General

The romance of paper books and their many uses

I read 36 books last year, all of them digital. Those books, if actual physical volumes, could fill an entire shelf of a bookcase but instead they were all contained in a single small tablet (or ereader, as my mood and choice of device varied).

I love the convenience of ebooks. I love being able to highlight words to look them up, to effortlessly pick up from where I left off reading without worrying about a bookmark getting lost, to be able to read in the dark so I don’t disturb others, to flip quickly between different books, to see images and illustrations sharply rendered and in color, something few paperbacks afford these days.

I like being able to read trash on public transit without the pesky social stigma since no one can see the lurid book covers. Actually, I don’t mind people seeing my terrible taste in literature. If I did I wouldn’t carefully track and review everything I read on this blog. But others are bound to appreciate being able to discretely read about unicorn sex or whatnot.

And yet for all these conveniences and perks I can appreciate why some people still prefer actual paper books. There is a solidness, a tangibility to having something you physically heft. It makes the experience of reading seem more substantial. Book covers pop with embossed lettering and illustrations in a way you don’t get from a flat LCD image. The grain of the paper, even the smell of the pages, it speaks to the magic of losing yourself in another world for a little while. I experienced some of this when I was in a bookstore during my mall exercise regime the other day, looking over shelves of books, each a different size or thickness, none of them reduced to bits of digital ephemera.

And then I sighed at how those same shelves are crowded with endless series across every genre. Every story must be spread over ten volumes now, it seems, with single volumes largely left to the “literature” section. If I hear someone go on about world-building one more time I may scream. In fact, I did scream a little just now.

Other things you can’t do with an ebook that you can with a physical book:

  • beat off rabid animals
  • use as a paperweight
  • use as a doorstop (Steven Erickson recommended)
  • use to build a small fort
  • use to hide valuable jewels by carving out a secret space inside
  • use to show off how clever/literate you are in public
  • flip pages back and forth rapidly with your thumb in order to bug your friends
  • suddenly snap shut for dramatic effect
  • have it autographed by Famous Author then sell it on Pawn Stars

The expensive world of pet fish

When I was a kid and snow was magical instead of maddening, I had pet fish. I had tow tanks for a number of years, a smaller one with gold fish, and a larger one with tropical fish. The tropical tank had the usual assortment of mollies, neon tetras and algae eaters, whose antics I found endlessly fascinating (said antics consisted primarily of sticking to the glass via their sucker mouths or inexplicably chasing other fish). I also had some snails and occasionally an underwater frog mixed in.

Watching the fish was never as engrossing as a good video game (for example) because I was a kid with a kid-sized attention span, but it still was engrossing to just sit back and watch them silently moving through the tank. I wanted tanks as big as I could afford because I wanted the fish to feel less like they were trapped and more like they were just in a really tiny ocean.

As an adult I’ve never had fish but occasionally think of starting a tank again.

When I was exercising at the mall yesterday (see previous post) I went to a pet store that sells not just pet supplies but actual pets. There were rabbits (pee monsters), budgies (screech monsters) and an assortment of other furry critters. There were also tanks of fish, so for the first time in many years I actually stood and watched fish the same way I had as a kid, just with a bunch of other people pushing and shoving around me.

I saw a tank kit that came with some supplies. It looked about 20 gallons in size, though I neglected to check. “I wonder how much a tank costs now versus way back in olden times when I had one?” I said to myself, quietly so all the people around me wouldn’t think I was crazy. I looked at the price: $229. I wondered if maybe a decimal was in the wrong spot or something but no, the price was $229. That seemed like a lot of money for five panes of glass glued together with a few plastic plants thrown in.

Next I looked at the fish. The range seemed to be roughly $3 or so for neon tetras to around $10 for larger/fancier fish. This meant that stocking a good-sized tank would cost probably a hundred dollars or more. I remembered buying fish for about a buck each. Sure, that was back in 1976 and gas was also 29 cents a liter but I still felt some sticker shock. This is what happens when you stay out a market for 40 years.

Even so, I’m still tempted. There are times when watching fish glide though the water while the plants gently sway around them and the bubbles rise steadily behind would be a soothing, even pseudo-therapeutic experience. Until I had to clean the tank, anyway.

EDIT: Looking at this live fish page on the PetSmart website is making me want to set up a tank right this moment. There were a few things that I found intrinsically fascinating as a kid and fish were right in the middle of that list. In fact, here’s the list as best as I can remember it (there may be omissions and the list is not in any order):

  • dinosaurs
  • roller coasters
  • fish
  • sharks (yes, sharks are fish but they totally deserved their own entry)
  • reptiles (modern-day dinosaurs in my mind)
  • miniatures and models (model cars, trains, etc.)
  • video games (it was early days and everything, even Pong, seemed terribly cool and futuristic)
  • amusements parks (both going to them and just the general concept, especially themed parks like Disneyland)
  • monorails (after riding them in Seattle and Disneyland)
  • fire trucks. I still find them cool. I still can’t explain why.

Damn ice, December 2016 edition

The snow stopped and now with temperatures dropping below freezing, all of the plowed and shoveled surfaces are turning from gleaming wet to gleaming ice. Tomorrow’s commute, on foot and wheel, will be interesting. And by interesting I mean sliding and falling and crashing.

And then it will start raining again for the next four months (or back to normal). Is the weather this fall getting to me? Perhaps. Perhaps a little!

I still feel guilty every time I post about the weather. Sure, as climate change begins wreaking havoc on our planet, weather talk becomes somewhat more interesting but ordinary weather, no matter how unpleasant or SAD-making, is still pretty boring as a topic of discussion. I promise this, then–my next post will be about nude volcano hiking.

Damn snow, December 2016 edition

A month earlier than last winter we got our first snow of the season today. With the temperature just above freezing the snow was wet, heavy and turned into a slushy mess on sidewalks and roads where it wasn’t shoveled or plowed away. For awhile when it was sticking to tree branches it was kind of pretty, though!

Environment Canada ended then resumed the snowfall warning for the Lower Mainland, so who knows if we’ll get more tomorrow. It’s dropping below freezing tonight which means things will be good ‘n icy for the morning commute. People here don’t cope well with the first snow of the season–or, really, just any snow at all. They cope even worse with ice. This is where teleporters would come in really handy.

Here’s a picture of the college at midday with the snow doing its thing. Like I said, it’s kind of pretty but my romance with snow ended after I got my driver’s license and that was…a little while ago.

Vancouver snow December 5 2016

Amusing cat image, December 2016

Yes, it’s early in the month but I can’t shake this horrible sense of blah. It’s getting colder, the threat of snow (followed by still more rain) is in the forecast, winter is weeks away, work is bearing down, everything feels like a big ball of unraveling string or some other dumb metaphor.

So yes, here is December’s amusing cat image, three days into the month. Enjoy!

Cat box flop futility

Musical guilty pleasures: Everybody Wang Chung tonight

I remember the 80s for the giant hair and the music for its synthesizer obsession.

A lot of that music was sterile, stuff that sounded like it came from a factory, not actual humans. Sometimes this was even deliberate–witness Gary Numan’s work.

And then there was Wang Chung. They had a big hit in 1986 with the song “Everybody Have Fun Tonight.” I hated the song. I found it cloying, insipid, superficial. Most of all, it struck me as indulgent as the band inserted itself as a verb into the lyrics:

Everybody have fun tonight
Everybody Wang Chung tonight

I was 22 years old at the time. I was also a humorless twit because this song is great. It’s catchy as all get-out, it has kicking horns, the bridge is soaring, and it’s obvious–especially if you watch the video (don’t do this if you have epilepsy–seriously!)–that the band knew this was nothing more than a fun little confection.

I watch it regularly on YouTube. Or at least listen to it. I’m not epileptic but if I watch the video too closely I find I am suddenly not having fun tonight, I am about to hurl my cookies tonight.

Still, great song and given how utterly inconsequential the subject matter is, I count it as a musical guilty pleasure, one of about a hundred thousand or so that I have (my formative years musically were the 1980s, you see). I may come back and edit this post with more great fluff from the decade that mastered the art of fluff.

Cool, wet and Vancouver Island

For the Remembrance Day long weekend we went to Sidney over on Vancouver Island to partake in Jeff’s mom’s 75th birthday celebration. We had Chinese food for dinner because why not and overall it was a pleasant little trip, even if the ferry ride over was accompanied by the nigh-endless serenading of car alarms blatting from the vehicle decks. The chief steward at one point came on to the PA to announce that the car alarms of every BMW were going off. The vehicle owners had apparently calibrated their alarms to perfectly match the vibrations produced by a large commercial ferry.

After arriving and kibitzing with Jeff’s mom, his sister and their family, we headed into bustling downtown Sidney and spent some time walking along the pier.

Below is a photo of yours truly.

Me on the pier in Sidney, November 2016
With bonus tiny cloud attached to the side of my head

Some observations:

  • I have my dad’s right ear and my mom’s left ear. I think this is becoming more pronounced the older I get. It is also a little weird.
  • Am I developing jowls? I don’t want jowls. I am either ordering or inventing a jowls-prevention kit.
  • If you look closely you can tell I am freezing my butt off. Because I totally was.
  • I escaped seagull poop, both on the pier and bombed from above.
  • People on the pier were catching tiny novelty crabs. They were like finger crabs. Very small is what I’m saying here.

I also liked this sign for the simple way it says you may die:

a sign of diving doom
A sign of diving doom

The motel room was odd in that it was actually cool and we had to turn the heat on (the condo is almost supernaturally warm, staying at 23ºC or higher no matter what the temperature outside is, as if it was constructed atop the endlessly burning fires of hell). The ferry trip back was much quieter, due to either better car alarm control or fewer BMWs.

Overall it was a nice little jaunt. Sidney is one of those towns that manages to pull off quaint without descending completely into either kitsch or self-referential hipster irony.

But seriously…

Trump? Really?

I’ve never been more willing to believe that I’m just having a long, fantastically elaborate (and horrible) dream than I have this past month.

On the one hand I am (morbidly) curious to see what happens. On the other, I expect nothing less than complete disaster, which dampens the curiosity by a factor of about a billion.

It’s like the entire world is getting a lump of coal for Christmas. And I’ve been good this year! Mostly!

Goodbye and good riddance to November 2016

The best thing about November was the day it hit 18ºC thanks to the Pineapple Express. I was not expecting t-shirt weather this month.

I also resumed running, so that was good.

Almost everything else sucked, to various degrees. I’m not even going to attempt a list, it would just be sad and depressing. Instead, I will blow a loud raspberry at November 2016 and hope that December is better.

A haiku to November

I am not so keen on what November has given me, the world and possibly the entire universe.

If Only Time Machines Were Real

November you suck
Clowns, despair and no good words
Christmas will be coal

November 25: I blame Black Friday

As I’ve noted already November 2016 has been a month of disappointments and general awfulness. This blog has been hit by inactivity on both ends–the author (me) has been flailing about and not writing and even the few souls who randomly arrive on the site completely checked out on November 25th as seen in the site stats below:

November 25 2016 blog void

The gap you see means there were no visitors on that day. Not that this site has been hugely busy on other days, as the same chart shows. The taller bars represent 15-17 unique visitors. I tried calculating what percentage of the world’s population that is (currently over 7.46 billion and climbing) but let me just tell you: it’s a pretty small number.

I’ve also changed the header of the site to include an actual image of my mug (passed through a Prisma filter). Further changes are to come as I prepare for the bold, brash year to come that is 2017, the year when we all snap awake and laugh with relief when we all realize 2016 was just a crazy dream!

Also, I went to Metrotown today, not really considering that this is Black Friday weekend or whatever you want to call it. The usual madness of the mall was magnified about five times. I’d ask what was I thinking but I was clearly not thinking at all. But worming my way through the crowds before I decided escape was the only sane course of action did push me toward my daily step goal. See? Lemonade from lemons. I’m such a glass-half-full kinda guy.

10 best things about the US election

The 10 best things about the US election

  1. It's 16 days later and the world hasn't ended (yet)
  2. No more campaigning for at least a few months
  3. Trump wasn't elected in Canada
  4. Trump isn't literally Hitler
  5. It's finally over
  6. There is no longer any need to worry about the bar being set lower
  7. Red baseball cap industry has seen slight boost
  8. Trump can only be reelected once
  9. 2020 is only four years away
  10. There is no #10