I went to Vancouver this weekend to visit friends, and it was a lot of fun. I should make an effort to get over there a little more often, but the ferry ride from the island makes the trip, however short, very irritating.
We ate and drank at some great restaurants, did a little shopping, and generally had a good time. Chris even made a nice home-cooked meal for us to enjoy, which was excellent and very appreciated. This last month, I’ve gone off cooking a bit. Sometimes it just seems like more hassle than it’s worth when you live alone, but it’s unhealthy and expensive to eat out too often.
I happened to visit during a freak snow storm, which is just my luck. I was catching a ride with another friend from Victoria, and we had to make a quick trip down to Abbotsford to grab his bike before returning, and for the first 30 minutes of the trip we were averaging about 10km per hour on the highway. The last thing you want to do when you’re tired and hungover is drive through fresh snow surrounded by Vancouver drivers.
I think I’m going to return to Vancouver in a couple of weeks to watch Black Rider: The Casting of the Magic Bullets, an avant-garde play from William S. Burroughs, author of Naked Lunch, and Tom Waits, the coolest man on earth. It should be an interesting show, I think.
On an unrelated note, I made haggis tonight for a belated Robbie Burns Day. I now have enough left over to keep me frying for a week.
I’ve somehow fallen into a half-assed polyphasic sleep schedule this week, so I’ve just been watching silly videos tonight in an attempt to stay awake until a decent hour, instead of sleeping through the evening and staying up all night.
It may be the sleep deprivation, but I thought they did quite a good job with this:
Man Man is a wild, hilarious band from Philadelphia. I’m not sure how to describe them, as they don’t really fit into any genre. Wikipedia uses “Viking-vaudeville, punk-wop, and rock-and-soul”, so I’ll go along with that.
“Engwish Bwudd” is from Six Demon Bag. It’s a great album, and I’m really looking forward to their next release, Rabbit Habits, that’s coming out this year. I’d love to see them live. Their personalities come out in the music, and I imagine they put on a fun show.
What is it that keeps one up at night? What cruel trick is this, when the body and mind have to scream and fight all day to stay awake, only to lie there in defiance when night finally arrives?
My eyes have adjusted to the dark, and the room is so bright I’m beginning to wonder if there’s a second moon hiding in my closet. I can see the smudge on the far wall of my bedroom. Suddenly I have perfect vision, and my hearing has reached super-human strength. I can’t hear a bloody thing during the day, but now I can clearly make out someone shouting their dog’s name eight blocks away with my window closed. I try to clear my mind, but morose similes keep forming.
Life is like the mirror hanging on my wall. Keep examining it, and you’ll spend all your days watching yourself slowly get older.
I shouldn’t have eaten that sausage roll so late. Tomorrow, after I fall asleep at the wheel and the rescue crew drag my corpse out of my crumbled car, it will all be because of that sausage roll. Why do you have to take a nap when you eat too much in the afternoon, but you’re wide awake all night if you eat something too late? Why can’t we have a little consistency in the world?
Life is like my radio alarm clock, full of annoying personalities that speak out at the worst of times.
I really need to develop a proper sleeping schedule. I’m a zombie during the daylight hours, propelled forward only by the power of caffeine, and even that is starting to lose its effect. I actually tried to eat a small child’s brain earlier this week, but his mother arrived while I was still rubbing margarine through his hair.
Life is like a box of chocolates. Eat too many and you’ll develop type two diabetes and, if left untreated, you may lose a leg or die.
Bat For Lashes is a singer-songwriter from England. Listening to her album, Fur and Gold, is like walking through someone else’s creepy dream. I really enjoyed the whole album. She reminds me of a more mellow, less naive-appearing Bjork.
I really love this video for ‘What’s a Girl to Do?’ It was posted on Digg a while back, and I forgot about it until Motel De Moka posted the song in a playlist. It has an eery Donny Darko feel to it.
Friday night was my company’s postponed non-denominational winter party. It was great fun. They held it in a very nice hotel banquet room, and we were served a tasty meal: maple-glazed duck appetizer, sirloin steak Entrée, and a chocolate mango cream-puff concoction for dessert.
After the meal I took full advantage of the open bar. I’m not a lush, but I do like a bargain. Eventually the party shifted to a pub downtown, and I stumbled my way home about five hours past my bedtime. I wasn’t too badly hungover Saturday morning, but it felt like I must have tripped on my way home and scraped the inside of my throat on the asphalt. I think I may have been shouting a lot that night, but I’m not sure at what exactly. I guess I’ll find out how much of a fool I made of myself Monday morning. I do think the new girl at work was intrigued by my drunken high-pitched shrieking, though, like a siren call from an island of eunuchs.
Saturday I had two friends from Kamloops come to visit, and they brought their Xbox 360 and all of the equipment for Rock Band with them. After a quick Japanese dinner downtown, we went back to my place and rocked out all night long. They even forced me to sing. My neighbours must have thought a goat was being raped in my apartment that night.
This morning we had a quick brunch downtown, and then I saw them off. They were going to a bridal fair before leaving, but I decided to let them do that alone, as I would rather chew my own leg off and paint my naked self-portrait on the side of the parliament building with the bloody stub than enter a fair dedicated to weddings. But I do hope they enjoyed it…
All in all, a great weekend. Always nice to have friends come to visit.
My mom enjoys sending me little Scottish notes while I’m at work - random facts, jokes, and readings - like a distance continued education course on my heritage.
She sent this a while back, and I thought it was quite good. Mackenzie is my mother’s side of the family.
Mackenzie Prayer
Bless a’ the Mackenzies an’ a’ the Mackenzie childer; their sons an’ son’s childer and their dochters for a thousan’ years to come.
Be Ye gracious an’ send doon mountains o’ snuff, an rivers of whiskey.
An’ oh lord send doon swords an’ pistels an’ daggers as monie as the sands on the seashore to kill the MacDonalds, the Clan Ranalds, and the Campbells.
An oh Lord, bless the wee coo, an’ make it a big coo.
An oh Lord bless the sucklin’ and make it a grand boar.
An oh Lord, bless the wee bairns, yon Angus, Alex an’ Bessie an’ Maggie an’ Florrie.
An oh Lord, build up a great wall between us an’ the Irish, an’ put broken bottles on the top, so they cannae come over.
An’ oh lord, if ye hae anything gude to gie, dunna gie it to the Irish, but gie it to your chosen people, the Scots, especially to the Clan Mackenzie an’ a’ their friends.
Top of the Muffin to You!
