I don't agree with capitol punishment. Even for the very worst offenders and people who genuinely deserve to be tortured and left to die. It's not that I think life is precious or that taking a life is always wrong. It's much more simple then that. The government is our collective representation so if they fuck up and kill a wrongfully convicted person, we all just committed murder. I guess even if he was guilty it would still be murder, and that wouldn't bother me. But the system is flawed and the chance always remains that the poor bastard in the cell didn't do anything. We have plenty of evidence that this occurs frequently.
I've always considered myself an atheist. I don't remember a time when the sky-monster story made any sense to me. I'm also agnostic and ignostic when it comes to this subject. People often confuse atheist and agnostic as being two choices on the same subject. They aren't. Atheism is about belief, gnosticism is about knowledge. I don't believe that god exists because I have no reason, evidence or bases to conclude that one does, however I don't know that a god does not exist. It's the same way I don't know that invisible unicorns or any other critter made up off the top of my head does or does not exist. I just have no reason to assume the could.
I'm pretty good at the religion debate. I've been doing it since I was about 12. I have no idea why anyone would conclude, given the logic, reason and evidence that a god exists. What really troubles me is that I'm still a very small minority of the general population. It is because I am in the minority that when I talk about how nonsensical theism is it's viewed as a negative thing that is inappropriate to talk about. Religion gets a special pass, and I think as long as the culture continues to give it an unscrutinized and unquestioned status it will always be awkward in conversation.
I think all religion and theology boils down to two logical fallacies: Argument from Antiquity and Argument from Popularity. If you are not familiar with logical fallacies I highly recommend googling that shit up. They are your friend. They will help you to think a little more critically.
The argument from antiquity is when a person (or culture) declares that something is true because it has been around for a long time and survived in the culture. People have always believed in some larger force, that part is true. The problem is that what they believed is not. Before the methodology of science and critical thinking the answers to unknown questions seemed beyond our natural understanding. They saw a flat horizon in the distance so they concluded that the world must have an edge. But over time when we examine these questions we've always found a natural phenomenon that controls it. This is where the god of the gaps comes into play. God controlled the sun, until we learned about the sun, god controlled the weather until we learned about the weather, god controlled how we got here until we figured out natural selection, god controlled our morality until we figured out tribalism. The list goes on and the things this once great god controlled becomes smaller and smaller. This voids the argument from antiquity. The reasons to consider a god have decreased over time, it's only the straw-grasping that has actually lasted.
The argument from popularity is probably the one I hear more about god. Billions of people believe in it so it must have some validity. The only thing valid is that Billions of people believe in it. If you follow the logic backward you still have not provided any answers as to why a person's belief means any kind of truth. If this argument worked than all we would need to cure cancer is just get billions of people to believe cancer doesn't exist. Better yet all we would need to stop death and bring back the people who died is to get a lot of people to believe it! Reality, the natural world does not work that way. We know it makes absolutely no sense and yet I hear this argument given in favor of a deity more than any other.
I've been told I shouldn't mention non-religious beliefs like pseudoscience or the supernatural or any other belief that when the evidence is examined and the logic is deconstructed dissolves into nothingness, like a homeopathic solution (it's water... just water!) So I won't.
I have a lot of people in my life that believe in things that not only have no scientific evidence but actually can be shown false. Cognitive dissonance theory tells me that it's essentially pointless to debate these folks. Even presenting counter evidence will actually make them stick tighter to their beliefs. I think the best thing to do is to ask people why they believe these things to be true, ask them to examine the logic they use to come to those conclusions and most importantly, ask them what they would need to prove their belief's wrong.
Most people never give up nonsense that they've committed themselves to. They just stick the word "quantum" in front of whatever whacky belief they have and continue on...
Song of the day:
Thursday, February 10, 2011
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
Self Diagnostic
I think on Fridays I'm just going to post music I think is good in YouTube form.
This is interesting. I decided today's song was going to be a by a band called Horsefeathers. Mary turned me on to them. The singer looks like Bonnie Prince Billy and sounds like Tracy Chapman. When I found the video I was looking for and watched something happened that blew my fucking mind!
Ok so a long time ago I wrote a post about my first trip to Portland where I found my twin in a second hand store. The same store where years later I would buy the glasses that currently sit on my face. I'll just give a quick refresher to fill you in on some of the details. The ex-wife and I were walking around when we saw this guy who looked just like me (at the time my face was much more baby-like). We followed him into Magpie, the aforementioned store where I eventually worked up the courage to mention to him that we looked identical and that I required a photograph. This was back in the myspace days where a lot of my friends had seen the picture and noted how weird it was that I found this guy who looked just like me at age 19-20. I have no idea where the image is but I'm sure it's floating around somewhere.
Horsefeathers, the band in today's song, is also from Portland. Their video starts with the profile of a young man with blonde hair and glasses who then turns to look at the camera... Can you see where I'm going with this? It's that guy! He has the same light hair and redish glasses as he did in the long lost photo too. This isn't just "He looks like the same guy" I am 100% certain that it is. I know it is because I can see him clearly, behind the same pair of spectacles, that I bought from the same store, I once found him in.
What's funny is just how much I don't look like him now because of all the weight loss but still see myself with that visage in my head when I think of what I look like. I believe the guy's name was Collin, so if you'd like to know for sure send an email to the band. I'm sure they would love the story.
This is yet another reason why Portland really is the greatest city on earth.
If I was a decade younger I would enlist in the army. I base this on my growing fascination with the Iraq war. I love the episodes of This American Life that feature stories from the region and just finished watching Generation Kill for the third time. Hoo-rah.
I think a lot of people mistake the life and job of a soldier with that of a regular occupation. In order for a military to be effective the soldiers on the front lines have to obey without question. They can't be effective if they all act on their inner morality and politics. We have thousands of years of military experience to base the system on and so I understand where service men are coming from when they do the awful things they're told to do.
It's kind of a messed up sense of right and wrong but I think it can be an important experience for young people to live through. The Iraq war was based on some serious bullshit and I think the country is way worse than before, but once that moronic plan began the soldiers involved did what soldiers do. The people on the front lines don't get to make decisions about how the wars are fought. Not just because it isn't their job but because the entire system depends on unity even if that unity is guided by an idiot. Put it this way, the armed servicemen would have fought exactly the same if it was a war people agreed with. I think the general population thinks of soldiers in the same way we think of police. The police have to make personal judgment calls in order to keep the peace. Sometimes (many, many times) the police make really bad calls but they have far more flexibility when it comes to how they make those calls. Soldiers don't have that. If they're told that they have to shoot anything that gets within 20 feet of their vehicle they have to shoot. It sucks that a lot of the time the people who get in that range are innocent but I don't think it's right to blame the soldiers.
Man this post became a bummer. All I really wanted to talk about was how neat it would be to live under the conditions of a soldier in the US Marines. I'd be all buff and would finally eb able to live my dream of shitting in a hole I just dug on the side of a road.
This is what guys think about: how we would survive in the army, in prison, or alone in the woods. We think about that and also what music to include on Friday's post.
This is interesting. I decided today's song was going to be a by a band called Horsefeathers. Mary turned me on to them. The singer looks like Bonnie Prince Billy and sounds like Tracy Chapman. When I found the video I was looking for and watched something happened that blew my fucking mind!
Ok so a long time ago I wrote a post about my first trip to Portland where I found my twin in a second hand store. The same store where years later I would buy the glasses that currently sit on my face. I'll just give a quick refresher to fill you in on some of the details. The ex-wife and I were walking around when we saw this guy who looked just like me (at the time my face was much more baby-like). We followed him into Magpie, the aforementioned store where I eventually worked up the courage to mention to him that we looked identical and that I required a photograph. This was back in the myspace days where a lot of my friends had seen the picture and noted how weird it was that I found this guy who looked just like me at age 19-20. I have no idea where the image is but I'm sure it's floating around somewhere.
Horsefeathers, the band in today's song, is also from Portland. Their video starts with the profile of a young man with blonde hair and glasses who then turns to look at the camera... Can you see where I'm going with this? It's that guy! He has the same light hair and redish glasses as he did in the long lost photo too. This isn't just "He looks like the same guy" I am 100% certain that it is. I know it is because I can see him clearly, behind the same pair of spectacles, that I bought from the same store, I once found him in.
What's funny is just how much I don't look like him now because of all the weight loss but still see myself with that visage in my head when I think of what I look like. I believe the guy's name was Collin, so if you'd like to know for sure send an email to the band. I'm sure they would love the story.
This is yet another reason why Portland really is the greatest city on earth.
If I was a decade younger I would enlist in the army. I base this on my growing fascination with the Iraq war. I love the episodes of This American Life that feature stories from the region and just finished watching Generation Kill for the third time. Hoo-rah.
I think a lot of people mistake the life and job of a soldier with that of a regular occupation. In order for a military to be effective the soldiers on the front lines have to obey without question. They can't be effective if they all act on their inner morality and politics. We have thousands of years of military experience to base the system on and so I understand where service men are coming from when they do the awful things they're told to do.
It's kind of a messed up sense of right and wrong but I think it can be an important experience for young people to live through. The Iraq war was based on some serious bullshit and I think the country is way worse than before, but once that moronic plan began the soldiers involved did what soldiers do. The people on the front lines don't get to make decisions about how the wars are fought. Not just because it isn't their job but because the entire system depends on unity even if that unity is guided by an idiot. Put it this way, the armed servicemen would have fought exactly the same if it was a war people agreed with. I think the general population thinks of soldiers in the same way we think of police. The police have to make personal judgment calls in order to keep the peace. Sometimes (many, many times) the police make really bad calls but they have far more flexibility when it comes to how they make those calls. Soldiers don't have that. If they're told that they have to shoot anything that gets within 20 feet of their vehicle they have to shoot. It sucks that a lot of the time the people who get in that range are innocent but I don't think it's right to blame the soldiers.
Man this post became a bummer. All I really wanted to talk about was how neat it would be to live under the conditions of a soldier in the US Marines. I'd be all buff and would finally eb able to live my dream of shitting in a hole I just dug on the side of a road.
This is what guys think about: how we would survive in the army, in prison, or alone in the woods. We think about that and also what music to include on Friday's post.
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
Oscar Mike
I feel like I need to do a second, "real" post today. I skipped Sunday and my rant from this morning isn't really the type of writing I want to be doing.
The last time I visited my friend Terra's ashes was on the first anniversary of her death. I distinctly remember buying a cream soda slushie from the 7/11 kitty corner to the Argyle Mall. I love cream soda in slushie form, she was ht by a train.
Her ashes are in this weird mausoleum that requires a special access code to get into. I had to go through three or four people before getting the code from a gardener. I had flowers with me that I bought from the Covent Garden Market downtown. I very rarely buy flowers, they seem almost as thoughtless as a gift card only worse because you can't buy anything with them. I have a theory that women like flowers and diamonds because they were brought up thinking they should like flowers and diamonds and not actually because they like flowers and diamonds. It's the same as with men and huge slabs of meat.
Inside the mausoleum the feeling was quiet and peaceful and over the top creepy. The eerie factor had nothing to do with the ashes of the dead but in the extravagance that people will go to to decorate the little wall-boxes that held the urns. It was like people were pimping out their graves. They're not even graves, they're kindergarten cubbies filled with trinkets that the dust in the jar next to them has no use for.
Once I found Terra's cubbie I had no clue what I was supposed to do. I essentially just stood there for about two minutes thinking about how awesome a slushie would be and then I left and got one.
I have no reason to visit the resting places of any of the dead people in my life. I also think going to funerals is an unnecessary bummer. I used to think that a big funeral was a good tribute to how well loved the person who kicked it was. But nobody actually wants to be there, they're just afraid of how it will look if they don't go. If you actually read the history of what we know as the funeral, it's all a money grab. Penn and Teller did an excellent episode of Bullshit on this exact subject. I highly recommend watching it before you die.
I found my grandfather's dead corpse. I only have one memory of him and it's finding his body in the backyard of my grandparent's house on Kelson Avenue. He had been picking cherries from their cherry tree and was laying on his back under it. I thought he was just pretending and was going to pop up and scare me when I got closer. I never liked cherries but for some odd reason I fucking love cherry koolaid. I think most kids have some story about finding a dead relative. It's not really a traumatizing memory as much as an interesting story that I use to mention how much I love cherry koolaid.
After I bought the cream soda slushie I took the Dundas St, bus back downtown to visit the ex-wife where she worked. This was only about a week before I began working at Carmen's Foto Source where my first shift happened during the great black-out of 03. We were living in the awesome apartment at the time and I remember that the ex-wife was ticked off at me for something. Probably because I gave flowers to another girl.
Song of the day:
The last time I visited my friend Terra's ashes was on the first anniversary of her death. I distinctly remember buying a cream soda slushie from the 7/11 kitty corner to the Argyle Mall. I love cream soda in slushie form, she was ht by a train.
Her ashes are in this weird mausoleum that requires a special access code to get into. I had to go through three or four people before getting the code from a gardener. I had flowers with me that I bought from the Covent Garden Market downtown. I very rarely buy flowers, they seem almost as thoughtless as a gift card only worse because you can't buy anything with them. I have a theory that women like flowers and diamonds because they were brought up thinking they should like flowers and diamonds and not actually because they like flowers and diamonds. It's the same as with men and huge slabs of meat.
Inside the mausoleum the feeling was quiet and peaceful and over the top creepy. The eerie factor had nothing to do with the ashes of the dead but in the extravagance that people will go to to decorate the little wall-boxes that held the urns. It was like people were pimping out their graves. They're not even graves, they're kindergarten cubbies filled with trinkets that the dust in the jar next to them has no use for.
Once I found Terra's cubbie I had no clue what I was supposed to do. I essentially just stood there for about two minutes thinking about how awesome a slushie would be and then I left and got one.
I have no reason to visit the resting places of any of the dead people in my life. I also think going to funerals is an unnecessary bummer. I used to think that a big funeral was a good tribute to how well loved the person who kicked it was. But nobody actually wants to be there, they're just afraid of how it will look if they don't go. If you actually read the history of what we know as the funeral, it's all a money grab. Penn and Teller did an excellent episode of Bullshit on this exact subject. I highly recommend watching it before you die.
I found my grandfather's dead corpse. I only have one memory of him and it's finding his body in the backyard of my grandparent's house on Kelson Avenue. He had been picking cherries from their cherry tree and was laying on his back under it. I thought he was just pretending and was going to pop up and scare me when I got closer. I never liked cherries but for some odd reason I fucking love cherry koolaid. I think most kids have some story about finding a dead relative. It's not really a traumatizing memory as much as an interesting story that I use to mention how much I love cherry koolaid.
After I bought the cream soda slushie I took the Dundas St, bus back downtown to visit the ex-wife where she worked. This was only about a week before I began working at Carmen's Foto Source where my first shift happened during the great black-out of 03. We were living in the awesome apartment at the time and I remember that the ex-wife was ticked off at me for something. Probably because I gave flowers to another girl.
Song of the day:
Konrad von Finckenstein
When hear the name Finckenstein I think of a large green monster, bolts in neck, playing three card monte on the streets of New York.
Last week the CBC news online was following the CRTC usage based billing debacle with almost an hourly coverage. This week everything has switched to a story about a murdered kid in the Dominican. So an important story that impacts the lives of literally millions of Canadians gets bumped for a single murder. Murder is sad for the families involved, but dedicating so much coverage for it is bizarre. I guess the CBC isn't really Canadian anymore as seems drenched in the stink of the American 24 hour news cycle.
The CRTC reversal is such a monumental event in Canada. It's the first time I know of where a community of online protesters (self included) have been able to gather what is now well over 400,000 signatures and actually pressure the government to listen to the people and govern them responsibly. Obviously there are political motivations involved seeing as there is likely going to be an election in May. Just the fact that people at a grassroots level actually achieved their goal without dissolving into just another place to buy all-natural hemp grocery bags and dated bumper-stickers inspires me.
In case you don't know what usage based billing is I'll give you the skinny. The CRTC is our radio and telecommunications commission. They're composed entirely of various animals in the rodent family and have about as much use as my testicles, namely none. If you think of all the weird, evil American government agencies that get to create their own rules and then enforce them, the CTRC is our media version of that. The FCC of the north.
The usage based billing system that the CRTC passed allows the major internet service providers to cap their monthly plans at a staggeringly low 25 gigs and then charge as much as $5.00 per gig on top of that. Their reasoning behind this is that they claim lower bandwidth users are now having to pay for heavier bandwidth users and that a cap would level the playing field. To a person who is not familiar with how bandwidth and ISPs work this may seem like it means something. It doesn't. Leaving side the obvious blurred distinction between bandwidth and file transfer these companies have the capabilities to handle amounts much, much higher than they are currently allocating. But even if they didn't have the framework to allow more traffic on their lines the solution is to expand, not minimize.
The market needs more access. You don't have to be an IP pirate to easily use 100 to 200 gigs per months. Gamers, Netflix subscribers, online television watchers, itunes, you tube, and imaging users all require large amounts of file transfer to do what they are currently doing legally. Then are people like myself who subscribe to different online educational programs and utilize video tutorials to learn. We're fucked by this. This doesn't even begin to cover the shear volume of small businesses that require heavy usage in order to run. Clearly the population all over the world is asking for more access. The big difference of course is that in the rest of the world business is keeping up with market demand. In Canada though we have the opposite. Our providers want to reverse the amount people use and then gouge them for being regular internet users and they have the CRTC's sign of approval to do this.
It can be hard for most people to understand why this is wrong. The older generations still think internet use is a fad and that it's somehow "bad" to be online so much. It's probably the same mentality that the horse and buggy generation thought when the automobile took over as the literal driving force. It's what the clergy thought once the printing press took off and what our grandparents thought when our parents started watching television and using the the telephone for business. It's monopolizing, price gouging on a resource that essentially unlimited. It has nothing to do with fairness and everything to do with government approved greed.
Sorry for the early rant. I'm posting this unedited.
Oh I also had my song of the day all picked out and ready to go and then when I went to find a you tube video I discovered that this tune is on the Twilight Eclipse soundtrack. It's a little like finding out that a teacher you liked was a pedophile. I almost decided not to share it because of this fact, then I remembered how many of my favorite bands have songs in current television commercials... I'm looking at you Matt Pond PA, Slow Club and Vetiver! Anyway here it is.
By the way you really should be listening to these. Many of these songs you don't know and will probably love. If it's good enough for Twilight...
Last week the CBC news online was following the CRTC usage based billing debacle with almost an hourly coverage. This week everything has switched to a story about a murdered kid in the Dominican. So an important story that impacts the lives of literally millions of Canadians gets bumped for a single murder. Murder is sad for the families involved, but dedicating so much coverage for it is bizarre. I guess the CBC isn't really Canadian anymore as seems drenched in the stink of the American 24 hour news cycle.
The CRTC reversal is such a monumental event in Canada. It's the first time I know of where a community of online protesters (self included) have been able to gather what is now well over 400,000 signatures and actually pressure the government to listen to the people and govern them responsibly. Obviously there are political motivations involved seeing as there is likely going to be an election in May. Just the fact that people at a grassroots level actually achieved their goal without dissolving into just another place to buy all-natural hemp grocery bags and dated bumper-stickers inspires me.
In case you don't know what usage based billing is I'll give you the skinny. The CRTC is our radio and telecommunications commission. They're composed entirely of various animals in the rodent family and have about as much use as my testicles, namely none. If you think of all the weird, evil American government agencies that get to create their own rules and then enforce them, the CTRC is our media version of that. The FCC of the north.
The usage based billing system that the CRTC passed allows the major internet service providers to cap their monthly plans at a staggeringly low 25 gigs and then charge as much as $5.00 per gig on top of that. Their reasoning behind this is that they claim lower bandwidth users are now having to pay for heavier bandwidth users and that a cap would level the playing field. To a person who is not familiar with how bandwidth and ISPs work this may seem like it means something. It doesn't. Leaving side the obvious blurred distinction between bandwidth and file transfer these companies have the capabilities to handle amounts much, much higher than they are currently allocating. But even if they didn't have the framework to allow more traffic on their lines the solution is to expand, not minimize.
The market needs more access. You don't have to be an IP pirate to easily use 100 to 200 gigs per months. Gamers, Netflix subscribers, online television watchers, itunes, you tube, and imaging users all require large amounts of file transfer to do what they are currently doing legally. Then are people like myself who subscribe to different online educational programs and utilize video tutorials to learn. We're fucked by this. This doesn't even begin to cover the shear volume of small businesses that require heavy usage in order to run. Clearly the population all over the world is asking for more access. The big difference of course is that in the rest of the world business is keeping up with market demand. In Canada though we have the opposite. Our providers want to reverse the amount people use and then gouge them for being regular internet users and they have the CRTC's sign of approval to do this.
It can be hard for most people to understand why this is wrong. The older generations still think internet use is a fad and that it's somehow "bad" to be online so much. It's probably the same mentality that the horse and buggy generation thought when the automobile took over as the literal driving force. It's what the clergy thought once the printing press took off and what our grandparents thought when our parents started watching television and using the the telephone for business. It's monopolizing, price gouging on a resource that essentially unlimited. It has nothing to do with fairness and everything to do with government approved greed.
Sorry for the early rant. I'm posting this unedited.
Oh I also had my song of the day all picked out and ready to go and then when I went to find a you tube video I discovered that this tune is on the Twilight Eclipse soundtrack. It's a little like finding out that a teacher you liked was a pedophile. I almost decided not to share it because of this fact, then I remembered how many of my favorite bands have songs in current television commercials... I'm looking at you Matt Pond PA, Slow Club and Vetiver! Anyway here it is.
By the way you really should be listening to these. Many of these songs you don't know and will probably love. If it's good enough for Twilight...
Monday, February 7, 2011
Fleshy Lettuce
I didn't write a post yesterday.
There are a few good reasons for that but the main one is that Mary and I were watching Gangs of New York and got tired. Daniel Day Lewis trumps blog every time.
As it turns out, the key to making a good website is clean code. I've been working on the LoveSprouts Photography site all day, everyday for a week. About two hours ago I decided to redo all the code to remove all the extra junk hanging around. As I re-wrote each line of code I was able to get rid of everything confusing. Now I'm on fire.
The Stoney Creek Dairy is my hometown's major claim to fame. In it's day people would line up down the block waiting to get their hands on wacky flavors like "Tiger Stripe" and "Strawberry Cheesecake". When I was 18 I got my first real part-time job there. It seems crazy that I was officially an adult before I ever got legitimate employment. I only got the job because I knew Danny had left and so I slipped in there right away.
The work was easy and consisted mostly of replacing the cardboard cubes of ice-cream for the scoop-girls in the front, recording inventory in the freezer and taking out garbage. In the ice-cream industry the volume of trash is obscene. This isn't including customer scraps either, just the crap behind the counter. The dairy had a large industrial trash compactor that required walking through a series of abandoned hallways and what was as that point a defunct diner. The weird unused spaces reminded me of the 1950's. Everything had pale, thick paint on it and rolls of old, sun-faded signs were piled all over. The compactor remains to this day, the worst smell I've encountered.
Part of my job was sorting the freezer which consisted of two sections, the holding freezer and the deep freezer. I loved working in the deep freezer. We had these industrial coats and gloves that made performing laborious tasks doable. Ice mounds would form and the large cardboard cubes of French Vanilla would become encased in a glacier of delicious. For some reason, no one ever wants French vanilla. They had rules about how long it was safe to be in there for a consecutive period of time but it was never enforced. The only time someone would check up to see if I was dead was when they needed more buble-gum or cotton candy flavors.
The holding freezer was a separate room at a slightly less frozen temperature. The bizarre thing was that this room felt much colder than the big one. Bricks of ice-cream were organized and piled up creating a maze of awesome. They never got much higher that 3 or 4 feet but it was still tricky to navigate the room and find what needed finding. This was because the guys over in the actual factory would stamp the flavors onto the side with small, worn out stamps. In addition, this room also had fans blowing the cold air around. It was like the smaller, louder, more annoying teenage version of a freezer.
There was also a huge walk-in fridge out front. This housed all the sundae extras. Brownies, sauces, bags of soft-serve ice-cream. I remember having to mix syrup with a sugar-water saline liquid to make the caramel and English toffee sauce. I would often gorge on brownies while working. This is where I gained most of my weight, the shear volume of crap I ate would make you vomit and drool.
The dairy also had a rooftop patio where I would hide out and pretend to be doing something important. I think my personal tasks on any given shift consisted of hiding from people, not doing any work and eating creamy, stolen desserts. I didn't really care at all about the job seeing as I was leaving at the end of August to go live in a soviet-style concrete box across a hall from the McPoyles.
I was reminded of this time in my life because I had ice-cream yesterday during my nephews 4rth birthday and was staring at my belly in the mirror today feeling guilty as shit for enjoying the small amount I had. I weight about the same as I did in grade 8 I think. I know I shouldn't lose anymore weight, and Mary tells me that I'm disappearing and that my face is sinking in but I can't imagine changing my paranoid eating patterns. My diet is like web design, everything is easier to maintain with a good clean code.
Song of the day:
There are a few good reasons for that but the main one is that Mary and I were watching Gangs of New York and got tired. Daniel Day Lewis trumps blog every time.
As it turns out, the key to making a good website is clean code. I've been working on the LoveSprouts Photography site all day, everyday for a week. About two hours ago I decided to redo all the code to remove all the extra junk hanging around. As I re-wrote each line of code I was able to get rid of everything confusing. Now I'm on fire.
The Stoney Creek Dairy is my hometown's major claim to fame. In it's day people would line up down the block waiting to get their hands on wacky flavors like "Tiger Stripe" and "Strawberry Cheesecake". When I was 18 I got my first real part-time job there. It seems crazy that I was officially an adult before I ever got legitimate employment. I only got the job because I knew Danny had left and so I slipped in there right away.
The work was easy and consisted mostly of replacing the cardboard cubes of ice-cream for the scoop-girls in the front, recording inventory in the freezer and taking out garbage. In the ice-cream industry the volume of trash is obscene. This isn't including customer scraps either, just the crap behind the counter. The dairy had a large industrial trash compactor that required walking through a series of abandoned hallways and what was as that point a defunct diner. The weird unused spaces reminded me of the 1950's. Everything had pale, thick paint on it and rolls of old, sun-faded signs were piled all over. The compactor remains to this day, the worst smell I've encountered.
Part of my job was sorting the freezer which consisted of two sections, the holding freezer and the deep freezer. I loved working in the deep freezer. We had these industrial coats and gloves that made performing laborious tasks doable. Ice mounds would form and the large cardboard cubes of French Vanilla would become encased in a glacier of delicious. For some reason, no one ever wants French vanilla. They had rules about how long it was safe to be in there for a consecutive period of time but it was never enforced. The only time someone would check up to see if I was dead was when they needed more buble-gum or cotton candy flavors.
The holding freezer was a separate room at a slightly less frozen temperature. The bizarre thing was that this room felt much colder than the big one. Bricks of ice-cream were organized and piled up creating a maze of awesome. They never got much higher that 3 or 4 feet but it was still tricky to navigate the room and find what needed finding. This was because the guys over in the actual factory would stamp the flavors onto the side with small, worn out stamps. In addition, this room also had fans blowing the cold air around. It was like the smaller, louder, more annoying teenage version of a freezer.
There was also a huge walk-in fridge out front. This housed all the sundae extras. Brownies, sauces, bags of soft-serve ice-cream. I remember having to mix syrup with a sugar-water saline liquid to make the caramel and English toffee sauce. I would often gorge on brownies while working. This is where I gained most of my weight, the shear volume of crap I ate would make you vomit and drool.
The dairy also had a rooftop patio where I would hide out and pretend to be doing something important. I think my personal tasks on any given shift consisted of hiding from people, not doing any work and eating creamy, stolen desserts. I didn't really care at all about the job seeing as I was leaving at the end of August to go live in a soviet-style concrete box across a hall from the McPoyles.
I was reminded of this time in my life because I had ice-cream yesterday during my nephews 4rth birthday and was staring at my belly in the mirror today feeling guilty as shit for enjoying the small amount I had. I weight about the same as I did in grade 8 I think. I know I shouldn't lose anymore weight, and Mary tells me that I'm disappearing and that my face is sinking in but I can't imagine changing my paranoid eating patterns. My diet is like web design, everything is easier to maintain with a good clean code.
Song of the day:
Saturday, February 5, 2011
It's Wobin, I'm He-yuh!
Of all the apartments I've lived in before my favorite has to be the upper floor Piccadilly St place in London. It was small and had those angled walls from the roof slope so I could really only utilize a a few feet for standing room. The size was really small but the layout was done so well that you felt as if the space was bigger. It was also really high up like a third floor. The ceilings on the main floor must have been insanely high. Insanely high... it sounds like a turn of phrase that makes complete sense until you see it written. The height of this room must have mental illness.
Across the street was a small convenience store that rented movies at an insanely low rate. The inexpensiveness of the rates had mental illness. The Asian family that owned the store took turns manning the counter. I remember that on occasion the nine year old son would be working the cash. There was also a chubby teenage son and a grandpa, the kind of elderly Chinese man that pops into your head when you read "Asian grandpa". After I moved away to Montreal I found out that the store was robbed and the father was stabbed or shot.
The neighborhood was pretty nice and a lot of other houses were easily million-plus homes. That said it was also the area where my car was stolen on Christmas Eve. It was actually pretty easy to steal my car because the back window was composed of strips of packing tape from when my car had been broken into in the same parking lot about 2 weeks earlier. I had Credence tapes but they didn't get stolen. Put a candle in the window indeed. These events didn't bother me because the car had no insurance. This happened after the only car accident I had ever been it. I wasn't actually driving but it was decided I would just claim I was.
At another juncture in my life I lived in a soviet style concrete box on what I remember as being the fifth floor. I think it's the 35 year old carpet in the lobby that makes every shitty apartment building have that poverty-esque smell. The smell of Value Village-musk has a poorish smell too but it's much easier to handle than a decaying building. The kind that has the thick black elevator buttons where the white paint that once made the embossed floor numbers have long since faded.
From the balcony of the concrete box the view consisted of a rail-yard and a large psychiatric hospital. If you squinted you could make out a massive catholic high-school that looked more like shopping mall than a school. Beyond that was Fanshawe College. This was Fanshawe when it still looked like a set from Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange (this was my reason for choosing the school... I'm not kidding).
The building was part of series of buildings that were called something along the lines of The Mornington Towers which of course meant referring to it as "Morning-Wood Towers". It had a lot of Students as well as recently release patients from the crazy house down the road. At the time the idea of being close to people who were hospitalized was quite unnerving. I'd go as far as to say in was insane... Now, having seen the inside of more than one crazy-house the idea that they were scary is funny.
I'm not sure if I told this story yet but across the hall of this particular location was a pair of brothers and a wife. They were scary. Scary in a way that chills me to the core even now. "If I can just get the frog out of my throat we can all have a Merry Christmas." They were like a cross between the McPoyle brothers and the family from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
I lived in two other places in London but they both take up full posts on their own. The two in this set are my favorite and least favorite. Oh... besides the cavepartment, although I do miss my cot-air mattress combo.
Today Mary and I went to see two apartments. We have our specific area that we're sticking to which is essentially within walking distance of the Hamilton Go Station so that I can take the long train ride into Toronto to work. I imagine myself playing Mario on a DS while sipping on a hot coffee that eventually stains my tie as I relax on the lengthy ride into the T-dot. This area of Hamilton is completely foreign to me other than St Joe's which I really only knew from the inside. Circumcisions and overdoses.
The first place we saw was pretty nice but kind of small for the price. It had exposed brick but I couldn't really see myself living in the space. We don't actually plan on getting a place until May 1st but it's good to get an idea of things and to to jump on it if the perfect place pops up. That's a lot of 'p's so you know it's important. The big sellers on this place were the brick, the insuite washer/dryer and the parking spot. If Marybral Palsy gets a placement at St Joe's than she won't need her car anyway. She works essentially beside the Go Station so if we need to go to Toronto to visit people it right there and everything else is also in walking distance.
After we saw the first place we walked around looking for For Rent signs but it was fucking chilly. I had on three pairs of socks and my toes still went from pain to numb. We eventually went to a Bakery on Locke Street. I had never been to Locke Street before. The trendy part, not the Al Simmons gunshop. I liked it a lot.
Later we saw a place that was on an awesome street in a great area that had a nice price and was listed for May 1st... It sucked. The people who own the property were really nice and Scottish. I say that with both meanings; that they were nice and also very nice and Scottish.
We wandered around a lot more and even went to White Elephant and Mixed Media. I almost bought a book on Graphic design theory and at this moment regret not spending the money. If I do buy it I'll go back and get it there rather than online or at a Chapters. I want to support the scene. I'm a huge fan of gentrification! Not sarcastic either. I love gritty areas and I think that if the local poor don't figure out how to make the best of gentrification through creative economics then they're too dumb for any area and are probably better off getting shuffled out.
I'm excited about claiming Hamilton as my home. I grew up in Stoney Creek hating both Hamilton and pretty much all of the lake brim. After living in so many places though I think Hamilton is really awesome place. It's not yet trendy but it's still punk enough to be from. It's Canada's Portland, it's the tiny Apartment with the slanted walls that feels bigger then it actually is.
Song of the day:
Across the street was a small convenience store that rented movies at an insanely low rate. The inexpensiveness of the rates had mental illness. The Asian family that owned the store took turns manning the counter. I remember that on occasion the nine year old son would be working the cash. There was also a chubby teenage son and a grandpa, the kind of elderly Chinese man that pops into your head when you read "Asian grandpa". After I moved away to Montreal I found out that the store was robbed and the father was stabbed or shot.
The neighborhood was pretty nice and a lot of other houses were easily million-plus homes. That said it was also the area where my car was stolen on Christmas Eve. It was actually pretty easy to steal my car because the back window was composed of strips of packing tape from when my car had been broken into in the same parking lot about 2 weeks earlier. I had Credence tapes but they didn't get stolen. Put a candle in the window indeed. These events didn't bother me because the car had no insurance. This happened after the only car accident I had ever been it. I wasn't actually driving but it was decided I would just claim I was.
At another juncture in my life I lived in a soviet style concrete box on what I remember as being the fifth floor. I think it's the 35 year old carpet in the lobby that makes every shitty apartment building have that poverty-esque smell. The smell of Value Village-musk has a poorish smell too but it's much easier to handle than a decaying building. The kind that has the thick black elevator buttons where the white paint that once made the embossed floor numbers have long since faded.
From the balcony of the concrete box the view consisted of a rail-yard and a large psychiatric hospital. If you squinted you could make out a massive catholic high-school that looked more like shopping mall than a school. Beyond that was Fanshawe College. This was Fanshawe when it still looked like a set from Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange (this was my reason for choosing the school... I'm not kidding).
The building was part of series of buildings that were called something along the lines of The Mornington Towers which of course meant referring to it as "Morning-Wood Towers". It had a lot of Students as well as recently release patients from the crazy house down the road. At the time the idea of being close to people who were hospitalized was quite unnerving. I'd go as far as to say in was insane... Now, having seen the inside of more than one crazy-house the idea that they were scary is funny.
I'm not sure if I told this story yet but across the hall of this particular location was a pair of brothers and a wife. They were scary. Scary in a way that chills me to the core even now. "If I can just get the frog out of my throat we can all have a Merry Christmas." They were like a cross between the McPoyle brothers and the family from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
I lived in two other places in London but they both take up full posts on their own. The two in this set are my favorite and least favorite. Oh... besides the cavepartment, although I do miss my cot-air mattress combo.
Today Mary and I went to see two apartments. We have our specific area that we're sticking to which is essentially within walking distance of the Hamilton Go Station so that I can take the long train ride into Toronto to work. I imagine myself playing Mario on a DS while sipping on a hot coffee that eventually stains my tie as I relax on the lengthy ride into the T-dot. This area of Hamilton is completely foreign to me other than St Joe's which I really only knew from the inside. Circumcisions and overdoses.
The first place we saw was pretty nice but kind of small for the price. It had exposed brick but I couldn't really see myself living in the space. We don't actually plan on getting a place until May 1st but it's good to get an idea of things and to to jump on it if the perfect place pops up. That's a lot of 'p's so you know it's important. The big sellers on this place were the brick, the insuite washer/dryer and the parking spot. If Marybral Palsy gets a placement at St Joe's than she won't need her car anyway. She works essentially beside the Go Station so if we need to go to Toronto to visit people it right there and everything else is also in walking distance.
After we saw the first place we walked around looking for For Rent signs but it was fucking chilly. I had on three pairs of socks and my toes still went from pain to numb. We eventually went to a Bakery on Locke Street. I had never been to Locke Street before. The trendy part, not the Al Simmons gunshop. I liked it a lot.
Later we saw a place that was on an awesome street in a great area that had a nice price and was listed for May 1st... It sucked. The people who own the property were really nice and Scottish. I say that with both meanings; that they were nice and also very nice and Scottish.
We wandered around a lot more and even went to White Elephant and Mixed Media. I almost bought a book on Graphic design theory and at this moment regret not spending the money. If I do buy it I'll go back and get it there rather than online or at a Chapters. I want to support the scene. I'm a huge fan of gentrification! Not sarcastic either. I love gritty areas and I think that if the local poor don't figure out how to make the best of gentrification through creative economics then they're too dumb for any area and are probably better off getting shuffled out.
I'm excited about claiming Hamilton as my home. I grew up in Stoney Creek hating both Hamilton and pretty much all of the lake brim. After living in so many places though I think Hamilton is really awesome place. It's not yet trendy but it's still punk enough to be from. It's Canada's Portland, it's the tiny Apartment with the slanted walls that feels bigger then it actually is.
Song of the day:
Friday, February 4, 2011
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