things that make me smile

mostly this, right now:
dozens of these off-pink little numbers, all along dovercourt. why ? who knows. did it make me look ? yes. did it make me grin, most definitely. trust me. click on it and take the time to read the poster (cause some crazy fucker took the time to write it, draw it, print it, copy it and tape 'em all up)...

the end.

name that tune

"manic monday" on an easy thursday.
"easy like sunday morning" on a manic wednesday.

something i've been attempting to document for the past few months is exactly which song i have stuck in my head upon waking. i've been pretty shit at writing it down, as i'm generally soaking wet and naked under a stream of scalding water at the time of cogniscense; like i'm not even awake enough to know i've got a song in my brain until it's steam-heated to some ridiculous temperature.

this morning it was toni basil's "mickey" and i can't figure out why the fuck that would be rolling around in there at such an ungodly hour.

there really is no rhyme or reason. it's almost never something current & it's rarely an old favorite --it's just a simple tune that has been lodged in the recesses of my grey matter for eons, waiting for just the right morning to surface. and the thought of unlocking a pattern feels like it could be the key to eternal happiness (or surely something of the like).

it reminds me of the months that tanzir, nelly & i charted the outfits of a girl at their work. we called her baby blue (i forget the exact reason why, now, but surely had something tongue-in-cheek to do with friday-late-night-soft-core television). hippy shirt with the tight jeans monday. blue sweater with the hippy skirt tuesday. jogging outfit wednesday. and then the patterns (and the questions) began to emerge...

why did she ALWAYS wear the hippy shirt on monday ?
why was there a greater probability of a ponytail if she wore the green button-up ?
and who would win the ten dollar pot by guessing the correct outfit TOMORROW ??

congratulations again, tanzy.

no point.

Gondolas & Coasters. Trolleys & Trains

There’s something very cathartic, to me, about taking a trip. Some people might see it as running away, but I prefer to look at it as an excursion that provides perspective to a certain situation. Oftentimes it punctuates the end of a period of my life; the end of a schoolyear, the end of a working ‘season’, or (in recent years) the end of a relationship.

In October 2003, I convinced my best girlfriend, Jen, to take a roadtrip with me from Calgary to Vegas. It was a less-than-random destination, as it coincided with my favorite-travel-couple-of-all-time’s wedding, but seemed sortof appropriate as Jen was suffering deeply from the still-bleeding wound of breakup, and desperately needed to get the fuck outta dodge. She needed to see that there was more to the world than the little playground that she’d built with ‘him’. And I needed a roadtrip…

She spent the first few days bitching, and I spent the first few days listening. As the green Montana ranches turned red into Utah painted backdrops, the physical distance between them manifested itself in her demeanour. By the time we hit Vegas (baby, vegas), I had her on the path to recovery, figuratively holding her hand and walking her away from the past and into the gaudy neon flashing lights of the future. And on our last night, she walked alone:

“Are you gonna come on the rollercoaster with me ?” she asks.

“Not a chance,” I reply, steadfast in my hatred of any ride of any sort.

“C’moooon… please ? I really wanna go.”

“So go.”

“But everyone else has someone to sit with”

“So don’t go.”

In the end, she went. And I watched her take her first steps…

So here I am, on the train to Montreal: a trip to punctuate the end of something that never really even got started. Sad, really... Friendship or love –who’s to say—in its infancy, needlessly smothered either by my devotion to the idea of something better than ourselves, or his apparent lack thereof.

Last night, over solo beers at bluegrass night, I was reminded of it all… and I smiled.

morning after crazydreams

woke up this morning feeling pretty shit, due to an excess of beer & crazy dreams.

we'll begin our dream selection in a posh hotel in calgary, of all places (strange only in that i have my own house there, so the hotel part... well... it WAS a dream). having already packed, i opted to kill time in the lobby. as dreams have a way of doing, somehow i was running late, then, and rushed off to hail a taxi.

[there is this whole other subplot here, whereby i hail a cab that's heading the wrong way, as i'm often likely to do in real life, and as he turns around he gets stuck in mud & another cabbie pulls over to pick me up. as i get into taxi#2, the driver of taxi#1 starts SCREAMING at me: all memorably occurring in shadowy shades of soderbergh greens... i think this section has to do with my overwhelming guilt for something or other in real-life. but i digress...]

at some point here i see my english pilot mate, james, and there is some smooching involved. all very casual and normal at the time, but clearly (in conscious retrospect) makes no sense at all. i believe it was during all this kissing that i realize i've left my passport at the hotel.

of course i rush back to get it and, of course, it's still there. but much to my stomach-dropping horror, there are certain things missing: my photo & info page, my UK working visa, my australian working visa (in reality, these two visas are in consecutive passports). but more awful is the fact the guy has stapled in some phony stamps cut from OTHER people's passports and he's left behind a bunch of personal photos. so, of course, i spend the rest of the dream frantically looking for this man, devastated that i can no longer travel abroad...

fuck, i'm exhausted just thinking about it.

not being much of a dream interpreter, i can see that i get the passport theft theme from my dude who's leaving (who's crazy friend stole his travel stuff so he'd be grounded on this side of the atlantic). i get the not-being-able-to-fly-overseas bit from bailing on europe with dyl. and, well... i TOTALLY get the frantic search for some mystery guy...

hm.
no point.

raging pink sky

i figured it's high time i started one of these things... it'll be easier just to post shit and then email it to everyone rather than try to reply to the 612 emails i've got stagnating in my inbox. who knows if it'll work...

i had cooie on messenger earlier and she insisted on posting our conversation on HER site, then she insisted i start one of my own. kinda like a journal only i don't have to try to find one with the right kind of paper that will store all my shite and fit in my backpack...

it's coming up on 8pm, which (in late-summer-toronto) means soon the sky will turn these awesome shades of pinks and violets... at least smog is good for something...

i've been in a bit of a funk these last few days. needing to sort some stuff out in my life:
i bailed on europe with dyl & feel sorta guilty about it.
my dude (never really mine) is possibly disastrous & definitely leaving.
there's no hockey.

i'm bored.
the end (for now)