General

An early case of the bluhs

After a bunch o’ posts yesterday I find my brain frozen once again, unable to come up with something to focus on and write about after a day in which my brain was subjected to intense frazzling. But here I am writing anyway, because not writing results in…well, nothing being written. And one needs to write to improve one’s writing.

Here, then is a haiku on the bluhs, which are a variant on the blahs.

On the bluhs

The bluhs in winter
They will try to bring you down
Resolve with Pop-Tarts

I’m not sure Pop-Tarts can solve the bluhs, but I might be willing to try.

Lousy Smarch weather

Actually, it’s pretty nice out right now, if a bit cool, I just wanted to get the ball rolling for posting in March and went with a random Simpsons reference.

February shmebruary

This month started out with a fizzle, but is ending on a mostly better note, or series of notes:

  • My weight is down. Yay.
  • I am exercising again. Also yay.
  • I think I’m sleeping better in general.
  • My writing is…well, more on that below.
  • Work is [redacted]

On the poop side of things, my writing has gained no traction at all, whether it be fiction or this blog. I fell way behind on my usual one-post-per-day average, just as I did last month, and despite a few posts today, I will still come up short, unless I post ten haikus or something. I’m pretty sure I won’t do that.

I have also fallen behind on my modest reading goal this year. To meet it, I need to read a book every two weeks. To date I have read three this year, so I’m one behind. This is due to a combination of wanting to veg out during my commute and often not getting a seat because the [redacted for adult language] SkyTrain car will be standing room only at 6:30 in the [redacted] morning. It’s insane. I get on at the fourth stop on the Expo line. After my stop, Sapperton, there are 16 more. I’m pretty sure it’s SRO by the second station, Lougheed. It’s silly. Does everyone work in downtown Vancouver? Yes. Yes, they do.

For the writing, I’m not sure what to say. I think about it, sometimes I start, but nothing much happens. The latest book on writing (I’ve read oodles of them now) has the author assert there is no such thing as writer’s block and technically that’s true. Unless you are in a coma or otherwise physically incapable, you can always write if you have some time. So it’s not that I can’t write, I just don’t. And I’m not entirely sure why, because I’ve read some of my stuff recently and while I’m not trying to toot my horn (heh heh), I quite like some of it and think I should write more.

And maybe I will. Soon. I do actually have some additional thoughts on this and will spill them out of my head in another post.

(I’m not talking about work on a public blog. You’ll need the key to my heart diary to find out more about that.)

SkyTrain vs. dump truck

Last night I had a dream and instead of being about world peace, it was about riding on one of those scary old original SkyTrain cars.

In this instance, I was on an olden train and it was entering a terminus station that was similar to but not quite Waterfront station, as it was clearly inside a tunnel. As it began to brake I noticed a pickup truck up ahead and it was crossing the track, as if it was a conventional at-grade rail crossing. I was somewhat concerned, but the truck got across in time and seemed to wait on the other side, possibly because it was in a tunnel and had nowhere to go.

But once the pickup cleared out, I saw another more ominous obstacle: a giant dump truck that was sitting on the track, with the back end presented to us in a somewhat rude manner.

As mentioned, the train was braking, so a high-speed collision was not in the cards, but it seemed some sort of collision was and sure enough, the train bumped into the dump truck, pushing it away because behold the power of a Mark I SkyTrain car. After this it seemed the train had too much momentum and was going to crash into whatever was at the end of the tunnel, so a switch was activated to divert the train left and into some kind of auxiliary tunnel, except it seemed quite short and narrow and sloped down about 45 degrees. So the train sort of crashed, anyway. Everyone was fine, though, so we got out and after that I’m not sure what happened. Maybe we all went and yelled at the dump truck driver.

Anyway, my concerns over riding the increasingly aged Mark I trains is clearly starting to manifest in my subconscious, so hooray for that.

My own made-up career test results

I took one of those “answer a bunch of questions and we’ll tell you which careers you are totally suited for” quizzes last week and partway through I suspected they would ask me to pony up a few bucks to see the results. Sure enough, I was asked to fork over $9.99 to learn that I might make a great chicken farmer.

My unpaid conclusion is that I need to get into the job quiz creation business. $10 per result? I could get rich! Slowly, slowly rich.

I may yet be willing to offer money for some of this “career advice” but I’m not convinced the specific site in question is worth the money, meaning I’ll have to do research on these sites first. Once again, looking for work is work, even if I’m not looking for anything specific (yet).

While I contemplate the horror of having to do research (I hate research the same way I hate elevators. Maybe I had a traumatic experience with research when I was a child that I’m blocking now.) I figure I could get the old idea train rolling by just getting out and pushing myself.

Which is to say, I’m going to list a bunch of careers I might (“might”) be suited for that I’m coming up with off the top of my head. Here we go, yay!

Awesome careers for someone
(Possibly me, possibly someone else, possibly no one)

  • Chicken farmer
    • Pros:
      • Chickens are small and sort of cute, maybe?
      • The rich smell of earth, honest and pure
      • Be my own boss
      • Chickens might talk back but it’s all just clucking, so it’s fine
      • Never have to shop for chicken for dinner ever again
      • Not cooped up (lol) in a stuffy office, sitting at a desk and prematurely aging
    • Cons:
      • Chicken poop
      • Probably have to get up early
      • Not a life of fabulous wealth and luxury
      • Rich smell is actually gross, because of the aforementioned poop
  • Singer
    • Pros:
      • Who doesn’t like singing?
      • All you need is your voice
      • Look, “Friday” was a best-selling single. FRIDAY.
      • Creative work nourishes the soul
    • Cons:
      • Earning a living could be challenging, resulting in starvation and death
      • Autotune can only go so far
      • Would need musicians or have to steal music or something

I have run out of time (I am writing this on my lunch break, which may be ironic), so I will add to this post soon(tm).

Only 135 days until summer

Yes, I am counting. The snow has stopped and the drizzly, cold rain has returned, which is actually an improvement.

It’s also a mere 42 days until the spring equinox, when we switch back to Daylight Saving Time and I no longer have to endure getting up in the dark to go to work and coming back home in the dark, with actual daylight reserved for when I’m working and mostly indoors. Tech support doesn’t require a lot of going outside.

I find myself utterly uninspired when it comes to writing on the blog lately, but I figure if I start writing I will hopefully get past the hump and start producing utter gems. Utter Gems is also the name of my Talking Heads cover band.

The post-flu world

Yes, given how awful and lingering this flu has been, I am now dividing my life into pre-flu and post-flu.

Every night for about the past week I have intended to post something to the blog–maybe a haiku, or a comment about the weather (done), but every night, after dinner and by mid-evening I find I have no energy left. The idea of laying down becomes immensely appealing. The idea of engaging my brain while sitting upright seems like far too much work.

That said, I’m forcing myself tonight, as you can now see. So here’s a haiku on the flu. A fluku, if you will.

The flu strikes swiftly
Energy sinks like a stone
Weeks later, still blah

Okay, not exactly my finest work, but it’s a start. Of something.

A dream in which an alien machine wrecks our historic buildings

Last night I had an odd dream that I actually remember fairly well.

I was in downtown Vancouver, within view of Burrard Inlet. The sky was a bright, clear blue and the way people were dressed suggested it was summer.

To my left was one of the historical buildings that one finds along the harbour–think the Waterfront Station building–though in this case the building more closely resembled the Hudson’s Bay building which is not, in fact, located on the harbour. It was a dream building, then, but close enough to reality to serve its purpose.

Directly ahead of me, in the inlet, was what appeared to be a giant oil derrick, except it had been modified or created with a different purpose. Atop it was a fully articulated arm, the end of which was tipped with a very large spike. For scale, I’d say the spike itself was probably 20 feet long. Not the kind of spike you’d want to be caught under. This spike was almost casually reaching over and chipping away at the historic building reminiscent of the Hudson’s Bay store. From where I stood I couldn’t see the actual damage the spike might be doing, but somehow I knew that it shouldn’t have been doing this, but also couldn’t be stopped, because the platform was an alien construction and we puny humans had no control over it.

After some time passed there was a tremendous heaving sound from the building and I looked over in time to see an impressively large chunk of it–multiple stories–come loose, and topple into the inlet. Moments after, the spike managed to needle its way into a more modern structure and what appeared to be an entire skyscraper suddenly appeared in the sky, somehow pulled loose from its foundation, and which was now making its way directly down toward the people gathered.

I began to run to the east to avoid being squashed, but my mom–who was apparently there the entire time–had a better read on the building’s trajectory and told me to stop. I stopped and the building crashed into the harbour. We then conferred briefly and I suggested we walk to my place to see what the fallout of all this might be. Most people were similarly clearing out of the area, not in a panic, but in a “better safe than sorry” kind of way. The direction we headed suggested I was still living on East 19th Avenue, which would put the timeframe of the dream somewhere between 2001 and 2011, but it felt earlier than that, like I was still in my late 20s or maybe early 30s.

The dream ended there, so I’m not sure what our building-mashing alien overlords had in mind next, but the thing that lingered with me later was how strangely banal the whole thing was. An alien construct appeared or arrived in Burrard Inlet, it started poking away at nearby buildings, and all we could do was shrug and wait to see what happened. So we did.

Which is quite possibly the way something like this might actually unfold, if we were clearly powerless to stop it.