As I waited for a train to trundle by at the crossing at Government Street in Burnaby, I snapped a picture of this bit of wisdom someone had spray-painted onto the sidewalk (the train isn’t invisible, it’s on the second track which is not visible in my photo):
Is it a coincidence that this was put down at a train crossing? But not only a train crossing, one with double tracks and at an intersection, which is a perfect combo for some sort of horrible accident–er, I mean a place where something might be observed to be “coming apart.” Also of note, a short distance down the road is where a 150+ car train derailed a few years ago.
Or maybe it’s an observation about people, like “I really understood Uncle Festus after that day he totally came unglued.” Or maybe it just means “take lots of pictures when you dismantle the engine on your lawn mower, otherwise you’ll end up putting it back together, then find six vital engine pieces sitting behind you.”
One day I’ll write up a full review of my Series 2 Apple Watch (which I am generally pretty happy with) but something that has always bugged me is that Siri is only available when you have an internet connection, even for things that should easily work without a connection like “Hey Siri, start a 5-minute timer” or “Hey Siri, shuffle my music.”
Siri also has a tough time parsing certain (seemingly random) things. I will never get Siri to play The Alan Parsons Project’s album Pyramid because Siri is incapable of understanding the word “pyramid”:
“Hey Siri, play the album Pyramid.” I’m sorry, I can’t find the album Pure Mind
“Hey Siri, play the album Pyramid.” (Being very careful to pronounce the word clearly and concisely.) I’m sorry, I can’t find the album Pier Mind
“Hey Siri, play the third Alan Parsons Project album.” begins playing random track from The Turn of a Friendly Card, the fourth APP album
Best of all, even when I issue a command (usually related to playing music, like the aforementioned “Hey Siri, shuffle my music”) the watch will insist something went wrong with Siri…shortly after executing the command correctly:
I mean, as long as it works I don’t mind, but it’s a bit unsettling.
At least I’m totally set if I ever get an album called Pier Mind.
Another night, another weird dream I can recall bits of.
I am in a skyscraper that may or may not be the World Trade Center (the original). The dream has nothing to do with terrorist attacks.
Instead I find myself drawn to climb out onto some kind of spout structure on one of the corners of the building that paradoxically curves upward at the end. This isn’t at the top of the skyscraper but it’s at a decent height. After looking around for a bit I decided I’ve seen enough and go back. Except that, due to dream logic, it is impossible to climb back up the spout. The only way off the spout is down. I look down and am comforted to find there is a large grass lawn below me, verdant green and welcoming.
I then notice that I’m perhaps up a little too high, probably at least a hundred feet, and landing on grass from a hundred feet up will likely result in serious injury, death, or both. I consider my options.
Using one arm to hold onto the curved portion of the spout, I use my free hand to pull out a flip-phone (maybe this is 2001 or earlier, after all) and calmly call 911, requesting rescue. I then wait.
A little while later I am rescued and though I don’t remember exactly what happened, I think I was helped into the bucket of a fire truck and then deposited on the nearest floor of the building, rather than being brought safely to the ground for a good scolding about climbing one-way spouts on skyscrapers. When I am safely inside I look down through a window/balcony/deck and think, “It wasn’t that far. Pfft.” The ironic part here is that I am a big-time acrophobic under the right (or more accurately, wrong) circumstances. If I was grasping onto a spout a hundred feet in the air, off the side of a skyscraper, I would not be calm, I would be in a state of shock or pooping my pants, or pooping my pants while in a state of shock. Like the previous night’s bear-chase dream, I find myself in a situation that should be terrifying and act with utter nonchalance, like this stuff happens all the time.
I kind of like it. I’m not sure what it means. I’m not sure I want to know. But maybe I do.
Last night I had a myriad of dreams, most of them the usual dream sort-of nonsense, though a few too many were work-related. They weren’t bad dreams but I’d rather not have dreams about work when I’m, you know, on vacation.
I woke up from one and found it so dumb I had to record it before I forgot, so I padded into the bathroom, my eyes scrunched up tight from the bright light, and tapped out the dream on my iPad, using the Drafts app. Technology is grand.
In the dream I was walking west along Trunk Road, one of the longer roads in my hometown of Duncan. For reasons I never determined my hands were spackled with moist dirt, as if I’d been planting a garden. Perhaps that was the previous dream.
I strode up the street with my dirt-covered hands and headed toward the McDonald’s near the intersection of Trunk Road and the Island Highway (no such place exists in reality, though there is a McDonald’s further down the highway). As I got close I suddenly realized I’d forgotten my uniform. Yes, apparently I worked there, it was my first shift and I’d forgotten to wear my uniform. I turned around and headed back to get it. And possibly to wash my hands.
A short distance ahead of me I spotted what appeared to be a medium-sized black bear. In comparison to me this was still gigantic. It was snuffling through some overgrown bushes in a yard. I began to back up, hoping the bear would not see me before I could get somewhere bear-proof. Alas, the bear did see me so I picked up the pace, hoping my head-start would serve me well and also hoping bears couldn’t run faster than people. As I ran some guy off to the side yelled out that if I had [something] I could use it to distract the bear. I can’t remember what it was–food seems a likely choice, though given dream logic, it could have been anything. Whatever it was, I didn’t have it so I kept running.
I came upon a parked car and ran around it to the front, leaping onto the hood, which was to serve as my refuge. The bear immediately jumped onto the hood behind me, my refuge lasting about a tenth of a second. I then curled into a ball to at least make it more difficult to gut me and waited for whatever would happen next. I wasn’t scared because I was confident the guy who yelled about distracting the bear with [something] would somehow distract the bear.
I woke up at this point, so I’m not sure how it turned out. I’d like to think I didn’t get eaten.
Also, why I was going to work at McDonald’s in Duncan is a question I won’t even try to answer.
A later dream found me talking with people at work about something (or maybe [something]) and suddenly I couldn’t breathe properly. I began snorting and struggling and woke up to find I was snorting and struggling because my sinuses had completely blocked with the position I was laying in and I couldn’t breathe. It’s a bit freaky when dreams work that way.
Specifically, I’d like the air to stop smoking. Yesterday was weird with an orange haze and the air having a thick, soupy quality thanks to that good old fine particulate matter blowing in from forest fires in the Interior.
Today the haze descended to ground level so it not only blotted out the blue sky, it created a thin, fog-like layer everywhere you looked. And unlike yesterday the smell of the smoke has become tangible. It’s like being on the periphery of a magic campfire where no matter where you move, the campfire is always the same distance away.
Anyway, it’s gross and unlikely to change soon due to a very strong ridge of high pressure. It’s also bad because, well, lots of forest on fire.
get my prescription updated for my glasses; get new glasses or at least new lenses
clean up the junk in the living room
visit over on Vancouver Island
go camping for a few days somewhere that isn’t on fire
run 10K at least three times a week (starting in the second week)
write fiction for one hour each day
achieve world peace
I’ve probably left a few out and some goals may be easier than others. For example, world peace may be more within reach than writing an hour of fiction every day. But who knows?
I will report back in a month with the exciting results.
The weather has been pretty nice in July and this week promises an actual heatwave, with temperatures climbing up over 30ºC on multiple days. Not great for all the forest fires out there burning across the province, but nice for getting a tan.
I went the entire month–save one day–without wearing pants. And I kind of regretted wearing pants the day I did.
As an aside, it seems harder than it should be to find a pair of shorts that look decent* and aren’t festooned with pockets. I only need to carry a phone, wallet and keys, not two weeks of camping supplies.
* what I consider decent may vary from the popular definition. It’s like art, I know it when I see it. At least when it comes to shorts.
What if the Terry Jacks classic song had been about bees and dying, instead of love and dying?
Bee-sons in the Sun
Goodbye to you, my trusted friend.
We’ve known each other since we were nine or ten.
Together we’ve climbed hills and trees.
Learned of love and ABC’s,
skinned our hearts, got stung by bees.
Goodbye my friend, it’s hard to die,
when all the bees are buzzing in the sky,
Now that the spring is in the air.
Killer bees are everywhere.
Think of me and I’ll bee there.
Had no joy, and got stung, we ran from hornets in the sun.
But the hills that we climbed
were just beehives out of time.
Goodbye, Papa, please pray for me,
I brought the bees back to the family.
You tried to teach me right from wrong.
Too much wine and too much song,
and the bees all stinging strong.
Goodbye, Papa, it’s hard to die
when all the bees are buzzing in the sky,
Now that the bees are in the air.
Children screaming everywhere.
When you see them I’ll be there.
Had no joy, and got stung, we fought hornets in the sun.
But the wine and the song,
like the bees, have all gone.
Had no joy, and got stung, we fought hornets in the sun.
But the honey and the bong,
like the bees, have all gone.
Goodbye, Michelle, my little one.
You gave me love and helped me find the sun.
And every time that I was down
you would always come around
until the bees put me in the ground.
Goodbye, Michelle, it’s hard to die
when all the bees are buzzing in the sky,
Now that the bees are in the air.
With the flowers they don’t care.
Just to sting us here and there.
Had no joy, and got stung, ran from wasps in the sun.
But the houses we could reach
were just wall to wall with bees
All our lives we would run, we faced hornets in the sun.
But the hills that we climbed
Were just beehives out of time….
Okay, that’s pretty bad, but I somehow feel better having written it. Also, I tried to rhyme “reach” and “bees”, which illustrates my mastery of poetry and songwriting.
If I wear my over-ear headphones and then rub a finger on my upper-lip stubble (it’s not quite grand enough to really call a mustache) the sound is strangely reminiscent of sawing wood.
This has been my random thought of the day.
Also, I dreamed the other night that a taxi driver or bus driver said dividing something up fairly would be “fifty, fifty, fifty” and I frantically tried to find some way to permanently record this wisdom for all time. In reality I have an app called Drafts that I can summon on my Apple Watch and with a tap of the mic icon, I tell it what I want to record and it’s done. It’s simple yet always strikes me as such a spiffy, hi-tech way to record random thoughts and ideas.
In the dream I couldn’t get the app to work. I’m not sure why. The watch probably adopted spontaneous non-Euclidean geometry that made it impossible to operate.
This has been my second random thought of the day. About random thoughts.
If you have a slow connection I apologize, as this is a converted mp4 file that comes in at over 4MB as a gif. Still, who can be mad after seeing cat vs. banana?
