NYE=Not Your Event?

NYE events suck. They are usually blatant money-grabs that charge you an arm n' a leg, serve you warm champagne in a plastic cup and have the same entertainment you could expect any other lame club night. A lot of emphasis is placed on the turning of the Gregorian calendar. I think I'll ring in the new year w. a few friends, or find an event that doesn't smack of exploitation and line the pocket of some lame, egotistical and pompous amateur event promoter, like so many I've known.

Hey-sus is gonna...

Bodybuilder#: "who the hell is this guys doing the pelvic thrusts behind me?"

BB#2: "dunno man, says his name is Jesus, wants us to call him the son of man or something, just keep ignoring him, n' maybe he'll go away."

BB#1: "why does he keep talking how our wives must love our muscles, doesn't he realize we're gay?"

Jesus: "*censored*"

quotes from the DTES polls

"what's your name and I'll check if you are on the voter's list"
"fuck off!"
"is that your first name or your last name?"

"I don't vote, natives don't matter anyways."
"sure they do."
*slam*

"I moved here to get as far away from my family as possible, they are bureaucrats"

"I grew up as a ward of the state- not in foster care"

"It's good to see you here- I thought they'd forgotten about us"

"they are all a bunch of crooks anyways, why should I vote?"

"i've never voted in my life but I want to this time."

"this is real. this is what you get. this is a real honest neighbourhood, if you get in with people, someone's always got your back. some people do really well here, other's come here to disappear. Some people come here and die."

"i haven't got any time, i've got to go out and get a light"

Rockin' the vote in the DTES

I am registering people to vote in the DTES (Downtown Eastside) and in the next few days and weeks, I'll be posting some stories about getting Vancouver's poorest citizens to register for the polls. I've signed up a lot of people who have never voted, or not voted in decades. BC will make a difference this time and the election may be close. I have to remain painfully apolitical and non-partisan while doing this work.

When people have no home, the last thing on their mind is politics.

I picked up some work registering people in the Downtown Eastside to vote. I'm going into the SRO hotels and signing people up. I feel like one of those people who registered black voters in the south in the early 60s. I just started tonight and I have seen blood spatters on a door frame, countless doors that had been forced with prybars countless times and a real, genuine, small-caliber bullet hole in an interior window. I've seen bullet holes in buildings before, having seen many a structure that still exhibited WW2 damage and made a few bullet holes in things myself, growing up in a family with hunters. This was without question a bullet hole. I've never seen one inside before.

People are friendly for the most part, but the hopelessness that is apparent in so many of them is hard to see. It does make me really want to try to get as many SRO residents out there voting as possible.

tookie is dead

I only recently learned about Stan "Tookie" Williams and the State of California has just executed him. The day I read his story was the day I signed the petition to save him.

Aside from the fact that revenge-killing is wrong, no matter who does it, this man was a changed man, who did work to create peace between rival LA gangs and was even nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. As much as I love California in some ways, the fact that a state controlled by Arnold Schwarzenegger killed a Nobel nominee is going to bug me for some time. America needs to change. It has become such a reprehensible nation, I don't even want to go there anymore.

look at the 2x4 in your own eye, before criticizing the splinter in anothers...

I love paraphrasing Jesus, fulfills my messianic zeal...

I think if someone is overly concerned with the lives of others, to the point of ignoring their own existence, that person is suppressing some major issues that they perceive in the life they have created for themselves.

Your life is your own, other people's lives are their own. That proverb has been repeated many a time and is true now as it ever has been. Make your life what you want it to be and don't worry so much about what others think of you. Also, don't worry so much about the lives of others unless it affects you directly.

That is all.

today's blog posting

will be a link to another blog posting. it strikes me as strange, that I've had so little time and inclination to update my blog lately, considering how much free time I have right now.

north-west germans have a Schwarzer Peter myth too and make of it what you will, the tradition will probably stay. there's a lot of unfairness in the world, isn't there? i do think that it is an oversimplification to say that S.P. represents a black man, but I do agree that over the years, he did attain some "moorish characteristics". but then again, if I showed you some of the german books i read as a little boy, with thumb-sucking children getting their thumbs lopped off by tailors with giant scissors, you'd probably be shocked.

Make sure it's the dec 5th 2005 entry you read.

I miss Amsterdam, I miss it, miss it, miss it!

so the bastards laid me off, due to restructuring. they went for the some of the most senior people first and laid off 10-12 people who had been around about 5 years. they saved more money that way, since we made a few thousand a year more than a new guy. what a smart move in a knowledge-based company- a large part of my job was answering questions, training new guys and showing people how to access documentation, system resources and configure devices that they need to do their jobs.

today i noticed a problem w. my home connection and msg'ed a former coworker. they were in the midst of a major outage and 5 guys were working, all of whom were green as freshly fertilized alfalfa. the automated trouble reporting system for our newest, most complicated product was automatically creating tickets and phone calls and no one was available to take them.

another great decision on the part of the board. hope that when they start to lose customers, they see their mistake.

I'm glad I'm a man.

Because if I was a woman, and I found out I was pregnant, the first thing I would want to do is pour myself a stiff drink. And I wouldn't be able to.

Congratulations, Wendy and Paul.

Wendy must now treat her body like a temple, not that she didn't before. In fact, treat it like a golden temple, The Golden Temple at Amritsar. Nothing but curries from now on for you, the spicier the better. Make sure to use ghee and have it all with lime pickle and chapatis and a side of pickles and ...ice cream and bacon and chocolate and... cheese! and...

og.

My wife and I are guilty of pet names, inside jokes and cuteness that would probably cause a pwetty liddle bunny wabbit to want to vomit. Or anyone we knew if we did this stuff outside the home. Fortunately for you, we keep it in private. Here is an example of digusting cuteness: an email written to lisa by my alter-ego, the primitive caveman known as "Og."

og sneak out few mins early he think.
try be liberry 6 clock.
grunt

the cities of Europe have burned before, and they may yet burn again.

Apostatewindbag tells me that in Saint Gilles, Brussels, that gritty (yet nice) little multicultural district I visited him in which saw 5 cars burned by rioters monday night doesn't have the racial divides seen in Paris. In Brussels, everyone was rioting together in a collective spirit of disenfranchisement: white, black, north african.

As much as North American media would have me believe that this is the work of islamic radical terrorist-wannabes, I'm not buying it. Seems to me it is a whole bunch of poor people pissed off about being poor, some of whom are tired about not being accepted by their adoptive homeland, or even place of their birth.

Check out Apostatewindbag's posts on the European media and their spin on recent internal events. Makes me wonder what kind of press the now-heroic 68ers got over here during their days of glory.

"Hippies who hate freedom, cause widespread mayhem in drug-induced hysteria, then grow up to become the forces of government oppression themselves."

A Rough Guide to The Inevitable Casual Personality Profiling Through Place of Origin

Clinking glasses and beer spilling from pitchers. A CFL game on the ubiquitous big screens covering every wall of the sports bar, masquerading as an old english pub. Friday night beers with the crowd from work in a bar filled with other members of the downtown after-work crowd.

"So where are you from, buddy?"
Geez, here goes again. Uncomfortable looks around the table are exchanged.
"I'm from mars," he answers tiredly. Person who asked question in first place looks mildly insulted by the answer.

Jamaican: easygoing, but lazy.
Or perhaps he's African?: Sexist, politically radical. Grew up dirt-poor.

Not that ethnicity isn't important. I hate to take the perspective that ethnicity is completely unimportant, that our ethnicity doesn't affect who we are or how we see the world. How and where and by whom we are raised are important in forming who we are, but not all of who we are. Where you are from is often the smallest part of the equation, but the most loaded question to answer.

A quick look around the table revealed a motley crew of stereotypes to be had:

Greek: hot-headed, don't anger him or argue when he espouses an opinion. loyal to family.
German: outwardly artistic, inner fascist.
Whitebread, standard Anglo-WASP Canadian female: easy to get in the sack, good chances here.

Are we so pressed for conversation that we must resort to a quick judgement of personalty based on a cursory glance at one another? A quick sizing up by birthplace, ethnicity or accent (not to mention gender, height, clothing)?

Large-city Eastcoaster(New York, Toronto): pushy, overly businesslike.
Raised in small town westcoast: drinks Kokanee, likes to smoke pot and fish.
Grew up in Surrey: get him drunk and he's likely to shitkick you.

Lest I sound like a crusader of political correctness, or idealistic, easily offended proponent of identity politics, let me stop there. I just think we need to take a step back before we judge, or even ask.

And for those of noble birth, but no particular origin, other than whitey-white.
Canadian Euro-Mutt: easy to push around, nice, but a little boring.

"I'm not from Mars," he eventually said after the conversation had progressed through a few different drunken topics.

"I'm from Zimbabwe."

smelly selling agents

In househunting news, I had a place sold out from under me before I could take another look at it and decide to make an offer, and I got a look at a rotten basement in another place, since the tenant upstairs was (according to the sleazy-seeming agent) refusing to let people view the rest of the house, despite 24 hours notice given.

I walked into the basement and they hadn't even bothered to remove the old car seat, or sweep up the dirt all over the carpet, or fix anything. Walls covered in mold all along the foundation and it looked like someone had done a deep inspection for rot- with a sledgehammer. The south wall of house was rotten through from outside to the inner drywall, you could see through the holes bashed in the bathroom wall. Worse than the place I live in now and there was no telling what horrors were hidden.

The price for this prize? $438,000. Oh, and you had to bid against the listing agent, who clearly wasn't making any attempts to make the place look better, since he had a bid in himself. Bet he was offering less than $438,000. I'm still thinking about going to the real estate board with this one.

My score so far:

1. house in good neighbourhood- 2 appointments to view, stood up by listing agent both times, resident not home and when did come home, refused to let me in. house got re-listed for $20,000 more and then taken off the market.

2. good house, right price, wrong neighbourhood. if i am to live with no car, i need to be near the train. it sold quickly, anyways

3. 3 open houses in one day: 1 was awful and old and small and dirty with massive renos required, one was a horrid renovation, where the owner followed me around, trying to discourage me from looking too closely at the spray covering the ceiling tiles and other hidden evidence of water intrusions. i could hardly stand in the basement suite and I am average height. third house was nice, but actually listed at about $100,000 less than it could fetch- they were auctioning it off that tuesday, but if the reserve was met, the auction would never happen and you needed a $10,000 bank draft to join the game.

4. nice place, right location, but too expensive, considering the need for about $15,000 in basement suite renos. i thought about bidding low anyways, but the listing agent discouraged this, saying price was firm. then it got re-listed at $25,000 less and sold at midnight the day before I had my second viewing.

5. "come look at my wonderful listing for a rotten basement that looks like a former crack den and bid against me and a bunch of other realtors without having seen the entire place. did i mention my offer is being considered tonight, so don't expect to be able to make an appointment to view at a later date". i smell property flipping conspiracy.

"Bingo Jed had a light on"

The man who wrote "Big old jet airliner" the well-known Steve Miller song is dead. Paul Pena, the Genghis Blues guy passed away. I wasn't a big fan, but I has just finished reading about the tragic death of Falco- Hans Hölzel in a traffic accident in 1998 only to find out PP died immediately after.

As I mentioned, I wasn't a big Paul Pena fan but he is single-handedly responsible for one fo the best misquoted song lyrics of all time, right up there with "the ants are my friends, they're blowing in the wind", "'cuse me, while I kiss this guy", or "when a man loves a walnut" and we owe him a thanks for that alone.

I love misquoted song lyrics, I consider them on of my hobbies, along with Engrish.

I also thing Falco was brilliant- beyond just being an 80s icon, he was one of the first white rappers, without having to be a totally pompous, sexist Vanilla Ice goofball. He also wasn't copying black rappers, he just rapped because that was his style- IN GERMAN, no less. All of these horrible German gangsta rapper copycats who try to sound American have a thing to learn from old Falco.

I named my Linux server "Falco" - my wife refuses to give into my demands to name our first son "Falco", at least my server can proudly bear his name. Or maybe we can get another cool cat...

house-hunting 101

Came across this questionnaire on a website for first-time home buyers.

Wants and Needs

- Price range
$450,000 or less, if I can find it. half a million smackeroos, and I still have to fix it up. ohmigod. doesn't that get me an estate with an 8-car garage and private steambath with helipad in New Brunswick?

- Building style/design
not butt-ugly and completely surrounded by concrete, like some of the houses I've looked at.

- New construction
no. i can't afford it and why pay extra taxes to the government?

- Remodeled
no. well-kept.

- Fixer upper
yes- i want to increase the value, but not have to do major repairs or renovations.

- Minimum # bedrooms
2-3

- Bathrooms
1-2, not counting the suite downstairs, they must have their own place to poop.

- Family room
?

- Fire place
meh.

- Office/den
yes. i need somewhere to hide.

- Hardwood floors
hell, yeah.

- Swimming pool / Spa
yes. and a pleasure-garden filled with nubile young love-slaves. purely so that they can appreciate my flowers and fan me with palm fronds, of course.

- In-law quarters
if by "in-law quarters", you mean "basement suite", yes.

- Workshop
absolutely. Builder Bob be in da house! now where do i plug this reciprojigsledgamasawbigbadmofo in? wahahahaaa! ow!

- Central air conditioning
and a wet bar in every room, stocked with the finest champagnes and fine stinky unpasturized cheeses smuggled from europe in my cheese mule's secret luggage compartments.

- Parking facilities
the street is good enough for my friends. nothing but the best for the car owners in my life. more room for my pleasure garden.

- Yard size
big as possible. my own private fiefdom to fence and dig up as I please. arf!

- School district
yes. ah must edumacate my chilluns.

- Work locations
the whole damn place will be a work location until I am happy with it. you will never see me without sawdust on my clothes.

- Special zoning or location
must be zoned HCS-01 (hippies, coffee and skytrain close by).

Gronk! Hulk Smash! Ugh! Grunt!

The real destruction began this morning with sledgehammers smashing the exterior walls at 7AM. In murphy's law fashion, they began outside the bedroom and then worked their way to removing the last of the stucco around the doors around the time I was leaving for work, so I had to remove materials to open the door after realizing I'd been blocked inside the house.

shows in seattle

Many, many musicians worth seeing never, or rarely make it up to Canada. Some American artists can't, cause, well, they have "questionable character". Once upon a time, Paul Robeson was denied admission to Canada, for being too left-wing.

Today, artists are more likely to skip us, because we are more trouble than we are worth. So that means, Seattle is the closest place to see some shows that are worth seeing. A good friend of mine goes to shows in Seattle all the time and it's how he met his current girlfriend, who just escaped the land of George Bush to live with him here in Vancouver.

My friend is a music nut and I have to turn him on to the dark death-bluegrass of Gillian Welch, so that I have someone to see her with in Seattle. My friend's taste in music runs more to bands with names like: "Death Mullet".

You say FANNYPACK and I say Pants!

...let's call the whole thing off.

Apparently to British ears, the term "fannypack" sounds obscene. To my sensitive North American ears, "bumbag" sounds obsc...not right, anyways. My Quebecois coworker wears a black leather fannypack, if only he knew the awful truth.

The phrase i really, really want to steal from the Brits is "pants". Trousers are pants, so pants are something you wear beneath your pants-er, I mean, trousers. UNDERpants. I get it now. Some thing that is bad or ridiculous is pants.

I want to import that: "What? That is just PANTS! The most PANTS thing I ever heard! This place is the PANTS! Awwww, PANTS!

Let the PANTS begin!

Sincerely,

Mr. Pants

creepy, creeping, creepily

The security guard on duty last night was seriously creeping me out. I understand their job is to lurk, but everywhere I was, this guy was there. It was like he was expecting me to do something illegal.

Now maybe I have a guilty conscience, but I made it clear to him during our first encounter (right outside my home) that I live here, this is my bike and I am not the suspicious cyclist from earlier this evening. My housemates were right inside the window behind me, it was hardly suspicious to be heading to return a video at 8PM. Anyways at this point, he should have marked me as "friendly". He's not the regular guy, but he can figure out that I live there and he's not hired to watch people who live there.

Then I went to water the trees transplanted from my wrecked courtyard on the other side of the complex. There he was. He watched me water the trees. He followed me onto the sidewalk of the busy road in front of the complex were the trees were now and stood there, watching me work.

Then Chelsea knocked on my door to get me to sign something. I shut the front door to keep her cat (which follows her everywhere) outside and mine inside, since they were threatening to scrap. As we stood outside speaking, there he was at the bottom of my stairs, standing, watching us...watching...

I hurried back inside to avoid his prying eyes. I hope he's not there tonight.