Has anyone seen the Lover’s Vow part of the Tales from the Darkside movie?

I’m not schizophrenic. I promise.

At three a.m. here at my job I am supposed to do a building wide patrol checking meter readings and doing visual inspections of specific rooms (the 7th floor mechanical room, elevator rooms, roof, water rooms, high voltage room etc.). The route spans all over the property from the top floor to the underground spider webbed and occasionally bat infested storage area. I am really used to doing it so it is almost reflexive now. Certain doors I just push open, glance in for a quarter second and then shut, marking a checkmark on my list and clipboard. Tonight I opened the door that goes to the roof and let the scene reflect onto my retina for a few frames and shut the door quickly and automatically as I have done hundreds of times before. As I turn to walk away in my foggy 3am haze… it hits me. What was that? I freeze. The door is now shut and locked and I have to decide if I want to open it again or just pretend I didn’t see it. Except I can still hear it through the door. Crunching. Loudly. I decided just to walk away. I don’t think I’m going to be checking the door to the roof anymore.

Ever since I took this night job, I have been taking reality with a grain of salt. On the same patrol route there is this one door in the basement of the manor house that always bangs in its hinges every time I walk by. I keep telling myself it is me disturbing the air that somehow makes it jump outwards. I don’t know. I probably shouldn’t overthink this.

Exam number number one is coming up in about 16 hours. Been flying through the material but I know it is barely sticking. Study quality gets dangerously low after 2am. My little study break patrol certainly woke me up though. Wish me luck.

I don’t like looking at the security camera monitor we have here at work between the hours of 3 and 5am. The cameras are configured to start recording whenever movement is detected. My boss wonders why they record so much at night when there is no movement to send them into record mode. Well I know. They show up when you look at them on the monitor live. They don’t record though. I keep getting shivers. Why did I feel the need to write about this? Because it’s 4:26am and they keep coming back.

Another strange little incident that occurred earlier this week was that someone or something pulled out exactly 14 Christmas lights out of a strand wrapping a decorative pillar on one side of the driveway to the garage here at my workplace. The next day another 14 were pulled out of the opposite side pillar. The guards here thought it was a pretty bizarre act and even discussed how it might have been a squirrel or racoon. I realized tonight that December 6th was the day of remembrance for the Montreal massacre, where on December 6th, 1989 fourteen women were gunned down at a Montreal University. Someone must have been honoring them with this odd act of vandalism. I’m the only one who got it.

I caught someone taking a picture of me on the sly today. I was coding on campus in one of the computer labs. I had my big earmuff headphones on and was listening to Ashanti The sneaky Pete was sitting across and over from me. As I was coding, I could tell he was looking at me through my peripheral vision. I paid attention to it without moving my gaze. His head lingered pointed in my direction, staring at me, I presume. I noticed him raising something slowly and very discretely. With a sudden movement I looked right into his camera with a nasty glare the second he took the shot (I am pretty sure, I didn’t hear a sound. It was digital). He put his head down and wouldn’t look up. His dominant feature was a very egg shaped head reminding me of Kif from Futurama but with glasses. I didn’t confront him but fumed about it for a few minutes before I could get back into my work. I wasn’t sure whether to be angry or flattered. I still don’t know which.

Yippee! I had a breakthrough on my project. Hopefully my prof will still take it on Monday. If he doesn’t… Thanks for the well wishing. I’m going home.

I think one of my new fillings is infected. My Mp3 discman keeps giving me disk errors. I wanted to watch my favorite movie but couldn’t find it. My final project isn’t working and is overdue. 😥

Trivial issues I guess. I feel pretty crummy right now though.

The Onion has a truly funny article this week.
“As a man of science, I deal with facts, and the fact is that mice are gross“

I feel like listening to the Beatles. There’s none on the comp though.

(My computer soundcard lines out to an amplifier which heads out to my big Akai speakers positioned at each corner of my little living room/dining area so I get a really nice deep booming sound off of music played from my computer. The amp is old and cheap so the sound is a little warm, just the way I like it.)

*brb, off to get an anthology CD from my room* I just put in disk 2 CD 2. Yes… this is what I want right now. I have missed this. I don’t even feel like writing much anymore. I just want to melt into my bowl chair, close my eyes and savor John Lennon’s golden vocal cords and sweet melodies. I love how raw the anthology CDs are. Even on the rough cuts the astronomical level of talent is apparent.

Hey, You’ve got to hide your love away….

It was a hard day. I pair programmed for most of it with a good friend. We completed our final networking assignment and it works wonderfully. I have a higher priority assignment overdue but I felt strongly obligated to him since he really helped me out on something else school related in an extreme act of kindness.

Yesterday, love was such an easy game to play.
Why she had to go I don’t know, she wouldn’t say.

It was Indian night at the grad club. I had delicious Butter Chicken on rice for under six dollars (don’t they call that Chicken Muglai?) Mogwai? Gizmo?. It was the best food I have ever had on campus.

Haven’t shaved since Sunday night, looking pretty scruffy.

Sorry, that’s all I’ve got tonight. I’m totally fried and Norwegian Wood just came on.

Fuck Frankie.
The most fun you can have with your pants on.

Every summer up until high school when I wasn’t in the woods with the family I was on my block playing Fuck Frankie. The core of regular players included myself, three other same aged neighborhood catholic school kids; Keith, Sean, Brent and the Christiansan brothers, Chris and Ryan. They were a little younger. Our day always ended with one of them going home crying and/or bleeding. They always came back though. No one can resist the spectacle that is Fuck Frankie.

Keith was the organizer. He had to be because his yard and the surrounding yards next to and behind his house were the absolute best playing field. His house was fenced and bushed and gated with garages, cars, fences, boats all around, a forking gravel alley frames the area. The neighbours were truly excellent in allowing us kids to tramp and run all over and through their properties. On one side were a bunch of perpetually stoned college kids and a really nice old couple on the other side. “You hear that dear? Keith and his nice friends are playing Fuck Frankie again.” Keith’s three legged collie added a comically hoping and barking X-factor into the game.

So after any combo of the posse showed up at my door (Keith only lived 7 houses down), I would head over to meet up in front of his house at his large concrete steps and porch. This was the home base and location of  many exciting explosive and violent encounters. We chose “Frankie” with that baseball bat hands game and much cheating. Lacking a bat we used dirty circular rhyming ending in “and you are not it”.

So it’s basically a rough and profanity laced version of hide and go seek. All the non-Frankies go and hide and after a few minutes Frankie starts out from the concrete steps to come and seek. Just finding someone isn’t good enough though, Frankie’s got to catch you. As soon as someone spots Frankie from their hiding spot they take a deep breathe and yell with everything they’ve got FUCK FRANKIE!!! (It is so satisfying to yell this as loud as humanly possible, try it sometime.) That signals to everyone to run back to home base. If you can make it back to the steps without Frankie grabbing you, you’ve made it to the next round. If Frankie nabbed you, well congratulations now you are Frankie number two and the first place loser. So it’s all about stealth and cunning followed by frantic bursts of speed and agility, hurdling fences, juking and jiving, taunting and humiliation. The winner is the last non-Frankie. Sometimes the last non-Frankie would go hide and all the Frankies would go to the corner store without you. What a bunch of assholes.

We played other games too. Jailhouse was a good one because it involved locking people in a garage. Street hockey, baseball, water wars, other mischief. Fuck Frankie was the all-time favorite though.

Burnt toast. Toothache. Headache. Dirty. Sore. Have to work all night. So fucking tired. I’m spreading depression wherever I go. I was told so.

I had this poster on my wall from about age 10 to probably about 13. Video Village gave away all their posters for new releases to whoever wrote their name on the back of them. Even as a kid I thought it was a lame sequel. Part 3 was even worse. This poster was pretty damn spiffy though.

Sunday afternoon. So lazy. Nothing brilliant here. Coffee tastes like shit today. (It is shit, Austin. Oh, well, it’s not just me then… It’s a bit nutty.)  It was in my thermos all night. Reheated, it tastes charred, scorched, burnt. It’s mostly hazelnut cream with a few Belgium chocolate beans dropped in. I ground it in the decaf grinder at the store in a mundane act of rebellion.  

Maybe one of my plants will like it. They were watered for the first time in a solid month yesterday, maybe longer. I refused to water them until they showed some signs of needing it. It took a long fucking time and only the small ones showed some browning. I get the feeling it was just for my benefit and they are obtaining nourishment in some other more sinister way.

I have a thirty minute computational biology presentation tomorrow/today (Monday). I’ve decided to wing it.  Presentations are more fun when there are long awkward pauses.

Early one mornin’ while makin’ the rounds
I took a shot of cocaine and I shot my woman down

Music music music. I have brought some back from the future. “Magnolia Electric Country – Trials and Errors”, a 2005 release. How did I get my big fuzzy paws on it? Indie Torrents. That is my secret little site that only the hipsters know about so shhhh. I snatched a whole bunch of new music this weekend. I’ll put some new tracks up on my player at the bottom of the list.

Shot her down because she made me slow
I thought I was her daddy but she had five more

This Trials and Errors album is little twangy. A rock-country hybrid. You know I don’t mind country music too much. I have to be clear though. The heavily produced, bleached blonde, mass marketed, digitized sludge that is played on country radio stations and television channels is not what I consider country music. Chances are you haven’t heard the country music I listen to. There is a show on CHRW (University Radio) Tuesday nights at 10pm called Hardcore Country that I enjoy. I bet you would too. It is raw, emotional and cliche free. That reminds me, I’m putting up “Johnny Cash – Cocaine Blues” on my player. It is an all time favorite. “The Reason – The Joke and The Gentleman” and “The Blow – Hey Boy” are kind of fun tracks I just added too.

99 years underneath that ground
I can’t forget the day I shot that bad bitch down

Ohhohaa! Checked my email and apparently somebody sent me an unexpected parcel. It is down at the rental office of my building. Can’t get it until Monday. Now I’m going to be thinking about it all weekend. Who sent me the present?

Crashed back to reality. All the swagger and smack talk are gone. Finished one project only to turn around and cower before four more looming menacingly. The magical term finish date of December sixteenth continues to approach. I like how it’s a hard date. Succeed or fail, it will all be over on that day and I will be able to assess the damage and recollect myself.

It snowed today and promptly melted. This is probably the last week for my well used bicycle. A shame because it will be a loss of two hours of much needed cardiovascular exercise every week. Maybe I can work trips to the cardio room at campus recreation back into my routine. I paid for a full locker and towel service in the men’s locker room and it is going to waste. I don’t miss it though. It smells like ass in there. Yes, ass. I’ve been told the women’s locker room has individual shower stalls with dividers between shower spaces. That is totally unfair. In the men’s locker room it is all open concept prison style. 3 or 4 shower heads to one metal post. Full frontal man nudity no matter where you look.

The Christmas gift giving at work has begun. I was given a bottle of wine by a friendly lawyer tonight. I can’t tell if it’s any good. All I know about wine is that anything under 12.5% alcohol is unacceptable. Does anyone know how the Merlot grapes were in Argentina 2001?

It’s amazing what you can do when your back is against the wall. My coding skillz are so 1337. My affine gap penalty global alignment brings all the girls to the yard. Damn right its better than yours. I can teach you but I have to charge. It’s fast and lean and mean. Explosion overpowering, over the competition I’m towering. Don’t you dare compare me to the rest that’ll all get sliced and diced. Competition’s paying the price. Watch out motherfuckers cause I’m dangerous. I’m starting to think I may actually survive this term.

I have insomnia tonight. An old problem that hasn’t visited for a few weeks. It’s a topic I’ve researched a little. One of the tips to get through it that works is not to lay in bed trying to fall asleep but to actually get up and do something relaxing for a while and then go back. It is a mistake to just roll around and get frustrated because that makes sleep even more difficult in coming. You can ruin a whole night in bed that way, the later it gets the more frustrated and stressed you get as sleep continues to elude.

So I am up and taking this opportunity to watch some anime!

It has been a while since I indulged. I just watched Kino’s Travels episode eight, it is a series with a total of thirteen episodes. Very beautiful. Not just the animation quality but plot wise too. Most episodes are self-contained stories about a traveler visiting a new country and interacting with the people and their unique customs. It has a post apocalyptic feel where all the nations are self contained entities knowing nothing of what is outside their borders so they are all at different stages of technological achievement. It is very colourful and usually upbeat but has some darker themes too. (slave traders with a secret in episode two.) The episode I just watched was about a girl who dreamed of flying. Inspirational. I think I’m sleepy enough now. Goodnight.