My all-time favorite commercial was a fairly recent one for Kraft Dinner. A young man walks into an empty apartment prompting thoughts of, “Why is it completely empty? Was he robbed?” There’s a picture of him pinned to the wall with a fork. The picture is vandalized. His eyes are poked out and someone gave him devil horns. It’s now clear that this man’s girlfriend/wife has cleaned him out and left for good. Besides the mutilated picture, all that she left behind was his scruffy looking dog. So what does he do? Break down and cry? Wallow in self-pity and alcohol? No. He had a rough day and now he’s kind of hungry. Looks like she left some Kraft Dinner in the cupboard. But what to cook it in? He glances around the empty apartment and spies the dog’s water bowl. Perfect. He adds the instant KD and water, cooks it in the microwave, plucks the fork out of the wall and chows down. Then he smiles. Then I smile. Because I know what he must be thinking,  “Wow, she’s finally gone. Took all the stuff too. That’s a small price to pay to get that crazy she-demon out of my life though. This isn’t so bad. I’ve got my dog, a roof over my head, warm KD in my belly, and best of all, sweet sweet freedom. Life is good.”

I slept through a thunderstorm this morning. I would never have known except lighting hit the roof, jarring me out of fitful slumber. For this reason I remember a fragment of a dream. I was headed to a kennel to pickup my childhood family dog, Bear (a big, incredibly furry, beautiful husky/German sheppard). I walked into the kennel and noticed that, for some inexplicable reason, a log of what each dog had said overnight was written down on a gigantic whiteboard on the wall. So I looked at the list of dog names and noted what each one had said. Not surprisingly, all the dogs had said, “Ruff!”. Except for Bear. He was different. Written beside his name was, “Woof!”. Woof? Why was Bear the only Woof?

When I woke up the bed was empty and Merle was on a tear, cleaning the apartment. She was wearing my least favorite boxer shorts and a pink sports bra. I wanted no part of her this morning, so I grumpily ignored her, drank my coffee and read my novel. The main character’s girlfriend had just cleaned out his apartment and left forever and ever. After breakfast I went back to bed to do nothing and indulge in a fantasy of how I’d handle Merle taking all my stuff and fleeing into the sunset. I figure I’d go out to a dark bluesy dive somewhere. Do my best to look cute and lonely. Charming and forlorn. Ahhhhh…. probably not. More likely, if she didn’t take the TV and my Sega Saturn, I’d put on my pajamas and play a retro video game. Something from my childhood that’s nice and comforting. Bubble Bobble or Shining Force. Maybe I’d drink a beer too, I’d be happy. Sweet sweet freedom. Life would be good.

This is my last night shift ever. I’m going to swim in the pool.

Talked with mommy tonight. She sounded worried, her voice faltering. I reassured her that my life is all sunshine, lollipops and rainbows. That I’m doing well and am happy, confident I’ll land a good job soon. Then I found out what was wrong on her end. Apparently my little sister, Sue is planning to drop out of her art school in British Colombia. This is quite surprising given that she’s had a lot of success selling her paintings out there. The reasons mom offered on her behalf seemed pretty flimsy, “She’s not being challenged enough.”, “She’s too far from the family.”, “It’s too expensive.”

I sensed that Mom wants me to give little sis a call. Hit her up with a stern, brotherly, “you better stick it out for your own good” speech. Because as everybody knows,  I’m all about laying down the discipline. “Maybe attending this school wasn’t the best choice, but now you better dig in and gut it out like a soldier, because in this family we finish what we start, missy.” Maybe I’ll tell her Mom was crying on the phone. Totally guilt the hell out of her.

Otherwise I had a fun week-end. There was a fringe arts festival that wrapped up yesterday. I saw two shows. The first was a dark comedy called, “Bad Neighbours”. It was a ridiculous, stressful experience because it was basically an exaggerated version of my 1999-2000 apartment. Complete with two dysfunctional couples under one roof, sketchy criminal landlord and regular break-ins.

The second show was the Aerial Angels. This one consisted of three women dressed in leather tops with bright red and neon pink leotards doing acrobatics that looked like rejects from cirque-du-soliel. Except it was awesome. To make up for their technical mediocrity, they relied on dirty humour and humiliating men picked out of the audience. The lesson was that three women working together and dressed like funky stripper ballerinas can get the most timid man to do anything.

(and my sister actually isn’t a Sue at all, her name’s very unusual and rhymes with bumblebee. haha, try and figure that one out.)

Hmmm. It’s a warm, summer Saturday night. The best kind of night there is. The north side of the city is unusually quiet. As I skated through campus on the way to work, I absolutely savored how secluded and beautiful it was. I stepped outside myself for a moment to realize how good it feels to be young healthy and strong. How perfect it is to be gliding on a secluded path under dark trees and a clear starry sky. I’ll really miss living on campus. Three more weeks and I’m gone.

2025 me here: Video and photos are gone unfortunately.

I had the last three days off and for a change, took advantage completely. Today was swimming in lake Huron, swinging on swings and reading at a surprisingly beautiful beach. Yesterday was mini-putt, go-karts, dinner, drinking, candy and the Devil’s Backbone with a friend. I won’t be in contact with him anymore soon. Tuesday was the most fun though.

As I was getting off of work Monday night, I decided to ask the incoming guard, Bob, if he had any advice on how to enjoy spending the day at Marineland. I realized how much of a mistake this was as the question slipped out. Bob is the most depressing man on earth. I might as well have been asking him to suck as much joy as possible out of me. So in his slow monotone voice, he droned on awhile about how he enjoyed the experience much more when he was younger. Then he basically repeated six different ways that the park was meant for kids and Merle and I wouldn’t enjoy it. I asked him if we would be able to touch any of the animals. “No, just the kids who get picked out of the audience during the shows.”

Luckily I’m blessed/cursed with a very childish girlfriend and we really did enjoy ourselves there. Growing up, Merle often went to the Boston aquarium and saw the marine show where the animals perform. At some point in the show, the trainer picks out a little kid from the audience to come down for some interaction with the animal. Merle always wanted this bad but was never picked. So for the past few years, she’s been obsessed with going to Marineland to touch the beluga whales.

I have mixed feelings about places like Marineland (and zoos, for that matter). I don’t like seeing animals in small enclosed, artificial habitats. I understand that it does raise awareness though. So as long as the conditions are humane, I can deal with it. I felt worst for the orcas because I know they can swim enormous distances daily and are intelligent, social animals. Keeping them in captivity is so unnatural.

Anyway, Marineland has two performance shows. One is a small, straight forward one, where a walrus and some sea lions do modest tricks. Despite Merle’s frantic hand waving, a small kid was chosen to hug the walrus. The larger, second show features the park’s best performers. Sea Lions balancing things, walrus tricks, flipping and dancing dolphins. When it came time to choose an audience member, Merle got up and enthusiastically started jumping up and down, hands in the air, and screaming. And out of the hundreds of audience members and little kids, she was chosen. I captured most of it on video here (12.1 MB). She got to touch and feed a beluga too. I’m happy for her. Here is another video of the big male Orca, I make a brief appearance at the 26 second mark (6.2 MB). (Be patient if you download them, they’re coming off of my home computer).

My favorite picture of the day. I was the only one in the area and was waving, and calling out like a nut to get this beluga interested enough to pop out of the water long enough for a photo. I’m sure he/she was genuinely amused.

A miserable looking orca not doing much beside a gate. This was depressing to watch.

A Bear.

And some deer.

“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.