Monday, March 31, 2008

Brown and Yellow on both sides now.


Although it perhaps isn't exactly Cal Ripken Jr.'s record of 16 pro baseball seasons without missing a game... I had managed to work for over 12 straight years (full time) at Backstreet without taking a sick day. Not that I've been the picture of health or the video of vigour... it's just that aches, pains, coughs and wheezes have been so far within tolerable levels. Any instances of more debilitating malaise have cooperatively come over weekends or on official holidays. Thanks weirdly chrono-savvy constitution.

This past week my streak went down in flames.

After the long weekend (and concurrent house explosion... see below) I settled back into my two job routine... troubled only by a little throat tickle and cough I couldn't seem to kick. Tuesday night after getting home, feeling fine, I had a bit of a flippy floppy feeling in my gut and I hurried down to the washroom and unleashed a torrent of loose bowel debris... and that signalled a three day cycle of eat/drink/ditch that devolved into surrealism quite quickly.

As a drinker and a sickly child I've had my fair share of stomach gymnastics... but I can't say anything quite like this has darkened my bathroom door before. For example, no nausea? After a day and a half my head was swimmy with dehydration and no coffee, but none of the usually cramping or hiccuping you get. And everything went through my digestive system... chicken broth, crackers, green tea, even water... nothing got turned to pee pee for the whole three days.

Then on Friday afternoon... food started doing what it's supposed to do again. I could pass gas with confidence... not needing to fear a wet surprise.

Whether this is my one sick chance to take the middle of the week off... or the sign of more sick days to come... who can say. It did give me the opportunity to watch the continuing parade of people driving by to peek at the empty lot which was once a house. Do these people enjoy empty lots? Do they have to have been full previously, or will any empty lot do. My urge to put up a "Welcome to Scully St.... Please enjoy our HOLE!!" sign grows daily.

In adding insult to injury news... the company who cleared away the remains of the house is called Disaster Kleenup... that I've just now discovered is a national one and not just a bunch of local retards with a few trucks like I first would've guessed. I guess just because your community has been decimated by floodwaters and half of your family is missing and presumed dead... that's no reason not to look on the bright side and call in the KLEENUP KREW.

fuck you.

Monday, March 24, 2008

So my place didn't burn down over the holiday weekend, but...


To get a better handle on the absurdity of the following video presentation you should be aware of the following.

The street I'm speaking of is exactly a short city block wide.

It comes off of a major North/South street, but it really isn't on the way to anything other than two baseball fields, a pool and a playground... all of which are buried under a winter's worth of snow and ice.

On an average Monday night a car might pass in front of my house every fifteen minutes or so. About a third of those live in the neighbourhood.

The video is a little edited, but all the action took place over about a 5-8 minute span... and it got busier after I put the camera away.

Enjoy?

Monday, March 17, 2008

Fly like an Eagle, or Something that flies straight... maybe a crow. yeah.


It's long been one of my secondary survival skills... my ability to get home and find my bed no matter where I am when the shut-down impulse kicks in. But there have lately been obstacles in my path... nearly (but not quite) thwarting me.

The first obstacle has been getting a cab. Specifically getting a cab to get home from my friend Howard's. Specifically getting a cab anytime between midnight and two a.m. to get home from my friend Howard's instead of walking the hour to hour and a quarter back across the river to my place (especially given the fact that the price of the cab ride is an absolutely ludicrous $6.50). The time before last I called after Howard had passed out in a chair watching the DVD part of the last Akron/Family album. I went downstairs, called the cab... and waited, and waited, and sipped my last beer, and waited. My sozzle-senses started tingling with this idea, if I start walking out to the end of the driveway... reaaaaalllllyyyyy sloooooowlyyyyy... the cab will just arrive as I reach the street. And you know what? That's exactly what happened.

So last time, two weekends ago, as Howard and I sat in the kitchen downstairs, waiting, and waiting and waiting, and sipping our last beers... I thought... It's gotta work again, right? It was one of those night where a storm had gone from rain to freezing rain (little stinging balls of fury) and then just quit... leaving behind a strong but mildly mild wind. So I walked reaaaalllllyyyy sloooooowlyyyyy to the end of the driveway... and stood there... and stood there... and listened to the wind... and looked up at the tree next to the end to the driveway and really noticed how fucking tall it was... and how it was really swaying in the wind... and how I couldn't hear if any cars were anywhere near Howard's street... and then Howard called out from the kitchen window, "Why don't you come back inside, idiot?"

This past weekend I had two oddball end of night occurrences:

First was on Friday night when I went for dinner at my friend Andrew's place. He lives up in an area of Fredericton called Skyline acres... near the highway that travels east towards Saint John and west becomes Prospect St. The streets are little fishscale crescents that double back upon themselves... and given all the snow we've had, they look all the more same-ish. But no matter... I'm familiar with the area... it was fairly warm around midnight when I was leaving... I had my CD player... and my planned route was as illustrated below:



(1) is Andrew's place the starting point... and on a downward and vaguely westward trajectory you eventually come across (2) which is the shortcut across the highway on/off ramp and into campus and then hoppy skippy jumpy home... about 40 minutes or so all told.

Unfortunately this, I think, is the route I actually took:



(1) same starting point, but I must've whipped around Bristol in the wrong direction and slowly corrected course... although I was keeping an eye out for Canterbury I never saw it... though I had to have crossed it at some point... (2) is the large snow covered field I crossed... thinking I was at some weird new corner near campus only to emerge at (3) Forest Hill road... well above where the overpass leads to the Princess Margaret Bridge but a straight shot down towards the foot of campus... albeit about as far from my apartment as I had been when I left Andrew's in the first place.

The last homeward bound adventure was on Saturday night. John, Marc B. and I had been out with a brigade of fake mustache rocking Haligonian Voiceprint folk. Our night wrapped up at the former taproom and I split from the group and headed home up around the graveyard between Brunswick and George. As I neared the corner of Carleton Extension where I usually turn up I heard a voice from nearby behind me squeak out, "Hey hang on for a second... wait, wait." I turned to see the backlit figure of a smallish woman I assumed was someone I knew... but as she passed under the next streetlight I realized this was not the fact... I also realized she was wearing just a T-shirt and a skirt on this sub-zero night. As she pulled up to me she unwound her woeful tale... coat check took her ticket at Nicky Zee's, but offered her the wrong coat, which she didn't take... and now was shivering her way home. For some reason she targeted me as a suitable source of body heat... requesting that I escort her home so she didn't freeze to death. Home was only up around the corner onto Regent... more or less on the way... so I agreed, tucked her under one side of my coat and headed home.

If I were Matthew McConaughey this would have culminated in some exotic evening of Greek wine, conversations about Hopper paintings or more likely Charley Pride records and a lifelong friendship that deepened... for a time... into a brief, bittersweet romance. But since I'm, in fact, me I was offered a Corona, which I turned down, and then quizzed on whether I knew some of the same people... most examples of which were brought up turned out to have recently died.

Instead I just released her from beneath my jacket and (easily) found my way home... for once.

Saturday, March 01, 2008

Trapped in a lab...

...in a snowstorm. Alone.

All I can say is Piper, where are yooooooo oowoooooooo ah!!!