Wow

I just told myself that the odds of me getting a job at a paper were pretty minimal.

And then a posting came up in Olds. Flashback, I was there for my practicum when I was still in college. Albeit at a different paper, but now the two papers have been merged, and I'd be working with a couple of people from the old paper.

I'm intrigued. More so that this would come up just as I'm ready to give up on print media. If I get the job, and that's still a rather substantial IF I get this job, I'll probably be living on my own. I already know, from my last venture up there, the extended family didn't appreciate my lack of communication with them, but what can I say? I like my privacy. I would, however, have to apply myself to the community. Which could possibly work in my favour. Maybe.

Meanwhile, I'm going nuts because this room is filled with tiny little moths that keep brushing up on my arms and legs. I see a spider got one. Ruddy little bastard is getting what he deserved.

Walkabout

Someone once said that, when coming to a fork in the road, we should always take the path less travelled. Failing to note, of course, that both paths were laid out for a reason, and that treading one or the other will still result in you becoming a pawn in someone else's scheme. Two trails are apparent, but like occams razor states, the space inbetween can be divided up into an infinite number of paths, without ever rendering nothing.



Dark skies and luminous green fields. There is no place in reality for this.



To spite the lightning that smote it, the tree grew crooked and menacing, a parodic visage of that which destroyed it.



And after it all, I found myself in a nonsensical land, where the weeds grew as tall as trees, and the ducks talked, and the riverbank eroded the river.

And then, when I thought I was done, the sun came out, and man was it hot. Very uncomfortable. I should've worn shorts.

I've Lost It

I seem to have lost it. Days wasted sleeping, and nights wasted awake. Always wondering, just what will come next, what will be the next big mistake that I make, the next big crash I'll fall into. I've got a constant feeling of someone watching over my shoulder, like someone is always watching what I do, but doesn't want to say anything. I know there's nobody there, but after years of always having someone there, it only could be that there would be somebody there when there isn't.

There's always somebody there when I make a mistake. There's always someone to critisize, or dramatize, or fuckerize, whatever. I've never had the privelage of fucking up and nobody knowing about it. It's always been a public affair, with everyone on the block gossiping over the phone. No trust. No trust.

Talking to people doesn't seem to help. I might as well be talking to a wall or a heap of dust. Change the conversation wall, change it before you figure it out. Dust is as dust does, or does not. I feel like dust. I just lie around all day, pondering where I'll be blown to next before somebody decides I'm a mess that needs to be cleaned up. And then they'll be forced to decide which clichéd tool from their arsenal they'll have to use. The guilty brush, perhaps? The motivational vacuum? The cleansing spray of spittle as I'm lectured to by a dipshit again?

Alone. I've always known what it meant. I was raised to spite it, and yet at the same time, I was never allowed to be anything more than. I do everything myself. I don't ask for help. Help means debt, and when everyone's calling in, it's something I can't afford to have. Fuck what you all say. How do you know you're telling the truth when you aren't even sure yourself? How can you have so much faith in what people say when they don't mean a word of it? How can you build castles of trust on untested soil, and rely on courage that is, at best, a farce?

Like a dream. I dream of flying, and of beautiful places away from the cities, away from the people. Where friends remember my name, and what I look like. Where I remember what I look like, and I don't frighten myself by looking in the mirror and see a new stranger every day. Where there is beauty in everything, and the only fiction is yet more beauty, printed out on sheets and bound into books of fancy and legend. I dream of flying, and yet... I also dream of falling.

Falling in love. Falling asleep. Falling from high places. It's all the same feeling now. I can't remember what it was like. I can't comprehend the feeling anymore, it's so alien. I feel as though I am half the person I was, and twice the fool. I should have moved on, but I became so hung up on the thought: "Moving on to what? What more could there possibly be?"

More dust and lies. More trouble to sift through to find the dreams I used to chase. More dawns to end the dusks, and more days to end the nights.

Maybe.

We Say Nothing

So.

I'd actually have a nice big picture to post here. I've come into possession of Photoshop CS2, and I've been toying with it a bit lately.

But seemings as how blogger's photo system seems to derive pleasure from bucking my connection right now, I guess you'll just have to put up with some more text until later this afternoon when I rise from my slumber to try again.

Regards,

I have so much to say, and yet so few will listen.

Edit:

BOOYAH.

Dust Off

My brain seems to be back to normal now. Whatever freak illness I contracted seems to have left with all the fury and zeal that it came with, leaving me weary but otherwise alright. However, in my newgound lucidity, a new thought strikes me...

I don't want to spend my whole summer job hunting. If July ends before anyone says anything, I'm ready to say fuck it, I'm outta here.

Question is, where will I go? North? South? East? I don't want to take a plane, and I'm tempted to drive (the weather these days is ideal for driving), and I want to do some kind of camping and/or fishing. Neither one I'm particularly adept at. I've never caught a fish, although I've tried plenty of times, and inspired by the tales of Dan, Trevor, and Ryan, I want to try again. Maybe the four of us can make a fishing trip sometime before 'ole bandersnatch departs for the greater white north. I just have to find out where my fishing rod is at, and then I can pack up and goooo.

Just a thought.

Oh, and just for my safety, you guys aren't religious fly fishers, are ya? The last few I bumped into threatened to kill me at the sight of my lure rod. Said it was a travesty... but to me, catching a fish is catching a fish. Whether it be with hand-wound flies, or with sticks of dynamite.

Misery, my only faithful companion

I'm sick like a dog.

High fever.
Hallucinations.
Nausea.
Hallucinations.
Hot and cold flashes.
Hallucinations.

Yes. I'm not even sure if I'm writing this right now. If I come back tommorrow, and this is still here, I'll know that indeed, the last two days did happen, and indeed, I've done something outside the house.

I think I should be proud, but right now I'm just tired, and I can't tell if I'm asleep yet or not. The dizziness and the things that are there, but not there... they don't go away when I try to sleep. They just get worse. It's like being on a rollercoaster, you close your eyes so you can't see the plunge, but that just makes you feel it all the worse.

Today's Headline

Implant helps disabled man use his brain to do tasks
Rest of planet's able population still hopeless.

Nerding Out

So, this is the first Wednesday I've stayed home in ages. Normally, I drive to the north end of the city to hang out with some friends of mine that I don't otherwise get to see. You might wonder what inspired the change. Well, see, it's a little something called a videogame addiction. I got tired of spending ten bucks in gas to drive to the north, to pay forty bucks for dinner (because most of my friends are poor, don't ask why), and then to spend the night... watching these guys blow their time playing World of Warcraft all night.

Meanwhile, I raid the fuckers' supply of Gamecube games worth reviewing. Okay, not really, but you'd think that if they want me to come and visit them, they'd at least make an effort to acknowledge me as something other than a meal ticket. Oh wait. I forgot. This is the city.

You can expect your friends to see you as nothing more than a free fucking meal ticket.

So I stayed home today. And thus, it has been a productive day. Indeed, I've been pondering about WoW, and how it's allowing people to create parallel lives at the expense of their real ones.

And then I realize that line of thinking is just bosh. You can't expend a real life you don't have in the first place.

As the Legend goes...

If you see dead man walking, your death will be soon.
The "dead man walking" is actually violent, multiple vortex tornadoes that frequently pass over the American plains each summer. Each vortice has a limited lifespan, and can create it's own funnel, creating the appearance of a tornado that "walks," as old vortices spin out and new ones are created.

Just a bit of trivia.

Otherwise, here are the pics I promised.



You'd have to be blind to miss it. It's right there on the right. It just looks like a lump of cloud in this picture, but it was rotating at about 5, maybe 6 revolutions a minute. I know, I'm a nerd. I counted, but really... what else is one to do when all the computers and TVs are turned off to prevent surge damage? It's too dark to read and too noisy to play music, so...



This was pretty much the eye of the storm. When it suddenly stopped raining, I ran outside and shot pretty much straight up and to the right, and that's what I saw. The whole system seemed to be rotating around this point in the cloud, and I'm pretty sure it's what they call a mesocyclone. Pretty interesting to see all the clouds whirling around this tiny little patch of calm.



This is perhaps the most uninspired picture of the bunch, as it completely loses its meaning without motion. Let me put it this way. See those little tendrils of cloud hanging on the bottom there? They weren't there two seconds before I shot the picture. They seem to materialize out of thin air, swirl around in a circle, and then get drawn further up into the cloud. Updraft. Whatever. Scary shit, because it was deadly quiet out when I shot this picture, and the only thing moving was the wind, the lightning, and the clouds.

And that's all of them. Should a full blown tornado come, I'll be sure to hurl myself into its path to get the best possible pictures for your enjoyment.

Weather Phenom

So we had a supercell hit the city today. Well, maybe not a full blown one, but it was part of a chain of severe thunderstorms that made its way across the province. I believe they would call that a squall line, although I'm no meteorologist so my facts may be a bit sketchy.

However, that is beside the point. The weather today was like something you hear about in Tornado alley. I'm not exaggerating. I went out to witness the birth of this beast, and unlike most thunderstorms here in the city, it was a maelstrom of movement. The clouds were all rotating, like a bunch of drunken sailors trying to dance, and funnel clouds were dropping wherever the rain decided to stop.

And the rain did stop. It would be pouring one moment, and just when you thought it couldn't get any worse, the rain would stop, and it would be dead still. The only sounds breaking the silence was the rhythmic peal of thunder and an odd rumbling-whistling noise, which I can only assume to be the sound of the cyclonic action inside of a very active thunderhead (ie. the sounds of the winds that would, under different circumstances, have given birth to a twister).

All in all, today was rather exciting. I have pictures, but since photos don't capture motion, I'm afraid they all just look like a bunch of dark clouds. I'll put them up tommorrow, but for now, I'm going to bed.

News Flash

Good News/Bad News

I heard back from the paper. I didn't get the job, but I got referred to another paper that may want to hire me for a short-term position. Good? Yes. More on this later.

11 a.m. tommorrow morning, I have to make a trip to the electrical chair so the sadist with picks can make my gums bleed, all the while chastizing me for not following through on my barbaric oral hygene routine. I brush, I floss, I rinse. I don't understand the concept of quantity when it comes to rubbing my enamel and gums with a plastic brush. Next, they'll tell me to start cutting my veins to cure the fever.

Again, more on this tommorrow. Tonight, need sleep.

Signing off.

Edit: I'm almost done Tales of Symphonia. Expect a review, etc. coming up shortly.

Proof that He does not exist and/or is asleep at the wheel

I was a letter away from posting a very angry and perhaps unfair statement yesterday.

I'm not going to go into too much detail here, as it's a pretty personal matter. A dear friend of mine is facing a life-changing prospect, and I felt nothing but anger towards the circumstances I keep seeing levied on people who really don't deserve it.

Matters of faith aside, I really had to stop and think that everyone should have a right to live. The concept itself is simple, but when you think of the people out there, who debase their own goddamned existence by the things they choose to do and say, it's... well. It's a little hard to accept that they should be allowed to keep breathing and breeding, when somebody who's made something of their life isn't afforded the same luxury through some bizarre occurrence.

In any event, I'm more shocked by the good then the bad. I've become weary of the tragedy, so please, don't hold it against me if I don't break down or apologize every ten minutes.

Segestica

I'm having a creative lapse at the moment, so to get out of it, I decided to take some pictures. What kind of pictures, you ask? Well, the most completely random shit I could find.

Like:

How the hell did all that dust get on my lens? How? HOW? Who the hell used my lens? And why the hell did that have to take it through DUSTVILLE, ARIZONA and not clean it off after they got back?

And:

Tea time? And how about some of that high class british porn?

And lets not forget:

Trying to find the answer to a question that nobody asked is like trying to sew with a needle and no thread. Eventually you just end up with a heap of unusable materials, some meaningless philosophy, and the naked truth standing there wide-eyed and shivering, and wondering why it never worked out the way it should have.

Genius, non?

Anniversary

It's Canada Day. Happy Canada Day, everyone. Enjoy the birthday of the red, white, and red.

Most of you will be out camping as I write this, so you probably won't read it until monday. I've got a few reasons to celebrate this day, but at the same time, I've got a few reasons to rue it. I was thinking I'd probably end up spending it alone, in quiet contemplation. Looks like I'll be right, for a change.

It's been a strange year. Not necessarily a bad one, but one can't trek from youth to maturity, and not look back and feel a pang of remorse. I'll admit it. I've missed a lot. I've put my priorities in the wrong places for too many years, and missing tiny experiences leads to bigger and bigger holes, until one day, you wake up and wonder why you didn't do things another way.

It's not possible to go back in time and fix mistakes. I've accepted that. I've also accepted that most people don't forgive, and failure is intolerable. Harsh lessons, but it's easier to ply with sincerity when you know you might not get any in return.

Anyway, I'm done sobbing on the internet now. Raise a toast with me, Happy Canada Day!

Ooo... Gin and Ginger, how I love you so.