“it’s a damn pebble in the ocean! What the fuck?”
-Kalligenia

*What a beautiful and poignant quote. Yes, I agree wholeheartedly, my Hans Island fascination is disturbing. A fascination that is inexplicably taking priority over what seems to be an excellent book. One that seems to be right up my alley, with dialogues about Jack Kirby, mid-seventies marvel superheroes, funk greats and detailed descriptions of street games lifted right from my childhood. I should be totally immersed. Yet, instead I choose to methodically work through the 179 google news hits on “Hans Island”.

I suppose it’s the magnitude of coverage that this story is receiving in this country that I find most interesting, not whether or not the joint Country Ellesmere Island-Greenland data collecting missions are endangered. The media coverage and influx of traffic is causing the poor guys at The.Hans Island Liberation Front bandwidth problems. (I actually sent these guys an email, suggesting that the two residents of Hans island, Hans and Hans, be renamed to Han and Han, because two Han make a Hans. Plural. See? Get it? Two of them. No? Nevermind.) The amusingly ridiculous way in which each country is trying to claim sovereignty definitely helps to hold my attention though. (That flag planting, alcohol burying, stone monument building stuff is all true). And just to absolutely clarify, yes I do think it’s ridiculous. Canadians aren’t generally thought of as being as patriotic as Americans, but they can be. It isn’t loud, bombastic, “Go U.S.A.!” chanting though. It’s a more quiet and condescending, “We’ve got it better than you, so there.” attitude. Enormously irritating. I really try not to do that. After all, things like a Liberal government, clean air, Universal heath care and de-criminalized marijuana don’t make for paradise. .. or do they?

2025 me: Broken images were removed.

Kind of a somber post this evening because the Hans Island crisis is weighing heavy on my mind. A brief synopsis of the conflict :

1972: A joint Canadian-Danish research team discovers the coordinates to a small, extremely northern, rocky island at the tip of western Greenland (80 degrees north.) The island is uninhabitable and inhospitable.

1988: Denmark sends a team to plant a flag and erect a cairn (a symbolic mound of stones).

1995: The Danes replace the flag.

2001: Canada retaliates by sending geologists. (yeah that’s right, don’t fuck with us.)

2003: Denmark responds with a new flag and a new cairn (which our geologists allegedly kicked over). For good measure they bury some Aquavit.

July 13, 2005: Canadian soldiers land, put up the Maple Leaf, bury some Canadian Rye Whiskey and erect a stoic inukshuk as a grim warning to the Danes.

And now, the latest Canadian salvo in the conflict occurred last Wednesday when our Defense Minister, Bill Graham landed by helicopter. Apparently, him and a few other guys roamed a bit, maybe kicked some rocks around, probably a little chit-chat, then left after an hour. On Monday, in a strongly worded letter of protest, the Danes expressed anger at the Canadian occupation and threatened to turn up the heat with a counter-offensive. They’re sending a ship… sometime in September. Maybe. I figure they’ll probably plant a fresh flag, maybe circle around a couple times and then go home. We’re going to have to find a way to take it to the next level after that.

Ok, I’ve got to do this to fulfill the contractual obligation that Starry_Eyed_82 tagged me with: “list five songs that you are currently rocking the living hell out of…” And as a show of support for the Hans Island cause, I’m keeping it All-Canadian.

• Sloan – Money City Maniacs
• Danko Jones – Bounce
• Sam Roberts –  Where have all the good people gone?
• Alexisonfire – Accidents
• Bif Naked – Chotee

I’m not bothering to tag anyone either because it’s impossible to top that. Those five songs are packed with the absolute maximum amount of Rock.

Ok. I had my coffee, a day of recuperation and now I’m going to recap some of my long week-end in Boston with a nice and solid, yet hopefully still light and fluffy, post. (I’ll save the endless, Merle associated drama and aggravation for a dark and brooding private entry.)

Friday was pretty laid back. The surprise lowlight was The Vanishing, a movie I had been looking forward to seeing for ages  Unfortunately, it was the 1993, Keifer Sutherland, Sandra Bullock, Jeff Bridges version. It provided an extremely disappointing movie watching experience. It’s a remake of an award winning 1988 Dutch film that I haven’t seen, but had my uncle spoil the ending of while in the process of singing it’s praises. I want to meet the American producer who decided to alter the ending and ask, “Why, why, WHY did you utterly ruin it by changing the best part?” The fundamental core of the movie’s creepiness. The ending that will undoubtedly pop back into your consciousness when you’re all alone at night and hear a strange creak from the kitchen. The foul, festering conclusion that haunts your dreams, seeps into your bones and stains your soul. I know the answer would be, “because people don’t want to be scared. They want the hero rescued, the couple to end up together bla blah blah.” But that answer would be wrong! So yeah, of course Blockbuster doesn’t carry the Dutch version, they only carry the cream of the crap. They don’t even have a horror section anymore. d;lkfjasl;dgjas;ldkgjrla;kgjsreluhjnsrko;knbkjzfnbjk;adnfbkfbldfbadfb Fucking Blockbuster. I’m getting a membership downtown at Flixx this week-end. …… What a pointless tangential rant that was.

On Saturday I proudly bared my marvelously hairy chest at Newport beach and swam in the Atlantic. That night I saw and listened to live music at a jazzy lounge in Cambridge. My companions for the evening were three other Scorpios. We sipped nine dollar martini’s and did our very best to look sexy and intense in our stylishly dark little booth.

Sunday I canoed on the Charles river. In the boat rental office I had to resist the temptation to barge through the line and yell, “Get the hell outta my way, I’m Canadian!” because you see, I received my classical training in canoe primarily at the noteworthy institutes of Whitefish and Rainy Lake. My Masters and PHD were completed along the Kaministiqua river, and post-doc work was done in Northern Saskatchewan and affiliated arctic tributaries. Despite this impressive CV, my Parisian canoe-mate turned out to be quite the freeloader. The best part was when I splashed some ducks with my paddle. That night I enjoyed watching Howl’s Moving Castle. And I had a brownie. Some banana caramel ice cream too.

On Monday we didn’t leave for London until after 5pm, so I was still driving at 6:30am yesterday morning. My car-mate, coincidentally the same as my canoe-mate, again proved to be quite the freeloader and only drove one lousy daylight hour. During the trip, I listened to mostly oldies power rock. Did you know Alice Cooper hosts his own radio show? There is something fundamentally appropriate about listening to classic rock at 3am under a dark starry sky, driving down a sparse Interstate.

Aaaaaarrooooooo

I’m a hairy, hairy man.

So, I’m back from my little whirlwind vacation and am feeling as articulate as a turnip.

I don’t wanna go to Boston.

Thursday.

I’ll go see Howl’s Moving Castle though. That’ll be a plus. I wonder if they’ll speak anglais this time. I doubt it. The bus trip’s 17 hours. Upstate New York is kind of sketchy. Not going to bring my laptop. I bought The Fortress of Solitude by Jonathan Lethem. I’ll read that on the way. It’ll be another plus. Shouldn’t I be excited to see my girlfirend? Who everyone assumes is my fiancé. But is just an unhealthy crutch. My parent’s like Merle. But at graduation my grandmother slipped into a conversation slyly, “Has anyone seen Fatal Attraction?” This flew over my parents and Merle’s head. Not with me though. What a keen old eye.

I feel uneasy about everything right now.

Xanga lacks the appropriate emoticon for the last half an hour of a mind numbing twelve hour night shift. So I’ll combine a few.  I need a face that conveys incoherent random babbling. Twitchy stretching and impromptu bouncing. Eye rubbing and spastic foot tapping.

You know that scene in the Simpsons where Homer’s in outer space annoying the two other manly men astronauts. And he’s floating around, honing in and devouring the chips while a classical score accompanies his chomping. Look out they’re ruffled! And he eventually plows right into the red ant colony, giving them horrible, horrible freedom. And on earth, channel 4 news goes live to the shuttle for a shot of the action. But they get the giant flyby of the red ant. Well I’ve been dealing with that all night. One’s been crawling over the garage entrance security camera incessantly, periodically blocking out the whole 17 inch monitor. That’s it.

There’s a young woman here on the weekends that I think likes me. Or just enjoys flirting anyway. The problem is that I’m always so goddamn braindead that my responses are about as witty and nuanced as one would expect from a disgruntled caveman. She really seems to sashay and shake those hips when she passes by the desk and out the door though. I wonder if it’s for my benefit or if it’s just some sort of congenital hip disorder. It’s not fair because I’m stuck at the desk and she can plan her little clever remark and come down and sabotage me with it at a time of her choosing.  Next time she asks me what I’m reading I’m going to say, “Oh just Virgil’s Aeneid, in it’s original Greek form, of course. I find the English translation lacks the punch of dactylic hexameter. Iambic pentameter is so bland in comparison, don’t you think?” And as I say this, I’ll probably be prominently holding my brightly multicoloured Harry Potter book under her nose. blesahkhaksjghksjg. This post is garbage. I’m so tired. 10 minutes and im outta here.

It was nearing midnight and the Ancient Undergrad was sitting alone at his desk, reading a long post that was slipping through his brain without leaving the slightest trace of meaning behind.

music deeply effects me.

so much that sometimes it hurts

After a morning of tedium I decided to do something different..

2025 me here: Images of a fake climate change parking ticket used to be here. Check it out, Greta Thunberg. I gave a shit, while you were still in diapers.

They’re a little hard to read but basically it’s a spoofed parking ticket outlining the hidden costs of vehicle ownership. The liabilities listed include, Climate change, Conflict over oil, Depletion of non-renewable resources, Environmental clean up costs, Time wasted in gridlock, Hindering bicycles and pedestrian activities, Noise pollution and Smog-related health problems. The amount of the fine is $29,800. (I love the quote on the back too.)

The ticket was included in the newest Adbusters, a Canadian based social activist organization and magazine. I really liked it so I scanned it, made an acrobat file with 4 tickets per-page, e-mailed it to myself and printed it out at a University library. (a side note, I print for free through a secret process and tool). I had planned to churn out 80 to 100 tickets but through a miscalculation I ended up with 400+ of them.

So I spent a couple hours this afternoon sneaking through parking lots and planting those bad boys on hundreds of windshields. So tired now. I brought my camera with the intention of capturing a frustrated motorist discovering a ticket but I think better judgment prevailed. The last thing you want when you find a parking violation on your car is to look around and see me smiling, taking your picture.

I was confronted twice, one was a very positive discussion with someone who asked me for extra tickets. The other was a man in marketing who thought I was wasting my time, that I should have been doing it in a more positive way. He recommended a happy face. I could tell he was just upset I got his SUV though. He was slipping profanity in and I kept reminding myself to smile. I would have been thrilled to receive one of those tickets on my car. A happy face that says, “Smile! Don’t pollute!” just wouldn’t appeal to me in the same way. All in all, I really enjoyed it. I wrote on some of the tickets, “Especially bad offender” for the big trucks or V8 cars.

I’ve been lightly dozing all summer. Eyes half lidded. Lethargic body sprawled out on whatever’s softest and closest. Since graduation I’ve been completely sleeping. System on coast. No exercise. Foggy consciousness. Everything half assed. Creative tubes empty. Motivational bucket has a hole. Day to day drifting. I can’t be happy in this state. I need to be jolted. Stressed. Challenged. Or else I nap. get bored. stagnate. Last night I felt something shift though. Late before I went to bed, after I shut the TV off in disgust and unscrewed the cable. Some clarity and drive returning. Better perspective and perception. Today I can feel the difference in the inflection of my voice, the energy in my muscles. It feels good. I’m waking up again. Hopefully it lasts.

In a week and a half I’m going to Boston. Just for five days while I have some time off. I’ll bring Merle back though for a couple weeks. Three weeks with Merle… Ahhahaahaha. While I’m visiting I’ll gauge how her parents feel about the prospect of taking me in for September. I, who they used to love. Things have cooled substantially though. I’ve been with Merle for so long without proposing, took such a long time with school. Much of my luster is gone. And they desperately want to get rid of her. Merle gets along worse with her family than with me. There are too many strong, flammable personalities in that household. And one insane one. I would rather live in Southie or some run down ghetto than there. But I need a job.

So yesterday during the tail end of a seemingly infinite shift, still thinking through fog, I decided to do some pseudo-random commenting. It’s been a few months since I indulged in this particular procrastination exercise. So browsing the xanga blogrings, I saw and picked the animal rights category under “science and nature”. The following blogring piqued my interest:

!!!!!!MONKEYLAND!!!!!!!

people who are devoted to monkeys!!! I LOVE MONKEY LAND!!!

Well that looked promising. I mentioned monkeys in my last post and who knows, maybe I’d even find a qualified member for the Monkey Calendar Owners Blogring. So I jumped into Monkeyland and opened up the ten most recently updated pages, carefully scrutinized their last posts, and did my best to leave a good solid, relevant comment.

Next up I noticed, still in the animal rights section:

GEORGE BUSH ROCKS!!!

Hey, everybody! I couldn’t find politics in the list of categories so I picked animal rights just for fun. This blogring is for people who support George Bush as our president.

Yuck. But I chose it anyway, hoping it was a tribute to a presidential rock collection. I went through the same process. Except leaving comments on these pages was considerably more difficult. More than half of them were centered around personal relationships with God. I find it remarkably sad that Republican and Christian seem to be synonymous in America. It’s such a strange phenomenon. Do issues like abortion and gay rights really trump the problems of homelessness, racial discrimination, and social aid? Admittedly, that’s based on some pretty general assumptions about Democrat and Republican values but that’s the perception. Moving on..

So while I was looking at these pages, a fierce, but sickly sounding German voice started yelling from somewhere in the back of my head, “It’s all slave morality!” “God is dead!”, “Overmannnnn!!!”. then I mentally squashed him. Shut up Fred, they’re trying to live good lives, trying to do the right things. Maybe they’ve got it right and people like us are inherently evil. Maybe they truly do feel a God. Maybe skeptical, open-minded chumps like us are fated to burn in their hell. I tuned him out enough before too much sarcasm seeped in. I think I got through eight of the ten pages. There were two I just couldn’t deal with.