it's like a hand grenade fight

hey -- you're just in time to check out the monster dramz between my landlord and me. take a look:

Oh dear *****,

As you clearly do not recall, when my first contract expired in April 2008, I asked you for a contact to cover the summer months. As a foreigner in this country, I think it's in my best interest to have as much legal documentation as possible -- including where I've resided while I've been here. But you said it was no big deal. So my last contractually binding day as your tenant was April 30, 2009. This is something I have not forgot for a single day since I asked you for a summer contact last year, and it's why I am willing to pay for my incremental time remaining here, but I'm not under contract to give you an official notice and pay for all of August. Sorry, but that's the facts.

This is why I had been telling you about my intentions to move since I returned to Vancouver around June 24th. I said end of July, August for certain. I kept you updated of my progress and intentions -- this is not out of the blue. Then after our encounter this week you made it clear you wanted me to leave -- and I understood that as "asap" because I was otherwise constantly telling you I was moving out. I'm doing you a favor by leaving and offering you an honest rent when I am not actually under contract to pay you anything.

Furthermore, this hurts my feelings because I know you're not asking for the August rent out of a real need to supplement your income -- fdfdsdsfs if you really were on a tight budget, you would have had that 3rd room rented out for May 1st (and it would have been completely possible if you tried). Last summer when Peter left and you and I worked together to fill the vacany, I assume it was urgent, a vital part of your living budget. But when I asked as such, you said that no, you weren't as concerned about the money as finding the right tenant for a happy home.

On the other hand I can completely understand that two vacant rooms is a much more significant issue than one, financially -- I don't blame you. I had asked for an extended contract because agreements are worked out for both parties' best interests. I feel that I've been doing as much as I can to be completely transparent with you. Additionally, I really liked living in your home because you were really committed to building a happy home; since this is no longer a happy home (as you said, you feel "indifferent" about me these days), I feel that I'm making the best choice for all of us in me leaving quickly -- sure you may want the rent money, but nothing will be resolved while I'm still living here.

I'm finding this kind of funny in that I think we are each convinced of our own logic, and we think each other is a little bonkers -- sometimes that happens! I still think you're a cool guy ****-- it's too bad things had to turn out like this.

- Me

a sense of drama

i can't take credit for this one, for i stole it from weather.ca

two years on the west coast and one of my two home-sickness points has been my longing for a badass thunderstorm. (the other home-sickness point, if you are so curious, is missing my childhood pet christopher the cat, who is still spending his late teens at my parent's house, no doubt spread eagle in front of the fake fireplace). in the naivete of my youth i thought thunderstorms were a joy everyone, everywhere experiences. alas, no. i only recall one inkling of a storm while i lived in vienna, nothing but fog and bus fumes in london, one hell of a typhoon in hangzhou (or as i like to think of it, the wettest tornado ever), and my time spent in peru was during their dry winter season.

two years in vancouver and nothing more potent than some wind and rain. boring, lame.

[also of note, some bank throws a fireworks contest in the latter half of july here in vancouver's english bay -- three competing countries vying for the big win. last year the countries represented were canada, usa and china, the program schedule is wednesday, saturday, wednesday, and a big finale on the last saturday. last year the finale fell on my birthday eve and i attended a fantastic party. i don't know who the judges are, but canada won the main honor, china won the peoples' choice (huh DUH) and america's production was some kind of sentimental fairy-ballet bs, which is counter-intuitive considering america is the country known for a penchant to blow shit up, right?]

anyways, saturday night was the second night in the series, so people are generally abuzz with 'and where are you going to watch the fireworks?' i mean, considering the bus system here is barely adequate to shuttle us broke-ass chumps around town day to day, all of a sudden everyone wants to ride the bus to avoid parking and traffic. so really, it's a big old clusterfuck. while the fireworks finale last year ended around 10:30pm i didn't make it to the bus stop until 1am, but the bus was still a zoo -- drunk middle aged gay guys grabbing each other's asses and all. (watching drunk people try to pick each other up on the bus is irritating, especially when everyone's crammed in there within an inch of our lives -- but then again if that sole ass grab was all it took to get some, uh, ass, then i am actually kind of impressed -- maybe i should try resurrecting the goose? or not.)

back to my point, which was that instead of fighting the masses for a seat to last saturday's show, i went to my friends' place. we were all minding out business, watching russell peter's red, white and brown (highly recommendable) when the lightning started. my friends live in a high rise in ubc's village (this means the very western edge of vancouver, where you can overlook the georgia straight and keep an eye on the mountains on vancouver island) and we got one hell of a lightning and thunderstorm show. 

word on the street the next day was nothing but 'that storm was better than any fireworks show.' well, my point exactly. this is one of my tiny issues with west coast living: it's easy, not interesting. i got the hell out of minnesota in part thanks to the toll the interesting weather there takes on daily life, year in, year out.

but i have to admit, i kind of like the drama. and that's when i got to thinking -- crazy awesome storms happen when hot and cold fronts meet. you need a clash to get action sometimes, you know? get some of that romans vs christians, union vs confederate, cats vs dogs kinda sparring going on. that's what i'm talking about: 

dear bc,

could you please spice things up with a little drama now and again? thanks.

love,

mary

maybe i finally nailed down what bothers me about vancouver from time to time; the on-going sameness. you can't brew a good storm when the weather hardly changes. you don't get good drama when everyone's sitting in a big circle holding hands and singing kumbaya, which just happens to be the definition of vancouver, british columbia, canada.

i keed, i keed.

then again, the thunderstorm brought in a big wave of balmy weather, so all the locals are whining about the heat. 'ohmigaw you guys, i'm sweating outside and i'm not even rollerblading!' i just tell the locals that at home, 'in the prairies, we just say it's hot as a crotch.'  

also, i brought a 2L jug of hard apple cider to my friends' place, and they insisted i take the remains home. so i stood at the bus stop downing the last of it, and i took this picture because i thought it was pretty. drunk, clearly.

christopher, 1997

cigarettes, puppies and handgrenades

you know you've had a rough day when you go to the service counter at the grocery store to buy a lighter and end up getting the cheapest pack of light cigarettes they sell. i know they were the cheapest, because instead of asking for a certain brand (as a general non-smoker i really don't have any brand dedication) i just asked 'what's the cheapest light cigarettes you have?' the check-out girl was trying to tell me that although they were cheap, the whatever level that determines how light or not light was not that low.

um, these cigarettes are clearly an impulse purchase, so i don't really care about just how 'light' they are.

guess it's a good thing safeway doesn't sell puppies or hand grenades because i'm pretty sure those are things i also don't need, but would potentially buy on impulse from time to time, like cigarettes. [ok, sure i love animals and would like to have a pet, right, but per the hand grenades -- sometimes drivers royally piss me off when they don't yield to me in a pedestrian crosswalk, and i always wish that i had an egg or two in my pocket to throw at the car, but they're so fragile and messy, you know? at least with a hand grenade you have to pull the pin before anything happens.]

sigh.

vancouver-g.o.b.

god what is with people in this city? as i was walking home this evening, i realized that that guy at work who looked so familiar today looks like g.o.b.! he's got that will arnett forehead, that smirk, and an unusually grovely voice for someone who doesn't appear to be a smoker. [sidenote: i find that grovely voice attractive on men for the most part even though i totally picture them as having straight up gizzards in their throat. freud say wha?]

anyways, this g.o.b.ish guy is in the office commenting on my veggie samosas lunch, started bragging about all his traveling. i know i'm the jealous type, but really this guy was just country name dropping for the fuck of it -- cities in india i've never heard of, all ending in -pour. '___pour, ____pour, ___pour -- they're all pours... haha, well poor yea...'

if that weren't enough, he went on a se asia spree 'china, taiwan, vietnam, cambodia, malaysia, we were gonna go to indonesia but blah blah wank wank,' ugh. i mentioned something about living in china and he was all, 'whoa! did you learn mandarian?' i'm glad i'm a grown woman now, because i now know how to give the slightest of slights in an icy eye shrug. 

dude... you ain't know shit about the shit i know. i was 23 and just trying to survive against something i felt an anti-intuitive existence in. [damn, there i go again with those prepositioning-ending sentences.] i was trying to navigate a place where the only sense of logic i had failed each and every time. that's pretty disorienting, when all your social constructs go up in flames over and over again, every fucking day. 

social construct 1: humans are sentient being who deserve to be treated with respect. -- nope!

social construct 2: even through some humans may appear very different on the outside, we're all still human on the side. -- nope!

social construct 3: treat others with respect. -- nope!

social construct 4: honesty is the best policy. -- not after you read this!

so... what was i talking about? china, vancouver-g.o.b., mandarin -- ah yes, the reason i didn't learn mandarin is because i only stayed for 75 days citing cultural aspect i couldn't adapt to. this is where vancouver-g.o.b. turns his desk chair to face me, puts his feet flat on the floor and his elbows on his knees, leans in -- as if he were seat-belted to the chair but he's ready to box. he says, 'not to be racist, but they have no culture -- they just push and shove each other, it's really barbaric.' 

so that makes about the 47th native bc'er who's pre-empted a racist comment with 'not to be/sound like a racist, but...' it makes me wonder if these people think i look like i agree with them? oh dear. i responded, 'it's not lack of culture, it's just their culture.' 

didn't we all learn in kindergarten that just because something is different doesn't make it better or worse? just because a foreign culture does something your personal culture doesn't like, that doesn't mean that foreign culture is inferior, lacking or somehow downgraded. aren't we all supposed to know that by now? or maybe this vancouver-g.o.b. is older than i think he is, and it's some kind of generational thing? he's probably thinking he's no where near as racist as his parents, and that you know, wink nudge, as white people, this is how we really think of *them*.

i said, 'no, it just works for them, and i decided if i couldn't do things on their terms, then that was my problem. and it's not a judgement on their culture but a rather dramatic self-actualization.' [23 is a pretty ripe age for those wondrously narcissistic self-actualizations, and believe me, i relished mine.]

oh vancouver-g.o.b., i can just picture you trotting along to your local starbucks on the weekend wearing linen draw-string pants and d&g sunglasses perched on your head, thinking about all the -pour places you've been and how happy you feel to live in such a 'well-cultured' place. congrats on your placement in the that guy hall of fame.

giving you the fistshake, stephanie meyer

twilight gossip makes me feel old. what happened to head-shaving britney and the golden era of internet gossip? now all my internet gossip sites are flooded with this r-patz/k-stew bullshit.

honestly, i miss the bennifer days.

modern bohemia

so i added this tag modern bohemia -- the golden age of the hipster. not that i'm one, because literally sitting here writing a blog on a macbook wearing an american apparel hoodie could not make me any more exactly like everyone else. i'm not a hipster, i'm as mainstream as possible. it's like hipsters are the new bohemians, but that thought is so terribly cliche that now it's ironic, which makes it cool.

right?

ah fuck it, i'd take a hipster over an uggs-wearing label-whore most days.

great dane

i met a most exquisitely gorgeous young dane today. maybe he was a model, or is one. or he should be. how could he have not been scouted out by now? this kid needs and agent -- i'll be his agent. he would be the easiest sell.

'great dane here for ya -- dewey and sculpted -- hell of a smile!'

the best part is, he's a yogi living in a modern urban cave (aka closet). i don't think i could ever be that authentic.

finding my pimp

going to the recruiter tomorrow because i need a professional introduction. powerful, successful organizations have the power using money to buy professional talent. i dont care if i have to sign up with some sort of professional pimp who's going to match me with the best john there is -- it's just another way of professional networking. yea, if a company is going to spend their own time and resources for new hires, they're not going to have that much money to pay you [you = me]. organizations that can contract out do so because they have the money to do it -- and to pay me.

this is what i need to tell myself in order to muster the dignity to walk into a temp agency because doing so feels so shameful! shameful! shameful!

love you scotty b

i love it when i feel like my life's suddenly an episode of quantum leap. 

'who am i?! why am i here?! what's going on?!'

but it's like quantum leaping into groundhog day because every day is the same old bs.

representing all white men

so i just finished reading a book called gringo by chesa boudin (he dated nat portman, oh my), and i can't help but think of what a ridiculously anglo-franco mash-up name chesa boudin is. chesa sounding like some cockney knock off of chaz, meaning charles to the rest of us. the any name with the _ou_i_ structure looks french to me (and then i start humming faux du fa fa, because fotc really knows how us anglophones think of the french language). it's as though boudin's parents tried to think up the whitest name possible -- and succeeded.

even though he does try to highlight the plight of mothers and children living in poverty, his exploration of the topic is understandably y-chromosomed. i know it was meant to be in a memoir format, but his brief tales of girlfriends and relationships sounds kind of cringey when he recounts how sexy one was the first time he met her (on an amazonian ferry boat). his whole stance on 'i care about the plight of mothers, children and families -- but i have no problem biting off a sexy bit for myself' gives me a case of the eye-rolls. i guess i doubt his altruism when he apparently feels entitled to personally gain from his devotion to the cause. i mean, if that's how he feels -- fine, whatever -- but your attempt to weave ideological and emotional threads came out more tacky than humble. 

i think this book is a modest start, and there's more to be expected of him. i think he can do better, get into it deeper, or at least express that personal aspect of his experiences. the politics are so tactical, onerous roll-calls of attendance, accounting for time... even though he does his best to leave an update of all in his narrative subjects at the end, his conclusion comes to the non-conclusive statement that this is just the beginning of what's happening politically in south america -- how this will develop will be seen only with time. he doesn't lead us, he doesn't give us a final thought.

there's something a bit douchey about the whole 'i'm a white guy but look, i can travel just like the locals! blah blah blah!' yea, we bet it sucks, but stop acting like such a war hero about it. yes, i've used rather dangerous public transit in my travels, but i do tend to take costlier options if they're genuinely safer. some ways of getting around are pretty damn dangerous and it's a bit foolish to play martyr about transit if you don't have to. you're supposed to use whatever you can to self-preserve, that's one of those key instincts, you know?

for instance, when i was traveling in peru, we were in a combi (van) driving rather fast (50 mph) down a valley road, lit only by mediocre headlights. we nearly t-boned a hugh truck hauling large boulders that seemed to be just sitting in the middle of the road. luckily i was in a situation where my transportation was on the safer end of the spectrum and we didn't crash. but i was in a bench seat with no seat belt, and i slammed into the seat in front of me. had i been in a less secure transport vehicle, i could have been in a multi-fatality crash. 

and how are you going to help people if you're dead? yes, be with the people, know what they experience, but remember what you're there to do as well. 

getting back to the point of boudin lacking a conclusion, we want to be lead -- bait us! people love a little gossip, your speculation is welcome.

it's not that i'm really a hater, because boudin's book is quite herculean task he's already pulled off. you can tell he's a rather bright guy, but his narratives are saturated with his issues (like the rest of us). then again, that's interesting because it's not every day i get to look at the world through the eyes of someone who repeatedly refers to himself as politically radical. sometimes it's those at the extreme ends that you find the saddest ideologies, these passionate idealists. is it just me, or do those types seem to always have one eye looking in the mirror? or maybe i'm just that bitter. well, the guy is doing what he believes, and that's better than a lot of us as is. 

maybe it's more that i envy him having a book actually written. god knows i have the material, and enough people have made that suggestion, and yet i tell myself that i don't know where to begin, so i don't. sigh.

maybe i'm really just a bitchy gay guy on the inside

it's true

overheard in the park, a young man and young lady walking in the park.

young lady: 'so i was reading this book stuff white people like, and one of the things that white people like was having difficult relationships and boring their friends with all the details.'

i really did laugh out loud.

i'd watch that

"The Facebook movie should be shot in cheapo 8mm for the first twenty minutes. This part should be watched in a dorm room with ten or so of your closest college buddies. Then the flick gradually increases in film quality and deteriorates in originality until it is simply 3D Imax explosions with Mark Zuckerberg fighting Nazi dominatrices atop Optimus Prime's cock, whose sides sport ads for J-Date and Gossip Girl. By this time you've been transported (how'd that happen?) to a megaplex surrounded by goobers you haven't seen since high school and their three kids apiece, chugging beer bongs and passing around flyers for inane fundraisers/church events."

source

the whole abortion thing

i'm a pro-choicer, sure. some pro-choicers don't want to be called 'pro-abortionists' or are offended by the term, because they want to stress the importance of having a choice either way, regardless of whether the verdict is to abort or keep a fetus.

i don't think i'm put off by the term pro-abortionist, at least for what it means to me. maybe i'd be annoyed at being called a pro-abortionist by someone who was using it as a derogatory statement, implying all sorts of immorality and whatnot. actually, nah, i wouldn't be offended if someone called me a pro-abortionist, because i think i am.

if you look at the reality of the world today, our planet is overcrowded as it is. there is zero need for more human beings. so what if all procreation were to cease from today on, why... the human race would die out, right? well, with 6 billion some people on the planet, it would be impossible to stop procreation. it's going on all the time.

now, let's think about who these people are, where they live, and their circumstances. very very vaguely, the industrial, or as we like to call ourselves the developed world, are a minority population that uses a majority of the planet's natural (and well frankly, unnatural) resources. that tends to be enough of a visual to me -- we want to contribute more people to this scenario? 

well, that's rather self-righteous. that gets me thinking about the whole religious bent of the anti-choice movement, which is often based on religious belief -- life is a sacred gift from god. yea yea. that whole aspect annoys the living shit out of me, which is why i'll just move along.

so here's my compromise -- i really do think that people who want to raise children should do so, and hopefully they will have the ability and resources to do so. my hang-up is why spawn a biological one when there are literally millions of orphans around the world in need of happy, stable, loving homes.

that's the idealist's answer, isn't it -- adopt, so easy! i understand adoption is not an easy process, oftentimes especially difficult in regions or countries around the world that have very strict adoption policies to protect children from trafficking. i know that angelina jolie or madonna might make adopting children from poor countries look like some sort of celebrity cliche, but i really think they're onto something.

which touches on another point that comes to mind when people want to go the bio-way for child rearing -- i just don't think these hopeful parents have much (or any) of a grasp on the world situation. i think bio-parenting reminds me how happy and willing people are to stay in their little bubble and act like there's no injustice to the world, act as though they don't see the injustice they're contributing to. which circles back to the green planet issue of 'we're rich and wasteful while poor people are suffering' -- popping out another human into a wasteful consumer society... eh, not so good. the flip side is adopting a child in need of a home/parents/stable life from a poor country means bringing them home to this wasteful consumer culture anyways... i'd say there's no answer to that, except that answer is:

we need less people on this planet, not more. how about we let go of the ego and embrace the universal whole?

new zealand air