13 November 2006 It is frightening to consider just how rarely one can look back on the past twenty-four hours and, honestly and without reservation, call it a day well-lived. Or perhaps I ought merely to speak for myself. It's not for lack of virtue, or will, or even wisdom. In my own defense I think all of those things are there. But there are other things as well, little cracks in the framework, little systems that don't function properly and render the whole shaky and haphazard. Like a Spitfire with a jammed rudder; an excellent machine but impossible to fight effectively with because of that one little flaw. Stalling out and flopping on the turns, firing desperately with little or no hope of actually getting a bead. It's frightening, then, to consider how many crushing defeats could be chalked up not to bad decisions, or lack of skill, but something as mundane-sounding as poor maintenance. And it probably happens so much more often than anyone wants to admit, due to the simple fact that maintenance is boring, and no one likes to do it. "It's boring" sounds like a pretty damn lame excuse when you're staring at the smoking wreckage at the end of the runway. Right up there with "but I was tired" and "at least I checked the oil". It doesn't make the poor sod in the cockpit any less dead. In hockey, penalties are awarded according to the severity of the offense. And that's why they call it a game. Reality has no referee, no jury. Only consequence. Read Comments (0) | Add Comment

23 October 2006 Wow. It has actually been more than a month since I posted. That's pathetic. First day back at work today. And not a bad one, either. I don't know why it felt so good, just drilling and broaching some parts on a lathe. After two months in school, perhaps it was just gratifying to actually make parts that were useful to someone, instead of just making parts for the sole purpose of evaluation. One would think that this would be the month in which I would post the most. At least, I would have thought that, had you asked me at any other time of the year. Going back and reading my first post of October of last year, I find that everything I said then holds true now, a year later. It just isn't quite as obvious, drowned out by so many other priorities and events and challenges. But today was the sigh of relief. On Friday I wrote my apprenticeship board exam, and then left with my wife for the cabin. We returned to Edmonton last night, and I went back to work this morning. The first normal day. When the pressure of you-only-get-one-shot-at-this was off. And suddenly the thick presence of October was there again, like a backdrop suddenly revealed as props are whisked away by a silent and efficient host of stage hands. Got to make the most of what's left. Seven more days left in the month. I'm hoping there's more than that left of the weather. Read Comments (2) | Add Comment

18 September 2006 More on cafes: I recently realized the primary feature of good cafes. Or at least, the primary feature of the ones that I like. This comes after spending a night in the only real decent cafe in my neighbourhood, which is ok, but stops just short of being really good. Of course, there are many features of a good one, but the single, most central element I've found is one best expressed not as itself, but by naming the barrier that stands between an ok coffee shop and a good cafe. That barrier is ideological neutrality. It is not enough for a coffee shop to be independant, apart from any chain, locally owned and operated. The shop I was in tonight meets all of those requirements (and they are requirements, almost without exception), and yet it fails to acheive "good cafe" status. The posters on the walls in that shop depict interesting looking but insignificant buildings, or various representations of coffee beans or drinks, stylized to a point but lacking any real substance and devoid of any expression. The music is generic top 40, chosen not without thought to coherent style, but certainly lacking any coherent ethos. All media, while stylized, are (as Paul aptly put it) sanitized; every poster or piece of music, the very vehicles of expression, is carefully selected as to not say anything at all. Contrast this with any good cafe I've ever frequented. Every one, whether it was immediately obvious or not, was saturated with a politic, a stance; it dared to express. The cafe itself was a character more than a setting. The music was provoking and original, the art varied and deliberate. The whole building seemed alive and unafraid to offend. It spoke to people who thought about ideas and had carefully reasoned and impassioned opinions. It seemed to playfully pick a fight with you while at the same time making you feel like you were right all along about so many things. It invited you to say what you really thought, whether it was nice or not. And, to ice the cake: it had good coffee. Owners, pay attention. Read Comments (3) | Add Comment

28 August 2006 Ten years since graduation and so many looked so much the same. I think I was one of them. But gatherings like that have a habit of making me feel like I'm the only one battling back the wolves at the door. Really, though... I think I was probably one of many. And there aren't really that many wolves. Read Comments (6) | Add Comment

21 August 2006 To Paul Gauthier I know it took a while, but I was finally able to find your little nook on myspace, and you've been added to my links. I missed your writing. Sure, there have been many emails between us, but of course, that's something altogether different. That little bit you posted about the muse... I loved it. I could have found that written on a scrap of paper in the street and I would have known you wrote it. Same goes for that little bit about Toronto. Nice to see you again. I'm writing this from Remedy, again. Trying to make it a bit of a habit to get out here on a regular basis, even though it's a long way from Clareview. I'm by the window, upstairs, you know the one... view of the Garneau theatre across the street, the speckled lights of downtown on the other side of the river. And being in this place conjures up the memory of more than one of your past muses, and perhaps one of mine as well. I thought I came here to write, and yet I haven't even opened my notebooks. And it's not for lack of ideas - my hard drive is full of projects begun and neglected, that could be completed if I just got to it. I think I came here to stop. To find my footing. To check for something I fear I may have left behind. And there's something here, but I'm not quite sure what it is. I'm not even sure it's anything I left behind; it might well be something I've never had. Something like what I need, even if this isn't quite it. The coffee here is still good, by the way. Read Comments (3) | Add Comment

18 August 2006 Gotta see if this really does work properly. Had a little issue there. Sorry. Read Comments (5) | Add Comment

17 August 2006 At long last, comments finally work properly for Safari users!!! Turned out to be ridiculously simple. All I needed was a night at Remedy to get it figured out and play with it a little. This little excursion feels good. Like I've been buried for a while, under the weight of so much progress. Good things can be heavy, too. Tonight I, I, fought my way to the surface. Came up for air. Just one deep, full, three-hour-long breath, uninterrupted by splashing water or choking dust. Circumstance has been pushing me around a lot lately. But tonight I chose to be here. And here I am. Read Comments (2) | Add Comment

3 August 2006 I apologize for the lack of posts lately. Things have been crazy busy, and also, something was screwey with some file permissions. But it's fixed now. Apparently. Got my mini-lathe today. It's exciting and smells of packing grease, and has real inspection certificates stamped by Chinese factory officials. Read Comments (4) | Add Comment

5 June 2006 Tonight, as I stood in the kitchen making my tacos, I heard the familiar sound from around the corner of my cat chewing on something. The cats are always chewing on things, and you've always got to look quickly and figure out what it is they're eating. So I abandoned my tacos, moved quickly across the kitchen, and looked around the corner to see what I was going to have to shoo him away from. It was cat food. I feel like I understand my parents a little better now. Read Comments (0) | Add Comment

24 May 2006 Why did no one ever tell me about dealership? I just discovered them through an online radio station, along with about a billion other awesome bands I'd never heard of. Internet radio rocks. Read Comments (0) | Add Comment

17 May 2006 Ha. Take that, San Jose. That's what you get for booing our national anthem. It baffles me that those fans did that, seeing as some of their best players are Canadians (like Cheechoo and Thornton). It doesn't make any sense. Unless those (admittedly few) anthem boo-ers were just too stunned to know that. Which, y'know, you would kind of have to be to do that anyway... Nicely done, Edmonton. I could hear the honking and cheering all over the city tonight. Bring on Anaheim. Read Comments (0) | Add Comment

10 May 2006 In response to Riley's comment on my previous post: I do remember telling you years ago that I'd heard a rumour about Darwin, not Einstein, refuting his own claims before he died. I also remember telling you at the time that it was a totally unconfirmed rumour and that I wasn't sure I believed it myself. Now, years later, I'm pretty convinced it was nothing more than a rumour and never had any truth to it at all. At the time, I vehemently resisted Darwin's ideas. I was also about thirteen years old. And I really don't think it's fair to deny me the right to change my mind. As for Genesis and relativity - you'd really have to read Schroeder's whole thesis (by the way, that link is an extremely compressed version of his theory). My explanation of his ideas to you was sketchy for two reasons: one, I don't really understand relativity all that well, and thus can't explain Schroeder's ideas; two, it was at my St. Patrick's day party, and we were both drunk. In the end, my evaluation of Schroeder's idea is this: he has proven nothing. SFA. He has, however, shown a very plausible scenario in which Genesis was, in fact, right all along insofar as its timeline goes, and that we just didn't know it until Einstein. Schroeder may be proven wrong in the future. But for now, all the current evidence is leaning in his favour. There are some out there who are actually bashing Schroeder for even attempting to make this case, suggesting that to try and reconcile the Bible to modern science somehow "devalues" it as a spiritual and inspirational text. This is a load of crap. In effect, these people are making the ridiculous claim that the Bible's strength and power lies in its status as a fictional, warm-and-fuzzy text, and that it will somehow be stripped of its spiritual significance if it actually turns out to be true. That notion is idiocy. Some of his other opponents are tearing his theory apart based on their own unaided reading of a bad English translation of Genesis, and the kind of approach to the book that one would take to The Little Engine that Could. This is also foolish. Genesis, and really the whole Bible, is a big, heavy, complicated book, and it's for grown-ups. Whether there's truth in it or not is, I suppose, for each of us to decide. And I've taken my stance. I may change my mind on some of the details here and there. But then, that isn't really the heart of the matter. Read Comments (1) | Add Comment

5 May 2006 It's funny, the things that come to mind. I just watched the final episode of season 1 of Battlestar Galactica, and realized how much it resonated with me. All that talk of the sciptures, the prophecies... Maybe some of you will think I'm going too far here. But my last reading of Jeremiah had much to say to me. As did Nehemiah. These priophesies are not mere myth. There is somehing real here. Ask Gerald Schroeder, Genesis wasn't wrong. Written six thousand years ago, and it knew things we didn't have the knowledge to know until now. Ultimately, Einstein unveiled the truth. Genesis had it right. We just didn't know it until now. Not long ago, my brother-in-law told me that my faith must have been shaky to have waited for such evidence as Schroeder's. But I think he misunderstood me. It's not that I was waiting for such evidence as his. I always believed. I always believed that one way or another, Genesis was right. I just didn't expect that I would understand in this life. I expected that this was something I would take on faith until my grave. I've found there is a gross misunderstanding about faith. The unbelieving feel that faith must be something that one believes in, despite all evidence to the contrary. That is not so. Faith is something you believe in without conclusive proof. It isn't something you hope for. Hope is different from faith. Hope is something you wish to be true. Faith is something you believe to be true. New evidence does not negate faith. It validates it. Whoah whoah whoah. Edit. I need to stop posting drunk. Read Comments (1) | Add Comment

27 April 2006 After many years, I just went back and read A Clean, Well-Lighted Place again. And I get that old man perhaps now more than ever. One of those "who need a light for the night"... Perhaps this really only comes in response to six months on the night shift, with no one around by the time I get off work. But in any case, Hemingway hit it. But now I need to turn off the light, eliminate the shadows and their sources, and embrace a kind of nothingness. Read Comments (0) | Add Comment

26 April 2006 This has been one of those weeks where seemingly everything goes wrong and you just can't get a break. Like all of the stupid little details of life, insignificant and easily dismissed singularly, gang up on you and mount this massive assault. Like being attacked by a horde of ants. I'm going to bed now. Read Comments (0) | Add Comment

19 April 2006 Thirty days have now passed since my last cigarette. I'm getting used to it, and there's no more of the hair-pulling/teeth-gnashing feeling. The odd thought, the occasional crave, easily dissuaded by the thought of great investment, is as bad as it gets now. Everything is better. But I'm tired tonight. I shall retire. Read Comments (2) | Add Comment

18 March 2006 Head hurts. Was a good St. Patrick's day. Jello shots are a lot of fun, but they are downright evil when morning comes. Thanks to all who came out. Read Comments (0) | Add Comment

15 March 2006 I can't believe I never spotted this before, but there's a definite irony in the fact that DIMM, and its (supposedly superior) successor, the SODIMM, are terms we use to describe types of computer memory. No idea what they mean or what they stand for, but the humour of it just hit me. Read Comments (0) | Add Comment

12 March 2006 Has it really been that long? No matter. Finally managed a little propulsion in the right direction, that direction that's always changing, never linear, looking very much from a certain angle like coming full circle. But it isn't. You don't travel on the line. You orbit around and along it. The helical coil of self-reinvention. Identity reconstruction, as someone once put it. The real trick is to hang on tight enough to survive the ripping centrifugal force. Read Comments (0) | Add Comment

21 February 2006 I could make a post, but it would be nothing that you haven't heard before. I am tired of this broken record. When is this going to end? Read Comments (0) | Add Comment

18 February 2006 A few things I know about myself: I like the world late at night I can beat Sopher at darts anytime I like Planning ahead is not one of my skills The beaten path is rarely my preference I am terrible at romance I have strange toenails I end most days with new regrets I forgot to learn self-discipline Very often I am late for work I am a half-decent singer I function best in a crisis I tend to talk too much I am easily distracted I would like to believe I am a work in progress Read Comments (0) | Add Comment

3 February 2006 By request from Phil: a paper on OK Computer. Please forgive any formatting or spelling errors, as this was hastily converted from an old Word 2.0 file. Thanks. Read Comments (0) | Add Comment

27 January 2006 It's been a long time since I've done this. Listened to OK Computer straight through from end to end. It strikes. Me. Like nicotine after its own long absence. In that way that only a few scotches (haven't tasted that in a long time, either) makes possible. Dovetailing nicely with the sting of unanswered emails, sent to persons nearly forgotten. There's an antique clock to the left of me that used to chime a deep sound every thirty minutes. It stopped working one day and I haven't fixed it. I should fix it. I didn't realize until now how it had defined me. And I'm wondering what the hell happened to that young man, barely more than a boy, who one time drank scotch and smoked his pipe, on the deck of a house at a party with some guy who was the son of some government official. That particular memory resides in my mind the same way a dream does - only in pictures, brief and vivid. Phew for a minute there ilost myself i lost myself That was always my favourite song. Perhaps it still is. I have only forgotten. I don't know how to do this. This reckoning, this reconciliation. My life looks so different now, and I'm not unfond of it. I wouldn't trade it. For anything. And yet there's something in my past that has failed to carry over to the present. I'm not sure just what it is. H. Ph/M, I need something from you. I don't know what it is. If you're reading this, well, you don't know how long it took me to write that last sentence, like I didn't know just how to put it. You said something once that made me think you might find this. It's a safe bet you've read some Marx, and I need someone who's read some Marx. Paul, I know you're out there, and I know you'll see this, and you know as well as anyone that I love you like a brother... and I mean that... that's not the scotch speaking, that's just the scotch enabling me to say what's always been the truth. But the roots of this lie further back than even you, further back than the eight fuckin' years that I've known you... Forgive me, readers, for some reminiscing. August, 1998. I saw you in the stairwell. You were moving in, and I recognized you from the smoking lounge in HUB Mall at the U of A. We said hi. Neither of us, at the time, could have known the ramifications of that moment. Recently, you described me as "the fuckin' rock" in your life at a time shortly following. I don't know if I ever told you to exactly what degree you have been the same in mine. And yes, I say this with full knowledge of the fact that this is as public as it can possibly be. That's intentional. Pull me out of the aircrash/Pull me out of the lake/cause I'm your superhero/we are standing on the edge But there was that time. Betweeen June of '96 and August of '98. Names. Faces. Nick. Rhonda. Brent. The Sugarbowl as it used to be and the riverboat. Phil, Tyson, Matt, the memory of Kirsty Foote and Jenny Erechuk. Yes, I remember Jenny Erechuck, and I still have the obituary in a box somewhere. I'm saying more than I ought to and I don't care. I confuse the two, and I don't care.. While I'm at it, and while I have the liquid courage to say so, what the hell happened to you, Jess? Somewhere between Second Cup on 124th and Bistro 112, something changed. You're not the same girl that asked me for my phone number that day outside HUB, just to see (as I found out much later) if you could get it. And I suspect you know it, too. I have a sneaking suspicion that, given enough "liquid courage", you'd be making a post much like this one right now. I'll probably regret this in the morning. Mr. Objois, this is ammo for you. Mock away. Read Comments (3) | Add Comment

24 January 2006 You gain a whole new appreciation for hummus when you actually have to peel the chick peas yourself. This takes a long, long time. But it's well worth it. And thanks, Tex, for the recipe you gave me two years ago. Can't believe I waited this long to try it. Read Comments (1) | Add Comment

20 January 2006 I discovered this morning just how much I love doing math on a chalkboard. Read Comments (0) | Add Comment

10 January 2006 So this is the eve of what will be the third and fiercest day of the battle. And it's one I really don't know that I'm going to win. A part of me cannot sleep, fearing that tomorrow will come too soon, while the other part wishes desperately to sleep, for fear that tomorrow will not be over soon enough. I know full well I'm obfuscating here, but wish me luck anyway, okay? Read Comments (0) | Add Comment

8 January 2006 Okay, this is not going to be a particularly deep post or anything, but I feel the need to complain about Edmonton for a minute. There is absolutely nothing for a guy to do on a weeknight after 2am in this town. And when you don't get off work until 1:30am, that really sucks. Seems all the decent 24hour places closed down. The Breadstick Cafe, I believe, shut down years ago. Naked on Whyte blew up not too long ago (a mishap with a pressure valve on an espresso machine - I'm not kidding, wrote off the whole cafe when it blew). Naked on Jasper is supposed to be open until 4am, but lately seems to be shutting down right at 2, which is precisely the time I would arrive. This is particularly irritating since I just bought myself an old G3 PowerBook and am itching to take it out to someplace cool and do some writing. Whine off. Read Comments (1) | Add Comment

4 January 2006 There is some definite weirdness going on between by website and Safari. Sorry, folks, this one might take me a while to figure out. Read Comments (0) | Add Comment