As the 2015 Federal Election enters its fifth year, two items to note:
I received my voting card. I can vote. I’ve been told where to go and how to get there. Yay.
The Conservatives are gaining, the NDP have slipped and the Liberals are right there in the middle. Statistically it’s a dead heat between the three parties. A lot of Canadians are apparently quite intolerant, more racist than expected, swayed by fear, hate science, easily manipulated and my old favorite, consistently willing to demonstrate the ability to vote against their own best interests. To these Canadians I say again: please don’t vote. Ever.
On the plus side, the last day of September has been pleasantly sunny and warm.
Peter Buck, the artist formerly known as the lead guitarist for R.E.M., has released his second solo album, Warzone Earth. Like his first solo album, this one is only available through indie record stores on vinyl. It’s the perfect gift for hipster dinosaurs, which I assume is the demographic here.
Perhaps we should be grateful he didn’t cut his teeth on the 8-track cassette.
If you search for “cat” on Google, you will get approximately 1.67 billion results. In general if you search on Google or other search engines you will get more results than you could ever reasonably look though. They may not necessarily all be quality results (hit 1.67 billion on “cat” may prove unsatisfying) but you will find more than enough to satisfy your needs.
However, it is surprisingly easy to yield few results, quality or otherwise, on things that may not seem particularly obscure, especially if they pre-date the Internet, which the first 30 years or so of my life covers. This means my nostalgic reminisces often rely on my memory or fabrications of memory rather than actual mementos of the past as captured and chronicled on the web.
For example, there was a fudge bar I liked as a kid. I vaguely recall the packaging and that it was just called “fudge” or something. I can’t find it online. All I have is my dusty memory. If I could find it online, who knows, there may even be a modern version I could purchase, to truly immerse myself in the past when everything except clothing and hairstyles was better.
Actually, I just did a search and I’m reasonably sure it was Cadbury’s fudge bar, which is indeed called Fudge. None of the images are of the version I enjoyed in 1975 so my point still sort of stands, mostly. More importantly, I have an incredible urge to stuff my face with fudge.
Today is the first day of fall. The weather was a mix of sun and cloud, with a light sprinkle here and there. It was mild in the afternoon and a bit chilly in the morning. All in all an average sort of early fall day.
Most trees have already changed color, the Halloween candy is on store shelves (three weeks before Thanksgiving, which is actually pretty normal now), the sun sets early enough that a post-dinner walk must be done without delay to avoid being caught out in the dark where bats will automatically dive at your head and become tangled in your hair. It’s totally true. I avoid this by wearing a hat. And not having hair.
I am sad that summer is over, even though the first half was stupidly hot and the second half featured a major leg injury that made there mere act of walking painful. Barring some weird climate change burst–which I wouldn’t necessarily rule out–we won’t see a 20+ degree day again for seven months. It will become cold and wet like a dog’s nose, except all over instead of just on a dog’s nose.
On the plus side I may increase my writing output as the urge to go outside and do stuff in dog nose weather fades, and that pesky glare from the sun won’t be quite as pesky for awhile.
All you need to know about the decline of our civilization is that iOS 9 includes a new “selfies” folder for photos. The geniuses at Apple (they have geniuses there, you can book appointments with them at Apple stores) believe that enough people use their iPhones (or iPads, perhaps even the gigantic iPad Pro coming out in a few months) to take photos of themselves with the front-facing camera to warrant a specific storage location for said images. And they are correct, as the web is awash in digital self-portraits.
Admittedly, my complaint (er, observation) feels somewhat “old man yells at cloud.” It may be that we as a (modern) society have always been vain, it just wasn’t as easy to record in high-definition sound and pictures and spread like some doomsday flu all over the world.
Not surprisingly, there is actually a collection of iPad selfies put together to (wordlessly) mock the very concept, on a website also not surprisingly called ipadisnotacamera.com. Here’s one that nicely illustrates how most tablet selfies simply make the operator look like they don’t know how to use a tablet:
Just about to give the iPad a good scrubbing in the sink, no doubt.
In the future we’ll probably have micro-drones following us that are programmed to take the equivalent of selfies at key moments, using sophisticated algorithms to detect important events like “having food for lunch” or “posing with BFF for the billionth time” or even “chasing away fearful old man who hates how technology enables people.”
As I mentioned, it rained yesterday, which also happened to be my birthday and also happened to be a Saturday and also happened to be the first rain we’ve had on a Saturday in quite awhile. Since the Big Storm™ of late August, the spell of months-long hot, dry weather has been broken, with generally cooler temperatures and a mix of sun, cloud and a some rain here and there.
We need the rain so I can’t really complain, especially given the climate we live in here, which generally leans toward wet with intervals of dry, followed by a lot more wet. In the winter this pattern normally magnifies tenfold on the wet parts.
The change in weather and the imminent official end of summer (in three days) has made me reflect on the seasons and, as always, I eventually came up with a list. In this list I rank the seasons from “please last six months longer through some form of magic” to “I tolerate you with a mix of loathing and open hostility.”
The Best and Worst Seasons
Summer. Number one with a bullet. What’s not to like? The weather is mild or warm for months but rarely gets outright hot (er, this last bit may be changing somewhat as the last few years suggest climate shenanigans are affecting how hot summer gets here). The days are long, with plenty of light in the evening for pleasant walks, runs and other outdoor activities. The trees, flowers and other vegetation are in full bloom. There is lush green and other colors everywhere. It even smells nice. Anyone who hates summer probably hates kittens, too.
Spring. Spring is basically proto-summer. It features a lot of the same positive attributes as summer, just dialed down. The days are getting longer but you won’t be strolling in the daylight at 8 p.m. quite yet. Trees are dressing themselves in leaves but timidly, as if they’re afraid to show off. It can be warm but at least it’s no longer cold. You can stop wearing layers upon layers. Most importantly, all of these things are signs that summer is on its way.
Fall. Fall is kind of special in that it’s the only season that gets a bonus alternate title, Autumn. The best part of fall are the weeks when the trees still have most of their leaves but they’ve changed into a spectacular array of bold colors: red, oranges, yellows. For a time the world looks like a really nice landscape painting. You know, the kind not done on black velvet. Early fall also features the last vestiges of summer–the days are getting shorter, it starts getting cooler, but the changes come gently, easing you away from Best Season.
Winter. Everything about winter sucks. The days are short. You get to a point where it’s dark when you leave for work in the morning and it’s dark when you get back in the afternoon. If you work in a place without windows you may never see actual daylight for weeks or months. It’s cold. It rains a lot. Wind often accompanies the rain, turning umbrellas into hazards to be dodged as their owners struggle to keep control of them on the sidewalks. Buses get smelly and damp. Sometimes it will snow and for a brief time the world falls silent and the blanket of white stuff brings a sense of calm and tranquility to the city. Then it warms up, the snow changes to rain and you have to slog through giant flows of slush. On top of all this, there are no flowers, the trees look like they’ve been nuked and the world is generally gray and dreary. About the best thing I can say about winter is that it’s nice to curl up with a cup of tea or hot chocolate after coming in from the cold.
It’s birthday time again and once more my reaction is “meh.”
Highlights of the day:
rain for most of the day. It’s barely rained the last five months.
a massive headache
napping for about three hours because of said massive headache
shuffling around the condo
not writing
not reading
not getting to kill that stupid spider in WoW because Blizzard has jammed players from 500 servers into one, resulting in newbie areas having a population density similar to Mexico City
feta-stuffed olives
The last item on that list is an actual highlight. Feta-stuffed olives, mmm.
All told, I continue to not particularly care about marking birthdays so the non-event nature of today’s doesn’t really bother me. I could have done without the headache and rain, though.
If the multiverse exists, I wonder if another version of me in some parallel dimension is also fumbling to come up with something to post to his blog. I hope so, because I hate to suffer alone.
And now, a haiku dedicated to all the possible universes:
I am here and there
Across the universes
Me, myself and I
I’m feeling out of sorts at the moment and so I’m not writing anything today except in the technical sense, as these are words and they do constitute writing.
Instead I present a cat that is clearly not feeling out of sorts:
Again I find myself unable to think of anything witty, relevant or interesting to post and the more I try to think of something the greater the blank space where that something would be becomes.
But I’m not going to post another cat image. I’m tempted. Oh, so tempted.
Instead, I will recall that I had dimly remember two dreams last night. One was being part of a crew setting up some kind of Mars research facility. This was a space station/habitat sort of thing that was going to either be on Mars or in orbit around the red planet. I remember the facility being large, clean and very empty. I don’t remember what I actually did but I like to imagine it was very important. Perhaps I met Matt Damon. I’m pretty sure publicity for The Martian is what prompted the dream.
The other dream involved me watching a passenger jet coming in for a landing at YVR, as passenger jets will do at the airport. I was watching from near 41st Avenue and Cambie and the plane was coming in north to south rather than east to west, which is silly, but that’s dreams for you. I marveled at how close to the ground the planes get when coming in, except this one actually started scraping its tail along Cambie Street. The pilot wisely pulled up, presumably to try again with less scraping. Instead of just looping around he did this strange series of climbs and descents, which I interpreted as him trying to gain momentum or height or something. I don’t know, I’m not an airplanist. The jet moved off to the west, somewhere further down 41st Avenue and did another climb but this time when it came back down it started twirling and then disappeared out of my sight, presumably crashing as out of my sight would be where the ground was. I woke up and was bummed out until I remembered the earlier Mars dream. The airplane crash dream was inspired by me watching a YouTube video of plane crashes that was a “related” video to something I watched that had nothing to do with planes, crashes or plane crashes. Probably a Boston video. Watching it was not one of my better ideas.
Tonight I’m going to watch kitten videos before going to bed. If I dream of being chased and eaten by lions I am going to be very cross with my brain.
Summary: After the first 500 weeks of the 2015 federal election campaign, the race has tightened, with all three major parties nearly running neck and neck (and neck). I can only assume the crazification factor is behind the continued support for the Conservatives (the crowds at his campaign events may not be helping, either).
With another 600 or so weeks before election day there is plenty of time for one of these parties to move to the front of the pack and claim victory. Remember, Canada, don’t be stupid!
The highlight of the last week is probably Stephen Harper using the drowning death of a Syrian child refugee to underscore how important it is that we continue to bomb the hell out of everything because bombs fix things.
Other than that it was another week of candidates from various parties forced to drop out because they can’t stop saying appallingly stupid and/or offensive things on social media. I’m normally not that enthused about Facebook, Twitter et al but they have proven their worth by continuing to weed out those who should not be seeking public office.
Also, Trudeau keeps trying to make hay about the NDP and their policies toward Quebec/possible secession. Hint: NO ONE CARES. The Quebecois themselves do not care–look at the moribund support for the BQ, even with the return of party favorite Gilles Duceppe (the Firefox spelling checker wants to replace “Duceppe” with “Produce.” My browser is now offering political commentary).
Anyway, I’ll have another exciting summary somewhere around Week 900 or so.
When I was 20 I didn’t really look back at the previous two decades of my life. I didn’t really look forward. Thirty seemed very old, in its own way. I didn’t even need to watch Logan’s Run to sense that. I just lived in the moment and stumbled along with youthful exuberance.
I remember being mildly traumatized when I turned 26, struck at how most of my 20s were behind me, that I was inescapably an adult and I would probably need to start acting like one. Three years later I grew a beard.
I never looked much into the future or thought about getting older much since the mini-crisis of turning 26. Turning 30 didn’t phase me and neither did 40. I started running at age 44 and by 50 I’d logged over 3,100 km jogging. At the same time I never really got into long term planning, never managing to successfully move beyond the stumbling approach of my youth. The difference now is if I stumble I have an increased chance of breaking a hip [old person joke].
What I have found in the last few years is an increasing tendency to look back to my youth and the things I enjoyed back then. This is nothing unusual, most of us do it as it brings a sense of comfort and familiarity as we grapple with the dawning realization that we are, in fact, mortal, and our time is limited, barring reincarnation as someone famous, spiffy or perhaps just a beetle that gets eaten by a curious cat. Or maybe post-death is some truly fabulous thing and no one ever comes back to offer concrete proof of this because our mortal minds could not handle that level of fabulousness.
All of this is to say that tonight I ended up on one of those nostalgia treks that led me to listening to the song “Something About You”, the 1985 hit from Level 42. It was a catchy song. I put the album its from, World Machine, on my wishlist in iTunes (not Groove, which, if it has a wishlist, probably adds random albums and songs that it determines are what you really want, not the ones you’ve selected, then deletes the list at some random point in the future, anyway). I continued my trek, listening to a smidgen of Cyndi Lauper, Roxy Music, Hole and yes, Nazareth. I found myself hovering over the Play button on Boston’s “More Than a Feeling” but had to draw the line somewhere. If you could wear out YouTube videos, I’d be close on that one.
I may have wishlisted the self-titled Boston album, though.
Most of my nostalgia is music-related because music is so of its time and is great at invoking memories in ways that TV shows, movies and books simply don’t. I’m re-reading Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, for instance, but I couldn’t tell you when or where exactly I had read the book before, except that it was when I was young. I’m actually kind of shocked at how little I remember of the book (it’s quite good). But there are things I do sometimes look back on wistfully. I will reminisce about them soon in another post that pushes me that much closer to “old man yells at cloud” territory.
