Meat Chaser

My tummy’s been upset lately, hard to say exactly why but diet seems a reasonable enough guess given how this whole tummy thing figures into the whole body mechanism. Anyways I decided to start dropping more fruits and vegetables into it in an effort to appease the damn thing. So I had a salad tonight. A nice salad, two kinds of lettuce, tomato, red onion, swiss cheese and a nice Italian dressing. All in all a good vegetarian meal.

And yet…

The craving…

Less than ten minutes later I cranked open the fridge and sliced off a few chunks of pepperoni. Meat chaser for my salad.

I try, I really do, but I’m a goddam carnivore no matter how you cut it. Don’t think you could kill an animal for food? Tell you what. If the grocery store stopped selling meat I’d be out there strangling squirrels with my bare hands.

I like meat.

Green!

So I’ve been working myself into a frenzy the last twenty four hours or so by watching documentaries about oil, namely Robert Newman’s comedic History of Oil, Amory Lovins talk at TED and Who Killed the Electric Car? I’ve been alternating from despair to outrage to a serious case of “I’ve gotta do something!”

Hard to believe I didn’t think of this sooner. Many of us want to save the environment AND continue to live with our admittedly excessive standard of living. With peak oil and global warming not only looming but sitting right there in the room (shhhh! nobody say anything!) we really, really need to act. The self-centered part of me is just worried about filling the tank in the car, paying the bills and what’s going to happen to my WestJet stock if oil prices keep climbing. Which is what led me to this…

If I’m worried about my stocks maybe I can save myself with other stocks, namely green stocks. If through my investments I can help alternative energy producers gain a foothold and develop their technology, well my bills will go down, there’ll be less demand for oil - lowering or stabilizing the price, which helps my WestJet stock, and on top of it all I’ll be making money off of the alternative energy stocks as they become more and more popular.

Shit.

Amazing that selfishness leads to saving the world but it does.

So I’m entering the hardcore research phase. I don’t have a ton to invest, but I’ll put in what I can, and when I can afford it, well I’ll be driving an electric car and just keep pushing this wave onwards.

I may not have the scientific or legislative know-how to make big changes for the environment, but I can give money to the people who do. And so can you.

The Pound

Just got back from a Bruleurs get together, and love ‘em as I do I have to say things are slow. I know there are a lot of burners in town, but the critical mass of a bunch of them all in once place at one time doesn’t seem to happen much. Which brings me to…

The Pound

This is my place, the greatest place I’ve found so far in Montreal. The Pound is so fucking magical its hard to describe. Anything can happen. Its so open and chaotic and bubbling with potential and creativity. I’m seriously bummed that I’m not going this week due to work. It truly is the highlight of my week.

So, the plan is to try and mix the ingredients. Get Burners to the Pound. Get people from the Pound involved in Burner kind of stuff. Heck. If I can mix some UE into it all who knows what’ll happen!

Party at my place. Soon.

Too Strange for Waking Life

When I woke up the first time my room was dark. Twilight strode in through the window, making everything little more than muted greys, blacks and that blue that comes from Hollywood night scenes. As I blinked awake I noticed three distinct, tiny coils of smoke in the corner of the room by the dresser, and something moving. There in the darkness, no more than a foot tall was a woman in tight army fatigues and holsters wielding some sort of weapon which she had just shot at me three times.

This isn’t real.

I’m dreaming.

Sweet!

I leapt out of my dream bed in my dream body and proceeded to throw this comic book figured woman - who was by now full sized into the door and proceeded with a furious makeout session, ready and eager for my first lucid dream fuck.

In all the excitement I managed to wake myself up a second time, this time in my real body and my real bed. Frustrated but excited I willed myself back to sleep, and in moments I was experiencing another false awakening in my dream room. What woke me up but something attacking me through the sheets, rushing and scurrying around the room!

After frantic tussling amongst pillows and sheets on the bed and onto the floor I found myself face to face with some sort of rat/badger thing - oddly reminiscent of the coke badger from Its All Gone Pete Tong.

Oh fuck…

I stood up, oblivious to the little monster and tried flicking the lightswitch a couple of times. No response from the lights in the room.

I’m dreaming again.

I wake up — again — for real.

So goes my first foray into lucid dreaming. Apparently it isn’t willpower, careful intention when going to bed or dream masks that bring on the lucid state - rather it seems like a week of drinking and backwards sleeping habits does the trick.

Or maybe I just got lucky. My friend who was staying with me in Montreal for the week told me that I’d been talking in my sleep a few nights before which is something I don’t normally do, so maybe there was already something going on with my sleep state.

In any case I’m confident that it’ll be easier to revisit the lucid dream world now that I’ve finally pierced the veil for the first time. The first thing to work on will be maintaining my composure while lucid dreaming so I don’t wake myself up from a flight across an alien skyline or sex with a room full of Amazon warriors. This will just naturally become easier with time.

The journey begins…

Titles Suck

Blogging really is a cruel passtime, not entirely sure why I do it, besides the obvious inflated ego. I mean really, when its dry its dry - nothing to report on, zilch of interest, just ho hum. Then a ton of things happen and you’re too busy to write about them and feel hopelessly overwhelmed when finally you decide to put fingers to keyboard. Aye. Well, such this is being of the latter. How’s that for craptastic English?

First things first. The move is on. I have to say a big fucking merciful thanks to the ditz who manages my building for letting me move in a week early. What a fucking Godsend. With memories of stuffing my car to absolute capacity for the drive across country its a relief to only jam a managable number of boxes into its every orifice for a multitude of short trips to deck the place out. I’ve done two loads and I think I have two more, the second just because I have no Internet set up there yet so I’m going to leave this humming strumming machine on this desk until the last possible moment, otherwise I lose all of you wonderful people. Yeah fuck whatever.

Its big, its empty, it echoes like a motherfucker. I need furniture and appliances like nobody’s business. But I’m a cheapskate so aside from a bed I intend to pay little to nothing for all my new stuff. That’s what the curb is for. The dumpster diving ban is officially lifted and I can’t pretend I’m not thrilled. I already scored a corner planter thingy that sort of fits the steampunk aesthetic I think I’m going to go for. Next trip is to the wealthy Anglo neighbourhood of Westmount. Oh yeah…

Next off is last Thursday night at the Pound. Good times. Jan wasn’t there but the other German was with his Belgian friend in tow. I love how Montreal is kind of a default Europe where I get to meet all sorts of ex-pats and visiting Euros on their way through the crass joke that is America. Why travel when the people come to you? Of course Alex and Dave were there as well, along with Jacob and the usual Pound “staff.” Everyone got invites to my house warming, Maud got two because I was so baked by the end of the night I couldn’t really remember what was going on. We played soccer in the back during one of the sets. That’s what I love about the Pound, its just freewheeling. There was a dog too, no idea…

I ended up sleeping in a nest of coats at the new apartment since its a shorter walk there than it is to the place on Fullum. It may sound uncomfortable, but when you have a dozen coats for every possible ocassion from cyber-punk invasion to Siberian death marches you’re talking about a lot of padding.

So I worked though a hangover Friday afternoon dreading my later night obligations. See I’d agreed to help volunteer at an event Friday night for a woman off of Tribe, mostly out of curiosity as to what her events looked and felt like. What I really wanted though was a chance to sleep, not minding the door from 11pm until 2am. Well truth be told it was one of the best things I did because it was like wandering into a dome tent at Burning Man around Destiny and 8:30. The vibe was amazing. Definitely on the hippy end of the spectrum, but after the punk DIY sense of the Pound it was the perfect pendulum swing. I got a rhythmic massage (which finally seems to have solved that kink I’ve had ever since a wave in the Dominican took me and thrust me headfirst into the beach like a reluctantly terrified ostrich), then had some wonderfully open and honest dialogue with some truly beautiful people, danced a bit and… oh hell. Got to oogle four of the sexiest young women I’ve seen in a long, long time.

Unfortunately I got stuck there until almost three thirty, my damn volunteer gene kicking in and making me stay to help clean up even though I had to be up to work today. But it was all for the best, with no kink in my back and still wafting throught he scent of that wonderful vibe I had a great day at work, at once focussed and calm, fully able to express myself and have fun.

So now I’m packing the last of my things to load into the car tomorrow morning and bring to the loft on my way to work. Everything is proceeding beautifully. Life is good. Montreal is good. Things will only get better. Wheeeee!

WANTED: Mechanic Friend

Position to be filled immediately. Must have working knowledge of Japanese imports from the mid-1990’s. Must be thorough and take pride in their work. Must be patient and able to explain work in layman’s terms. Ideally is willing to work side by side with the vehicle owner on fixing issues, forcing said white collar schlep to get his hands dirty.

Willing to work for cost of components plus hefty helpings of beer, pizza, poutine and the occasional buddy pass.

Must be genuinely passionate about cars.

Applicants with an interest in art cars will be given special consideration.

Just spent $70 at Canadian Tire to be told they didn’t really feel like my car needed any work, despite the fact my gas mileage has gone down by 10%-20% in the past four months. Some cursory reading of information on the Internet on automotives gives me some idea of things that might need looking at. Not likely I’ll trust it to a bunch of twats who get paid by the hour and don’t have any relationship with the car owner though. Fuck that.

Irregular Operations - March 8th, 2008

“Armageddon!” came the cry through the radio amidst the roar of gale force winds. “Armageddon!”

It was the desperate voice of one of the ground crew at Pierre Elliot Trudeau airport last night as we were hit by the most intense storm I have ever seen. A wall of snow barrelled into the airport at a hundred kilometers an hour and didn’t relent in its onslaught for the entire night. Visibility was zero, the windows shook and the wind whistled through every microscopic crack and opening. It goes without saying that nothing was taking off or landing.

The storm was so intense that at least one major highway connecting the airport to downtown was shut down. Shuttle services stopped and the line for taxis downstairs was over four hours long. All hotels within ten miles of the airport were booked solid, not that it mattered since you couldn’t go anywhere anyways.

We were up problem shooting with guests until two am, hours after all the other airline staff had given up and gone into hiding. All around us the stranded were sleeping, playing cards, one young man was even meditating. There were people everywhere, on benches, the floor, on the baggage belts, behind counters, then when we finally went upstairs to escape from it all, it went on. All through the hallways of the administration building people sleeping on the floor, clutching greedily to blankets from the fire department. It was an obstacle course to get to the office trying not to hit a blonde woman in the head when you opened the door.

I’ve never seen anything like it. It felt like a war or a natural disaster.

The morning crew was having trouble getting in, many weren’t going to make it at all so having no sleep and witout much idea of what we were going to do for people we set out again at 5am to face the hordes.

By 7:30 a few other employees had made it in and we’d managed to deal with the guests who had immediate flights though hundreds were still for the time being stranded. With the help of some coworkers we dug my car out and headed out onto the eerily vacant freeway. Then in the rearview mirror I saw something terrifying. Right behind me in a deadly phalanx of steel were five snowplows bearing down. Sleep deprived and barely gripping the surface of the road I never the less punched the gas since a potential spinout on concealed ice was better than a guaranteed snow plow enema.

We ate a ridiculously large breakfast at a funky little breakfast cafe and bubbled in a strange sleep deprived haze of post-traumatic hysteria. Somehow I managed to make it the rest of the way home, carve out a little parking space out of the mountainous snow drifts on my street, crawl up to my room and into a ten hour coma.

I’d write so much more about the absurdity, the Lord of the Flies at the airport, but people deserve some respect for making it through a harrowing experience of winter’s wrath when all they were planning for was a week on some southern isle. I’m also in need of some sleep. I need to try and get my body back on track if I’m to function at all tomorrow. Lots to do, lots to get done. Okay. Let’s go.

Just some stuff

There are many things I could write about tonight, so the question becomes, where is my passion right now? What is burning to get out? What needs to be released, or lost, aflutter on the breeze or buried in the long term memory banks, not to be seen or heard from again until some night as an old man a thousand miles from here? What indeed.

I suppose the quickest and easiest thing to do, if not necessarily the most insightful is just to make note, tick off the items that I’ve accomplished lately. How about that? That’s a reasonable start at least.

• My application to Concordia University is ready to go. A bit of a revelation behind that. Its due tomorrow. I finished it today. See what I’ve discovered about myself, or rather accepted is that I work best under stress. That’s a positive way of saying that I procrastinate. And why not be positive about it? I mean if that’s the way I am, why be any other way? Planning, preparing, taking your time and being careful - that shit’s for chumps. Give me a three alarm deadline in half an hour - that’s when I shine. Ask for the impossible and you’ll get it. Ask for the possible and I’ll probably sleep in.
• I bought a Macbook Pro. Now this is kind of a counter to the prior point because I planned the hell out of this one. Extensive research into Apple’s product rollouts told me that something was going to happen at the end of February, so I waited, and fastidiously kept track of the pricing on my particular model of choice. Sure enough when I looked today I found rumours circulating that Apple was upgrading its Macbooks to a new processor and a push was on to get rid of the old. When I looked at my model there it was… $650 cheaper. Bang! Sold! Should arrive sometime next week. Did I mention I hate Macs?
• Carmella asked me to go to Cuba with her. She found a great deal and she’s going stir crazy and needs to get off this big glob of dirt we call North America. Fair enough. Trick is she wants to go SOON. How the heck am I going to get the time off? How the heck am I going to pay for it? Sure I just saved $650, but does that entitle me to blow it on a week in Cuba? Then again, she has a good point - once Castro’s gone things will start to change down there very quickly. Tempting…

Nuit Blanche is Saturday night. Best English translation is all night city wide art party. I have no idea where to go or what to do, but hell, its going to be fun. Chriz might even drop in for the night. Tomorrow night is the more pressing concern. Which of two or three parties to go to? I wussed out on the Pound tonight since I’ve got to deliver my application before work tomorrow and see if I can get an April 1 takeover for one of the St. Henri lofts. I still wussed out. Whatever. There’ll be plenty of time to boogey. I need to get some things done first.

Wow. What an efficient blog post. Not entirely profound or entertaining, but it gets the job done. Perhaps a 20/20 travelogue in hindsight for Chriz and I’s little Dominican adventure next. Why not?

Work

You know what I miss about Calgary? Its not the mountains, the clean air, the incredulous civic pride or even the people (sorry guys). The thing I miss most about Calgary, boom time Calgary, is the power I held over the head of my employers. Shit man. How fucking awesome was that? I could dictate my hours, my days off even get time and a half just for coming in or staying late. All that was required was the threat that I might leave and I got everything I wanted. Not so now.

The biggest obstacle to my really enjoying myself and getting the most out of life here in Montreal is my schedule. I only get three out of seven nights off and those nights are invariably Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday - not exactly peak times for happenings about town or more importantly nights I want to create happenings. I could go back to mornings, but anything before 6am is pretty much lethal to my owl’s internal clock. Another alternative is applying for part time which has more varied shifts, but that would probably lead to troubles come school time. But hell, where there’s a will there’s a way. Spring and summer schedule will be a different beast from what I’ve dealt with in fall and winter. I’m also the sort to approach scheduling and management and present a mutually beneficial alternative. You don’t get if you don’t ask.

No Such Thing as a Wasted Trip

It would be understandable if I were upset. After all getting a projector is a big part of my plan to create the Living Room Cinematheque. Without a projector the whole thing kind of falls apart, unless I can manage to convince people that staring at a blank wall is somehow entertaining.

Today I ventured out across town to meet the seller of the projector, do a little demo and hopefully seal the deal, giving me a super cheap solution to the projector problem. I got on the metro and headed out, almost to the end of the line, went to the designated meeting spot and ordered myself a coke. Five to ten minutes later my phone rang and the seller informed me that A) he was running late and B) he had just tested the projector and it was “acting funny.” He told me he’d call back in fifteen minutes trying to resolve the problem.

The night before I’d done some research on the projector, obsessively googling it and also checking out the alternatives on eBay. There were some misgivings from “the experts” about the video performance of the unit though consumers didn’t seem to mind. In terms of alternatives there wasn’t much in a comparable price range. It was either this or something substantially more expensive. I figured for the Living Room Cinematheque pilot project a cheap projector that wasn’t perfect would do just fine - at least until such time as I could afford something better.

Waiting for the seller to call me back I decided to explore the neighbourhood since its a part of Montreal I haven’t been in before. My interest was quickly piqued by a rather tall old smokestack and a large circular tower a few blocks away. I set out to discover what exactly this architectural marvel was. As I drew near I figured it out, the smokestack was the physical plant for Hôpital Louis-H. Lafontaine. Trying to get a closer view of the impressive old tower I ventured into one of the buildings. Immediately upon stepping onto the grounds though a strange feeling tingled at the back of my consciousness. As I walked the corridors I began to figure it out.

Checking up on Google when I got home confirmed it, Hôpital Louis-H. Lafontaine is a psychiatric hospital. The old halls were permeated with that distinct aura that inhabits these places. The people I saw in the halls had that forlorn, confused and in some cases totally removed look. Some hunched and uncommunicative, others alert to things that nobody could see but them. Electric maintenance trolleys and floor polishers rushed through the facility like busy worker ants, almost oblivious to the patients around them as they slid around with their quietly eerie electronic hum. Most of the hospital was quiet, forlorn, except for the area underneath the tower, the apparent nerve centre of the facility. Here a freight elevator waited to ferry supplies up and down the imposing structure and staff scurried back and forth. Temptingly one of the first doors I walked through was right next to a door marked “Tunnel Access” (in English no less), but psychiatric hospitals probably have more vigilant security than most, and I’d hate to be mistaken for a patient while trying to talk my way out of a sticky situation.

At the end of the day it was an inspiring backdrop with incredible story potential. Sad to think of what it was in reality though, with its fenced off outdoor yards and that panopticonic tower. Suffering from paranoia and delusions I’m sure that tower’s iconography and symbolic power did more to push patients to lurking paranoia then to stability and peace of mind.

With perfect timing the seller called me back as I was walking off the grounds and informed me that the projector still wasn’t working right and that it might be an issue with the fan. He apologized profusely but was glad it’d happened before he sold it rather than afterwards, and this in part is why I’m not upset.

Buying the projector and having it subsequently break on me would have been a much bigger hassle than going out and having a coke and home fries this morning. The projector probably wasn’t my best buy for my purposes despite the excellent price anyway, now I don’t have to worry about it. Not only that but I got to see things in the city that I haven’t yet seen - the eerie mental hospital and the science fiction inspiring Radisson metro station. It got me up and out of bed before noon which is something I haven’t done in… weeks. In the end much more good came of the experience than bad and I’m sure that before you know it I’ll find the perfect projector at a price I can live with. No worries.

So… I have every reason to be upset. But I’m not. I’m actually quite happy. Let’s see what else the day holds in store!