"Cue the band!"

Enough with east coast babbling. Here's my soundtrack, meme courtesy of Lushy via Brooke. (Yes, I'm slow getting around to this but I've been caught up in other things. Better late than ...) According to Lushy:

Here's how it works...Put your iPod or whatever music player you have on shuffle. The first song that you hear will be the song for your Opening Scene. Skip to the next song, this is your next category. Keep doing this until the end.

In my list, I just about peed laughing at the "Learning a lesson" song. And I love my Closing Credits. Here we go:

Opening Scene: In this World - Moby
Lordy don't leave me
all by myself.

Wake Up Scene: Real Live Bleeding Fingers and Broken Glass - Lucinda Williams
You got a sense of humor
You're a mystery
I heard a rumor
You're making history.

Average Day: 36 Inches High - Nick Lowe
I heard the rich man grumble
I heard the poor man cry.

1st Date: Moon River - Frank Sinatra
Two drifters off to see the world
There's such a lot of world to see

Falling in Love: Dakon - Djeli Moussa Diawara & Bob Brozman
Instrumental.

Fight Scene: What Now My Love? - Frank Sinatra
Once I could see, once I could feel
Now I am numb, I've become unreal.

Break Up Scene: Proving You Wrong - Keb' Mo'
Everything that really mattered just walked out the door.

Back together: Love for Sale - Ella Fitzgerald (Cole Porter)
If you want the thrill of love,
I've been through the mill of love;
Old love, new love
Every love but true love

Secret Love: Satin Doll - Duke Ellington
She's nobody's fool so I'm playing it cool as can be.

Life's OK: Always a Use - Madeleine Peyroux
Maybe ain't no use in sayin' what I want it to be
Maybe ain't no use in playin' a tune
Maybe ain't no use in singin' my blues
But there's always a use in you and me

Mental Breakdown: My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys - Willie Nelson
My heroes have always been cowboys.
And they still are, it seems.
Sadly, in search of, but one step in back of,
Themselves and their slow-movin' dreams.

Driving: The Window - Leonard Cohen
Oh chosen love, Oh frozen love
Oh tangle of matter and ghost
Oh darling of angels, demons and saints
And the whole broken-hearted host
Gentle this soul

Learning a Lesson: In the Jailhouse Now - Johnny Cash
I'm in the jailhouse now,
I'm in the jailhouse now.

Deep Thought: The Party's Over - Willie Nelson
Call it a night, the party's over
And tomorrow starts the same old thing again

Flashback: Avenue A - ABC
Instrumental.

Partying: Picture in a Frame - Tom Waits
I'm gonna love you
Till the wheels come off
Oh yeah

Happy Dance: Autrefois - Pink Martini
Je ne manque à personne
Mais ce n'est pas grave
J'ai déjà passé un bon moment
Un bon moment autrefois

Poorlytranslated, that's:

Nobody misses me
But that's okay
I've already had a good time
a good time before

Regretting: You and the Night and the Music - Julie London
Morning will come without warning and take away the stars
If we must live for the moment
Love ‘til the moment is through

Long Night Alone: Exodus - Bob Marley
Open your eyes and look within:
Are you satisfied with the life you're living?

Death Scene: Mid-Riff - Duke Ellington
Instrumental.

Closing Credits: Wild Night - Van Morrison
And ev'rything looks so complete
When you walk out on the street
And the wind catches your feet
And sends you flyin', cryin'
Woo-woo-wee!
Wild night is calling

Rejuvenation

So why did I make a trip out east? Was it simply to enjoy the clapboard buildings and mussels of Atlantic Canada? To watch my hair wave and curl and frizz in the sea level air?

Well, yes and no. There was a greater purpose.

Interestingly, a friend sent me an email the other day about this being a season of rejuvenation. Now, you might tend to associate that with spring but I would say both spring and fall are rejuvenating seasons because both are seasons of change. Transitions. That sort of thing.

Regardless of this, however, it's been in my mind to do some rejuvenating of my own. And perhaps the season has something to do with it.

I've decided to make rather a large and to some degree alarming and even irrational change to my life. Having made that decision, I find I am rejuvenated. And I'm now embroiled in the chaos and panic of change, the second guessing and doubts, and thrill of it all.

It's damned good fun. Perhaps totally nuts, but fun.

Wheeeeeee!!!!!!!!!!!

(Notice how I very cleverly, or perhaps not so cleverly, don't actually say what this change is? It may be obvious, but for the moment I can't really say explicitly what the change is. But soon, soon.)

Boats and birds and loads of beer

That pretty much sums up yesterday. We jumped in the car and drove from Halifax to Mahone Bay the long way, through Peggy's Cove and Indian Harbour. And as usual, I took loads of photos (only some of which I put online).

I have still one more series to put up sometime, though they largely suck. Too much wine and food and so on. So the pictures suffered, though the taste buds did not.

And now I'm back in Edmonton. Dear, dear.

One day when I have time I'll try and organize the photos. For now, they're just thrown up higgledee-piggledee. I hope I can remember what was taken where. It's something of a blur right now.

It appears I'm in Halifax

Yes, we are now in Nova Scotia and last night involved a considerable degree of altered sensibility (yes, tipsy), a misty, wet night and lobster.

Today, much clearer skies and some frustration over internet connections.

I have been taking more pictures than is reasonable but so it goes. Unfortunately, no time to organize or really edit them so I've just tossed 'em all up here.

(My favourite Halifax shot, from last night, is this one.)

For those wondering, we've been in Fredericton, Moncton and Sackville in New Brunswick. And in Nova Scotia, we've been in Amherst and are now in Halifax. I mention this not because anyone will care but one day I'll want to know and I won't remember where the hell I was. This post might help.

And now, me in the east - with pictures!

Yes, I've collected a hodge podge of images from various parts of Atlantic Canada, tossed them all together and put them online along with an equal amount of shots of what I guess you would call a Maritime get together.

It was a birthday party. Having drunk beer without stop through the day, I'm not authority on what transpired or why, but I beleive it's safe to say everyone enjoyed him/herself.

I know I did. And good grief ... I had energy to burn! Must have been the big sleep I had following the sleep-deprivation thing a day or two before. Whatever it was, in an unusual occurance, I couldn't shut up. I just talked and talked ... very peculiar.

Out in Atlantic Canada

I took the red-eye so I flew overnight, leaving Edmonton at five to one in the morning yesterday (00:55). This means I was essentially up for something like 37 hours straight, which made me a babbling idiot through most of yesterday.

And most of yesterday was spent in Fredericton (New Brunswick). Today, I’m in Moncton. And I’ve taken some pictures. However, I stupidly forgot to bring the cable that allows me to download them to my Powerbook. So I’ve spent the morning wandering around downtown Moncton, drinking way to much Tim Horton’s coffee, looking for some place that might have the cable I need. Found it but it’s in another part of town. Hopefully I can talk someone into giving me a ride over there.

Blah blah blah … doesn’t sound to exciting, but there it is.

Oh, by the way …. I now have east coast hair – curling, frizzy and more disheveled looking than usual.

Note:

Some hours later, I finally got the cord I needed and was able to download my pictures. Therefore I've included an image of the ubiquitous Tim Hortons. They are everywhere. I even found one in the closet of the hotel.

Turning things upside down

This is where I currently live. In the next little while (no time frame) I will no longer live here. Yes, one of the units in here is (soon, was) mine.

I posted the following on my Writelife site. (That's why it reads as it does.) I've now posted it here as well. Because I can! Here goes ...

I begin far too many posts trying to excuse my lack of frequent posting. Yet it’s a terrific compulsion because I know I haven’t posted in a while. And when I do, it strikes me that the posts connect to writing in only the most tenuous way.

Well, that may be changing. Though I’m unsure of the timeline. And I’m not yet at liberty to explain what I allude to. But soon, soon …

In the meantime, I’ll say this … I hope to be making some changes that allow me to get back into the actual work of writing. Yes, I hope to be doing more writing soon.

No, I don’t mean just more blog posts. I mean the writing that delivers a paycheck because it’s the product of an actual job.

I am turning my life upside down. Details to follow shortly … I hope. Certain things must first be taken care of before I can really talk about it.

And that’s my version of a cliffhanger ending. (Needs some work, I know.)

Posting from a bar

(Today's post has not been reviewed, editor approved or otherwise finessed to eliminate humiliating typos, grammatical errors or unconsidered opinions.)

Today’s post comes from the bar at Murietta’s on Whyte Avenue. It’s about 4:30 in the afternoon – though it’s unlikely I’ll post this till much later since I can’t seem to locate a wireless connection. This doesn’t mean there isn’t one available. It just means I haven’t figured out how to access it – and I’m too lazy to bother figuring it out now.

Why am I not at home? Because I’ve been chased from it by the cleaners. Okay – they haven’t chased me from there. But it’s kind of awkward working and/or lazing around when people are washing floors and walls and what not all around you.

So I fled.

A few years ago I would have felt like a geek sitting in a bar and tapping away on a laptop. But times change. I look up from my screen and across the room from I see a woman staring at her own laptop screen.

Okay. So it may still be a geeky thing to do but who the hell cares anymore? I sure as hell don’t.

Anyway … it looks like the NFL up on the TV in the corner of the bar. Not that I care. But I’m killing time and thought I’d point that out.

Quick note for those of you who may be wondering … bars are kinda dull places late on a Sunday afternoon.

Getting back to the cleaners … I gave them my cell number. It’s on a 3x5 white card I placed on the counter beside the phone – rather hard to miss. They were supposed to call me about 45 minutes ago. They were to give me a kind of, “Will be through in 30 minutes,”kind of call. You know, let me know how much longer they would be so I could get an idea of when would be a good time to go home.

I ain’t heard anything yet. So … do I get another beer, and keep killing time here? And return slightly tipsy … ?

The answer is yes. The bartender just wandered by as I was writing that and asked if I wanted another. Before I knew what was happening, I said yes.

Draught. Kokanee. Here it is!

By the way, I have now declared publicly my geek status – laptop in the bar complete with digital camera so I can have photos for my blog.

There is no shame left. No humiliation left unplumbed.

My post post addendum

This is really a comment on my preceding post - but it sounds so much more important to call it an addendum.

I feel I have move into tomorrow. I am a citizen of the future. I have made a post (agreed, I play fast a loose with that term) from a bar. I have posted while tipsy on draught beer, Kokanee to be specific.

Now if that isn't the world of tomorrow, if that isn't our tech future, I don't know what is.

Technology ... it's not just a faster, more immediate tomorrow. It's a stupider one. And ya gotta love that. Surely there's a buch to be made. Don't cha think?

Ready to deconstruct

I am making adjustments to my living accomodations. Ok, I'm not - other people are. Some of them are friends who are lending a hand; some of them are people you pay for that sort of thing (like the cleaners who will arrive at 1:00 tomorrow, were supposed to have been here to day ... a very uninteresting story).

Why these changes? Well, because I'm going to be selling the place soon. And I'd like it to look it's best.

Where will I be headed once it's sold? Not sure yet. That's still a mystery. But I got my ideas! I got my ideas!

Work continues to be rather busier than I would care for - don't like that at all. And late next week ... well, next week I'm off on a short, whirlwind-like trip.

Headed east - way east. Atlantic Canada. The Maritimes. Halifax, Moncton, Fredriction ... that kind of east. Given the kind of weather we've been having in Edmonton the last week, I think God is trying to remind me what the east coast is like.

Really, I didn't need a reminder.

(By the way .... those tools, and legs, are Gord's. He was fixing my sink. It's a much happier sink now.)

I want a cat's day

I really would have preferred spending today in the way that Gonzo spent hers.

Strangely, few companies are willing to pay you for this kind of activity. I guess I just haven't developed a viable business model yet.

(I love writing like that - "a viable business model." It almost makes you want to run out and buy golf clubs and stock options.)

Anyway ... the weather has gone in the tank, work has turned stupid and I just wanna laze around like Gonzo does. Is that too much to ask?

Let's talk about the other William Wren

As interested as I am in myself, I find the other William Wren even more interesting. Perhaps because, being me, I know pretty much all I need to about this William Wren (meaning me) but know all but nothing about the other.

He was born, I calculate, in 1940 - I haven't been able to discover exactly when. So no horoscope sign for that one (I'm a Capricorn). But the math reveals he was 16 years older than me.

For the record, he died September 11, 2001. He was a fire safety director, 2 WTC. To say it explicitly, he died 9-11. He was a fire safety director at the World Trade Center.

He and I have the same name - William Wren. Not sure about the similarity of our middle names but really, who uses middle names anyway?

Apart from his name and a few scant facts that are pretty much meaningless to anyone but a statistician, I know nothing about this man who shares my name and who left the world because he was at the centre of a horrific event.

So who was he? I mean no disrespect to the tributes to victims of 9-11, but I'm not interested in a name. Who was the man? How did he love? What did he love? How did he laugh? What made him mad as a hatter?

I want to know how William Wren's friends referred to him. No one calls me William. I suspect no one called him William either. Was he a Bill? A Billy? A Will? Willy? You know, William has a fistful of variations. You never know what your friends might decide they're going to call you.

Flounder began his 9-11 post speaking of the assassination of JFK. I remember where I was. Having been born in 1940, you can bet your ass the other William Wren remembered where he was. He'd have been 23 at the time. (I was 7.) So for William Wren, I'm pretty sure it was a key and lingering event in his life. He was a young man in his prime when it occurred.

I wonder what William Wren thought of the Beatles? He'd have been about 23 or 24 at the time they hit the big time in the U.S. Did he embrace them? Or did he stay an Elvis guy? (Assuming he ever was an Elvis guy ...)

Did he marry? Were there children? My Internet search, admittedly not thorough, revealed no information like this. But having left the world at 61, wife or not, children or not, you can be sure he had his deep and enduring relationships. Maybe it's best we don't know. It was his business, and theirs. And read all you want about someone, uncover all the detailed personal information you want, you cannot know anyone that way. You have to live and love and fight and laugh with them. This none of us did, and will not do. Only his friends and family did.

Still, I'd like to know more about who the man was. Of course, for all I know he and I would have hated each other! He might have met me and thought, "Wow! What an ass! I can't believe he has the same name as me!" And maybe I would have thought the same about him. On the other hand, we might have shared a beer, laughed at everyone else and said, "We William Wrens - we gotta stick together. The rest of the world's made up of idiots!"

You just never know. Because you can't know. A name is just a name.

It's good and it's right to remember people lost. An event like 9-11 makes it difficult to memorialize them in a way that we'd like, where we can really know who the people were who belong to all those names, but we do the best we can.

Myself, I'd rather see the home movies. Or, better still, hear the stories from their friends. I'm sure there are more than a few that could be told by William Wren's friends and family.

As it is, I have only a name that, a bit disturbingly, is also mine. I choose to think of him as Bill. Of course, that's what I am - a Bill. So perhaps I'm biased.

And it's good to know that there was another person in the world with my name who was a better man than me. It gives the rest of us something to aspire to.

A night for Beef Wellington

Last night Liz, with assistance from Gord, made Beef Wellington for a passle 'o people. Eight of us, I believe.

I, as usual, assisted by not assisting. I remained removed drinking beer (and later, wine), helping as best I could by staying out of the way.

The food, by the way, was excellent. The conversation was congenial. The night was clear and perfect. (Though this mornng it was raining and thundering and generally somewhat morose.)

Unfortunately, being the idiot photographer that I am, it didn't occur to me to take a picture of the ninth guest, the neighbour's elephant-sized Newfoundland, Jake. An incredibly friendly, loveable dog - mostly black and roughly as large as a two-storey starter home.

Anyway, the night was fine with Liz and Gord, me, Andy and Perdita, and three of the neighbours (which included yet another Bill - there are billions of us; we should be numbered).

Oh yes ... thanks for the food Liz! Thumbs up!

Pointlessness

I decided to post this here although it's posted on my other blog, Writelife. But despite a couple of posts this week here, on Crazy Ass Planet, and few lame comments I've left on a few blogs, the following is applicable (sorta) here is well. Anyway, for what it's worth:

In praise of pointlessness – a eulogy?

I have not posted anything on any of my blogs in the last few days and I’ve been wondering why. The answer kept coming back: I had nothing to post about. I started mulling that over.

First, I wondered why I had nothing to post. The answer was that I actually had much I could have posted but, having had a busy and intense work week, my brain was reluctant to engage in anything else that might have even a slight relationship to “work.”

I was burned out. I didn’t wanna do it.

But then I wondered why I felt I needed to post “about” something. Why did I feel there needed to be a point, a purpose, to a post? I then realized I have been too long in the western culture of purpose and productivity.

Much of the fun of blogs, at least many that I visit, is the lack of a point. I enjoy the fact that I will not likely be a better man for having read a post. I like that there’s a good chance I won’t learn anything new, certainly nothing new that is worthwhile, in my online travels.

One of my favourite online encounters was the silly “Numa, numa” thing I came upon a while back. Given the way the damn thing spread like an STD over the Internet, I was not alone in finding it marvelously pointless.

Sometimes the best point is no point. But it’s awfully difficult to communicate that to people. In the past, before everyone had a computer and was online, people would ask me why I had a computer, an Internet connection and so on. I almost always had to frame my responses in a way that communicated function. They could not see a point until they saw a purpose, a function.

This may seem odd today when the Internet – indeed, the world – seems to be drowning under wave after wave of utter crap (seen YouTube?). Crap and war, that seems to be what we’re into these days. (Perhaps the war business is why we’re so hot for worthless crap – it can be a nice diversion, I suppose.)

But the crap is not pointless. In the west at least, even pointlessness must have a point. A purpose. A function.

And that point is, of course, the point of all points – profit. Companies are falling all over themselves to generate as much pointless material as possible because they are leaping upon perceived “revenue generating possibilities.”

So we are awash in rubbish.

I suspect, however, this triumph of the trivial will be short-lived. Pointlessness does have a point – a genuine point. It serves as a relief from our obsessive purposefulness. One of the reasons Microsoft is so ubiquitous, and remains so, is that while they were growing they were also largely focused on purpose. Look at all the damn business apps – documents and spreadsheets. All that data!

Pointlessness is necessary but it’s like dessert. Desserts, as desserts, are wonderful. But as a meal? It’s a good way to make yourself feel sick.

You know, as I conclude it occurs to me that this post about pointlessness had a point, one which I think I may have lost now, and that pleases me as it makes the post, as a whole, really rather pointless.

Tags: Pointlessness, Blogs, Internet, Web

I don't like to complain ...

But I do. Like to complain that is. What else is a blog for if not to moan and groan about the tribulations of being me?

And surely that's what everyone wants to read about?

It was a long day today. It has been a long week - and there's still tomorrow to go! And Monday was a holiday!

How does the world manage that? It's a testament to human ingenuity that we can make shorter weeks seem longer than regular work weeks. Only the hairless biped could come up with that.

Let me quote from Kurt Vonnegut's novel Galapagos:

More and more people were saying that their brains were irresponsible, unreliable, hideously dangerous, wholly unrealistic - were simply no damn good.

No argument here.

Pausing for ice tea now

I've been working and largely grumpy this weekend so in an effort to combat it, I post these two who sold me ice tea for 25 cents. I've no idea who they are, I just came upon them as I wandered down the street.

The little girl must have some voice on her. I had my iPod on and blaring yet I managed to hear her shout, "Do you want some ice tea!?"

Actually, I didn't. But since I was taking their picture I thought it only fair to buy a glass of ice tea.

What the picture doesn't show is the human chaos I was with my backpack on (from which I had to get the camera), the iPod which I couldn't manage to turn off (so I kept saying, "What!? What!?") ... and so on.

Anyway ... thanks for the tea!