Vacation Photos

What is the deal with vacation photos? I mean, okay, occasionally there's a really nice photo or a funny moment captured, but witness exhibit A:

What compelled me to take this photo? At the time I thought there was something great about that mountain, but look at it. It's a mountain. And mostly this is a picture of our dashboard. And while it does record that brief time where we had successfully glued the car started antenna into place before it fell off again (sheesh) but how long will the long string of ones and zeros that comprise this picture in my hard drive survive and too what end?



This one may have a bird in it.

Or perhaps that bridge held some interest.

Or that chemical plant.

Wow seascapes are great.


You know, I took photography in junior high school. I'm supposed to be competent. And the picture is displayed on the screen before you take it.

This blog sucks

My blog sucks.

There are two kinds of good blogs: the kind that rarely get updated, but make up for it by being so desperately funny or moving or real, and the kind that are occassionally funny or touching, but get updated all the time so you're at least following along with the saga of their life.

I'd be happy to have the second kind of blog. I'm no Dave Eggers of blogs. But I'm apparently incapable of caring enough to post more than once in a blue moon, with my vague and uninteresting posts, which begs the question why anyone short of a spogger would bother to read it.

Last night my friends and I were discussing the role of blog as confessional. I think people *like* the fact that people they know might find their blog and read the falsely anonymous diary. They get to let those people in on what they think of as "the real me" while imposing a kind of code of silence about it because those people can't admit to having read it without a kind of "snooping" judgement being placed on them.

My blog is particularly poor because the only people that read it are really close to me - so what's the point of confessing to them?

Another point against it is the ludicrous high-concept format that doesn't really work.

Does the universe need this:

Last night my sister was in town and we went to the Chapters (all hail the temple of texts) and I bought this cheesy Shakespeare based tarot set from the bargain bin.

It's so pathetic. I mean, at least a classic deck has some reasonably old tradition behind it to give it a (false?) sense of the wisdom of the ages. This is obvious cash-candy.

So last night after Lady Rose went to sleep I did a reading for myself and found it oddly touching and personal - accurate, encouraging, and challenging in all the ways great mysteries can be. But this morning I have this worry: if I am inspired by this to make a change and it works and my life gets better, am I going to be able to live with the fact that it was caused by a Shakespeare tarot deck?

Everyone get ready to join in on the chorus: He's a lamey... whoa whoa whoa, he's a lamey. Talkin' about my little lamey... and that lamey is lame!

Apparently I'm a little conflicted. (Which the deck predicted! Bah!)

Seriously. Is the world better? Am I better? Would I be typing this if an ulcer attack brought on by poor life choices hadn't awakened me prematurely?

Feh.

Oh, I almost forgot to post an inexplicable image.

Huh. Didn't seem to work. Oh well.

Meta-blogging

Yesterday I wrote this for my blog, but (horrors!) the internet was down at work. How the fuck am I supposed to waste time while I wait for work with no internet?!!! Anyhoo, here's what I wrote:

Over the past few days work has been a total bore – my many and varied projects continue to be tied up in various waiting games for feedback/instruction from such powers-that-be as the city, my bosses, and the dreaded clients-who-believe-I-am-a-time-traveller-and-thus-don’t-need-to-send-me-feedback-until-the-exact-moment-they-want-a-response. Hours of sitting with nothing to do, nothing “billable” anyway, and I am stripped of my connection to what I am doing here. I am a cog in an alien machine whose complexity is designed to cloak its true purpose.

Crazybirdlady is sick today – because she too has lost her purpose? – so I am alone with my thoughts and my waiting and my obsessive reading of other people’s blogs. My current favourite is “Bad News Hughes” – a disturbing freak from Florida that I would almost certainly hate if I met in person, but is a damned funny writer at that.

An email arrives – I have some work I can do, but a week of lazy has a kind of terrible momentum to it. It takes real effort to get going again, my brain feels like cornstarch in water – totally soquid.

By the way, I am totally floored by the current situation in Lebanon. Suppose some nuts in Niagra kidnapped some U.S. border guards and the Canadian government couldn’t get them back that day. Would it then be justified for the U.S. to bomb Toronto? Of course not – that would obviously be psychotic. So when Israel bombs the Beruit airport because terrorists in a different part of the country have kidnapped their soldiers what do we do? Call it reasonable and try to evacuate our citizens from the Israeli swath of destruction. 300 civilians dead because terrorists kidnapped 2 soldiers. Yeah, that’s totally justified. Of course the U.S. can’t say anything – they bombed the shit out of Afghanistan when some terrorists that lived in the backwoods of that country messed with them. But us Canadians are supposed to be better than that. Stephen Harper should pull his head out of his ass, and do something useful instead of his lame “I’m going to Cyprus to help the evacuation” publicity stunt. For shame “Steve”, for shame.

******

Anyway, that's the stuff I wrote yesterday. I still am stuck for work. Crazybigboss is still crazy. But at least I've got a bunch of planning done for my upcoming vacation.

Items of small note

Yesterday I played soccer. Went up for a header on a high ball in our own 18 yard box and some forward from the other team nailed me while I was in mid-air creating a dramatic 360 degree airborn wipeout which earned me a free kick and a "way to play tough" from my team-mates. Would have been "tough"er if I hadn't run out of steam in the second half and mostly trotted futilely around the mid-field.

Tomorrow eve (at the Auburn - froofy-actor-bar-a-go-go) a short play I wrote will be read as part of a bunch of readings from a playwriting workshop I'm in. Professional actors - curious to see if they make more of it than I imagine my regular community types could. I'm a little dubious - how deep can you get in five minutes? - but I do like Trevor Ruger and Shari Watling (name drop!) so I am excited to see them in action on the various pieces.

Humans are so weird

Don't waste too much time reading the actual post listed below, just get the gist of what they did and then check out the epic flamewar it started in the comment section.

http://toiletpaperonline.typepad.com/
the_blog/2005/11/walmart_dance_p.html

Just when I think the aliens I work with are too weird to be believed, some humans step up to remind me that we're pretty screwed up too.

Work versus "the work"

I'm writing a book. It's funny - I'm almost 90,000 words into the thing and it still feels like hubris to say so. Like I should hedge my bets - "I'm trying to write a book" - in case I still somehow give up on the thing. But it feels like its got momentum now.

Anyhoo, things have gotten really busy at work. The crazy big boss is throwing tasks around like grenades while everyone else scrambles to keep their other projects on track despite the extra work. I'm going to have to work overtime just to get it done which cuts into the non-work time of my life.

And I resent that. I'm still working on my book anyway - but I'm tired a lot of the time, and irritated about the politics and conflicts of the office, and I worry that it will steal the sharpness out of my writing.

In some ways I wish I could quit and just do what I love. But I like having a home. A lot. And food is good too. And all the things that money provides. Maybe what I resent most of all is a world that makes these things incompatible.

Someday, I say. Someday.

How long can a myth keep you going?

Long enough to finish a book, anyway.

Chastized

So I've been chastized (again) for not updating my blog. Okay - here goes.

Work is so weird lately - crazybirdlady went on vacation leaving behind a trail of half finished yet vaguely urgent projects and a half finished fight with the robotfromanotherplanet. So I had to scramble to keep the peace and the pieces and managed to be variously busy and bored out of my skull until she returned. The unspoken politics continue, but at least I've been busy with my own crap.

Last weekend was a wedding (the good twin) which was both less inappropriate than expected given the groom and his brothers sense of humour, and less stuffy than expected given the extended families. I, for one, couldn't give a flying crap how things are done in Scotland, but apparently this wedding had to be the last bastion of Scotsdom in western canada. I did end up acting as an usher at the last moment which was no big deal. Having been involved in a healthy number of weddings so far I know how they're supposed to work. I'm mostly just glad that the dramatics are over. Plus it was fun being drunk and trying to hail a cab downtown, on the same night that the flames won a game. (Their last, as it turned out.)

I feel vaguely ill and intend to cash that into a partial day off tomorrow.

I'm a little whiney these days (what else is new) because none of the people I emailed the latest chapter of my novel to sent me comments back. Except for my most loyal friend, and he only sent a note indicating he had read it. This is not turning out to be a very effective support system. I start feeling angry every time I open my email. But then, what the fuck am I being such a baby about? It's not like I ever email any of them on a regular basis.

I don't even blog on a regular basis.

Ah well. Maybe I'll get some more spog with this post.