great ideas

donation number 4

couldn't find a ruler, but this notebook is 9.5" tall, so it'll have to do

i recently sold my ancient digital camera, and this was the best i could do with my phone's camera. still loving the cut and follicular liberation in general.

donating my hair to locks of love

the sad sound of ambulance sirens

the more i think about it, the less sure i am about how i think people internally react to the sound of sirens. i mostly mean police, fire and ambulance sirens, because those facts of life usually mean unhappy things for those involved. or maybe that's just how it makes me feel. i'm sure some people would say the sound of police sirens sounds threatening to some and comforting to others, depending on perceptions of law enforcement.

well, it might be safer to assume that most people associate the sound of a fire engine's siren with flames and destruction. that or imagining a building-full amount of occupants standing around outside annoyed with the fire drill or malfunctioning detection equipment (because that's what it 90% of the time -- to them). the again, some might associate anything fire-enginey with 9/11, which is also sad. so really, your base-line debbie downer.

ambulance sirens though - those tend to depress me the most. this can be obviously attributable to my dad, as he's a retired paramedic and firefighter. i definitely have a mental database of ways the body can be sickened or injured leading to an array of resulting conditions like miracle healings but usually to a degraded quality of life or just plain old death. my mind's an archive of stories my dad's told over the years, indexed with really specific imagery.

'when the drunk driver t-boned their car, the girl in the passenger seat flew out the window because she wasn't wearing her seat belt. she landed flat on her front, except with her head twisted severely to the side and her neck was broken. when we have to stabilize her and strap her to the board, you just can't make a mistake because you could end of paralyzing the person,' etc.

my dad is a pretty observant guy, so no detail is spared.

anyway, i heard ambulance sirens a minute ago and started to wonder what the emergency was. from the death-detail database, heart attack is a safe bed. 'even though half the time they're running the sirens and speeding to the hospital, the guy's basically already dead.'

so i stood at my window and thought of the sadness that comes with the advent of a heart attack. on such a lovely evening. the sirens sounded like they were in stanley park -- maybe it was a grandpa with his family. or a particularly calamitous bike vs car situation. just something that makes me stop and think, 'so sad.'

but death is a part of life, and it also occurred to me -- if there's any time and place to go, this is as good as it gets:

my alley

vancouver's 420 night sky

fb says this is too long to be a status update

just watched critical mass ride down w georgia st into the stanley park causeway, turning a light, quiet traffic flow into a bunged-up nightmare. i work a mile away from home and either walk or take electric buses on a daily basis; i probably spend less than 3 hours a month using gasoline-fueled transportation. i'm all about lifestyles conductive to reducing carbon emissions. vancouver has wide-spread bikelanes, one of the best systems in north america! so what kind of assholery is clogging up major traffic routes during rush hour? i'd be pretty pissed if cars were driving on sidewalks. anyways - THAT'S ENOUGH, HIPSTERS.

i used to do this with christopher

#19 bus to stanley park @ 6pm

vancouver olympic torch relay and protest

riding the bus to work this morning...

oh dear

let's all stand in the middle of the street

oh right, today's the torch relay, right.

| | |

what now?

_____wayssuck.org? could that be segwayssuck.org?

are you saying the olympics is nothing but watersports?

complacency is complicity, eh?

the rich play, the rest pay, eh? yea, welcome to reality.

i love this arthouse longhaired guy on the right, documenting the scene by carrying around his camera still on its tripod so that he can get some raw footage for the crappy docudrama he'll make about the IOC and how it's evil.

my sassy new building

one morning during my first week at my new place i see this:

general gist of the memo: thanks to the olympics we're going to police the hell out of the parking lot.

response: *dick sketch* 'too much expensive'

january 2010: lost lagoon, stanley park, vancouver, bc, canada, earth

watch out, i got a bossy streak

there's plenty to be said in favor of compromise, but when you know what you want, how can anything else suffice? i feel like walking into that second interview placing my communication stature at a humble level, but also express how much i really want that job and i should really get it.

'i know i'm the best candidate for the job because i can already see exactly what i want to get out of the opportunity.' the ridiculously easy commute and implied healthy salary are just fortunate benefits.

inspiration gone missing

red alert -- i think the worst has materialized. i've certainly realized it by now.

as those who have lived my recent life along side me, i've maintained a rather extended detachment from traditional milestones and connections. i've been on the run for a while now. i find it exciting and keeps my attention. grad school now means a settled residency, a taboo to my houdini escapades -- but somehow i was directed to an incredibly ideal living situation in what i think of as the best neighborhood on the continent.

thanks for the pointer, universe, loves it.

but holding true to myself, even with this final cashing in of overdue address karma, i'm still skeptical. i guess i've spent the last two weeks floating, but the buzz has diminished. it could have been aided by minor professional, social and familial glitches today. i fell a little bummed, off balance, and generally dissatisfied.

it reminded me of my most recent writing mantra only fools are satisfied. i spent two great weeks as a fool. what a nice rest. but that's really no indicator that i woke up one day cured of cynicism, feeling entirely carefree and was destined to remain that way forever and ever, amen. no, i took my lack of internal peace for a walking meditation around stanley park this afternoon and came to the captain obvious observation of the day: i need some sort of conflict to keep me engaged. when i had those two weeks of bliss, i spent all my free time in the gym, reading, treating myself to elaborate bathing rituals, and watching tv shows on dvd with my roommate.

that's nice, but that's not enough. thanks to that factor, i express my inspiration. it's when my inspiration goes missing that i become concerned.

i'm concerned, but keeping my eyes open. i'm waiting on you, muse. waiting.

hood

i only put my hood up in the park at night to prevent the mosquitos from biting my back of my damn red (sunburned) neck. i'm the only person that could get a red neck at a gay pride parade.

maybe my friend is right

maybe that sushi place does indeed have its off days. a week ago i got sushi to go at the so so place, but i think the avocado went a bit skanky during the bus ride home. not a happy stomach with that one.

coming home from work this afternoon, i decided to stop at the better sushi place and dine-in. sat in the aircon, no less. still, perturbed stomach.

it's like my ulcer days all over again, exactly 365 days later.

:o

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.

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.

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!