to the back of the boat and start speeding away from the kid. i'm pretty much terrified and want to put as much distance between myself & him as possible. then i start getting this awful feeling like i shouldn't look back. i'm really compelled to do so, though, but something keeps telling me 'don't look back, don't look back'

so finally i look back and the kid is still standing by the shore, a few hundred feet away, but i can see him super clearly. he looks at me and mouths the words 'you shouldn't have looked back' and then he dives in the water and starts swimming towards me super super super fast, and as he's swimming i can see him transform into this blackish mass underwater and I start to freak out and the blackish mass goes deeper and deeper and deeper into the water and everything's getting darker and stormier and eventually i can't see anything anymore. it's just pitch black and i'm bobbing around in my boat and i can't even see my hand in front of my face.

and then my boat shudders and i can tell something just rammed into it from underneath. and then there's another hit. and another. and then i woke up.

big stag

2009-07-29T08:55:00.000-04:00

can any of you dudes read stuff in your dreams? i've had a zillion dreams where i was reading really weird books. usually it's pretty legible.

anyway last night i had a really long winding dream, but at one point i was a kindergarten teacher and i had asked my class to all write down a few sentences about a person they liked

so i had about 30 of these submissions and i was flipping through them and the first one said

"i like my dad he helps me when i "

and the second one said

"i like my big brother he is tall he can reach the cooky"

and i flipped another page and this one said

"I'd like to lay down the relative merits of the Big Stag himself, Norm from Cheers"

and this was followed by like a solid paragraph drumming up the man's character!

so anyway i was super confused, and i thought maybe another teacher had snuck in and stuck this in as a joke or something. so i checked the name and found the kid and i was like "hey cody, did you write this?!"

and fucking cody gives me this nonchalant look and was like "yeah"

and i was like "do you actually know Norm from Cheers?!"

and fucking cody was like "of course not! i'm 5 years old!"

CAPTAIN

2009-07-20T09:06:00.000-04:00

i had a pretty strange nightmare last night. everything was pretty normal in the dream, i had the same job, same life etc, when suddenly i started getting these sudden random fits of paralysis where i couldn't do anything except feel utterly terrified for about 30 seconds at a time.

i'm not sure how this second part came into play, but while looking into it i discovered a single similar case of whatever 'disease' it was that i had. it belonged to a captain who bore the name 'albrecht', but whether it was his christian name i do not know. from what i gathered he was a horrible, terrible person, but the scariest part of what i read was that he was born on the same day i was, but back in the 18th century.

anyway the paralysis was getting worse and i couldn't find any other information so i kept reading up about this captain, and about the horrible deeds he did. i stopped sleeping and would spend my nights just waiting for the paralysis to take over. i noticed it was getting stronger, and in addition to not being able to move and feeling scared, i also became aware of the strangest sensation - one of being pulled. it wasn't like i was being physically pulled upwards or anything; it felt like the inside of my body was being twisted around in my skin, and i felt like someone or something was trying to bring me somewhere else.

one night after a really bad bout of paralysis i immediately knew what was going on. i went back to my books and looked up the date of albrecht's death. it was in three days, and i suddenly understood that my whole life was a parallel to his, and that in three days i too was going to die, or get pulled over to whatever/wherever i was being taken, etc.

my dream then shifted to that third-person perspective where you're floating over everything and watching yourself. i knew that it was the date of albrecht's death and i watched myself go into final paralysis. i was lying on my bed in my apartment, but it was the only piece of furniture there. everything else was empty and desolate and lonely and weird shades of grey. i basically watched myself die in complete wretchedness. then i heard a banging noise and watched as my front door was kicked in.

a bunch of people wearing black clothes and black masks threaded into my apartment and lifted up my body. they covered it in a cloth. suddenly i was floating over a graveyard somewhere, and i knew that a week or so had elapsed and that i was in the different part of the world altogether.

i saw the people dressed in black come out of the woods, still carrying my body. they stopped in front of a masoleum that was marked C. Albrecht; and underneath that Albrecht C. The date of birth and date of death were underneath that, and each date was inscribed on a small marble plaque that bore a handle. One of the men came forth and pulled on the first handle, and the plaque slide out of the masoluem. It was about the size of a brick. Then the person pulled the second handle, and the date of death slid out much in the same way.

cnce both plaques were removed a series of creaks and groans emitted from the masoleum and it transformed and opened itself in front of my eyes and suddenly there was an open grave in front of me containing the skeleton of what i presumed to be Albrecht. the group in black dumped my body on top of the skeleton and pushed the plaques back in, and the grave was once again transformed into a closed masoleum. i remember being absolutely horrified by this, and the last thing i recall seeing before i woke up were dozens of large black dogs wandering through the graveyard.

yardbrain # 5

2009-07-14T15:14:00.001-04:00

still at it!@@

http://sheepshearing.googlepages.com/yardbrain5.pdf

wheel barrel

2009-07-03T13:29:00.000-04:00

last night i had this hilarious dream where i was in a hardware store trying to buy a wheelbarrow. anyway the dude was showing me these top-of-the-line high quality barrows and he was looking at this one in particular and was saying things like

"this one is really top shelf. lifetime guarantee, rust-proof, solid craftsmanship, this one is a helluva peach."

and i was like "okay sweet, i'll take it!"

and then the dude at the hardware store was like "AND... AND!! check this out! it's got TWO BRAKES! there's a brake on the handle, here, see, and that'll stop this barrow cold, and then there's this second one down here that you can step on and it'll also stop"

and i thought it was kind of weird that a wheelbarrow would need brakes, much less two, so i was like "cool, i'll take it!"

and the dude was like "yeah, you see.. two brakes!! this one AND that one.. you can use whichever one you want"

and i was like "okay, okay, honestly i don't really care, i'll take it"

so i wheeled the barrow up to the cash and i'm paying for it and the hardware guy is STILL hanging out next to me and he's now saying things like "just make sure you replace the brake cable every three months, and oil it regularly every couple of miles and make sure you..."

and i was like "god almighty, dude!!!"

and then the dream switched scenes and it was like half a year later, and for some reason i'm sitting in this fucking wheelbarrow just BARRELLING down highway traffic and i'm going like 150mph and i'm like HOLY FUCKING SHIT I'M GOING TO FUCKING DIE!!!! and cars are zooming around and all over the place

so i finally manage to turn around so i'm now sitting backwards and i lean over and grab the brake on the handle and the wheelbarrow sort of slows down for a split second and then i hear this snap and the brake cord comes flying out and i'm like "OH GOD OH GOD OH JESUS WHY DIDN'T I LISTEN TO THAT GUY!!!!" and i'm looking over at the brake at the bottom but it's too far for me to reach and i'm just flying down through all these trucks and stuff

yardbrain # 4

2009-06-24T16:28:00.003-04:00

new yardbrain zine

http://sheepshearing.googlepages.com/yardbrain4.pdf

enjoy

i'm going to crank a few more of these out, i think i might be able to pitch them, who knows.

i'll get back to STORIES eventually, promise

metaphor

2009-06-17T13:21:00.000-04:00

okay, this is an old dream i had maybe 5 years ago, but remember clearly because i thought it was important at the time. it was very lord-of-the-rings-ish

so i'm sitting somewhere minding my own business when suddenly i'm sucked up into the ionosphere and basically just watched the world get smaller and smaller and smaller until i was well in outer space and the earth was about the size of a basketball

and i'm floating around in darkness when suddenly it's like a giant sheet is lifted and all i can see is the sun, everywhere, and everything's super bright and illuminated and the earth looks brilliant blue and green, like the colors you see in reptile scales or bird feathers. and i'm recoiling from this and squinting when suddenly there's this big WHOOSH sound and everything goes black again and the sun's extinguished again. and then my eyes adjust and i start seeing all these little bright dots of light in the darkness, and i remember thinking 'okay, well the stars are out so its night again'

and i looked over to my right and i saw this second planet that was red and grey and looked very volcanic, and i thought to myself, okay, that's mars.

and then i tried to figure out what the hell i was still doing in outer space when suddenly i was given the impression that someone had just asked me if i wanted to see exactly what was going on. nobody said anything, i just suddenly knew that someone had asked me if i wanted to understand things.

so i sort of thought 'yes!' and then i starting zooming out even further, and the world revealed itself to be attached to a big chain. and the planet that i thought was mars was also attached to a chain, and soon the other planets also showed themselves and they were all also hanging by chains.

so i'm still zooming out when i noticed that each chain was attached to a sign post that said "earth" or "mars" or "jupiter", and all these sign posts were attached to a big ornate lamp post, like the ones you read about in dickens' novels. at the top of this lamp post was a giant raven perched next to a big glassy bulb that was casting light over the planets.

so i stared at the raven and it looked at me and lifted up one wing, which obscured all the light and threw the planets into darkness, and little rays of light filtered through the feathers and i realized those were what i previously thought were stars. then the raven lowered its wing and the shadows passed and the planets were all illuminated again. i got the impression that the raven never left its post and this was sort of how night and day came about.

i zoomed out further still and saw an old ornate iron bench next to the lamp post, and although i couldn't factor it in to the daily operations of planet earth i had this sensation that it was incredibly important to the existence of my solar system.

while staring at the bench i saw that the lamp post was set on a very peculiar base, one that could swivel around, and while i looked at this a giant breeze came in (more and more i realized that i was in fact in a park at dusk) and the breeze set all the planets swinging gently from their chains, and this in turn spun the light post, and i was made to understand that this accounted for revolution much in the same way that the raven accounted for rotation. there was a path alongside the lamp post and i felt that anyone coming through was suppose to sit by the bench before continuing on their way, but that nobody was suppose to stay for very long in this place.

that's really about it. i don't remember what was going on when i woke up, i mostly just recall staring at this entire setup and thinking this was a interesting turn of events.

yardbrain # 3

2009-05-30T15:23:00.000-04:00

for fun i decided to write music for yb3. dean put mics in front of instruments and let me go nuts for a while. the first song (of four) is up here:

yardbrain

it's about sort of accidently killing your parents and discovering that you're actually a monster

yardbrain # 2

2009-05-14T13:33:00.001-04:00

sorry about the lack of stories, i'm working on these retarded zines right now. they're fun because they're new.

DOWNLOAD!

http://sheepshearing.googlepages.com/yardbrain2.pdf

READ!

yardbrain #1

2009-05-01T13:52:00.001-04:00

not really story related, but it's finally nice and warm outside and i was getting restless at work and felt like writing so i pumped out a bunch of garbage this morning (with the exception of the pavlov story) and made a fake zine out of it

you can download it here!

http://sheepshearing.googlepages.com/yardbrain1.pdf

keep in mind it's really retarded

MR. POITWATH/SALAMANDER

2009-04-08T09:36:00.001-04:00

OH GODDAMN IT, WHILE I'M AT IT:

GRADE EIGHT, HAD A CHEM TEACHER NAMED MR. POITRAS. IT'S A VERY FRENCH NAME, SO YOU'RE SUPPOSE TO ROLL THE 'R' AROUND IN YOUR MOUTH FOR A COUPLE OF MINUTES BEFORE SPITTING IT OUT. ANYWAY THERE WAS THIS KID CHRIS WHO VERY MUCH ENJOYED CALLING MR. POITRAS 'MR. POITWATH' WITH A HINT OF A LISP AND PRETENDING THAT HE SIMPLY COULDN'T DO ANY BETTER. HE ALWAYS SAID THE NAME TWICE IN A ROW (QUICKLY), AND EVEN TO THIS DAY, IF, FOR SOME VERY BIZARRE REASON, I HEAR 'MR. POITWATH!! MR. POITWATH!!' I AM INSTANTLY BE YANKED BACK TO A POORLY LIT CLASSROOM FULL OF LONG GRANITE COUNTERTOPS WITH BUILT IN DRAINS AND HUNDRED-YEAR-OLD BUNSEN BURNERS FROM A TIME LONG SINCE PASSED.

ANYWAY WE HAD SOME LOCKED CUPBOARDS IN THIS CLASSROOM AND THEY CONTAINED A MYRIAD OF DUSTY RELICS AND ARTEFACTS FROM GENERATIONS AGO. I DON'T KNOW IF ANYONE HAD A KEY TO THE CONTENTS OF THESE CUPBOARDS, BUT I PERSONALLY BELIEVED THAT THE SCHOOL HAD MOST LIKELY BEEN BUILT AROUND THESE OBJECTS, WHICH NO DOUBT HAD BEEN DISCOVERED BY PIONEERS WHEN THEY FIRST LANDED ON THESE WESTERN SHORES. THERE WERE SOME CRACKED, LEATHER-BOUND BOOKS THAT LOOKED LIKE THEY MIGHT BE ORIGINAL EDITIONS OF SHAKESPEARE, OR THE BIBLE, SOME RUSTY BRONZE TOOLS THAT I FANCIED CAME FROM THE BYZANTINE ERA, WHAT LOOKED LIKE THE WORLD'S FIRST WIG, AND A GIANT FOOT-LONG SALAMANDER IN A GIANT MASON JAR FILLED WITH FORMALDEHYDE.

SO ANYWAY CHRIS WAS KIND OF A JERK AND I REMEMBER AS SOON AS WE STARTED THE YEAR HE WAS YELLING OUT "MR. POITWATH! MR. POITWATH! WHAT'S THE THING IN THE CUPBOARD!" AND MR. POITRAS WOULD TRY AND MAINTAIN HIS DIGNITY AND TELL CHRIS THAT IT WAS OBVIOUSLY A SALAMANDER IN A JAR OF PRESERVATIVE. AND CHRIS ASKED WHERE IT CAME FROM AND MR. POITRAS SAID IT WAS THERE EVER SINCE HE COULD REMEMBER, AND THEN CHRIS GOT IT INTO HIS HEAD THAT MAYBE HE COULD CLAIM OWNERSHIP OF THE THING.

SO BASICALLY FROM THAT POINT ON EVERY CHEMISTRY COURSE WOULD START WITH CHRIS SCREAMING OUT "MR. POITWATH! MR. POITWATH! CAN I HAVE THE SALAMANDER?" AND MR. POITRAS WOULD LOOK LIKE HE HAD BEEN MORTALLY WOUNDED AND WOULD MOUTH OUT 'POITRAS' IN A BESEECHING SORT OF WAY AND THEN TELL CHRIS IN NO POLITE TERMS THAT HE COULD NOT HAVE THE SALAMANDER. AND THEN THE NEXT DAY THIS WOULD REPEAT ITSELF.

ANYWAY MR. POITRAS CRACKED AFTER ABOUT A MONTH OF THIS ABUSE AND TOLD CHRIS THAT IF HE STOPPED YELLING OUT HIS NAME EVERYDAY, AND MAINTAINED AN 80 AVERAGE, HE COULD HAVE THE SALAMANDER AT THE END OF THE YEAR. AND CHRIS TOTALLY COMPLIED. I MEAN THERE WERE STILL A LOT OF 'MR. POITWATH'S' BUT ON THE WHOLE CHRIS KEPT HIS PROMISE.

SO THE END OF THE YEAR COMES AROUND AND IT'S THE LAST DAY OF SCHOOL AND CHRIS IS ALL FIDGETY AND MR. POITRAS IS ALL FIDGETY AND HE'S HANDING OUT FINAL GRADES AND I THINK EVERYONE'S WAY MORE INTERESTED IN CHRIS' MARK RATHER THAN THEIR OWN. AND MR. POITRAS HANDS CHRIS A PIECE OF PAPER AND CHRIS LOOKS AT THE GRADE AND SCREAMS OUT 'YES!!!! MR. POITWATH!! MR. POITWATH!! I GOT OVER 80! YOU SAID I COULD HAVE THE SALAMANDER!' AND MR. POITRAS SIGHS AND SUDDENLY LOOKS VERY OLD AND MUMBLES SOMETHING ABOUT HOW HE'LL GO FIND A KEY AND DISAPPEARS FROM THE ROOM.

SO WE'RE ALL ASKING CHRIS WHAT HE'S GOING TO DO WITH THE SALAMANDER AND HE KEEPS SAYING HE'S GOT PLANS AND SUDDENLY MR. POITRAS REAPPEARS WITH LIKE THE WORLD'S OLDEST SKELETON KEY AND SLIPS IT INTO THE KEYHOLE AND TURNS BACK THE LOCK. HE GRABS THE GIANT MASON JAR WITH BOTH HANDS AND TURNS IT OVER TO CHRIS, WHO IMMEDIATELY SHRIEKS IN DELIGHT AND RUNS RIGHT OUT OF THE CLASSROOM.

AND WE'RE ALL MOMENTARILY STUNNED AND CAN HEAR HIM STILL SHRIEKING AND TEACHERS ARE STICKING THEIR HEADS OUT OF THE DOORS AND THE SHRIEK DIES DOWN A BIT IN VOLUME AND WE HEAR A DOOR SLAM AND THE SHRIEK STARTS GETTING LOUDER AGAIN

AND IT'S CLEAR THAT CHRIS IS NOW OUTSIDE SO EVERYONE RUNS TO THE WINDOWS - THERE WAS A NICE LONG ROW OF WINDOWS IN THIS CLASSROOM OVERLOOKING THE GIANT PARKING LOT WHERE THE SCHOOLBUSSES CONGREGATE AND THE WINDOWS ARE ALL OPEN BECAUSE IT'S A BEAUTIFUL JUNE AFTERNOON SO WE CAN HEAR AND SEE THINGS CLEARLY. THE SUN IS BEATING DOWN ON THE ASPHALT AND EVERYTHING IS JUST REALLY WARM AND SUNNY.

BECAUSE IT'S ONLY LIKE 3:05 THERE'S ONLY ONE LONE SCHOOLBUS PARKED IN THAT GIANT PARKING LOT AND WE ALL WATCH AS CHRIS MAKES A BEELINE FOR IT, SHRIEKING AND HOLDING THE JAR, AND HE RUNS DOWN THE ENTIRE LENGTH OF THE PARKING LOT, AND GODDAMN IT IF HE DOESN'T JUST HUCK THAT FUCKING JAR RIGHT AT THE SIDE OF THE SCHOOL BUS AND IT EXPLODES INTO A BILLION PIECES AND THAT GIANT BLOATED SALAMANDER FALLS HEAVILY TO THE GROUND AND IS JUST LYING THERE AND CHRIS JUST KEEPS TEARING ACROSS THE PARKING LOT SHRIEKING UNTIL HE'S OUT OF SIGHT. IT WAS A REALLY INTERESTING WAY TO END THE SCHOOL YEAR.

umbrella genocide

2009-04-08T09:22:00.000-04:00

i dreamt last night that i had made my way to ottawa to watch this giant protest. it was at the museum of nature. when i got there i noticed they had bulldozed something like a 5-block radius around the museum, so it was almost like the museum was in a field, and it was just surrounded by hundreds of thousands of protestors. there were about a billion dumptrucks in a circle surrounding all the protestors, acting sort of like a barrier.

anyway so then it starts to rain but there was something really odd about it because the sky was still pretty clear and i couldn't really figure out what was going on but i felt somehow like the rain was man-made and coming from some sort of machine in the sky or something, and i got really nervous and squeezed out between two trucks and decided to leave. i walked out between two dumptrucks and climbed the nearest hill. it wasn't raining where i was, and that worried me even more. then i noticed all these guys in black suits walking in and out of the crowd handing out these giant black umbrellas, and all the protestors were taking one each and opening them up to keep the rain off. pretty soon i couldn't see people anymore, i just saw this massive sea of black umbrellas and it was like a big living black canvas.

then all the dudes in suits edged out between the trucks and it was really starting to rain over the protest and then suddenly all the dumptrucks turned on and unloaded tons and tons of boiling concrete onto the crowd! and concrete was poured out from the roof of the museum of nature, and it was just fucking horrific - i think the plan was that the concrete would smooth out over the umbrellas and the heat generated would suffocate everyone underneath

so pretty soon the protest was just this writhin mass of melting bodies and people trying to breathe through concrete and it was just fucking horrible and i was so appalled

and anyway the concrete started to set, and like a small percentage of people were crawling out of it, and the number of survivors was still pretty formidable due to the sheer number of people attending the protest in the first place, and they were fucking insane. they were picking up broken pieces of concrete and smashing windows and trampling cops and tearing the dumptruck drivers limbs off and then they all went on this giant fucking rampage all the way to where the old city hall is on sussex, tearing up just absolutely everything civic in their way

it was nuts!!

YOU CAN SKIP THIS ONE

2009-03-12T11:39:00.000-04:00

THIS ISN'T FUNNY. I WROTE IT DOWN WITH THE OTHERS WHEN I FELT IT INTEGRAL TO DESCRIBE A DAY AT THE MUSEUM OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY. I'LL EDIT AND PUT UP A FUNNIER STORY SHORTLY. ANYONE FROM OTTAWA WHO WENT TO THIS MUSEUM AS A CHILD IN THE 80S WILL 100% BACK THIS UP.

SO ONE OF THE BIG 'TREATS' OF THE YEAR IS THE FIELD TRIP TO THE MUSEUM OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY. WHICH IS DISAPPOINTINGLY SMALL WHEN I VISIT IT NOW, BUT AT THE TIME I WAS CONVINCED IT WAS BY FAR THE LARGEST MUSEUM IN THE WORLD. EVERYONE LOVED THE MUSEUM OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY. YOU GOT MORE EXERCISE THERE THAN YOU DID ANY OTHER DAY OF THE YEAR, SIMPLY BECAUSE THE BUILDING WAS ENORMOUS AND CONTAINED THOUSANDS OF EXHIBITS THAT ALL HINGED ON PUSHING BUTTONS AND TURNING CRANKS. THE CIRCUIT FOR YOUR TYPICAL SEVEN-YEAR-OLD WAS AS FOLLOWS:

ENTER THE BUILDING. LOOK WISTFULLY AT THE DEHYDRATED ICE-CREAM IN THE GIFTSHOP. GO TO THAT THING WHERE YOU PRESS THE BUTTON AND MAGNETS MAKE AN IRON RING SHOOT ALONGSIDE A GIANT METAL POLE, SHAPED LIKE AN UPSIDE-DOWN 'U', OVER TO YOUR BEST FRIEND WHO IS JUST DYING TO PRESS HIS BUTTON SO HE CAN SEND THE IRON RING BACK OVER TO YOU.

THEN YOU GO PRESS THE BUTTON THAT MAKES THE LIGHTBULB TURN ON, THEN PRESS THE BUTTON THAT SENDS A GIANT VINDICTIVE PURPLE LINE OF ENERGY COURSING BETWEEN TWO ELECTRODES, THEN RUN ALONG A WHOLE STRING OF HIGHSCHOOL SCIENCE PROJECTS UNDER GLASS AND PRESS EVERY POSSIBLE BUTTON YOU CAN GET YOUR GRIMY FINGERS ON. RUN INTO AN ADJACENT ROOM THAT HAS AN ENORMOUS WALL FULL OF BLEEPING AND BLOOPING GIANT PLASTIC TRANSISTORS. COMPLETELY IGNORE THE LOOPED 'HISTORY OF THE COMPUTER' THAT'S BEING NARRATED IN ENGLISH AND THEN FRENCH. GO TO THE ASTRONAUT SECTION. TAKE AN 'AIR SHOWER' WHICH IS KIND OF JUST LIKE STANDING IN FRONT OF A FAN NOW THAT YOU THINK ABOUT IT. GO TO THE CRAZY KITCHEN, WHICH IS JUST A ROOM BUILT ON PREPOSTEROUSLY OBTUSE AND ACUTE ANGLES. FIND THE INCUBATOR AND BE DISAPPOINTED IN HOW SLOWLY CHICKENS HATCH. TAP ON THE GLASS. GO TO THE TRAINS - REAL GODDAMNED TRAINS! AND CRAWL AROUND INSIDE AND OUTSIDE OF THE CARS. GO LOOK AT THE MINIATURE CANADA-ARM AND MARVEL AT WHATEVER THAT THING IS. FIND THAT THING WHERE STEEL SPHERES SLOWLY MAKE CONCENTRIC CIRCLES INSIDE THIS THING THAT LOOKS LIKE A TORNADO. BRIEFLY THINK ABOUT LIFE AS THE HEAVY BALLS ROLL TO THEIR DOOM. TAKE BRIEF INTEREST IN ANOTHER CLASS FROM ANOTHER SCHOOL, AND INSTANTLY DECIDE YOU'RE MUCH HAPPIER AND BETTER OFF WITH YOUR CURRENT FRIENDS. WAIT IMPATIENTLY AS A MAN OR SCIENTIST PERFORMS AN HOURLY SHOW REGARDING THE MAGICAL PROPERTIES OF LIQUID NITROGEN. GET IDEAS WHEN HE DIPS A ROSE INTO THE COOLER AND THEN SHATTERS IT AGAINST THE WALLS. ALMOST LOSE YOUR SANITY AND REASON WHEN HE POURS THE STUFF OUT ON THE FLOOR, COMMANDS EVERYONE TO WAIT A FEW SECONDS, AND THEN LETS EVERYONE RUN AMUCK IN THE HISSING, EVAPORATING LIQUID. SCRAPE YOUR FINGERTIPS AGAINST THE STIFFENED CARPET. BACK TO THE TRAINS. ARGUE BACK AND FORTH WHETHER THE 'FIRE' IN THE BOILER THAT YOU CAN SEE THROUGH THE GLASS IS REAL OR NOT. MEET UP WITH CLASS. EXCITEDLY YELL ABOUT ALL THE WONDERFUL THINGS YOU HAVE DISCOVERED ABOUT LIFE; COMPLETELY IGNORE YOUR FRIENDS AS THEY PARROT IT ALL BACK TO YOU. CONSIDER FOR A MOMENT THAT YOU NO LONGER HAVE A JACKET. RUN TO THE PERISCOPES - THESE GO RIGHT UP THESE METAL PIPES A THOUSAND FEET ABOVE YOU AND COME OUT THE ROOF OF THE MUSEUM. STARE HAPPILY AT PASSERS-BY WHO ARE COMPLETELY IGNORANT THEY'RE BEING SPIED UPON. VAGUELY PONDER WHICH CONTINENT YOU MUST BE LOOKING AT. LOOK AT THE INSIDE OF A GEODE. WATCH A VIDEO OF A TOP SPINNING IN SLOW MOTION. AND THEN - THE GIFT SHOP! DEHYDRATED ASTRONAUT FOOD! SPY GEAR! DINOSAUR MODELS! SMALL BUT FUNCTIONING TELESCOPES! FEATHERS FROM GENUINE NATIVE AMERICANS! MINIATURE REPLICAS OF TOOLS NEEDED TO PERFORM A SUCCESSFUL ARCHEOLOGICAL DIG! HOLY CHRIST!

RETURN TO THE COATROOM HOLDING ONTO A RUBBER DINOSAUR THAT WILL QUICKLY GROW TO BE AS LARGE AS A TANK. REDISCOVER YOUR JACKET. INQUIRE AS TO WHETHER POPSICLES WILL BE DISTRIBUTED UPON RETURN TO CLASS. WALK OUTSIDE, SINGLE FILE. SUFFER A SPLIT-SECOND, ACHING, EXPECTANT FLASH OF AN EMOTION WELL BEYOND YOUR YEARS AS YOU LOOK AT THE SKY AND THE SNOW FALLING SOFTLY OUT OF IT. LAUNCH A PRIVATE INQUIRY AS TO WHERE THE SMELL OF OLD APPLES IS EMANATING. CHOOSE THE SEAT OVER THE BACK REAR TIRE. EXAMINE THE BACKING OF THE SEAT IN FRONT OF YOU. RUN YOUR FINGER OVER THE SMALL BLACK PLASTIC WIREY-THING THAT FOLLOWS THE CONTOUR OF THE SEAT, PEEL BACK SOME OF THE DUCT-TAPE REPAIRING A CUT IN THE SYNTHETIC LEATHER. PRESS YOUR NOSE AGAINST THE GLASS, HOOK YOUR FINGERS INTO THE SLOTS YOU NEED TO PUSH IN TO OPEN THE WINDOW, AND STARE OUT AT THE SLOW, DYING AFTERNOON FULL OF PEOPLE TRYING TO GET HOME.

dude at the top

2009-03-11T09:30:00.000-04:00

so last night i dreamt that i was standing around in the street next to this supposedly haunted house. it was one of those three story houses where the 'top' floor is really just an oversized attic with the roof slope making up its walls and one window overlooking the front yard.

anyway everyone wanted these books from the basement of the house but nobody wanted to go in there because it was haunted. and i was like 'you know i don't believe in this horseshit, i'll do it' and my friends were stoked, but worried for my safety at the same time.

so they gave me a walkie-talkie. and i was like 'guys i don't need this, i'm just gonna jump in there and grab the books' and they were like 'take it anyway, just keep in touch'.

so i go inside and walk down the basement steps and the basement is actually pretty scary. there's broken pipes everywhere and water dripping and blood stains and it's just really creepy. i have to go through like 6 rooms, each one getting darker and smaller when suddenly the house starts to shake. and i'm like on the walkie talkie and i'm like 'is the house collapsing?!' and my friends are like 'quiet as the grave, dude!' and i'm like 'well that's really weird because everything's shaking in here'

so i finally find the books and there's like 40 of them, and they're giant, so i have to bring them back from room to room in stages. and finally curiosity overcomes me and i open one up, and it's just all these gruesome accounts of shit that has gone down in this basement, like people getting sliced in half and heads being decapitated and people seeing ghosts and demons and god knows what else

and i'm back on the walkie talkie and like 'dudes these books are just stories about horrible shit that went down here in this stupid basement!' and it's all quiet on the other side and i press the button again and i'm like 'dudes?' and it's all quiet and i'm like 'what's going on?!'

and then finally one of my friends finally gets back to me and he's like 'dave, you should get out of there, man'

and i'm like 'why, is the place collapsing?! i told you it was shaking down here, it was like there was an earthquake!'

and shit's silent on the other end and then my friend again is like 'um, no, nothing's shaking, but there's some sort of.. something staring out at all of us from the top window and it just disappeared from sight'

then i woke up

lady you are dumb

2009-03-09T14:13:00.000-04:00

okay i actually have a cramp i'm so irritated

so there's this idiot fucking woman in my french class, she is SO RETARDED, she's this little indian woman with a sour face and a mouth that droops like dog's bottom and i have no idea how in god's name she managed to get into an advanced class because she can't speak the language at all

anyway so today we had this exercise to do, basically 12 people are shipwrecked on a deserted island and they've built a raft to go find land or help or something, but the raft can only hold 6 people, and you have to choose which 6 people go on the expedition and which 6 people stay on the island

and this is like an exercise geared towards 6-year-olds. the choices, for the mostpart, are really goddamned obvious

here's the list:

a MARINE BIOLOGIST
an AWARD-WINNING LIFEGUARD
a CRAZY PSYCHIC
a MARINE with 18 YEARS EXPERIENCE who is also a cook
an ARTIST with a 9-YEAR-OLD SON who is good at making STAINED GLASS
a LUMBERJACK
an INVALID
a WEAVER who knows about PLANTS AND SHIT
a RETIRED PERSON
a 26-YEAR-OLD GLOBETROTTER
a NOBEL-PRIZE WINNING PHYSICIST
an ACTRESS

okay

so i mean if you're sending people out on a goddamned fucking expedition this shouldn't be too hard. MARINE, LIFEGUARD, MARINE BIOLOGIST, right? no questions asked?

okay and then people on the island - ARTIST, ACTRESS, RETIRED PERSON, CRAZY PSYCHIC, INVALID right?

and then if you had to choose 3 more from the remaining group for the raft chances are you're looking at the PHYSICIST, the GLOBETROTTER, and then either the LUMBERJACK OR WEAVER

so god fucking dammit if this woman doesn't open up her choices with the ACTRESS and the PSYCHIC and i was like are you seriously fucking dumb and the thing is everyone in the group has to sort of vote on it, and basically everyone else chose the exact same thing and all our votes were 7-1 and this woman got SO UPSET and SO SOUR-FACED everytime we voted her down

and she kept trying to justify her answers except she can't speak french so basically all she kept saying was "je pense que il est robuste" for some fucking reason so she's got her whole boat of 'robust' cripples and retired people and actresses and god i was getting so irritated

and even after we'd vote her down and move on she would get all grumpy and angry and be like 'WELL THE MARINE SHOULD STAY BECAUSE HE CAN COOK AND THE ISLAND NEEDS A COOK' and everyone's like 'HE'S A MARINE' and she'd be like 'YEAH BUT HE CAN COOK'

and it's probably a good thing i can't remember why she wanted to keep the LIFEGUARD on the island but it was just flat out retarded and then some dude was like 'is it more likely that someone will fall out of a raft into the water, or out of the island and into the water' and she just fucking frowned at that dude with her wrinkled spotty mouth for like a FULL MINUTE

FUCK

apple baseball

2009-02-11T13:32:00.000-05:00

last night i had a dream that i was playing baseball with some friends, except we didn't have a ball so we were using an apple. the bulk of the dream revolved around my complete stupefaction that the apple wasn't disintegrating to bits every time someone belted out a homerun or something. towards the end of the dream i was almost beside myself staring at this indestructible apple. towards the end of the dream this dude chris, who i haven't seen since highschool, looked at me and said "i don't get why you think this is so amazing"

2009-01-30T10:41:00.000-05:00

ROCKET

2009-01-28T13:32:00.000-05:00

THIS IS SHORT AND KIND OF DEPRESSING. IN GRADE SIX I WENT TO THIS 'SPECIAL' SCHOOL WITH A BUNCH OF SUPPOSEDLY SMART KIDS, BUT THE SCHOOL WAS SO FAR AWAY WE HAD TO TAKE THE HIGHSCHOOL SCHOOL BUS, WHICH WAS A HORRIFYING EXPERIENCE IN ITSELF. ANYWAY OF COURSE WE ALL SAT UP FRONT AND PRAYED TO GOD THAT THE NINTH GRADERS WOULDN'T BEAT THE CRAP OUT OF US.ANYWAY THERE WAS THIS ONE KID WHO LOOKED ABOUT TWENTY YEARS OLD, AND HE WAS CLEARLY VERY MENTALLY HANDICAPPED, AND HIS NICKNAME WAS 'ROCKET'. HE WORE THIS BLACK LEATHER VEST EVERY SINGLE DAY, AND EVERY ONE OF HIS TEETH LOOKED LIKE IT WAS A CANINE. HE COULDN'T REALLY TALK, HE JUST MADE NOISES AND ROCKED AROUND AND GRINNED AT EVERYONE WITH HIS HORRIBLE FANGY MOUTH.

ANYWAY I DON'T EVEN UNDERSTAND WHY HE WAS PUT ON A BUS FOR HIGHSCHOOL WHEN HE SHOULD HAVE BEEN IN A HOME OR SOMETHING, BUT ANYWAY OF COURSE THE REST OF THE HIGHSCHOOL KIDS DIDN'T CARE. THEIR FAVORITE THING TO DO WAS TO CALL ROCKET TO THE BACK OF THE BUS, AND ASK HIM TO 'HANG OUT' WITH THEM. WHENEVER ROCKET HEARD HIS NAME HE WOULD GRIN AND SMILE AND THEN WHEN ALL THE KIDS IN THE BACK WOULD BECKON HIM, HE WOULD STAND UP AND START TEETERING HIS WAY DOWN THE AISLE.

OUR BUS DRIVER'S NAME WAS EDDIE, AND HE WAS A CHAIN-SMOKING NEUROTIC THAT PERPETUALLY SHOOK AND QUIVERED AND GENERALLY DISPLAYED ALL THE ELEMENTS I HAVE SINCE COME TO IDENTIFY WITH THOSE WHO ENGAGE IN HABITUAL DRUG USAGE. EDDIE WAS UNDER STRICT ORDERS FROM ROCKET'S PARENTS TO NOT LET HIM (ROCKET) GO TO THE BACK OF THE BUS, BECAUSE THE KIDS INEVITABLY STOLE HIS BOOKS, OR SPRAYED HIM WITH PAM, OR DID SOMETHING ELSE EQUALLY HORRIBLE.

SO BASICALLY WHENEVER ROCKET STOOD UP, EDDIE WOULD JAM ON THE BRAKES AND GLARE INTO THE REAR-VIEW MIRROR AND YELL OUT, "ROCKET, FOR CHRIST'S SAKE SIT DOWN!!!" AND ROCKET WOULD WHIP AROUND WITH THIS LOOK OF HORROR ON HIS FACE LIKE HE HAD JUST BEEN CAUGHT DROWNING A CAT AND SIT DOWN AND STARE AT HIS FEET.

THIS WOULD LAST ABOUT TWO MINUTES BEFORE THE TAUNTS AND PLEAS FROM THE BACK OF THE BUS OVERWHELMED ROCKET. THEN WHAT HE WOULD DO IS DUCK DOWN, DISAPPEAR FROM SIGHT, AND ACTUALLY CRAWL ON THE BUS FLOOR ALL THE WAY TO THE BACK OF THE GODDAMNED BUS. THIS HAPPENED EVERY GODDAMNED DAY, I WOULD BE HANGING OUT WITH ONE OF THE SEVEN SIXTH-GRADERS WHO TOOK MY BUS AND BE REALLY NERVOUS THAT I WAS GOING TO GET HIT IN THE BACK OF THE HEAD WITH A SOCCER BALL OR SOMETHING WHEN SUDDENLY WE'D SEE ROCKET, COVERED IN OLD CANDY AND YOGURT AND ALL SORTS OF ATROCIOUS SHIT, ARMY-CRAWLING HIS WAY TO THE BACK. WE WOULD JUST LIFT OUR LEGS.

ANYWAY A FEW MINUTES WOULD TRANSPIRE AND SUDDENLY A LARGE CHEER WOULD ERUPT FROM THE BACK AND ROCKET WOULD POP UP BETWEEN TWO ASSHOLES WITH A GREAT BIG SMILE ON HIS FACE AND OLD SANDWICHES IN HIS HAIR AND HIS BLACK LEATHER VEST WOULD BE ALMOST GREY FROM THE DUST AND DEBRIS, AND BY THIS POINT HE WOULD HAVE TOTALLY FORGOTTEN ABOUT EDDIE'S REMONSTRANCE AND THEREFORE WOULD START WAVING MADLY AT HIM IN THE REAR-VIEW MIRROR.

EDDIE, GETTING MORE AND MORE CRACKED-OUT BY THE MINUTE, WOULD GO ABSOLUTELY BONKERS AND JAR THE BUS TO A HALT, GET UP, PLOW HIS WAY THROUGH THE AISLE MUTTERING VARIOUS EXPLETIVES UNDER HIS BREATH, GRAB ROCKET BY HIS SODDEN VEST, AND START SCREAMING AT HIM TO GET BACK TO HIS SEAT. THIS HAPPENED AT LEAST TEN TIMES A DAY, AND BECAME A VERY BIG PART OF MY CHILDHOOD ROUTINE.

---

I ONLY HAVE TWO OTHER ITEMS OF NOTE REGARDING THE CHARACTERS IN THIS STORY. ROCKET ONCE MISSED THE BUS, AND AS WE PULLED AWAY HIS PARENTS CAME FLYING OUT OF THE HOUSE IN A PERFECT FLURRY OF EXCITEMENT AND CONCERN, ISSUED THEIR RETARDED SON INTO THEIR CAR, AND STARTED DRIVING DIRECTLY BEHIND THE BUS, HONKING NONSTOP.

EDDIE HAD THIS WRATHFUL LOOK ON HIS FACE AND GRIMLY DROVE ON. ROCKET'S FAMILY WAS EVIDENTLY UP FOR THE CHALLENGE AND DOGGEDLY FOLLOWED US ALONG OUR USUAL ROUTE, HONKING ALL THE WHILE. EDDIE START PICKING UP SPEED. SO DID THEY. THINGS WERE GETTING TENSE. SUDDENLY EDDIE THREW UP HIS HANDS, YELLED OUT "OH GOD DAMMIT!!" AND PULLED THE BUS OVER. ROCKET WAS BOOTED OUT OF THE CAR BY HIS MOTHER AND THE TWO OF THEM RAN TO THE BUS, HOLDING HANDS. ROCKET'S MOM SHOVED HIM INSIDE AND REGARDED EDDIE FOR ABOUT A MINUTE. THEN SHE LOOKED AT ALL OF US. PLANTING HER HANDS ON HER HIPS SHE LOOKED AT THE CHILDREN AND TEENAGERS IN FRONT OF HER AND SAID, "EVERYBODY, DON'T LET ROCKET MISS THE BUS."

---

THE LAST APPENDAGE TO THIS RECOLLECTION IS THAT WHEN I EVENTUALLY MADE IT TO HIGHSCHOOL A FEW YEARS LATER I ENDED UP ONCE AGAIN TAKING EDDIE'S BUS. I REMEMBER THE DOOR SWINGING OPEN AND BEING COMPLETELY TAKEN ABACK THAT NOT ONLY WAS THIS MAN STILL ALIVE, HE WAS STILL DRIVING THE BUS TO AYLMER. EDDIE OF COURSE DIDN'T REMEMBER ME AT ALL, AND SEEMED TO BE IN PISS-POOR SPIRITS. THIS WAS AROUND THE TIME THAT THE QUEBEC SCHOOL BOARD INSTALLED EMPTY BOXES WITH BLINKING L.E.D. LIGHTS AT THE FRONT OF THE BUS AND TOLD EVERYONE THEY WERE VIDEO CAMERAS; I NOTICED THAT EDDIE'S "CAMERA" WAS COVERED IN SMEARED LIPSTICK. HIS FINGERS AND HANDS WERE YELLOWED WITH NICOTINE STAINS AND HE LOOKED PRETTY ROUGH. AS WE PULLED OUT OF THE SCHOOL PARKING LOT AND OUT INTO THE ROAD HE IMMEDIATELY CRASHED RIGHT INTO A SMALL CAR, CRUSHING THE PASSENGER SIDE OF THAT POOR VEHICLE INTO NOTHINGNESS. I DON'T BELIEVE ANYONE WAS HURT, BUT IT WAS THE LAST TIME I EVER SAW EDDIE DRIVE A BUS.

so this is a dream

2009-01-20T13:03:00.000-05:00

three nights ago i dreamt we were playing the pumas, who are the worst team in the league, and in my dream i was playing forward and within seconds had scored a goal. then like a minute later i scored another goal, and then like a minute later a third.

and the best player on our team came up to me and said, "dave, tone it down! these guys have feelings, you know!"

and i was like "who gives a rat's ass about feelings" and went and scored like 8 more goals

and throughout the game i felt like everyone on both teams were getting irritated with me, so i just kept scoring

and then at the end of the game i found out that the entire game was a fundraiser for charity, and if we had tied like a million dollars would have gone to orphans or aids research or something

shots

2009-01-06T09:59:00.000-05:00

last night i dreamt that i have invented a new kind of alcoholic shot. basically you combined these three magical ingrediants into a shot glass and once they were all mixed together they instantly froze into this electric blue solid. then what you had to do was stare at your shot glass until the frozen blue mass inside it turned a malachite green, and then it was ready to drink. or so i thought.

anyway because this shot was so ridiculous i tried to patent it, and called some sort of meeting on the top floor of an impressive building with various CEOs of various liquor companies. everyone was shuffling around in expensive suits when i entered the room with my special ingrediants.

everyone sat down and i expertly mixed about a dozen shots and watched in appreciation as everyone ooh'd and aah'd the fluorescent blue result. then that died down, and finally someone said, "well, can i try it?"

and i was like, "uh, no.. it's actually frozen right now" and i held the shot upside down to demonstrate. someone else looked a bit irked and i said, "don't worry, this is the cool part - we have to wait until it turns green!!"

so then we all just sort of sat around this table and stared at these shots and things began to get really awkward, and then finally, finally, thank god, one of the shots started to take on a bit of a greenish hue.

"see!!" i yelled, and grabbed that particular shot, "now it's ready! try it!!" and i stuck the shot in front of the CEO nearest to me

and he sort of opened his mouth and tipped the shot back and promptly started to choke. i guess the shot wasn't quite liquified and was at that particular moment of a consistency akin to molasses, or silly putty, but anyway the dude was choking pretty hard and pretty soon he toppled over and went still.

undaunted, i grabbed another shot which had also begun to shyly display a hint of green and thrust it in front of the next guy over. he looked at me with fear in his eyes and with a bit of a squeal tried to down the unidentifiable mass i had set in front of him. like his companion, he too gave up the spirit shortly after drinking the one i had forced upon him.

fighting a wild panic that was growing in my stomach, i grabbed a third shot and practically threw it at my next victim. this particular man regarded me for about a minute straight with a soured eye and finally told me perhaps i should consider marketing such a product to the military.

i was crushed. then i woke up.

WENDIGO STORY

2009-01-05T16:02:00.000-05:00

SO WE'RE AT CAMP OPEMEKON (CUB SCOUT CAMP) AND WE'RE ALL NICELY SETTLED IN THESE LITTLE WOODSY CABINS. WE'RE OUT HERE FOR TWO WEEKS, WHICH IS PRETTY AWESOME. THERE WERE ABOUT EIGHT KIDS TO A CABIN. KYLE AND I IMMEDIATELY SELECTED THE NICEST ONE AND UNLOADED ALL OUR GEAR. EVENTUALLY A FEW OTHER KIDS WERE SHUFFLED OFF INTO OUR CABIN AND WE SORT OF REGARDED THEM AS OUTSIDERS FOR THE DURATION OF CAMP. ANYWAY, THE SCHOOLBUSES HAD PULLED IN AROUND TEN IN THE MORNING AND THE FIRST THING WE HAD TO SUFFER THROUGH WAS THIS EXCEEDINGLY LONG 'OUTDOOR ASSEMBLY' WHERE AKELA AND BALLOO AND THE REST OF THOSE SMARMY MORONS ALL HAD ABOUT A THOUSAND RULES APIECE TO TELL US. ANYWAY I'M SURE IT PROBABLY ONLY TOOK ABOUT TWENTY MINUTES, BUT TWENTY MINUTES TO A TEN-YEAR-OLD SITTING CROSS-LEGGED IN THE MIDDLE OF THE FOREST IS AN ETERNITY.

EVENTUALLY THOSE IDIOT COUNSELLORS WRAPPED UP THE SHOW AND SHUNTED US ALL INTO THE MESS HALL. THIS IS WHERE I DISCOVERED KYLE HAD NOT BROUGHT HIS OWN SPOON, AND APPARENTLY THERE WEREN'T ANY BACKUP SPOONS IN THE ENTIRE CAMPSITE, AND APPARENTLY WE WERE TO EAT NOTHING BUT SOUP FOR THE NEXT TWO WEEKS. MY FOND MEMORIES OF THIS PARTICULAR SCOUT CAMP ARE RIDDLED WITH INSTANCES OF KYLE "FORGETTING" SOME CRUCIAL ITEM OR OTHER, AND HAVING TO BORROW MINE. THE SPOON WAS THE FIRST. THE FOLLOWING DAY HE REALIZED HE DIDN'T BRING A TOWEL, AND IT JUST SORT OF WENT FROM THERE.

ANYWAY THE SOUP GETS DOLED OUT AND WE ALL STAND UP AND HAVE TO RECITE THE CUB SCOUT PLEDGE, WHICH I NO LONGER REMEMBER OTHER THAN THE OPENING "I PROMISE TO DO MY BEST SOMETHING SOMETHING SOMETHING" AND WE'VE GOT OUR FINGERS UP AGAINST OUR BROWS AND WHAT A LITTLE ARMY WE ALL ARE. AKELA AND BALLOO AND THE REST OF THAT ILK ALL HAVE THEIR HATS CLUTCHED AGAINST THEIR CHESTS LIKE IT'S VETERANS' DAY AND YOU CAN'T HELP BUT WONDER WHAT THEY'RE GOING TO TURN OUT LIKE AS ADULTS. ANYWAY AFTER KYLE AND I FINISH LOOKING LIKE TOTAL IDIOTS AND EATING OUR SOUP WITH ONE SPOON BETWEEN THE TWO OF US, BAGIRA OR WHATEVER SORT OF CUPS HIS HANDS TO HIS MOUTH AND TELLS US THERE'S TO BE A "BIG SURPRISE" AT THE CAMPFIRE AFTER THE SUN GOES DOWN, AND ONCE AGAIN EVERYONE GROANS AND THEN WE ARE SUDDENLY INFORMED THAT WE'LL HAVE THE AFTERNOON TO OURSELVES, WHICH RULES!!

SO KYLE AND I TAKE OFF AND TRY TO FIGURE OUT WHERE THE BOUNDARIES OF THIS SCOUT CAMP LIE. WE FIND SOME TRAILS, SOME GOOD CLIMBING TREES, A SMALL CLIFF THAT LEADS INTO THE LAKE, AND BEST OF ALL, A REALLY REALLY AWESOME HIDING SPOT. WE'RE UP ON THIS ROCKY PROMONTORY AND THERE'S THIS DEEP HAIRLINE CRACK RUNNING THROUGH IT. AT ONE POINT THE CRACK EXPANDS TO A WIDTH OF ABOUT NINE OR TEN INCHES, WHICH IS WIDE ENOUGH FOR US TO SQUEEZE DOWN INTO IT. ONCE YOU'RE INSIDE, THE CRACK OPENS UP INTO A SMALL SORT OF CAVE, EASILY LARGE ENOUGH TO FIT HALF A DOZEN KIDS. IT'S JUST A FUCKING FANTASTIC PLACE TO HANG OUT. KYLE AND I QUICKLY FASHION BOWS AND ARROWS USING OUR SWISS ARMY KNIVES AND SHOELACES, AND SPEND SEVERAL HOURS SHOOTING ARROWS LIKE SIX FEET OUT OF VARIOUS PARTS OF THE CRACK. IT'S PRETTY GREAT.

ANYWAY THE DINNER BELL SOUNDS AND WE NARROWLY SQUEEZE OURSELVES OUT OF THE PROMONTORY AND TAKE OFF TO THE MESS HALL. ONCE AGAIN WE'RE SERVED SOUP. ONCE AGAIN WE STAND UP AND MAKE VARIOUS CUBSCOUT PROMISES TO HELP SOCIETY AND DO LORD KNOWS WHAT ELSE. ONCE AGAIN KYLE HAS TO BORROW MY SPOON. DUSK APPROACHES AND AKIRA TRIES HIS HAND AT CONDUCTING SOME SORT OF INANE SINGALONG THAT FALLS APART ALMOST INSTANTLY. HURT, HE RUSHES US OUTSIDE AND TELLS US TO GO SIT AROUND THE CAMPFIRE.

NOBODY ACTUALLY KNOWS WHERE THE CAMPFIRE IS, AND SINCE THE STUPID THING ISN'T ACTUALLY LIT, IT TAKES LIKE AN HOUR TO GET EVERYBODY THERE. FINALLY WE'RE ALL SITTING AROUND IT, WONDERING WHERE THE COUNSELLORS ARE, WHEN THEY SHOW UP IN THESE ABSOLUTELY RETARDED MASKS COVERED WITH FEATHERS AND ELBOW MACARONI AND STUFF. THEY ACTUALLY HAVE THE GALL TO TELL US THAT WE'RE GOING TO MAKE MASKS LIKE THESE LATER ON. EVERYONE GROANS YET AGAIN. THEN BALLOO TELLS US THE BIG "SURPRISE": A GHOST STORY! WE ARE OF MIXED REACTION. ON ONE HAND, THIS IS PROBABLY GOING TO BE HORRIBLE IF ONE OF THE COUNSELORS TELL IT, ON THE OTHER HAND, GHOST STORIES ARE STILL PRETTY SWEET.

SO THIS WILL GIVE IT AWAY, BUT THE CAMPFIRE IS STILL UNLIT AND PILED UP ABOUT TEN FEET HIGH WITH A BUNCH OF QUARTERED LOGS, AND IT SMELLS LIKE GASOLINE. WE'RE ALL EXPECTING ONE OF THE COUNSELORS TO GRANDLY LIGHT THE THING WITH A TORCH OR SOMETHING SINCE IT'S GETTING REALLY DARK, BUT INSTEAD BALOO BOBS HIS HEAD AROUND LIKE A BUOY IN A ROUGH SEA AND GIVES ONE OF HIS STUPID GRINS AND STARTS TELLING US ABOUT THE WENDIGO, WHICH EVERY CANADIAN KID IS ALREADY FAMILIAR WITH ANYWAY.

SO HE'S BARELY A FEW SENTENCES IN AND TALKING ABOUT HOW WE'RE SITTING ON SACRED GROUND OR SOMETHING WHEN HOLY FUCKING SHIT A FLAMING FUCKING ARROW COMES SHOOTING OUT OF THE WOODS SOMEWHERE AND THE WHOLE FIRE JUST FUCKING EXPLODES INTO FLAMES!! EVERYONE'S UP IN A SECOND AND SOME KIDS HAVE EVIDENTLY ASSUMED THE HORSEMEN OF THE APOCALYPSE ARE NIGH AND THEY JUST BOLT INTO THE FOREST. A COUPLE OF US WHO SAW THE ARROW FLY IN ARE OVER THE INITIAL SHOCK AND NOBODY'S BADLY BURNED SO WE SORT OF SIT BACK DOWN AND TRY TO FIGURE OUT WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON. AND BALOO JUST TOTALLY FUCKING LOSES IT. HE STARTS YELLING INTO THE WOODS "JAMES I TOLD YOU TO WAIT UNTIL I SAID 'THE WENDIGO'!!" AND SOMEWHERE IN THE FOREST WE HEAR "YOU SAID 'WENDIGO!!" AND THE BALOO TURNS AROUND AND FACES THE DIRECTION OF THE UNSEEN VOICE AND YELLS "NO I DIDN'T!! I SAID 'WINDY'!!!" AND AGAIN FROM THE DEPTHS OF THE FOREST WE HEAR "GERALD YOU DEFINITELY SAID WENDIGO!!" AND THEN KYLE, FOR MAYBE THE FIRST TIME IN HIS LITTLE LIFE, ACTUALLY MAKES A GOOD JOKE AND LOOKS AT GERALD AND PIPES UP "DOES THIS MEAN YOU HAVE TO ANSWER THE CALL?" AND BALLOO LOOKS UTTERLY EXASPERATED AND YELLS OUT "WELL WAY TO GO" AND THEN TURNS AND BELLOWS INTO THE FOREST "KIDS, IT'S ALRIGHT! IT WAS JUST AN EFFECT!" AND MOST OF US I ASSUME ARE WONDERING JUST HOW MUCH INSURANCE HAS BEEN TAKEN OUT ON THIS CAMP WHERE THEY CAN SHOOT FLAMING ARROWS AT A BUNCH OF CHILDREN AND NOT WORRY ABOUT LAWSUITS. ANYWAY EVERYONE FINALLY RETURNED TO THE FIRE AND BALLOO ASKS IF WE STILL WANT TO HEAR THE TALE OF THE WENDIGO, AND TO THE BEST OF MY RECOLLECTION SOME SMALL RANDOM KID SAID "NO!" WITH SUCH VEHEMENCE THAT THE REMAINING NIGHTLY ACTIVITIES WERE DISSOLVED AND WE WERE TOLD TO RETURN TO OUR CABINS.

every 15 minutes

2008-12-29T09:18:00.000-05:00

alright so last night i had this really awesome dream. it was kind of dark and stormy outside, but not raining. i was outside this giant old castle that had been renovated and turned into a restaurant that gave tours to the rest of the castle, only a bunch of people who took the tour died mysteriously and everything sort of shut down. the owners of the restaurant still wanted to keep the place open but because of the deaths nobody would go there anymore. so instead they sort of closed things off to the general public, but offered their services exclusive to any large groups that weren't afraid of the rumours surrounding the castle. so basically if you & about 30 friends wanted to eat in a castle, and then take a tour where people mysteriously died, you could do it.

so anyway basically myself and some friends booked the castle, and basically as we were walking up to it (it was in the middle of nowhere) we heard all these screams coming from inside and all these noises and it sounded like shit getting destroyed. so we all sort of hastened our pace to see what was going on (and if anyone inside needed help) and suddenly EVERYBODY around me started to slow down and get sick. like everybody just started doubling over and kneeling down and throwing up and curling up in fetal position.

and i was like 'this is fucked! why am i the only person who isn't getting sick!' and i'm staring in dismay at all my friends slowly going still when suddenly i see myself tumble out of the front door of the castle and fall down all the steps.

so i'm like HOLY SHIT! DOPPELGANGER! and i know i'm not suppose to look at this thing in the eyes, but i'm compelled. so i'm basically staring at myself and asking me what in the name of all hell is going on.

and the thing that looks like me that just fell down all the steps is pretty bruised and totally disoriented, and it opens its eyes and looks at me just horrified, and it sort of tells me that i'm going to see myself every fifteen minutes. i have no idea what this means. i'm just sort of holding the thing in my arms and it's flailing and it's telling me that i need to get in the castle before i die, and that i need to use the 'every fifteen minutes', whatever those are.

so i'm kind of scared by all of this, and the thing just keeps saying to get in the castle before i die & we all die.

so i start up the steps (about fifteen minutes have elapsed) and ANOTHER version of me comes flying out the castle and falls down the steps. i stop this one. this doppelganger is in better condition and it looks at me and says 'dave, i tried - you gotta get in there, there can't be much time left.. just keep trying.. i think we can beat this thing' and then it sits down halfway down the steps and just sort of stares at the first version of me, who is all the way at the bottom and holding his head disconsolately.

so i'm like 'dude what is going on!' and dave #2 is like "i'm not totally sure.. we went to the restaurant and took the tour, and something happened.. it split everybody up into like a million versions of themselves.. it was like hell.. everyone died.. it killed everybody but me.. everybody but us.. but whatever is in there is trying to finish the job.. there's a new version happening every fifteen minutes.. we don't know what to do.. i don't know as much as the next dave that you'll meet, unless we're dead already.. i know more than the dave down there on the stairs, though.. right now i just know you have to get into the castle, as far & deep as possible.."

so i give one last look at all my dead friends outside, and book it into the castle. once in there i'm in the restaurant part and it's all empty and full of tables, and i'm hearing screams from god knows where, and suddenly dave #3 comes tearing out of hallway (another 15 minutes have passed) and he's bleeding. and he rounds the corner and leans back on the wall and gives me this knowing look and says "down the hallway.. that's all that i managed to learn. i heard the next dave.. he didn't do to well. i think it killed us, i'm not sure.." and we go to the castle window and look out at the first dave i saw, and i'm just horrified to see that dave #1's face is starting to turn this scarlet color and his whole body is starting to bruise and these gashes are opening up all over his arms.

we look at him just getting sick and dave #3 says "look, if he dies, then the next dave is going to have the exact same thing happen to him 15 minutes later.. we're all 15 minutes ahead or behind in the future of each other.. then it'll be me.. then the next one, if there is one, then finally you. you need to get down into the castle, and stay alive as long as you can.. the longer you live, the better chance you have of killing whatever is down there."

so then i'm like 'so i need to follow you guys, right?' and he's like 'i think so', and i sort of confirm which hall he came from, but he's a little out of it. he sits on a chair and sort of stares at the ground. so i run down the hall and i can see bloodstains on the walls and i hear more shrieking and follow it.

so i get down to this room and dave #4 is leaning against a wall, just bloody as all hell, but breathing well and he sort of smiles at me and says 'we didn't die! it was close! everyone's getting sick. i can't remember more than 15 minutes before or after this very minute, but you chased whatever attacked all of us, and it wasn't expecting that.. it went down there. there's a painting, the next dave told me that.. you need to use it to kill the thing.. i wish i could be of more help'

and i run in the direction he pointed at and climb these stairs and end up in this room full of paintings. and i am hearing horrible horrible noises, it sounds like some giant machine is screaming or something, it's getting so loud and i can barely hear anything. and i'm looking at all these paintings and somehow know which one i need.. it's the picture of this old, respectable-looking man in a nice suit and as i'm staring at it dave #5 basically comes crawling in, and he's got blood pouring out of his mouth and lungs and he's dying and he sees my concern and says "don't worry.. i can't die until everyone before me had there chance.. i have at least an hour. i found out what you needed.. it was worth it.. run your fingers down the painting" so i sort of brush the painting with my fingers and the oil just sort of melts away and where the old guy was, there's this other young dude, just standing in this forest, looking petrified.

and the bleeding dave on the ground sort of smiles weakly and says "good.. that's the person that this thing is after. it's coming for you, though. i tried to delay it. i think it's your turn.. i don't know what the last step is, though.. i can't see far enough ahead.. this is it"

and before i can do anything else, this fucking giant demon/devil thing rounds the corner, and it's like this black swamp-thing creature with a bunch of arms and legs and tentacles and it's just fucking horrific and it's got these red eyes and it opens its mouth and lets out the loudest, most piercing scream i've ever heard, and without thinking i basically hold the painting in front of me with both hands and just basically pull it into myself.. and i put myself through it, and suddenly i'm in the forest with this young dude.

the young dude can't see me, and is looking the wrong way but i can tell he's just terrified, and off to my left i can see the vague outline of the castle, except it looks different, and i get the impression i've gone a few hundred years back in time. the dude looks totally scared, but also preoccupied, and i follow his gaze and notice with some surprise that way way way off in the distance there's another version of himself crawling towards the castle, bleeding and with a knife in his back. the kid just looks terrified.

suddenly i see this fucking evil looking man with a hunting knife creeping quietly through the woods.. he sneaks up on this young kid and explodes out of the bush with his knife above his head and clearly he's about to murder the kid.. so i rush in there and tackle this guy, and he just looks like pure fucking evil, and he opens his mouth and lets out this horrible scream like the one the monster just gave, and i manage to get the knife away from him and then we struggle (the kid is useless at this point and is staring at us and just totally insane) and i manage to stab the hunter in his side with his own knife, and he relaxes his grip and i pull the knife out and stab him over and over and over in the heart and neck.

when i finally look up i'm back in the castle and the creature is dead. the dave that's in the room stands up and he's still bleeding, but only in the same places that i am. he smiles at me and nods and starts walking back where he came from. i know suddenly that i need to walk back to the front of the castle where this whole mess started. so i do that and he gives me one final nod and disappears around the hallway. i make sure to walk back the exact route i took to get into the castle, and as i do i pass all the other daves in perfect intervals. they, too, are all cut and bleeding in the exact same way that i am, and they're also smiling. they each all disappear around a corner. i pass the last dave by the steps outside the front door and am relieved to see he's also okay. i ask him where they're all going, and he says i already know.

then i woke up.

work

2008-12-17T13:38:00.000-05:00

last night i dreamt that i was on tour and was playing a house show in ohio somewhere. after the show i was wandering around the house and i went upstairs and i ran into this girl i work with, wendy. and i was like 'wendy?! what the hell are you doing here?'

and i don't remember exactly what she said, but she basically had some sort of grand life plan that she had embarked upon, and as she was unveiling all the events in this great 'plan' i remember thinking "holy crap, this is the worst plan i have ever heard of in my life - i can't let her do this!"

so then i was like "okay wendy, i don't want to sound like a dick here, but your plan is just fucking awful. i mean you're hardly started it and you're already in the middle of nowhere, ohio - it's a terrible plan. i really really think you should reconsider your options and go back to ottawa and work something else out."

and then wendy got PISSED and all quiet and i thought it best to leave. so i went back downstairs and hung out with people at the house show and maybe an hour later i remembered wendy and went back upstairs again. and this time when walked into the room she was lying down on the bed with her eyes open. and i was like, "uh wendy? what are you doing?"

and she was like "I'M TAKING A NAP" in a really angry tone, and i was like "uh, okay... um, do you want me to wake you up in an hour or something?" and she was like "HOW ABOUT YOU WAKE ME UP WHEN YOU SEE THINGS MY WAY"

and i was like "oh man, work is gonna be awkward tomorrow"

island of rabbits

2008-12-15T10:30:00.000-05:00

i don't think this dream is offensive:

so i'm on this big island with a bunch of my friends, only this wizard has turned about half of them into rabbits.

and all my friends are all kind of giddy and excited about the whole thing, and we're all sort of standing at the edge of a big forest, and then some idiot yells out "well, what are we waiting for!! let's go find our friends before they get eaten by wolves or something!!"

and everyone's like "alright!!! yeah!!!" and they're just thrilled beyond words and they all but bolt off into the forest

then suddenly i realize what a terrible fucking idea this is and i'm like "WAIT YOU RETARDS!!" and everyone sort of pauses mid-stride and they turn around and face me.

and i'm like "we can't just all dash into the goddamned forest, we're all going to get lost! we need a better plan!! and how do you expect to tell our friend-rabbits apart from real rabbits?! huh?! yeah, nobody thought about that did they? we need a PLAN! we need to PREPARE and FIGURE something out and - "

and while i'm doing this i'm sort of waving my arm way off to my right and i happen to glance down in that direction, and there, by the shore, are a whole bunch of rabbits playing in the water and building sandcastles and sunbathing and stuff and i'm like "okay, well that's them"

sweatsuit

2008-12-15T10:20:00.000-05:00

alright, so here's a pretty racist dream i had:

so i'm part of this film crew working for like national geographic or life network or something like that, and our 'assignment' is to follow around some idiot who's developed this costume that harvests energy from just about anything.

so we pull up and there's this dude wearing what looks like a one-piece black velcro suit, and and soon as we all get out of the car he's like "hey guys! glad you could make it! this is going to knock your SOCKS OFF" and all that, and i'm holding the boom mic or something and someone says 'okay we're rolling!' and the cameras are on and we're live

and basically this dude starts skipping down the street backwards, and he's facing us and the cameras and he's talking about how humans are wasteful and how we don't understand all the different sources of energy there are, etc etc

and then at one point he stops skipping backwards and he says "alright - now how much energy do you think i just stored up from that tiny bit of skipping i just did?" and he looks at this watch-thing built into the suit and he's like "a tenth of a watt! look at that!" and then he's like "and how much energy do you think i stored up from being in this beautiful sunshine?!" and he looks at the watch again and is like "another tenth of a watt!! can you believe it!!"

and then he sort of hobbles over to this nearby alley, and we're all running after this lunatic and he basically just jumps right into this big disgusting dumpster. and we're trying to get the cameras and the mics in position, and the guy is practically rolling around in garbage and yelling shit at us the entire time.

and he's like picking up banana peels and stuff and sticking them onto his black velcro suit and he's saying things like "there's so much wasted energy in organic matter!" and he finds an old carton of yogurt and pours it on his legs and says "just look at all that energy!" and he grabs a piece of old pizza and smears it on his legs "look at all this energy!! and that's not all!!" and he finds some old coffee grounds and pours it all over himself "all this 'garbage' generates a lot of heat! if i cover myself in this i'm set for winter!"

and then this one camera man near me turns to me and says "ah yes - the ol' mexican sweatsuit"

new direction

2008-12-12T11:06:00.000-05:00

because i am tired of explaining pictures, i will now discuss semi-offensive dreams i have on a regular basis, coupled with a completely unrelated image of someplace i have been to.

first, i will start with older dreams that i have remember for whatever reason.

okay so in this one dream i was watching pavlov do his experiments with the dog and the bell. and basically pavlov was this big fat guy and he had the dog up on this little stage and one day after making the food/bell association for weeks on end, he finally did his experiment and rang the bell, and sure enough the dog began to salivate.

and pavlov goes nuts. he's just excited as hell and he starts yelling for his wife, martha, to come downstairs. martha shows up in an apron and pavlov's like "god dammit martha check this out!!" and he rings the bell and the dog starts to drool. and martha, who seems to be a good wife, sort of gives pavlov an encouraging "that's great, dear"

and pavlov is waving his arms around and saying things like "great?! it's the greatest god damn achievement of all time!! i've broken open the secrets of the universe, woman! break out the champagne! do we have any cake?! this calls for a celebration!!"

and pavlov slaps martha on the butt and she hurries off into the kitchen (remember this is the old days when everyone did that) and returns with some champagne and cake, and pavlov eyes the cake (it's a very good cake) and cuts himself a big moist slice and takes a swig of the champagne and asks if they have any cheese. and martha, being the good natured wife she is, shuffles off and finds some cheese.

pavlov is now leaning back in his chair and really happy with the fare in front of him, and he decides before he shows his experiment to the world he should make sure everything's locked down, so he calls up some friends on the telegraph and morses them to come over tomorrow afternoon. they all telegraph back, morsing that they'll be there. pavlov turns to martha and says "i'm going out to buy some ribs and stuff, we're having a little bit of a shindig tomorrow"

so tomorrow comes and pavlov's friends amble over to his house and he sits them all down and says to hang on to their pants because he's going to show them something that's going to ROCK THEIR WORLD. and they're all a little bummed out when he disappears and comes back with a stray dog and puts in on a little podium, but they're still interested.

so pavlov explains what he's been up to and really talks it up, and since his friends are all into science they all get excited about it too. and then pavlov rings the bell. and the dog starts to drool!! "holy shit!!" his friends yell out and everyone jumps up and starts yelling about how this is the greatest psycholomological discovery in the history of the god damn planet, and pavlov is just overjoyed and screams at martha to bring out more refreshments. and martha comes out with these plates of devilled eggs and other appetizers, and pavlov looks greedily at all the food and licks his lips and him & his friends really just plow into all of the stuff martha prepared.

then they sort of munch on leftovers and discuss how to present this. they decide another formal showing at pavlov's house is best, but this time a full out dinner party and like 60 guests. they decide to do it friday night. martha is once again requisitioned to start making the necessary catering prepartions, and she goes about it cheerfully and says pleasant things like "boys will be boys" while plucking chickens and stuff, and she's totally being a babe about this whole thing.

anyway friday rolls around, it's the usual scenario, except this time everyone's standing up and in formal attire and wearing monocles and stuff. the dog is now on this little raised stage and not sure what's going on. pavlov delivers the formalities and the explanations and then here comes the big moment and he rings the bell and the dog starts slobbering all over the place and it's a hit.

"this is the biggest scientific breakthrough in modern history!" everyone cries out! the dog wags its tail! pavlov looks around at his friends and says "I KNOW, RIGHT!!!" and a big toast is made to pavlov, the human mecca of all that is scientific and civilized, and then martha comes out with this giant pumpkin pie and is like "pavlov i made you your favorite pie!" and pavlov practically starts drooling himself because the dude loves food.

i don't want to keep repeating myself but at this point everyone should understand how the dream progressed, with larger and larger demonstrations and recurring food and basically things getting to the point where pavlov unknowingly conditions himself to receiving delicious snacks whenever that bell is rung, and basically both him and the dog start to drool whenever he rings the bell like a town crier, and then there was some really heavy panopticon-like ideas swirling around in the dream that i can't really explain, and the dog & pavlov suddenly became metaphors for each other, and that whole 'circle of life' thing sort of revealed itself to my pineal gland, and then of course i woke up and forgot all the subtleties of the dream and only remembered the basic premise.

2008-12-03T09:49:00.000-05:00

2008-11-24T11:53:00.000-05:00

2008-11-17T10:36:00.000-05:00

2008-11-12T08:36:00.000-05:00

2008-11-10T12:02:00.000-05:00

tarsiers

2008-11-10T11:32:00.002-05:00

so these things are like the size of my palm!! they blink really slowly! they've got messed up fingers!!

anyway we hired some idiot to drive us out to the tarsier foundation, which was in the middle of nowhere, and when we stepped out the cab driver said he would wait in his cab with the meter running while we spent the day running around in the forest looking for tarsiers. i promptly sent him on his way.

then we went inside the building, which was empty, and looked around at a tiny model of some trees, and then a person who i believe was the janitor showed up and asked our business.

we said we planned to go search for tarsiers and he disappeared and then this other guy came along and made us follow him into the forest. we learned that this guy's job is to saunter off into the rainforest every morning and figure out where all the goddamned tarsiers are. this is his occupation: monkey finder. and i really have a hard time believing the tarsier foundation receives more than a dozen visitors all year long. the whole thing was confusing.

anyway this dude took his job seriously and barely spoke a word to us the entire time. we wandered behind him and every so often he would turn to us and put his index finger to his mouth and then vaguely point way off into the tops of the trees and then watch us in extreme satisfaction as we squinted and grimaced and generally didn't see anything. then, without warning he'd take off again, we'd go another hundred yards, and then he'd pull the same shenanigans.

eventually, however, we came across a tarsier at eye level and i spent an enjoyable three minutes getting bored of the little creature. they sleep during the day and, as far as i'm concerned, don't respond to any sort of stimulus whatsoever. our guide snapped his fingers and the tiny mammal very slowly turned its giant eyes in the wrong direction, and then the guide gave us a knowing look and then we marched further into the brush.

we saw several other tarsiers and then decided to have a go at finding some on our own. this was a mistake, because as soon as we set off in a direction different than that of our guide, we ran into giant spider webs and poisonous fungii and swarms of fire ants and all sorts of other nameless horrors.

getting home was retarded, too. the cab driver was long gone, so we hiked back to the main road and just kind of started ambling back to the nearest village which was over an hour's drive away. eventually a large brightly colored vehicle drove by, i flagged it down and we bartered a ride back.

old churches

2008-11-05T13:26:00.000-05:00

while i am not religious by any means, there is something pretty neat about aged architecture. this is a 16th century church whose basement has not been entered ever since an evil spirit got stuck in there by accident. or perhaps people were just flat out lying to me. either or.

2008-11-05T11:18:00.000-05:00

camel xing

2008-11-04T16:00:00.000-05:00

so this was taken while inside a taxi driven by a man who had absolutely no idea where he was going. we had been warned that cab drivers in this country had no idea where they were going, so we tried to one-up the system by hiring a guide. it seemed like a good plan, except the guide also had absolutely no idea where she was going, and as a result we stayed on this road for about fifty minutes before she made some calls and then decided we were heading in the direction opposite where we wanted to go. the cab driver didn't realize we understood a bit of the language and kept talking about what we had eaten for lunch in this awed voice. or at least that's what i think was going on.

2008-11-04T15:10:00.000-05:00

muscle

2008-11-03T09:48:00.000-05:00

so this is the world's oldest city wall. it's enormous, and what's even more ridiculous is that every single brick is inscribed with the name of the poor soul who made it & placed it. it's kind of nuts.

what totally fucking sucks, though, is that because time and war ravaged certain areas of this wall, the city commission decided to revamp it by placing giant fake plywood turrents on top of it every ten kilometers or so. no doubt this makes the wall look more "complete" and "better kept", but what it also does is makes unassuming tourists think that there's a way down from the stupid wall way off in the distance.

i can't write this morning and am aware this entry is horribly worded, but anyway we had been walking on top of the wall and generally enjoying the perimeter of the city when fatigue settled in and we began to look for a way down. of course there weren't a set of stairs in sight, and it had been several miles since we had last seen a post with a way down to the ground. we decided to walk around a small bend and see if there was any hope up ahead. we did so, and sure enough, way off in the distance we could see a giant red and yellow turrent. certainly this is a way down, we all thought, and kept on walking. 40 minutes later we arrived at the turret only to find out it was all smoke and mirrors and basically there was absolutely no way down. we discovered an old hole in the floor of the wall and i crawled down there but it was creepy and full of rats and probably skeletons and shit so i came back out into the sunshine and told everyone we'd have to turn around. everyone was bummed.

about a kilometer on the way back we came across a clump of trees growing alongside the wall and decided to risk climbing down. it was a little dangerous and a lot of dust poured out after us, but nobody died and we all felt good about ourselves for the rest of the day.

2008-11-03T09:43:00.000-05:00

BIKE RACE

2008-10-31T16:04:00.000-04:00

SO BASICALLY IN ADDITION TO TRACK AND FIELD DAY, OUR ELEMENTARY SCHOOL ALSO HAD ONE OR TWO OTHER ANNUAL CELEBRATORY EVENTS, AND ONE OF THEM WAS SORT OF A LARGE OUTDOOR RACE AROUND THE SCHOOL. WE WERE IN GRADE THREE, SO THIS WAS MY THIRD YEAR DOING IT, BUT IT GENERALLY INVOLVED AN ENTIRE CLASS OF KIDS PUSHING THEIR WAY AROUND THE PERIMETER OF THE SCHOOL GROUNDS WHILE TRYING TO SURMOUNT VARIOUS "OBSTACLES" WHICH COULD MEAN ANYTHING FROM CRAWLING UNDER A FEW DESKS PUSHED TOGETHER TO TRYING TO KNOCK A PIE PLATE OUT OF A TREE WITH AN APPLE (THIS WAS AN ACTUAL 'EVENT' ONE YEAR - SOME CALLOUSED TEACHER TRULY THOUGHT THIS WAS A GOOD, CREATIVE IDEA).

ANYWAY WE STILL LOOKED FORWARD TO IT BECAUSE IT MEANT BEING OUTSIDE AND RUNNING AROUND, AND WHEN OUR TEACHER ANNOUNCED THE DATE FOR THE RACE WE ALL CHEERED. AND THEN MRS. MENEZOS LOOKS US ALL SQUARELY IN THE FACE AND SAYS, "AND BECAUSE EVERYONE IN THIS CLASS HAS A BICYCLE (SHE HAD LEARNED THIS FROM A SURVEY DONE EARLIER IN THE WEEK) YOU WILL BE ALLOWED TO BRING YOUR BIKE - FROM HOME!!"AND WE ALL GASP! THIS IS JUST INSANE!! INSTANTLY EVERYONE STARTS TALKING ABOUT HOW COOL THEIR BICYCLES ARE AND HOW MUCH FASTER THIS IS GOING TO MAKE US ALL AND EVERYONE IS JUST EXCITED BEYOND BELIEF.

OF COURSE THE NEXT DAY EVERYONE FORGETS ABOUT THE RACE BECAUSE IT'S A WEEK AWAY AND THAT MIGHT AS WELL BE YEARS FROM NOW. EVEN THOUGH WE'RE REMINDED OF IT OVER WEEK WE ALL JUST KEEP FORGETTING.

ANYWAY THE DAY OF THE RACE ARRIVES. WE SHOW UP TO CLASS AND MAKE SURE ALL OUR STUFF IS STILL IN OUR DESKS AND FIGURE OUT WHO'S NOT HERE AND STARE OUT THE WINDOW AND THEN MRS. MENEZOS SAYS "TODAY IS THE RACE!" AND EVERYONE JUST ERUPTS IN EXCITEMENT! OF COURSE WE ALL FORGOT ABOUT THE RACE, EXCEPT FOR SOME OF THE SMARTER GIRLS AND ANYWAY THINGS ARE AWESOME. THEN OUR TEACHER ASKS WHO BROUGHT THEIR BIKES, AND AGAIN, A COUPLE OF THE SMARTER, QUIETER GILRS SHYLY RAISE THEIR HANDS AND POINT TO THEIR BIKES WHICH ARE LEANED UP IN THE HALLWAY. MRS. MENEZOS SORT OF SMILES AT THEM AND THEN SOMEONE SHOUTS OUT, "EVERYBODY LOOK AT KYLE!!"

AND ACROSS THE FIELD, COMING UP OVER THE HILL WITH THE RISING SUN BEHIND AT HIS BACK IS KYLE, PUSHING WHAT I FIRST ASSUME TO BE A LARGE SPARKLING DIAMOND ON WHEELS. IT'S HIS BIKE. NOW I'VE SEEN HIS BIKE AND RIDDEN IT BEFORE AND EVERYTHING, AND I CERTAINLY DO NOT REMEMBER IT LOOKING LIKE THIS. AS THE SUN GLINTS OFF THE IMMACULATE FRAME I SEE THAT ONE OF KYLE'S PARENTS SPLURGED IN THE BIKE SECTION AT CANADIAN TIRE BECAUSE HE HAS LIKE EVERY SINGLE LITTLE ADD-ON YOU CAN HAVE ON A KID'S BIKE. HE'S GOT ALL SORTS OF BELLS ON IT, A FULL-OUT RUBBER HORN, EVEN SOME OF THE GIRLY BIKE STUFF LIKE THOSE SILVER-TINTED COLOR STREAMERS THAT ATTACH TO THE HANDLEBARS, AND THOSE BRIGHT FLUORESCENT BEADS THAT LOOSELY CLIP ONTO YOUR BIKE SPOKES AND THEN FLY OUT AND CLACK AGAINST THE RIMS WHEN YOU START PEDALLING. IT'S RIDICULOUS. AND IN ADDITION TO THE KAZILLION THINGS HE'S GOT CLIPPED ONTO HIS BIKE, HE'S COVERED THE ENTIRE THING IN ABOUT A THOUSAND HOLOGRAPHIC THUNDER-CAT STICKERS AND HE'S GOT LIKE A HUNDRED HOCKEY CARDS TAPED TO THE FRAME SO THEY MAKE NOISE AGAINST THE SPOKES. IT'S JUST NUTS.

OF COURSE KYLE'S ALL SMILES AND WE'RE ALL MAKING ABSURD "WHOAAAAAAAA" EXCLAMATIONS, AND KYLE SAUNTERS UP TO THE WINDOWS AND WE ALL ADMIRE THE BIKE UP CLOSE. IT'S REALLY INCREDIBLE. HE'S GOT EVEN MORE STUFF ON IT THAT I FIRST REALIZED. THERE'S ABOUT THREE WATERBOTTLES TIED TO IT, HE'S GOT A SCREWDRIVER ATTACHED TO THE FRAME WITH SOME STRING, AND ALL HIS LEGOS AND BEST TOYS ARE STREWN ABOUT IN THIS BRIGHT GREEN BASKET HE'S GOT IN THE FRONT. HE'S GOT HE-MAN TAPED TO THE VERY FRONT LIKE A SHIP'S FIGUREHEAD. THE WHOLE THIS IS JUST GLORIOUS.

KYLE GETS HIS BIKE INTO THE HALLWAY AND MRS. MENEZOS FAKES INTEREST IN IT AND DEMURS A FEW COMPLIMENTS WHILE THE REST OF US ENTHUSIASTICALLY LOOK IT UP AND DOWN AND ADMIRE THE THING FROM ALL ANGLES. I AM SO STOKED TO BE HIS NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR AND CAN'T WAIT TO RIDE IT AFTER SCHOOL. KYLE'S LOVING THE ATTENTION AND KEEPS TELLING US THINGS LIKE "BET YOU THOUGHT I'D FORGET THE RACE!!" AND "I'M SO FAST ON THIS BIKE!" AND OTHER LITTLE BOASTS. EVENTUALLY THOUGH WE'RE ASKED TO SETTLE DOWN AND SCHOOL BEGINS, AND IT'S JUST BRUTAL TRYING TO DO MATH WHEN THAT AWESOME BIKE IS IN THE HALLWAY.

ANYWAY AFTER ABOUT A THOUSAND YEARS MRS. MENEZOS SAYS THAT IT'S TIME FOR THE RACE AND WE RUN OUT INTO THE HALL AND ARE ASKED TO GO OUT BACK TO THE 'BIG KIDS' PLAYGROUND (GRADES 4-6 HAD THE BACK HALF OF THE SCHOOL GROUNDS, WE HAD THE OTHER HALF. THE SCHOOL ITSELF WAS IN THE MIDDLE OF THESE TWO PIECES OF LAND AND ACTED AS A BUFFER BETWEEN THEM). SO WE WALK OUT THERE AND SORT OF LOOK IN AWE AT THE FADED BASKETBALL COURT AND OTHER DISTRACTIONS THE BIGGER KIDS HAVE DURING THEIR RECESS. THE SUN IS SHINING BRIGHTLY AND THERE'S JUST THIS ENORMOUS SENSE OF HAPPINESS FLOATING AROUND THE PLAYGROUND AND KYLE'S STILL WALKING HIS BIKE TO THE STARTING LINE. WE SEE A LOT MORE DESKS THAN USUAL, AND ASSUME THERE'S GOING TO BE A LOT OF CRAWLING GOING ON BEFORE WE GET AROUND TO OUR SIDE OF PLAYGROUND.

THEN MRS. MENEZOS MAKES AN ANNOUNCEMENT AND SAYS THAT THE REASON THERE ARE SO MANY DESKS IS BECAUSE EACH GROUP OF DESKS IS A "STATION" AND AT EACH STATION WE'RE GOING TO HAVE TO SOLVE AN EQUATION OR ANSWER A RIDDLE OR SOMETHING LIKE THAT. AND THEN ALL THESE TEACHERS WALK OUT OF THE SCHOOL AND EACH MAN ONE OF THESE "STATIONS"!

EVERYONE'S KIND OF UNCERTAIN ABOUT HOW THIS WILL AFFECT THE JOCULARITY OF THE DAY, BUT KYLE'S FACE JUST FALLS. NO DOUBT HE HAD THESE GRAND VISIONS OF HIM SPEEDING AROUND THE SCHOOL IN THE BLINK OF AN EYE, AND NOW HE'S GOING TO HAVE TO STOP AT EVERY ONE OF THESE STATIONS AND DO SOME HORSESHIT ASSIGNMENT. HE'S BUMMED.

MRS. MENEZOS LINES US ALL UP AND GIVES A HEARTY "ON YOUR MARK, GET SET, GO!!!" AND WE ALL SCRAMBLE OFF TO THE FIRST STATION ON FOOT, AND THE GIRLS DON'T EVEN BOTHER TO USE THEIR BIKES ON ACCOUNT OF THE SHORT DISTANCE AND RUN ALONG WITH THE REST OF US. KYLE PRODUCES A BIKE HELMET FROM SOMEWHERE AND STEPS ON HIS BIKE, AND THEN WHAT I CAN BEST DESCRIBE AS A SORT OF MILD EXPLOSION TAKES PLACE AND MAKES EVERYBODY TURN AROUND. I MOSTLY RECALL KYLE'S BRILLIANT DIAMOND-BIKE TAKING AN IMMEDIATE SPILL ONTO THE DIRT, BUT I REMEMBER MATT RECALLING THAT IT LOOKED MORE LIKE SOMEONE HAD JUST THROWN A COUPLE OF DECKS OF CARDS INTO THE AIR, AND JEFF RECALLING THAT HE HEARD A NOISE AND THEN WATCHED DOZENS OF LEGOS AND THOSE PLASTIC BEADS ROLLS DOWN THE SMALL INCLINE AND ONTO THE ROAD. BASICALLY EVERYONE LATER AGREED THAT KYLE JUST HAD WAY TOO MUCH SHIT ON HIS BIKE, AND SOMEHOW OR OTHER EVERYTHING SIMULTANEOUSLY POPPED OFF OR SHOT OFF HIS BIKE AS SOON AS HE TRIED TO PUT THE MODIFIED VEHICLE INTO ACTION.

KYLE, UNDAUNTED, AND MISSING MOST OF HIS BEADS, HOCKEY CARDS, AND A FLASHLIGHT THAT HE MUST HAVE TAPED TO THE TIRE OR SOMETHING, GETS BACK UP AND STARTS PEDALLING FURIOUSLY FOR ABOUT TWO SECONDS WHEN HE REACHES THE FIRST STATION. AT THIS POINT HE TRIES TO DISMOUNT AND TAKES ANOTHER SPILL AND THE SCREWDRIVER FALLS OFF AND ONE OF THE STREAMERS ON HIS HANDLEBARS FALLS OFF AND HE'S LEAVING A WHOLE WAKE OF TOYS BEHIND HIM. HIS HELMET'S OFF TO THE SIDE AND HE LOOKS CONFUSED.

THE FIRST STATION INVOLVED US MAKING A 3D HEXAGON OUT OF MARSHMALLOWS AND TOOTHPICKS, WHICH MEANS AT THIS POINT MOST OF THE CLASS WERE RUNNING TOWARDS THE SECOND STATION AND TRYING TO SWALLOW ALL THE MARSHMALLOWS WE STUFFED IN OUR MOUTHS. KYLE EVENTUALLY SORTS THE CHALLENGE OUT AND GETS BACK ON HIS BIKE AND TAKES A FEW MORE SPILLS AND EVENTUALLY GETS TO STATION 2. AT THIS POINT WE'RE ROUNDING STATION 4 AND SO ON AND SO ON AND IT BECOMES PRETTY APPARENT THAT THERE'S NO WAY KYLE'S GOING TO WIN THE RACE. EVENTUALLY HE REALIZES THIS AND THROWS HIS BIKE ON THE GROUND AND STARTS KICKING IT AND STARTS PICKING UP ALL HIS TOYS AND STUFF AND TEARFULLY/VENGEFULLY ANNOUCES THAT HE'S QUIT.

THIS IS WHERE MRS. MENEZOS SHOWED A MEAN STREAK IN HER THAT WE DIDN'T KNOW ABOUT PRIOR. SHE TELLS KYLE THAT IF HE QUITS HE'S NOT GOING TO GET THE PRIZE THAT WILL BE GIVEN OUT TO EVERYONE WHO FINISHES THE RACE, AND KYLE MULLS IT OVER FOR A WHILE AND SHE KEEPS SORT OF COAXING HIM INTO GETTING BACK ON HIS BIKE AND FINALLY HE GIVES IN TO HER WHEEDLING. SO KYLE MAKES A LITTLE PILE FOR HIS TOYS AND OTHER LOST POSSESSIONS AND GETS BACK ON THE BIKE AND PAINFULLY BEGINS FINISHING THE RACE. IT TAKES HIM ABOUT HALF AN HOUR LONGER THAN EVERYONE ELSE, MOSTLY BECAUSE HE'S DOING THE STATIONS BY HIMSELF. THE REST OF US PRETTY MUCH STAYED IN A GROUP AND THE SECOND SOMEONE PROPERLY FINISHED A STATION, EVERYONE COPIED HIS/HER ANSWER AND FINISHED AT THE SAME TIME. KYLE HAD TO DO IT ALL ON HIS OWN, BUT EVENTUALLY MADE IT THROUGH TO THE LAST STATION. AT THIS POINT WE WERE PRETTY MUCH ALL SITTING DOWN IN THE SUNSHINE ENJOYING THE POPSICLES THAT WERE INVARIABLY HANDED OUT AT THE END OF A SCHOOL EVENT, AND READING EACH OTHER THE JOKES ON THE POPSICLE STICKS. KYLE HAD THOROUGHLY ENTERTAINED EVERYBODY WITH HIS SHORT TEMPER AND PREDISPOSITION FOR CRYING, AND WE ALL IMMENSELY ENJOYED WATCHING HIM TEAR UP THE FIELD FOR THE LAST LITTLE WHILE. ONCE HE FINALLY REJOINS THE REST OF US HE SITS DOWN HEAVILY ON THE PICNIC TABLE, SNATCHES A POPSICLE OUT OF MRS. MENEZOS' HAND, AND DEMANDS THAT HE BE GIVEN A PRIZE. MRS. MENEZOS, WITH A TWINKLE IN HER EYE I HAD NEVER SEEN BEFORE, PRODUCES A LARGE PLASTIC BAG AND HANDS OUT TO EVERYBODY A LITTLE BELL FOR OUR BICYCLES WITH A BIG SMILE ON HER FACE.

loud mannequin

2008-10-31T13:16:00.000-04:00

some people choose to use mannequins as a means to tastefully demonstrate how flattering their clothing looks draped over the human form.

others use mannequins to let their customers know that they can BUY MY FUCKING RED COAT

YEAH!!!

2008-10-31T10:22:00.000-04:00

whoosh!!! vamooosh!!

2008-10-30T12:14:00.001-04:00

so this is a tiny little part of a giant wood carving in a building built around a live archeological dig. it was pretty cool. later that day we saw a fat girl wearing a sailor moon costume, and i got drunk with this dude rick from philly while the guy running the hotel slapped down wads of $100 dollar bills on the table and demanded we acknowledge his wealth and power. plus i hung out with some kittens. actually this was probably one of the best days of last year.

my ankle is still sprained, but i have decided that once i am in walking condition to reward myself with a trip to toronto to visit friends i have not seen in years.

metafilter/reddit people: i found several unpublished stories from the batch i wrote in winter 2005. there are about 10 of them. i will put them up when i finish correcting them.

2008-10-30T09:58:00.000-04:00

russian spacecraft

2008-10-29T13:50:00.000-04:00

so basically one day i decided to try and take pictures that would totally confuse me later on, and it actually worked pretty well, even though i do remember that this is part of some russian satelite i saw in a dirty city called hohhot.

other pictures from this series include a shadow on a man on a horse, seahorses in a glass, the skull of a monkey, and a couple of other stupid things i have little recollection of.

2008-10-29T10:16:00.000-04:00

this is why you wear shoes when you bike

2008-10-28T14:06:00.000-04:00

so this is why you wear shoes when you bike. worst still, when i tried to clip off the upper right part of the nail, the whole thing just came right out of the toe. it was disgusting.

2008-10-27T14:58:00.000-04:00

kids

2008-10-27T10:11:00.001-04:00

so to counter that horribly sad picture of the tiger i posted earlier, i've decided to post something a lot more upbeat and god-fearingly pleasant.

pictured below are some nine children who we spent almost a full week with. they popped out of the ground as soon as we turned up (this is in a village called 'da'bay'tayan, near lapu-lapu, in the sulu sea) and basically ended up being the poorest, most polite, well-mannered children i have ever encountered. they never asked us for anything, not once. i'm not sure if they had parents. they wore mis-matched, moldy sandals that washed up ashore, and tshirts that you will only ever see on the bodies of loser montreal hipsters who play in "art rock" bands. they were fantastic.

these kids were evidently very lonely, because they asked us all sorts of questions and seemed to want nothing more than to follow us around on our walks and listen to us talk about places they've never been. the plan for the week, as far as lj & i were concerned, was to get up at noon every day, eat pancakes, go swimming, wander around the nearby forest and stare at starving cows, go swimming again, and then eat more pancakes. i still can't believe how great our plans are. anyway whenever we went on our walks, these kids would follow us around. we were positioned on a shallow bay, and when the tide went out at dusk you could walk for miles on the beach floor and watch these massive, 2-foot long red spiky starfish desperately try to crawl further out into the ocean.

anyway one cool thing about these kids was that although they didn't know the proper name for anything, they were ultimately familiar with every creature in the ocean and kept running out to grab something disgusting and then show it to me. i can't stress how awesome these kids were. they would just walk alongside us and ask us questions about the world. the two kids at the back were the oldest and took care of the rest as best as they could.

anyway we had a blast that entire week. we had been warned not to touch the kids because they all apparently had horrible communicable diseases, but they all looked pretty clean to me except for this one poor kid i lovingly called 'scabs' who was about 8 years old and just covered in lesions and had no teeth and never said a word and lived only to sit a few feet from laura and just stare at her and then give her the biggest smile ever whenever she smiled at him.

anyway long story short, after we met these kids we went to the nearest town and wrote our parents and asked them to western union us money so that we could get these kids some clothes. the next day we visited the western union office and they had sent us $250US, which is just a retarded amount of money in lapu-lapu, so we really went to town. we borrowed some bikes from a seattle lawyer who was in a coma (this sounds made up but it's not) and took off to the market, where we bought about two dozen pairs of sandles, toothbrushes, school supplies, toys, basketballs, dolls, etc etc etc and then went back to the bay. those kids lost their shit. it was so awesome. it was so fucking awesome to see that scabby kid shake off his enormous size-40-slimy-disgusting sandals that he had found in the garbage and put on a little orange pair of flipflops that fit him and were bought for him. about an hour later we saw him in his old crappy sandals
again, and carrying his new ones in a garbage bag. laura looked dejected, we asked the older kid what was going on and he said the scabby child didn't want to wear them because he wanted them to be new forever. anyway he looked ridiculously happy. they all did. later on i took a picture of them and found out that they didn't have any pictures of themselves, so what i plan to do (i still haven't gotten around to this because i can't get an address) is send them copies of the following picture as soon as i can locate a reputable contact in that part of town who will be willing to stroll the beach for an hour or so calling out the names of homeless children.

anyway, a picture of some happy kids who at that point in time probably couldn't wait to run home (wherever that was) to look at all the stuff we bought for them.

ps. this picture is taken in the bay i spoke of. in the early afternoon the water level would easily be about 10 feet high.

unimpressed @ the warriors

2008-10-27T09:31:00.000-04:00

so maybe this is a good reason to travel; you tend to remember small, useless facts that will do nobody any good, whatsoever.

we took some stinky train to xi'an to go see the terra cotta warriors, which i was under the impression were one of the seven wonders of the world. i now know that there are different 'categories' of wonders of the world; there are the ancient wonders of the world (which are like the gardens of babylon and the leaning tower of pisa, even though tiger hill is older and leans further), then the wonders of the middle world, and the modern world, etc etc. and despite the fact that the terra cotta warriors are basically as old as the lighthouse of alexandria or whatever, because the greeks apparently didn't travel that much a bunch of interesting shit never got included.

anyway in case anyone ever tells you about the grandeur of the terra cotta warriors, i will quickly give my impression of the whole affair, history and all.

1. qin was a ruthless leader but brought china together in a lot of ways. he wanted an army to take with him to the afterlife, so he had all these life-size warriors built. we don't know how many. people think we've only unearthed 1/10th of what's actually underground.

2. it reportedly took 700,000 people to build all these warriors, and afterward qin had them all killed.

3. apparently he had rivers flowing with mercury. this is the only cool thing about it.

alright, now the experience. the actual exhibit is a ten minute walk from a giant parking lot. there are two small, poorly marked footpaths that you can take and eventually you'll find 4 or 5 giant white concrete museum-looking buildings. you have to buy all sorts of retarded tickets. random chinese people who can't speak english will demand that you purchase their services as 'translator'. it will probably be sunny out, so everyone will be carrying umbrellas because chinese people all want to look as white and pale as possible.

after you push some fifty 'translators' out of the way and buy your tickets, you will march through the buildings containing the pits. after you've look at two terracotta warriors you will want to go home. they all look the same and they're all broken. we decided to save the third & largest pit for last, and when we walked i didn't gasp in awe or anything. we walked around the entire pit, took a lot of pictures that look the same, and then decided to leave. oh yeah, there's a small exhibit in the darkest museum i have ever been to in my life. whether or not all the lights were broken or they just assumed people would bring heatseaking devices with them i do not know, but basically the only time i could see was when someone's camera went off. there were about 700 people crammed in there, everyone bumping into each other and trying to find that little silver chariot you always see pictures of. it was horrible.

leaving is the tricky part. the chinese have cleverly placed an overpriced 'souvenir shop' inside the grounds where clumsy white people pay upwards of 500x what the actual price is. we ignored this. as we passed the exit gates we were accosted by a couple of dudes in their mid-twenties trying to sell us a box of 6 terra cotta warriors for 60 yuan. (the ones in the giftshop were about a 1000). i told them we'd give them 5 yuan (laura suggested we get some for friends), and after some heated arguing (where i definitely loudly threatened to punch one guy in the face if he stared at my girlfriend any longer) we settled on 6. of course then they didn't have change for a 10. (by the way, 10 yuan is like $1.15, so we're literally arguing over pennies at this point). one dude definitely tried to give me .4 change instead of the 4 i was owed, and i threatened to hit him as well. he was all shifty about it, trying to push jao into my hand like i didn't know their currency. they were PISSED off after we left. towards the end i was talking to them like they were handicapped and saying (in mandarin) "no, i give you 10. 10! 10 minus 6 is 4! 4! no, that's 1! shut up! you give me 4! i will take 4! 1! 2! 3! 4! now go home! i will hit you!"

of course like 3 minutes later the exit route led us through an entire small village of commerce and random shit for sale, where i saw the same stupid warriors for 4 yuan, and we actually argued people down to 2, but anyway we ended up with a ton of little statues to give to friends.

then we made our way back to the parking lot, climbed on a random bus, demanded to go back to xi'an, and decided not to stop at this weird hot springs attraction we saw on the side of the road.

sheepherding

2008-10-24T14:02:00.000-04:00

so i can't herd sheep for the life of me. this family graciously acceeded my request to herd their sheep for them, and i basically opened the gate and every last stupid sheep pretty much exploded out and took off in separate directions. so then i sort of hobbled after them and yelled out various things in various languages, all to no avail. then i considered how i might go blaming laura for the poor turn of events. then i considered sleeping out in the open for a little while, at least until the family had forgotten how i lost their entire livelihood. then i turned around and marched back to the farm and planned what i was going to say.

fortunately for me this family either had unusually spirited sheep, or perhaps a lot of stupid people had tried their hand at herding them before, because before i got to the front door they sent their two tiny daughters out into the field. one was armed with a long stick that had a rope attached to it, the other was on a dirt bike.

and i swear to god, within about 45 seconds those two tiny girls had rounded up every single last sheep and had them charging back into the pen. god damn.

i now maintain that had i been given a dirtbike and stick with a rope on it, i could have handle things.

addendum and beavers

2008-10-24T13:54:00.000-04:00

so a few things:

1. i found another picture from that horrible alligator encounter in southern USA. if you look closely you can definitely see the crocodile's eyes. this was taken after the other people in this picture burst onto the scene and made me aware that i had been practically sitting on the thing.

2. here is a photo i took in huainan, chiefly known for it's dreaded, motherfucking man-eating beaver!!!!

2008-10-23T14:53:00.000-04:00

2008-10-23T13:09:00.000-04:00

chocolate hills

2008-10-23T10:05:00.000-04:00

so i sprained my ankle last night, and as a result just about everything that is currently occupying my attention needs to be delayed... recording, soccer, cabin building, etc. it sucks. i'm never spraining my ankle ever again.

anyway, this is a picture i took on the island of cebu, philippines. actually, wait, this was on bohol. we took a ferry over to the island of bohol, from cebu, because we wanted to look at the illustrious chocolate hills as well as those little monkey-things with the big eyes. tarsiers?!

anyway, we had a bout of extremely good luck back on cebu and basically were taken care of by a local eldery couple, who used the english names 'daisy' and 'tom'. they treated us like their grandchildren and we are pretty much forever in their debt for taking us in and showing us around. when we left for bohol, daisy explained that the best thing to do once off the ferry was to try and negotiate a driver for the whole day (she also provided me with a good price to settle on), and that's exactly what we did.

we ended up with a reasonably competant man who i think might have gone by the name 'eddie', and we were promised all the sights and sounds we had on our little list. this included the tarsier reserve, the chocolate hills, this long, high & dangerous bamboo bridge over a completely green river, one of the world's oldest man-made forests, and a few other things that had caught our interest.

anyway it was all a lot of fun. eddie sort of kept rushing us but we insisted on taking our time. the philippines have the worst food i have ever eaten (it's all canned pork and canned sardines for some reason), but we ate rather well in bohol. we stopped by a small family selling fresh coconuts, watched the man expertly butcher them up and even carve rough spoons for us out of the tough shell, and later we discovered another interesting snack, which consisted of long narrow fruit strips (about the same width and size as french fries) from unripe melons and mangoes and stuff. they sprinkled salt and malt vinegar on them. it was pretty good.

yeah so anyway these are the chocolate hills. unlike the steep and narrow karst hills i posted earlier, these ones were perfectly convex. there's some 1200 hills counted in this area, and they're all made out of fossilized crustacean skeletons or something equally cool. they kind of remind me of super mario world.

captain bringdown

2008-10-22T15:57:00.000-04:00

so this will probably just bum people out, but these tigers are pretty much left like this 24/7. this was the first live tiger i ever touched, and i think the thing was desperate for contact of any sort. it let out one of those deep sepulchral growls when i sat down next to it and then tilted its head in my direction. i scratched its ears for couple of minutes and vehemently hated mankind with all my heart. when i left some people were loading it up into the back of a jeep. fuck you, bengbu!

karst

2008-10-22T15:49:00.000-04:00

so that last post about being near vietnam made me hunt down some pictures of the karst mountains.

while not actually across the vietnamese border, we're hard by it, and rented some bikes to make our way through karst mountains. yangshuo is getting more touristy by the minute. we spent all day getting lost, wishing we had anything to eat other than bouzi (probably spelled wrong since my pinyin is awful - pronounced 'bow-dsa'),l and more or less taking in the scenery. everything here, contrary to the village where we were staying, looked genuinely old, and we frequently biked by ancient stone houses, long abandoned.

we hiked up one of these suckers. it was steep!

speaker boxes

2008-10-22T14:44:00.000-04:00

let me preface this by saying i do not advocate crime. i would also like to inform the public that the person in this picture is not me.

however i will discuss a dream i had where i had been practically living in lj's apartment on bank street for the better part of a year. her bedroom had three giant charming windows, all east facing, and usually, to the best of my recollection, somewhere between 3 and 3:15am the sun would peak over the horizon and instantly the room would be flooded with blinding rays of searing white light that would have thrown lesser men into convulsions.

another charming facet of her apartment was that, being located one of the ottawa's noisiest street, the apartment literally shook like an abused child everytime a garbage truck or some other large means of locomotion passed by. which happened several times a day.

thirdly, and most charmingly of all, on the corner of bank where her building was built were four stop-lights, each armed with two small speakers that whistled loudly everytime the light turned green. because the stop-lights were perpendicular to each other, one set was always green, and therefore the whistles were performed in perpetuity. this would happen long into the night.

anyway, if i remember my dream correctly, one cold night after i had too much to drink i lost some of my cool, and, snatching the largest knife i could procure, ran out into the snowy night, scaled every stoplight, slit the wires attached to the speakers and knocked the offending electronics into the snow using sheer brute force. it was a tricky business, because the poles were covered with ice, and i had to hold onto the knife with my teeth in traditional pirate fashion in order to climb up high enough. the whole thing was thrilling. afterwards i collected the speakers and put them in a large garbage bag which i then hid underneath laura's bed. someone, let's say a magical unicorn since this is a dream, disposed of them at a later time, far away.

the following night i slept like a baby, despite a multitude of cuts and bruises on the sides of my fists. when i woke up i thought to myself, 'what a ridiculous dream!! and went about my private business.

hong kong island

2008-10-22T14:23:00.000-04:00

so we had written hong kong off as a complete waste of time until a couple of friends came back and said it was just like canada and they had gone camping. positive they were lying, we immediately purchased tents and sleeping bags and pots and pans and swiss army knives and sleeping pads and flashlights and whistles and this thing you screw on to a small butane tank and then press a button and a goddamned bolt of lightning shoots out from somewhere and suddenly you have a little flame under control.

flying to hong kong was out of the question, so we took a train from guilin (about 4 hours from the vietnam border) to shenzhen, a large shitty chinese city. from shenzhen you basically walk over to hong kong. it was really bizarre. they have these big "HONG KONG" signs everywhere that take you down streets, through malls, in and out of buildings, up stairs, around corners, etc... for all my local friends, imagine seeing signs promising "USA" in the rideau centre and then leading you down elgin street.

it didn't help matters that we were both carrying giant camping bags, stuffed to the brim with useless equipment we pretty much either wrecked or ditched later on. i felt like we were being made fun of.

eventually, however, we were informed that we were now in hong kong (by a man who told me to take off my hat, no less - i asked him why, and he pointed to a private booth in a corner and said they were checking everybody's temperature using heat seeking machinery in order to determine who was diseased and who wasn't) and suddenly the skies cleared up and i saw my first tree in about half a year.

we took a pleasant, functioning train for about a 40 minutes and got off at some sort of large mall (diamond hill?) that had english signs, english food, and other things we hadn't seen in months. we transferred here onto a bus bound for the far eastern peninsulas of hong kong. at this point we were some 5 hours behind schedule. apparently this bus was suppose to drag us up into the mountains and abandon us, whereupon we would see whether or not you can really camp in hong kong.

the bus brought us to a little ocean-side village that reminded me of all the little port towns of new england. we got off, wandered around for a bit, couldn't find a single trail leading anywhere, and promptly got on another bus. at this point it was getting late.

the second bus took us into the woods. at one point i saw a great big sign saying 'mackinaw trail', yelled out 'STOP!' in mandarin (they speak cantonese), and we shuffled off. unfortunately we had gotten off at the bottom of hill where the trail begins. the next 40 minutes were gruelling beyond measure. the sun was setting, we were sweaty, laden with gear, swarmed by wild cows (which are everywhere in rural hong kong) and clearly not going to make out post before it got dark.

eventually we made it to the trail, and the hike began. at this point it was dark. we were hiking on a thin, slippery trail with only a few weak chinese flashlights to aid us. the bush on either side of the trail was far too thick to even begin setting up camp. finally, after an era of uncertainty, we found a clearing and a firepit. we set up our tent (i fortunately had the foresight to practice this back at our apartment, just in case of such an emergency), got the lightning-bolt-thrower-apparatus in place, warmed up some soup, tried in vain to start a fire (it was far too damp), crawled into our sleeping bags, and fell asleep.

the next morning we woke up in one of the most beautiful areas i've ever seen in my life, spent the next few days hiking around, swimming in gorgeous beaches, and enjoying wholesome camping food.

now the picture, which has little to do with my story: after camping we headed back to kowloon, took the star ferry over to the island, took the world's first funicular tram up to the top, watched a marching band play to a small group of well-dressed executives, watched said executives launch a thousand silver balloons into the sky, climbed off into the forest surrounding us and enjoyed life:

NB - one reason hong kong island is such a great city is due to their building restrictions. the entire southern half of the island is off limits, and northern development is almost entirely halted, letting the rainforest once again take over. this leads to a fantastic city where you'll find old growth gardens and wildlife parks smushed in between gorgeous architecture. and besides, where else do you find outdoor escalators?

LIBRARY OWL

2008-10-17T13:39:00.000-04:00

THE LITTLE LIBRARY IN MY ELEMENTARY SCHOOL WAS LOCATED IN THE EAST WING, WHICH WAS THE NEWEST ADDITION TO THE SCHOOL AT THE TIME. (IT WAS A SMALL SCHOOL, AND A VERY SMALL LIBRARY). MOST OF US LIKED TO GO TO THE LIBRARY. NOT BECAUSE OF THE BOOKS, THOUGH, BUT BECAUSE THERE WAS THIS GIANT STUFFED GREAT HORNED OWL SET ATOP ONE OF THE HIGHER BOOKSHELVES IN THE BACK. THE OWL HAD ITS WINGS SLIGHTLY OUTSTRETCHED AND IT WAS JUST COLOSSAL. IT WAS PRACTICALLY MY SIZE.

ANYWAY THE OWL GAVE OFF A VERY MUSTY, WOODSY SORT OF ODOR THAT MADE THE LIBRARY SMELL LIKE AN OLD MUSEUM, OR AN ABANDONED COTTAGE AND THAT JUST MADE THE LIBRARY EVEN COOLER.

ANYWAY ONE OF OUR LITTLE RITUALS WHILE WALKING TO THE LIBRARY WENT AS FOLLOWS: FIRST THERE WAS A LITTLE STEP DOWN WHEN YOU WENT INTO THE EAST WING - IT WAS CUSTOMARY FOR STUDENTS TO JUMP WHEN WE APPROACHED THE STEP, TOUCH THE CEILING TILE ABOVE OUR HEADS (ONE OF THOSE LARGE SQUARE CEILING TILES MADE OUT OF THIN DRY-WALL) AND THEN FALL THE EXTRA 6 INCHES INTO THE EAST WING. SINCE WE ALWAYS HAD TO WALK IN A LINE IN ELEMENTARY SCHOOL EVERY KID BASICALLY GOT A CHANCE TO JUMP AT THE STEP, AND WE WOULD OFTEN TEASE ANYONE WHO FAILED TO TOUCH THE CEILING TILE. I THINK IT WAS ALMOST CONSIDERED BAD LUCK OR SOMETHING.

ANYWAY THE SECOND STEP TO THIS ROUTINE WAS THAT ONCE YOU WERE IN THE LIBRARY YOU HAD TO GO TO THE BACK, JUMP UP AND TOUCH ONE OF THE WINGS ON THE GREAT HORNED OWL. ONCE YOU HAD TOUCHED BOTH THE CEILING TILE IN THE EAST WING, AND THE FEATHERS ON THE OWL'S WING, YOU WERE SET FOR THE DAY.

THE PROBLEM WITH THE SECOND PART OF THIS DUTY WAS THAT THE GREAT HORNED OWL WAS PERCHED RATHER PRECARIOUSLY ATOP THE BOOKSHELF, AND WOULD TEETER ALARMINGLY EVERYTIME SOMEONE TOUCHED IT. IT WASN'T UNUSUAL TO SPEND ONE'S TIME IN THE LIBRARY HELPING JOE AND FRANK HARDY GET TO THE SECRET ISLAND WHILE KEEPING AN WATCHFUL EYE ON THE GENTLY ROCKING OWL IN THE FAR BACK.

OF COURSE THE TEACHERS SHARING LIBRARIAN DUTY NOTICED WHAT WAS GOING ON AND EVENTUALLY AFTER SOME HIDDEN MEETINGS DECIDED THAT THE OWL HAD TO GO. I WAS THERE WHEN IT HAPPENED. I WAS SITTING ON ONE OF THOSE SHORT STOOLS WITH THE WHEELS AND CURSING CHET'S SLUGGISHNESS WHEN SUDDENLY AN AWFUL MOAN AROSE FROM EVERY MAN AND WOMAN IN THE ROOM. I STOOD UP AND IMMEDIATELY LOOKED OVER TO THE FAR BACK JUST IN TIME TO SEE TWO TEACHERS WRESTLE (WITH NO LITTLE DIFFICULTY, I MIGHT ADD) THAT GIANT OWL OFF THE BOOKCASE AND DISAPPEAR WITH IT THROUGH ONE OF THE BACK DOORS.

WE WERE ALL VERY SAD THAT DAY. THERE WAS SOME SPIRITED TALK OF RESCUING THE OWL, AND MANY PLANS WERE DRAFTED AND REVISED THROUGHOUT MATH, BUT ULTIMATELY WE REALIZED THAT A VERY LARGE PART OF OUR CHILDHOOD HAD BEEN ABSCONDED.

THE NEXT DAY WE HAD LIBRARY TIME AGAIN, BUT THERE WASN'T ANYWHERE NEAR AS MUCH ENTHUSIASM AS THERE ONCE WAS. WE ALL SHUFFLED AROUND LISTLESSLY - IT JUST WASN'T GOING TO BE THE SAME WITHOUT THE OWL. ONCE AGAIN WE WERE LINED UP, BUT THIS TIME WE MARCHED TOWARDS THE EAST WING WITH THE HOPELESS DISINTEREST OF A PRISONER MARCH. WHEN WE APPROACHED THE EAST WING NOBODY EVEN BOTHERED TO JUMP; THERE WAS NO POINT.

AS THE LINE TRICKLED DOWN THE STEP AND INTO THE EAST WING THIS KID DONALD, WHO HAD DONE HIS BEST TO ROUSE OUR SPIRITS SINCE THE DISASTER, DECIDED HE WASN'T GOING TO GIVE UP ALL HOPE AND JUMPED WHEN HE REACHED THE STEP. HE GRACEFULLY BRUSHED HIS FINGERTIPS AGAINST THE CEILING TILE, AND THEN, FROM WHAT I REMEMBER, THE HEAVENS OPENED UP, A GREAT BLACK SHADOW CAME OUT OF THE SKY LIKE A BOLT OF LIGHTNING, DONALD PLUMMETED TO EARTH LIKE SOME DEMENTED ICARUS, AND THEN A GOOD PART OF THE EAST WING CAVED IN ON TOP OF US.

OF COURSE WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED WAS THAT OUR IDIOT TEACHER-CUM-LIBRARIANS DECIDED THE SAFEST PLACE TO STORE THE OWL WAS IN THE CEILING, ROUGHLY RIGHT FUCKING ABOVE THE PLACE WHERE ALL THE KIDS LIKED TO JUMP. (THIS WAS, BY THE WAY, MY FIRST REAL GLIMPSE INTO THE MYSTERIOUS WORLD OF DESTINY, FATE, AND A SELF-RIGHTING UNIVERSE.) AND OF COURSE WHAT HAPPENED WAS THAT WHEN DONALD TOUCHED THE TILES, THE OWL, NOW PRECARIOUSLY PERCHED IN THE DEPTHS OF THE CEILING, FINALLY TOPPLED OVER AND FELL THROUGH THE WEAKENED TILE, TAKING DOWN DONALD AND A HANDFUL OF OTHER STUDENTS. SEVERAL OF US WERE COVERED IN A FINE DUST. I WISH I COULD SAY THAT A FEW FEATHERS FLOATED GENTLY IN THE BREEZE BUT THAT DIDN'T HAPPEN. IT WAS A GREAT DAY. I HUGGED THE OWL, (SOMETHING I HAD WANTED TO DO SINCE MY FIRST DAY OF KINDERGARTEN) AND, AS I HAD IMAGINED, THE OWL WAS TOO BIG FOR MY ARMS TO REACH ALL THE WAY AROUND IT. WHICH TOTALLY FUCKING RULED.

COMPASS QUEST

2008-10-17T13:09:00.001-04:00

SO IN CUBS OUR CAMP 'LEADERS' ALL HAD THESE RIDICULOUS FAKE NAMES THAT WERE TAKEN FROM THE JUNGLE BOOK AND WE WERE SUPPOSE TO ADDRESS THEM AS SUCH. NONE OF THE KIDS WHERE VERY HAPPY WITH THIS, AND EVEN AT AN EARLY AGE WE ALL REALIZED OUR CAMP WAS BEING RUN BY A BUNCH OF NERDY TRY-HARDS WHO SEEMED TO HAVE A THING IF YOUNG BOYS CALLED THEM 'AKELA' OR 'BALOO'.

ANYWAY SO WE HAD TO DO THIS WINTER CAMP ENDURANCE EMBARASSMENT. IT BOILED DOWN TO SPENDING A FRIGID NIGHT IN A GODDAMNED BARN IN JANUARY. IT WAS AWFUL. I REMEMBER THERE WAS THIS FAT KID NAMED MARK WHO SPENT THE ENTIRE NIGHT MAKING ALL THESE LITTLE LABOROUS NOISES AND GENERALLY SOUNDING FOR ALL THE WORLD LIKE A BEACHED WHALE. I ALSO REMEMBER AT ABOUT 2 IN THE MORNING (BECAUSE IT WAS TOO COLD TO SLEEP), SOMEONE TOLD MARK THAT THERE WERE 'CORN CHIPS' HIDDEN IN THE HAY SOMEWHERE, AND THEN MARK WENT VERY STILL FOR A WHILE AND THEN 15 MINUTES LATER WE HEARD HIM MUNCHING. SINCE THERE WERE NO 'CORN CHIPS' WE ASSUMED HE WAS ACTUALLY EATING HAY.

SO ANYWAY THE LAST DAY OF THIS WINTER CAMP ABORTION WE WAKE UP TO FIND OUT THE CAMP LEADERS HAVE DECIDED TO TEACH US HOW TO USE A COMPASS. WE ARE TIRED, BROKEN MEN AT THIS POINT AND IN NO MOOD FOR THESE SHENANINGANS. AKELA OR AKIRA OR WHATEVER IS THRUSTING THESE PIECES OF PAPER WITH INSTRUCTIONS TO ALL THE KIDS. THERE HAVE GOT TO BE ABOUT 400 DIRECTIONS ON THIS PAPER, ALL SAYING THINGS LIKE "GO 55 DEGREES NWN FOR 400 PACES UNTIL YOU SEE A TREE SHAPED LIKE A BARREL".

WE ALL GROAN AND THAT FRUIT "BALOO" EXPLAINS TO US THAT THERE'S A BIG SURPRISE WAITING FOR US AT THE END OF OUR "COMPASS QUEST". MORE GROANING. "BALOO" GIVES US THIS WINNING SMILE AND CRIES OUT "IT'S CHOCOLATE!!!!!"

NOW AT THIS POINT WE ARE DEFINITELY IN A BIG SNOWY FIELD IN THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE AND TO OUR RIGHT IN THE FAR DISTANCE YOU CAN SEE THE WOODS, AND EVERYWHERE ELSE IT'S JUST HORIZON. THERE IS ONE LONELY LITTLE SHED STICKING OUT OF THE GROUND LIKE A BROKEN TOOTH A MILE AWAY.

THEN ADRIAN SAYS "IS THE CHOCOLATE IN THAT SHED?" AND "BALOO" SAYS "WHAT?" AND THEN I REMEMBER WE ALL STARTED RUNNING TO THE SHED DESPITE THE CRIES AND PLEAS FROM THE COUNSELORS AND SURE ENOUGH THERE'S A BUNCH OF GODDAMNED CHOCOLATE EASTER BUNNIES FROM WHO KNOWS WHAT YEAR STACKED UP IN THE SHED. IT WAS AWESOME. WE DIDN'T HAVE TO DO THE COMPASS QUEST.