dear owner of one ninja hauler

it's been a damn long time since i've written on this, my eponymous blog, for it's been some time since i've been inspired to blog about anything other than hockey (for which i have my alternate flames-based forum). today, however, i woke up and discovered that one of my pals had linked to a craigslist ad selling a 2005 exterra:

NINJA HAULER: 2005 Nissan Xterra - $12900 (Ronan / Lake County)

Reply to: sale-926508578@craigslist.org [?]
Date: 2008-11-19, 10:04PM MST

OK, let me start off by saying this Xterra is only available for purchase by the manliest of men (or women). My friend, if it was possible for a vehicle to sprout chest hair and a five o'clock shadow, this Nissan would look like Tom Selleck. It is just that manly.

It was never intended to drive to the mall so you can pick up that adorable shirt at Abercrombie & Fitch that you had your eye on. It wasn't meant to transport you to yoga class or Linens & Things. No, that's what your Prius is for. If that's the kind of car you're looking for, then just do us all a favor and stop reading right now. I mean it. Just stop.

This car was engineered by 3rd degree ninja super-warriors in the highest mountains of Japan to serve the needs of the man that cheats death on a daily basis. They didn't even consider superfluous nancy boy amenities like navigation systems (real men don't get lost), heated leather seats (a real man doesn't let anything warm his butt), or On Star (real men don't even know what the hell On Star is).

No, this brute comes with the things us testosterone-fueled super action junkies need. It has a 265 HP engine to outrun the cops. It's got special blood/gore resistant upholstery. It even has a first-aid kit in the back. You know what the first aid kit has in it? A pint of whiskey, a stitch-your-own-wound kit and a hunk of leather to bite down on when you're operating on yourself. The Xterra also has an automatic transmission so if you're being chased by Libyan terrorists, you'll still be able to shoot your machine gun out the window and drive at the same time. It's saved my bacon more than once.

It has room for you and the four hotties you picked up on the way to the gym to blast your pecs and hammer your glutes. There's a tow hitch to pull your 50 caliber anti-Taliban, self cooling machine gun. I also just put in a new windshield to replace the one that got shot out by The Man.

My price on this bad boy is an incredibly low $12,900, but I'll entertain reasonable offers. And by reasonable, I mean don't walk up and tell me you'll give me $5,000 for it. That's liable to earn you a Burmese-roundhouse-sphincter-kick with a follow up three fingered eye-jab. Would it hurt? Hell yeah. Let's just say you won't be the prettiest guy at the Coldplay concert anymore.

There's only 69,000 miles on this four-wheeled hellcat from Planet Kickass. Trust me, it will outlive you and the offspring that will carry your name. It will live on as a monument to your machismo.

Now, go look in the mirror and tell me what you see. If it's a rugged, no holds barred, super brute he-man macho Chuck Norris stunt double, then contact me. I might be out hang-gliding or BASE jumping or just chilling with my ladies, but I'll get back to you. And when I do, we'll talk about a price over a nice glass of Schmidt while we listen to Johnny Cash.

To sweeten the deal a little, I'm throwing in this pair of MC Hammer pants for the man with rippling quads that can't fit into regular pants. Yeah, you heard me. FREE MC Hammer pants.

Rock on.

all i can say is WOW. i don't have 13K to throw around but if i did, i would have gotten my ass down to lake county, montana, this american thanksgiving weekend and picked myself up one sweet ride.

so thank you, ninja hauler salesman. i appreciate your absurdly creative writing of this this gem of an advertisement so that i could comment on it, thereby vaulting me over the year-long bout of writer's block. i intend to write more often over here....

if you happen to be googling your work and land over here, well thank you ever so much.

:)

hunter street

perhaps it's because i never spent much time in the city's downtown, or maybe my years of absence had let the change slip by unnoticed, but hunter street in newcastle now appeared to be a veritable ghost town. in the eight blocks to my destination, the broken glass of empty shops led past boarded up pubs, to endless graffitied storefronts. the sidewalks were populated only with the occasional tattoo shop employee (this, clearly, still a thriving industry); markedly absent were panhandlers and undesireables, street kids and the crazy folk... even they had better places to be....

i arrived at the cambridge with time to spare, to find the boys in the midst of soundcheck. before long, lindsay and i set off to explore the surroundings, returning with a round of coffees and a pocketful of age-old hair beads from "the rock shop" that would be attached to the braids in lindsay's rat-tail extensions while under-agers scaled the patio fence. a few beers later and my silly-haired guitar-playing friend would encite the hundreds of sweaty, drunk aussie punkers to welcome his mate, "the girl with the funny canadian accent," before the band tore into a crowd favorite:

"never had so much fun."

gettin' in the habit

i leave for australia in exactly two weeks (holy CRAP) and i'm starting to get back into posting daily. i've been very consistant at writing stuff over on my hockey blog, even in the off-season, but i've definitely been a bit stumped to write much of anything over here. i'm definitely hoping to turn that around a little while i'm gone. we'll see how much time i end up with to be creative, with all the boozing and socializing i've got on the schedule... ;)

today i've been thinking about how i've been a homeowner for nearly SIX years and still don't really own anything.... both the roommies will be moved out by the time i return, so i will walk back in to a messy bedroom and a truly empty house. with very little cash in my pockets, i'll have to spend a few thousand bucks on stuff like a sofa & loveseat, a coffee table, a kitchen table/chairs etc. etc. etc. too bad that january is about as far away from garage sale season as i can possibly get...

but, of course, when i start thinking about acquiring one thing, it starts to snowball. i think maybe i'll put a sectional over in the corner where the TV is, which would require me to either move the telly or... get a really nice big flatscreen and mount it above on the wall.... ? it doesn't help that the layout of my living room is really twisted, though i must take full responsibility for that cause i decided to put in the 'bar.' *sigh*...

and i'm a-gonna need a freakin' toaster....

garden state

i remember the first time i watched zach braff's 2004 directorial debut "garden state," i thought it was the most incredibly beautiful movie of my generation. upon a second viewing, however, it occurred to me that the film itself was average; a quasi-believeable yet fairly mundane storyline, punctuated with a series of intensely beautiful moments. i realized today that what i'd initially thought to be the movie's downside is actually it's brilliance: the film is a flawless mirror image of 'real life.'

there have been moments, in my past, where i have taken a mental snapshot of the physical beauty around me. other times, i take a deep breath and note how truly, perfectly and utterly happy i feel in my heart, so that i can recollect it in the impending darker times of melancholy and confusion. when i look in the mirror puffy-eyed and tear-streaked, i am able to smile at my misfortune with the memory of golden sunlight, the laughter of friends, soft lips...

i am living my garden state....

we are all made of stars...

i feel as though i should begin this post with some kindof historical view on the heavens, how innumerable ancient societies must have viewed the shimmering lights in the night skies, or how the stars have become wonderous and magical things to look upon, and to divine the future...

but instead, i'll lead with this: in all the time i've been anticipating my return to australia, it didn't occur to me until tonight that i'm looking forward, with the most excitement, to seeing the southern cross...

i spent half the night tonight trying to figure out if the wisps of clouds barely visible in the darkness were, infact, clouds, or if they might have been the northern lights. i sat on my balcony and acknowledged both the bears (ursa major and minor) and orion, while breathing in the crisp calgary autumn air, thinking about the past two times i saw the aurora borealis from the city, and the one perfect time i saw them in astonishing colour and duration through the window of an airplane. then i spent the rest of the night poring over my old journals, trying to find the entry from margaret river when i mentioned walking home from work at the knights inn, my path across the field led by the southern cross and lit by the moon... it was a beautiful, magical time.

the southern cross holds some mysterious and incredible charm for me, and i think it's because it's so bright and obvious in the southern skies and yet most of the people that surround me day-to-day have never laid eyes on it. it is this twinkling picasso, an absolute heavenly masterpiece, that i guess i can't believe people don't flock to see, the way they do the louvre... or that the people that do get to see it every night don't become enchanted by it at every sundown.

i would walk back to the lodge through gloucester park (which, btw, i only discovered was its name about 30 seconds ago), most days and nights, either from the tavern, the shops, the cafes, the post office or from work on walcliffe road at the margaret river resort: the knights inn. it was a fairly sizeable park and i recall days where i would dress with my bathing suit underneath my work clothes, so as to tear them off as i ran through the park so i could jump straight into the pool. at night i would walk without shifting my gaze from the 'cross, and try to remember every divet in the grass so as to not trip and fall...

i couldn't find the entry, but what i DID find was the entry from exmouth, december 18th 1998, when wade, su and i went to the shore at night to catch sight of the sea turtles laying eggs. well, we didn't see any of them but it was a night full of shooting stars, and wishes were made a-plenty...

i can't help but wonder if any of them came true...

driving home from set on my last job, i missed a turn on the stoney reserve and opted to continue on highway 1A all the way back to calgary. just as i crossed the ghost dam, a shooting star brighter than any i'd ever seen fell to the ground just infront of my car. it was so vividly bright and huge that i actually considered pulling over and looking for the smouldering spacerock. instead i made a wish...

thanksgiving

it's been an awfully long time since my last post, and it's mostly due to going through a totally uncreative period, yet again. not surprisingly, the bouts of disinterest in writing coincide directly with long stretches of exhausting work that are followed by long stretches of boredom... *sigh*

this past weekend was thanksgiving, here in canada, and on saturday night i was suffering from a minor case of the melancholies; i was cocooning on my couch watching mindless television when my phone rang.

"area code 509 ????" i thought to myself, convinced (as i hit 'answer') that it would be a wrong number.... nope. it was dez calling from winthrop washington, just to say hello. i can't say how much that phonecall meant to me --a guy i adore, but with whom i've never corresponded with any regularity. it was incredible to know that the salt of the earth was on the other end of the line...

of course it's not news that that all a person needs sometimes for a quick pick-me-up are their friends.... and i have been blessed, in my lifetime, to know some pretty fucking amazing souls...

so, after i got off the phone with dez, i jumped onto msn messenger and low and behold, there was lindsay. although i intend to see lindz in a little over a month, down in australia, i hadn't communicated with him much over the past while. we chatted for awhile, about the usual things --music, movies, food. can't wait to see the goof...

hangin' online with lindsay got me all jonesin' for aussie, so i (of course) called ems. she was out at a party so the convo was short, but the "i love yous" are always so heartfelt between us that i couldn't help but hang up the phone with a stupid grin on...

in the past two days i've had some extralong conversations with cooie, who happens to be on a working vaykay in belize. when i need counsel, she is my first call --and i'm glad to say the street goes two ways. she is insightful and strong and wonderful...

but the clincher ?

a text reading "what has 4,000,000 thumbs and sucks without you ? ...... downtown toronto."

a smokejumper i met on the beach in the kingdom of tonga....
a punk rocker, radio show host i met backstage at a porkers show...
two of the best friends a girl could ever ask for...
an award winning drummer from a shithot band...

thanks, guys, for making me smile....

x

44 updated

i don't even know where to begin... so i'll start from the start...

in september, 2003 i caught a flight to london with a 2 year work visa in my passport and a few thousand dollars in my pocket. hagan had been living there for some time, and a room had recently opened up in her flat (pulbro lodge is probably the coolest house i've ever lived in, it had a backyard AND a conservatory, and was located in the heart of islington). i arrived and paid first and last months rent, which left me with very little dough after the conversion to pound sterling.

i needed a job.

sure, if i'd started out immediately and landed a shitty retail or restaurant gig, i would've had no problems, but i spent a few weeks lollygagging; visiting with friends i'd met along the way, and making half-assed attempts to find a job in my field. it didn't take long to realize the money was gonna run out LONG before xmas (my target date for deciding whether to go home for the holidays and return in the new year, or pull chute on the whole UK idea)... so i hit it hard. i've never, before or since, had so much trouble landing a film gig, but this was an excercise in exhaustion and frustration: running around a huge city, dropping off resumes and getting notsomuch as a single call... and with no income, i wasn't having any fun. i was conserving money like it was going out of style by eating toast and tuna sandwiches and staying in every night listening to kent... it was depressing...

it was about this point when i realized that david blaine was hanging around in a perspex box on the south bank of the thames at tower bridge. i used this as a motivator, allowing myself to go in the afternoon only after spending a solid morning of job hunting and researching. i found an incredible amount of solace in him and his feat: 44 days without food, suspended in what amounted to little more than a human aquarium. i would think "what am i in such a rush to do ? look at this guy, he put himself into this situation, he's GOT to be more bored than me, and all he can do (like me) is wait it out."

the first day i went, i found a nice electrical/telephone pole about 100 feet away to lean against. it was to the side of the box, to the east, and thus a good distance from the crowds which were always directly beneath his glass cage. i would stand and watch for awhile, and my mind would wander. i would formulate plans of attack, think about home and be melancholy and lonely and impatient for the good times. it was his day 31.

the second day, i wore my expos cap. after about a half hour of my silent musings, he turned and looked towards where i stood, motioned a "tipping of his [non-existant] cap" and gave me a thumbs up (as in: "nice hat"). i grinned and nodded thanks. he turned back and continued acknowledging the crowd below him, and i continued daydreaming --all-the-while sending off what positive energy i could muster: "how can I be impatient with MY life ??? i appreciate your zen-ness, sir."

the third day, he turned and looked and made the same hat tipping motion, then shrugged his shoulders, as if to ask "where's the cap ?" i smiled, and shrugged back, thinking "yeah, that's me. the chick with the expos hat. i'm not wearing it today." the fourth day he laid down to look out the side towards me, and just smiled for ages... i stood silently, still, and tried my best to muster pleasant thoughts and positive energy towards a man i'd never met. a magic man who was somehow keeping me mentally strong though he must have been (at that point) incredibly physically weak... i continued going for another 5 or so days, always in the afternoons, always leaning on the pole, always sharing what positive vibes i could muster and daydreaming conversations...

i am an incredibly impatient person by nature, and, in the years since, i have always looked back on these days as the first in my awareness of a life lesson to slow it down. the number 44 turns up out of the blue with absurd frequency, and each time i am reminded of those days, and how i need to relax. chill out. breathe... two months ago, i tattooed 44 (in braille) on my right wrist as a physical reminder of it all, and i look to it often when i start getting all bent out of shape about, well... anything.

last night, in a daze of melancholy "what am i doing with my life" blues, i came across blaine's myspace page, and i wrote a quick thank you, simply noting my appreciation for the inspiration to learn patience at a time when i was certainly anything BUT. i'll be honest, i didn't expect a response. and i definitely didn't expect this:

whoah.
i may have to re-evaluate my beliefs in the power of thought, energy, observation, and higher consciousness... and i am certainly re-examining any doubts i had about blaine vibrating on a higher level than the rest of us....

my response ?
"indeed..."