So... is it the heat, Fredericton... or... What?

Arriving at the store yesterday I was blessed to overhear a bit of an intense conversation as I was wedging my "open" sign up against Radical Edge's goddamn bike display. Two gentlemen... one in his late 60s, tubby, wearing a powder blue "Top of the Rock 33" T-Shirt and what appeared to be a freshman college beanie... the other in his 40s wearing birks, brown slacks/shorts and a striped shirt (of course). The exchange went thusly:

Beanie: You just can't beat a Broadway musical for entertainment!

Stripie: No, that's true.

Beanie: Those folks have such great talent!!

Stripie: Not just good.

Beanie: No. Great!!!

As I've probably previously commented on... I get a lot of resume clutching late-teen/early 20somethings, especially in summer months. In 96.8% of these cases it will be the one and only time I'll ever see these folks in my life... so I know our Yellow Pages ad must be working... at least as a beacon of sorts for slack-job seekers.

Yesterday I had two appliers... the first a young lady who looked liked she'd been sent in from a 40/50s Hollywood central casting office for the role of "Sassy Older Sister." She was wearing cutoff jean shorts, a plaid shirt knotted just above her belly button, a little rash of acne on her chin and a Darla from Little Rascals bangs and big curls 'do. Her resume had a cover page from a program called Youth Options, with a first line whose intent outlined: "to provide interventions to youth at risk, before they come into formal contact with the criminal justice system."

The rest of the resume made me wonder what the cover letter was about... listing girl guides, air cadets, tae kwan do, sandwich artistry and papergirl of the month awards amongst her many achievements. Only the fact that the pages were stapled out of order... and that her high school achievements included "maintaining a 90.6% averaged."

The second applicant was a young gentleman who strode into the store cowboy-legged, like he had an ostrich egg swinging between his knees, and greeted me with a jaunty, "Hey bud!" Following this was his query whether not I "needed someone to help run this place." I let him know he probably would be of little help... he took this fairly well, cursorily examined a Def Leppard CD and sidled off.

----

What saved me from depression about my retail place in the world was stopping into Strange Adventures this morning just in time to overhear what I imagine is a more or less ongoing monologue in the store... the gentleman (in his late 30s/early 40s) picking up his comics expounding on the relative virtues of recent superhero movies. Highlights included when J, who works there and obviously has to occasionally interact with these folks, interjected how another customer preferred the recent Hulk movie to the recent Iron Man movie... to which the customer said, "Let me think on that." I nearly tipped over a rack of trade paperbacks. I then had to hurry out while he began explaining why Jennifer Connelly was a much better Betty Brant than Liv Tyler had been in the last Hulk movie (though she had undeniably been stellar in Lord of the Rings).

My freaks or yours?

There's no business... or is there show business?

So...

now...

What do I have left to say.

Ok. well.

I know I haven't been writing here much this spring. That's normal enough... given that I don't have my work-imposed 20 hours of weekly computer time to spur me on. Except... this spring... or at least over the last few weeks, it's been because my quasi-work imposed 40+ hours of weekly computer time has been consecrated to way too many other portals of communication.

For the last month I've been sitting at the computer doing the following:

Typing/transcribing an interview/review with Nick T. from the Islands.

Doing any number of other reviews for Exclaim! (the same reason I was doing the above).

Setting up a Facebook page for Surgery (slow going) and Backstreet (fast going).

Keeping up posting to Backstreet blog and MySpace.

And editing and relaunching the Goose Lane-related blog, Branta.

In the meantime I got drawn into helping out at a dance/improv show called

Uranium and Uranus.

This is not from the show... Just JB doing homework hiding in a closet:



For the performance I purchased a fun little doo-hickey... Kaoss Pad. Or at least the junior version of it:


The show went better than it had any right to... given the limited prep/rehearsal time... from a technical standpoint. Lucy May, the dancer in charge of staging, had a lot of great ideas... which was actually frustrating, because with more time to link the ideas to actions rather than a large portion of "winging it," it could become a really impressive multimedia show. Who knows. Maybe it still will.

I've also been on a peculiarly unplanned movie buying kick lately.

An acquaintance has started working up at HMV and I mentioned having seen a box set of Alejandro Jordoworsky films at the store back before Xmas that had disappeared since. He mentioned he might have seen it back in the stockroom so I, without much thought said, "well, put it aside for me if it is." Which it was. So now I have it. Yay?

I don't know how to explain these films.

Holy Mountain is probably the most famous of the three full lengths (there's also a short "long thought lost" film and two soundtracks to round the set out). Within ten minutes of the mostly visual, dialogue-free film you're show a monk-like character in a comically wide-brimmed hat shaving two naked women bald in what appears to be a white tiled steam room; a Christ-Like figure pelted by S. American Indians rescued by a multiple-amputee'd dwarf who he smokes drugs with then carries into a marketplace. There they are set upon by similarly dressed prostitutes age-ranged from about 8 to 38. The Jesus guy destroys a showroom of plaster Christ's then pretends to be a frog looming over a minature model of an Aztec(?) city that is then overrun by actual frogs dressed in Crusade singlets and showered in blood from above. That's the first ten minutes. I turned it off and napped for about six hours and haven't gone back since. But I'm sure I will.

My "less challenging" purchases have included:

A proper version of Cloverfield. (see below post for some further description).


The Mist... an adaptation of a Stephen King novella by Frank Darabont who also helmed adaptations of King's The Green Mile and The Shawshank Redemption. The Mist isn't set in a prison... and it has giant pan-dimensional monsters... so it's a bit different.


About a Son... the image-poem to Kurt Cobain narrated by the interviews he did with Michael Azzerad for his book Come as You Are.


30 Days of Night... a vampire film adapted from a graphic novel of the same name... set in Barrow, Alaska, the "northrernmost town in US." The story occurs during the town's yearly month-long sunless stretch.


The Assassination of Jesse James... because Brad Pitt being quiet and spooky is just as much fun (and maybe moreso) than Brad Pitt being loud and herky jerky


Once... Indie Irish film about finding love out of writing heartbroken songs... starring the singer from The Frames... if that's relevant ot anyone. I read good things about it.


Margot at the Wedding... Noah Baumbach's follow-up to The Squid & the Whale. Stars Jennifer Jason Lee... who I usually like, but can be a loose cannon... Nicole Kidman... who I'd like to like more, but you get the feeling a wax figure from some British museum took over from her about 5 or 6 years ago... and Jack Black... who'd I'd like to not ever like, but he somehow gets in the way of that every now and then. Whatever psychic Baumbach (and his pal Wes Anderson) endured from their parents growing up, their film career is benefitting from it now.


Rodger Dodger... I've had this for a while on VHS. I like this kind of morally ambiguous movie... recently jilted by his (older) boss (played by Isabella Rosselini) Rodger (played by Campbell Scott) has his teenage nephew unexpectedly show up, supposedly checking out College campuses but in reality to gain Rodger's insights into the female psyche. Campbell's Rodger is an effective predator when it comes to spotting weak spots... except when it comes to his own. So it's one night of many bad decisions in NYC.


The Eye 2... Pang Bros. Chinese horror. Adultery. Botched suicides. Unexpeceted pregnancies. Old Ghosts. Mayhem.

There's more... you can be sure... but that's enough for now.

ahem

Sheeeeeeep!!! Where are you SHEEEEEEEP!

Been having trouble sleeping lately.

The transition from the two job/not a lot of downtime schedule to one of relative normalacy has been quite smooth this spring. The key, perhaps, was not going directly into a spell of complete lethargy (my general preset)... nor setting myself up with that old standby, "now I'll have time to get all those projects on the backburner done!!!" Instead it's been somewhere in between... dedicating myself to pushing creative and/or necessary tasks forward, but also nurturing my softer side... that would be the gradual spongification of the brain.

The only snag over the last few nights has been this null space between 2 and 4 a.m. where I start to shut down operations only to suddenly come back to (nearly) full wakefulness after only a brief, brief sleep. It makes for crappy, attention impaired days after, I can tell you.

So here we are.

What have I been doing lately?

One of my Spring projects has been a new job through Goose Lane Editions, a publisher here in Fredericton that I've done work for in the past. This time around they've retained me as a kind of blog editor for an online magazine of sorts called Branta. Essentially it will sit parallel to their website and provide entertainment, information, and a reason for people to keep coming back and... maybe... buy a book or two?? My part has been to secure regular contributors who will provide what I've been thinking of as bylines... periodic columns that will be either about the same broad topics each time, or something completely different connected aesthetically in some way. Pretty nebulous, no? Most posts will have some tenuous connection to writing, or being a writer, or reading... you get the idea. Initially this was all meant to launch back in April... but now it's been pushed back to a couple of weeks from now in June... corresponding with the website's relaunching.

On the fun side... I've been catching up with some film/series watching:

The good:

No Country for Old Men
I've always been a Coen Brothers fan, but they've been slipping lately with a couple of misses like Intolerable Cruelty and The Ladykillers it shook my faith a little. This restored it. Though it's based on a Cormac McCarthy novel... one of the few of his I've not yet read... it has all the trademarks of the bros. best films: A loser who suddenly has an oppotunity for something better. Here that's trailer park cowboy Josh Brolin who finds a ton of drug money. In Raising Arizona it was ex-con Nicolas Cage who kidnaps a baby to save his marriage; in The Big Lebowski it was bowler Jeff Bridges who gets handed a satchel of cash to be bagman for a convoluted network of schemers. It has Javier Bardem as the cypher-like hand of doom (think Peter Stormare in Fargo or Randall "Tex" Cobb in Raising Arizona. It has Tommy Lee Jones as the overly-wise but still-stymied philosopher cop (Frances McDormand in Fargo). It's bone-dry and downbeat, too. Good times.

Cloverfield
So producer J.J. Abrams got his household name status on Felicity, then cemented it on Alias and Lost. The first show I made fun of, though I never watched an episode... the second I occasionally tuned into to see if Jennifer Garner was wearing something made of latex and the third I've avoided because I always avoid things everyone else doesn't. Here he teams up with fellow Felicity alum Matt Reeves... and despite the potential for getting things really wrong, they don't. It's a monster movie shot in the handycam aesthetic tacked on top of a framework of a guy who found the girl of his dreams and fucked it up. It works because (a) we can identify with the guy's bonehead moves and then the monster destroying NY becomes a massive externalization for his internal trauma and (b) the way the monster is shown in glimpses and distances makes it way more effective.

Battlestar Galactica Season 3
The cracks are beginning to show a little, especially in the latter half of the season. It happens in most television dramas and is perhaps unavoidable... that the focus turns more and more directly onto the characters and away from the situations they find themselves caught it. I found myself not really caring about the Apollo/Starbuck love affair. The device that is meant to create chemistry through tension has been overused since its initial (over)use in Moonlighting and Cheers. What is interesting was the gradual disintegration of order within the Cylon ranks. As they become more human, they become more and more fucked up. I don't know how the revelation of four of the five remaining Cylon models will play out... but I kinda wish they hadn't all been already established semi-major characters.

Well... I guess I'll take another crack at sleep.

Wish me luck.

Fredericton - Ottawa - Montreal - Fredericton

The trip began Sunday Morning around 5:30 a.m. Atlantic. These were stoic men with a long day ahead:


Stoicism is not always defined in terms of capacity.


Nor the respect of property.


In Ottawa the weather allowed the enjoyment of plenty, both in it's basic form:


And cooked:


Three of us spent some time in Marc L.'s Ottawa estates... while Marc B. disengaged to a realm more "keggy." This is also a rare picture of John awake as he spent most of Monday suffering a stomach bug and sleeping roughly 18 hours.


On Tuesday in Montreal we ate soup.


The went to a Masonic Temple where we saw Christopher Willits wield a guitar whose sound was routed through laptop and various other electronics to fine results.


At intermission we spied Sam Thulin sitting with John.


John's illness was ongoing and he would sometimes revert to zombie status.


Headliners Stars of the Lid:






We left Montreal after the show... around 12:15 a.m. Eastern and departed for Fredericton.


Even with the wisdom that comes with worldliness, some patterns are unbreakable.


The light bloomed in the Eastern Sky as we neared New Brunswick.


I spent Wednesday in bed.

The end.

appendix:

Here are some brief (bootleg) videos of the show:

Christopher Willits:


Stars of the Lid:

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.

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?

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.

Trapped in a lab...

...in a snowstorm. Alone.

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

Black Mountain, White Snow

So Tuesday after work we packed up the station wagon four man strong (or four strong man strong... or at least one strong man and a few milquetoasts... or... something) and headed down to see Black Mountain in Moncton.

Traveling for rock shows is a proud tradition for some of my fellow journeymen, and I've been known to do so in the past... so company was tight.

The show was at the Manhattan, so we parked nearby... then on PJ's recommendation went to a nearby Irish pub called Triangles for dinner. I had pretty good Curry and Chips... Howard had something called Irish Tea Break which was two enormous slabs of beef and pork resting A-frame style atop a mound of roasted mash potatoes all topped with curly fried onions. Zany.

There were two openers... a solo act (ex-Deadly Snakes member) from Toronto going by the name Nordic Nomadic unspooled some spacey Tim Buckleyesque guitar swoonings. Next was Wisconsinite band (also on Jagjaguwar) Bon Iver... a three piece, two guitars and drums who's stuff veered from slowcore jams to what TV on the Radio's sound might be had they grown up around tractors instead of fire hydrants.

Black Mountain came out and ripped through most of their new album... tossing in a couple of nuggets from the first... did a three song encore (no 16 minute epic as I had predicted) and then it was 1am and time to hit the road again.



All three bands put on great sets, but they were compromised by the less-than-stellar sound the bar provided. The Manhattan is a restaurant/bar built in what used to be the back end of a movie theatre... the architecture of which means the ceiling above the stage is between 30-40 feet high. It seems like all the low end of Black Mountain's guitars and bass were sucked up into the void or bounced around the room until it sounded more like a boom than a groove. Still they brought the rock.

The drive back was into the eye of a snowstorm that grew steadily from the time we left the Irving in Salisbury until we hit Gagetown... at which point it was like having a drunk Santa pull you too close into his beard.

These are the little footprints I made coming home at around 4:30pm.

Ah rock and roll lifestyle... so glam.



Tonight:

Stories that need no ending #1

"So I know this bar where you can do body shots off toddlers..."

It's a leap year!!!

February's kinda wearing me down.

I've had some pretty good fun over the last couple of weekends. First the ECMA weekend... which kicked off a little slowly. I had anticipated a crush of shoppers so made an effort to stock the store with appropriate goodies only to sit (or pace) by myself for most of the day. We made $41 between 11am and 4pm. Friday was better... but finally Saturday we threw a little event that brought people out:



The "surprises" part was Julie Doiron who graciously accepted to play in a stairwell in the afternoon and even busted out some unrecorded material for the faithful. The day was a blur of music and smiling people and... hrrm... shoppers.

That night we tried to actually take in some showcases, but the venues were so packed and fully lit with PDAs that our only recourse was to retreat to the 20/20 Club to listen to Footloose on a system with no high tone... which in fact is more truly East Coast music. When you think about it.

The next weekend was also musical... and very East Coast. I decided to gather together my struggling music playing friends and my struggling music listening friends and put them all under one roof... or more accurately under one floor under one roof:



There is some video of the Windchimes set on the Ker. MySpace page or just check this out:


It culminated in much drinking on several different levels of homestead and a multi-street cheeseburger trackdown. How many drive-thrus are open late in Fredericton? Not many it turns out.

But one side effect of special event fever is that it brings along with it a special kind of crash on the weeks after. The mundane seems that much more mundane. The banal seems... painful.

This fact was illustrated and heightened by a convergence of three of my "What do they do?" people so far this week. These people are folks who, over the years, have regularly and relentlessly visited the store yet have perhaps purchased a sum total of 4 items between them over a decade of browsing. But they are also people who I unfailingly see everywhere else I go in town... uptown, downtown, Northside, industrial park, wading pool... everywhere.

The first was the "Gasman." I actually hadn't seen the Gasman for a couple of years and believed him to have either exploded or floated away... but I bumped into him up at the Regent Mall waiting for the bus I was about to disembark. When he (regularly) came into the store he would rustle his oily army jacketed self over to the cassette rack and clack through them... burping, farting and whistling his merry tunes. He would also mumble unintelligibly things about each cassette he was holding. I eventually realized he was talking to me... but because he never turned around I had no way of making out anything he said.

The second was/is the "Walker." Aside from the store you can spot him at the Carleton Street Library, buying coffee at MacDonald's, walking up or down York Street, Regent Street, George Street, Charlotte Street, Brunswick Street... any hour of the day or night. The store seems to be a 20-40 second segment of his path as he routinely comes in, walks one slow circle around the perimeter and then back out the door.

The last was/is the "Bike Guy." Bike Guy is the most dynamic of the trio... and the least frequent. Dynamic because... well he has a bike for one, and also because he also speaks in close to full sentences in a nearly clear linguistic pattern. Unfortunately he says things like, "It sure is icy out there today." I guess when you're the Bike Guy this has a potent impact upon all aspects of your life. Dynamic also because he seems to do things like buy groceries and go to the Salvation Army, whereas the other two seem to be handled by some firm that possibly also hires out movie extras. Meaning they are somehow magically clothed and fed by some external force. But the other distinguishing trait of Bike Guy is that every outfit he does wear seems to have some prominent rip involved. Today it was in the seat of his corduroy pants.

So... the good thing is I've gotten my involvement with these folks out of the way for the week... which means either clear sailing, or that I won't see anyone else from here on out.

Ah February.

Nyooooooooooo. Nope.

So like I was saying...

A whole month has been and gone since my last post... Januaries will do that to you. Most of my postal work has been over at Backstreet and Surgery. Excuses? Excuses.

Also a good amount of energy has been devoted to furthering the legend of Piper Perabo. No not that Piper Perabo... this Piper Perabo.

I have seen the quartet at work no fewer than five times in just over a month... two house parties, two Northstar Sports Bar engagements and a co-headlining gig (with The Windchimes) at the Capital (not Capitol, by the way).





Next up is a post-ECMA stint at Howard's Basement. More on this later.

The ECMAs are in Fredericton next week from Thursday through Sunday. I'm not really sure what to expect. Other than a lot of posters that've been up since before Xmas wondering if Fredericton is READY... there hasn't been much in the way of available documentation. Perhaps Fredericton wasn't READY. Still I'll get the store ready for what might be just another week. We'll see.

I've started doing volunteering at Voiceprint. It's a national service that provides broadcast audio of local news, sports, entertainment, grocery specials, obituaries online, on cable and on satellite television for people with issues of literacy, vision, age... or just plain lazy folks maybe. I do the Atlantic Arts and Entertainment report... recording between 10-12 Fridays and uploaded for broadcast in the afternoon. It's something I can do and feel good about giving time... but I still don't have to touch anyone stinky. Unless I want to.

Well, I'll keep it short this time so I don't get a cramp. Somn\e of my favourite things of the last month have been the signs outside what was formerly Boldon's/Kelly's Café on Regent... now re-christened Regent Convenience Café and Kebab. The grand opening sign went thusly:

Now Open

Coffee and Kebab
50% Off

Others
10% Off

The new one that was up when I walked by today was:

Now Offering:

Espresso

Cappuccino

Café Latte

Phone Cards

I feel like I haven't been keeping up with the advances in coffee culture.

XXX MMMy AAA SSS

(Season's) Greetings.

It is officially crunch time... some ten thousand minutes before Xmas.

It's been a couple of peculiar weeks. For some reason I can't seem to accumulate enough sleep. Not that I can't sleep. Rather the opposite... I've been sleeping 8-10 hours a night and napping in between, but I can't seem to become revitalized by it.

Perhaps it's just to escape the stresses of the season. When you work both in retail and at a University you tend to have your few small stresses... but then you also are bombarded with several others' larger stresses, either real or imaginary.

One aspect that's been ongoing is the sluggish and unpredictable shopping patterns over the last month. November was deceptively busy (compared to previous years) but there hasn't been the hoped-for consistent increase that leads up to Xmas. I was beginning to assume it had mostly to do with a strong Canadian dollar and an increase in cross-border/online shopping... but today the first 10 people were fear-eyed older ladies with lists written in English that they still could not read. Therefore we have the XMAS OF BAD PLANNERS.

The thing about the bad planner is that they don't understand the error of their ways. The bad planner operates under the delusion that in the 21st Century every store that specializes in something (i.e. music) must contain every item available (or even out of circulation) that falls under the general descripition... even if said store is only 15 feet by 15 feet in size. To make matters worse they usually come to me at the recommendation of a larger store who also didn't have their hopelessly obscure item in stock... thus, because we were recommended, they fully believe that we must have it... making their disappointment all that more poignant, or pungent, or something.

Another added stress is that I've had problems helping even the good planners due to not one but two orders over the last week that ended up not shipping when they were supposed to. I don't mind dealing with incompetence from the customers... they give me money... but incompetence from the suppliers... who I give money to (sometimes)... well that gives me bad breath.

A retail unrelated stress came at the end of a great stress-relieving event:



Here are some pictures from the event.


The Squaredance Kid


ImageisEverything


Notorious D. O'Rea


Vehicle Lasso


and the mighty Piper Perabo

The mishap (stress inducing) came near the end of the evening after I took a picture of another member of the audience who spent much of his time lounging on the clothes dryer in the washroom:


Tito

Obviously offended by the invasion of his personal space he slapped the camera out of my hands and it fell to the floor with the lens extended. Or I might've just dropped it 'cos I was drunk. In any case the lens was tipped up at an off angle and wouldn't retract. I gently popped back in line and it went back in when I turned the power off... then came back out when I turned the power on... whew!

However the next day at breakfast I had hoped to get some day-after pictures from our assembled crew only to discover the lens on longer wished to come out. I supposed if I had been dropped on my head from a height I'd feel the same.

In any case there are three more stress/shopping days to contend with and this is my last evening at the lab until January 7th.

I will try to keep you apprised of my comings... or at least my goings... over the holidays. With or without photographic assistance.