Tuesday, May 22, 2007
Monday, April 23, 2007
Best Weekend Evar
Sitting here on Monday afternoon, I find myself both already nostalgic for the totally amazing weekend that just passed and not entirely sure what made it so amazing.
Among the factors I can think of were a communal desperation to have a really good time, blindingly great weather that crept up on us after a long long winter runout - perfectly timed to Friday afternoon, no less - a healthy supply of alcohol and barbecueables, and just plain good luck.
I got off work at the much-hated factory at 3pm on Friday. I've been reading On the Road by Kerouak and it has been both an inspiration and a frenzying force in my life. I wanted to have a good time. Al agreed to come over and have a couple of beers before I had to go to bed at 8pm (I stupidly volunteered for Saturday overtime). Tracey and I drank on the back deck for a couple of hours before being joined by Al. He and I popped out to get taco chips and ran into Wendy, who happily agreed to come back to my house and drink instead of whatever she had been going to do. Erika and Kelly showed up in short order and we really got down to the business of enjoying ourselves.
barbecued veggie dogs
cheap beer
storytelling on the deck
frantic conversations
another argument about honey!
Kelly's dad singing Scottish tunes
candles!
awesome homemade tracklists playing out the windows
Erika and Wendy deciding to goth it up and go to the Underground
me deciding to not go to work ^_^
an outlandish degree of photography
the bar
the retreat from the bar
the return to the bar
we didn't buy a single drink!
stumbling drunkenly home
putting a bucket next to Wendy's head
We didn't realize it until the next day, but we had had an accidental party.
Saturday, I woke up with a pounding headache. I put away an ibuprofen, a couple pints of water, and Tracey, Wendy, and I headed out to the market. Questions that occurred to us as the morning wore on:
Did I really fall down the stairs the night before with a steam cleaner in my hands?
Had we really drank all the beer in the house and started mixing bloody marys in our mouths?
Why was everyone wearing hats?
Whose idea was it to start arm-wrestling?
and bestly:
Isn't it amazing how much fucking fun we had?!
Got home from the market. Ordered more beer. Cleaned up a touch and had a super delicious vegan breakfast of salad rolls, fried potato onion patties, and veggie sausage links. Coffee.
The beer arrived and I told the guy not to take the empty pint cans on the porch since we'd be ordering again in about 3 hours. He laughed, but he laughed harder when we saw him again at six.
Wendy went home and Nicole showed up. Then Emily. Then Tristan. Aaron climbed on the roof of the garage with Emily and they chilled out there. Tracey went out with her dad to get soil and then passed out on her swing. Kelly and Andrew arrived. The barbecue was engaged, and delicious foods cooked. I marinated tofu and vegetables, which we ate once Al and Erika came over. I declared it was the best marinated barbecue tofu I had ever made.
People began to climb onto the roof in greater numbers. Many pictures were taken of our friends - sitting, standing, teetering drunkenly, pretending to be crows, and sneering.
The sun lowered. One of our neighbours threatened to call the police on account of our racket. It was 8:30. Our racket increased. Anyone who went inside first took an order of everyone on the roof who needed another beer. The orders became large and complicated. Al and Erika opened a bottle of Dom Perignon on the roof and it circulated to fortify our already boisterous presence.
A new game was devised: throw your empties off the roof and try to get them into the garbage can on the lawn. I said NO! Everyone else responded by throwing bottles. Once the first one broke, it was all over, so I joined in too. I think people began to chug beer so that they could throw their bottles all at the same time.
The sun sank below the horizon. We didn't notice. The roof was packed and Al and Erika took off to go to Lia's kinky party. Time became somewhat distorted for me. Aaron kept going inside for prolonged periods. Eventually, he emerged wearing leather pants, no shirt, his posing pouch, and a pink feather boa. We all went inside and danced in the kitchen to Sexyback while taking pictures of ourselves dancing. Tristan lifted me into the air. OUTRAGEOUS DRUNKENNESS!
After this frenetic climax of dancing and debauchery, things took a turn for the mundane. Someone turned on the television, and after an hour of avoiding it, Simon, Tracey, and I headed to Lia's. We kept to Dublin and drank the entire way. Why not?
The party was strange. It was supposed to be a sexy party with structured activities, but the only activity we were there for had confusing rules (doubly confusing if you've been drinking a great deal) and after they were explained, the organizer switched rooms. I know that there was something to do with kissing. I kissed Becky. Tracey kissed someone next to her. I don't think very many people did the activity. I was having difficulty remembering that the party was kinky-themed. I think the three of us (Simon, Tracey, and I) all decided simultaneously to make ourselves scarce. Simon went downtown and we never saw him again (until noon on Sunday). Tracey and I went back and tried to play Guitar Hero with Kelly, Andrew, and Brent (who had finally shown up). Alas, it was to no avail. I was far too drunk, and I couldn't hit a god damn note. *ploink ploink twang plink wang* I gave up and headed to bed.
By Sunday morning, the damage we were doing to ourselves at night was becoming more apparent. My bruises and scrapes from the steamcleaner incident were very sore, and Tracey was partially submerged in a hangover from which she struggled to emerge all day. I was sluggish for hours, and I felt terrible about accidentally breaking the lid to one of her keepsakes. (which was in a stupid place and I'm surprised it hadn't been broken on some earlier occasion, but I still felt awful) I spent an hour looking for pieces and trying to glue it back together without making my fingers a permanent contribution to the piece.
And then we didn't do anything for a while. Round 4, Aaron and Emily got home from the mall and declared it PIRATE DAY! They were loaded with pirate crap (eyepatches, cutlasses, pistols, doubloons, hooks, daggers, etc) and we got pirated up and drove out to shanghair Tristan on York. We waved our weapons and shouted ARR at all the cars we passed, and Aaron used his spyglass to chart our course. While we waited for T to change at his apartment, the three of us shouted piratical slogans at each other and waved our weapons around and took more pictures. We attracted the initially vaguely-interesting and eventually creepy attention of one of Tristan's neighbours, a Manx named David who was sitting shirtless on his patio balcony, getting drunk by himself and watching the world slide by. He told us he spoke gaelic (I think he thought our pirate accents sounded gaelic) and said we knew how to live life! Then he started talking about the AK-47s in his apartment and we told Tristan to hurry up.
Back at the house, things were winding down. Tracey did a lot of dishes and we traded in all the empties for MORE BEER! We tried to play frisbee, but the wind was too strong and we couldn't catch worth a damn. That didn't last long. "I feel like I'm coming down off drugs," said Tracey. I thought she perfectly captured what I was feeling.
For an almost totally unplanned sequence of events, the weekend was pretty fantastic.
Among the factors I can think of were a communal desperation to have a really good time, blindingly great weather that crept up on us after a long long winter runout - perfectly timed to Friday afternoon, no less - a healthy supply of alcohol and barbecueables, and just plain good luck.
I got off work at the much-hated factory at 3pm on Friday. I've been reading On the Road by Kerouak and it has been both an inspiration and a frenzying force in my life. I wanted to have a good time. Al agreed to come over and have a couple of beers before I had to go to bed at 8pm (I stupidly volunteered for Saturday overtime). Tracey and I drank on the back deck for a couple of hours before being joined by Al. He and I popped out to get taco chips and ran into Wendy, who happily agreed to come back to my house and drink instead of whatever she had been going to do. Erika and Kelly showed up in short order and we really got down to the business of enjoying ourselves.
barbecued veggie dogs
cheap beer
storytelling on the deck
frantic conversations
another argument about honey!
Kelly's dad singing Scottish tunes
candles!
awesome homemade tracklists playing out the windows
Erika and Wendy deciding to goth it up and go to the Underground
me deciding to not go to work ^_^
an outlandish degree of photography
the bar
the retreat from the bar
the return to the bar
we didn't buy a single drink!
stumbling drunkenly home
putting a bucket next to Wendy's head
We didn't realize it until the next day, but we had had an accidental party.
Saturday, I woke up with a pounding headache. I put away an ibuprofen, a couple pints of water, and Tracey, Wendy, and I headed out to the market. Questions that occurred to us as the morning wore on:
Did I really fall down the stairs the night before with a steam cleaner in my hands?
Had we really drank all the beer in the house and started mixing bloody marys in our mouths?
Why was everyone wearing hats?
Whose idea was it to start arm-wrestling?
and bestly:
Isn't it amazing how much fucking fun we had?!
Got home from the market. Ordered more beer. Cleaned up a touch and had a super delicious vegan breakfast of salad rolls, fried potato onion patties, and veggie sausage links. Coffee.
The beer arrived and I told the guy not to take the empty pint cans on the porch since we'd be ordering again in about 3 hours. He laughed, but he laughed harder when we saw him again at six.
Wendy went home and Nicole showed up. Then Emily. Then Tristan. Aaron climbed on the roof of the garage with Emily and they chilled out there. Tracey went out with her dad to get soil and then passed out on her swing. Kelly and Andrew arrived. The barbecue was engaged, and delicious foods cooked. I marinated tofu and vegetables, which we ate once Al and Erika came over. I declared it was the best marinated barbecue tofu I had ever made.
People began to climb onto the roof in greater numbers. Many pictures were taken of our friends - sitting, standing, teetering drunkenly, pretending to be crows, and sneering.
The sun lowered. One of our neighbours threatened to call the police on account of our racket. It was 8:30. Our racket increased. Anyone who went inside first took an order of everyone on the roof who needed another beer. The orders became large and complicated. Al and Erika opened a bottle of Dom Perignon on the roof and it circulated to fortify our already boisterous presence.
A new game was devised: throw your empties off the roof and try to get them into the garbage can on the lawn. I said NO! Everyone else responded by throwing bottles. Once the first one broke, it was all over, so I joined in too. I think people began to chug beer so that they could throw their bottles all at the same time.
The sun sank below the horizon. We didn't notice. The roof was packed and Al and Erika took off to go to Lia's kinky party. Time became somewhat distorted for me. Aaron kept going inside for prolonged periods. Eventually, he emerged wearing leather pants, no shirt, his posing pouch, and a pink feather boa. We all went inside and danced in the kitchen to Sexyback while taking pictures of ourselves dancing. Tristan lifted me into the air. OUTRAGEOUS DRUNKENNESS!
After this frenetic climax of dancing and debauchery, things took a turn for the mundane. Someone turned on the television, and after an hour of avoiding it, Simon, Tracey, and I headed to Lia's. We kept to Dublin and drank the entire way. Why not?
The party was strange. It was supposed to be a sexy party with structured activities, but the only activity we were there for had confusing rules (doubly confusing if you've been drinking a great deal) and after they were explained, the organizer switched rooms. I know that there was something to do with kissing. I kissed Becky. Tracey kissed someone next to her. I don't think very many people did the activity. I was having difficulty remembering that the party was kinky-themed. I think the three of us (Simon, Tracey, and I) all decided simultaneously to make ourselves scarce. Simon went downtown and we never saw him again (until noon on Sunday). Tracey and I went back and tried to play Guitar Hero with Kelly, Andrew, and Brent (who had finally shown up). Alas, it was to no avail. I was far too drunk, and I couldn't hit a god damn note. *ploink ploink twang plink wang* I gave up and headed to bed.
By Sunday morning, the damage we were doing to ourselves at night was becoming more apparent. My bruises and scrapes from the steamcleaner incident were very sore, and Tracey was partially submerged in a hangover from which she struggled to emerge all day. I was sluggish for hours, and I felt terrible about accidentally breaking the lid to one of her keepsakes. (which was in a stupid place and I'm surprised it hadn't been broken on some earlier occasion, but I still felt awful) I spent an hour looking for pieces and trying to glue it back together without making my fingers a permanent contribution to the piece.
And then we didn't do anything for a while. Round 4, Aaron and Emily got home from the mall and declared it PIRATE DAY! They were loaded with pirate crap (eyepatches, cutlasses, pistols, doubloons, hooks, daggers, etc) and we got pirated up and drove out to shanghair Tristan on York. We waved our weapons and shouted ARR at all the cars we passed, and Aaron used his spyglass to chart our course. While we waited for T to change at his apartment, the three of us shouted piratical slogans at each other and waved our weapons around and took more pictures. We attracted the initially vaguely-interesting and eventually creepy attention of one of Tristan's neighbours, a Manx named David who was sitting shirtless on his patio balcony, getting drunk by himself and watching the world slide by. He told us he spoke gaelic (I think he thought our pirate accents sounded gaelic) and said we knew how to live life! Then he started talking about the AK-47s in his apartment and we told Tristan to hurry up.
Back at the house, things were winding down. Tracey did a lot of dishes and we traded in all the empties for MORE BEER! We tried to play frisbee, but the wind was too strong and we couldn't catch worth a damn. That didn't last long. "I feel like I'm coming down off drugs," said Tracey. I thought she perfectly captured what I was feeling.
For an almost totally unplanned sequence of events, the weekend was pretty fantastic.
Friday, March 30, 2007
Terminology!
Amazing! In this Day And Age, it is still possible to come up with an expression whose proper name can't be easily located using the internet.
I remember in the pre-google days where the Internet was a marginal and sometimes deceptive information-gathering resource, where finding stuff required actual skill and practice. Want the track listing for an album by some non-cutting edge band? Brace yourself for the trip through a dozen shitty (often wildly inaccurate) Geocities fanpages. Need to find a reasonably good and large image of men storming Normandy? Better get a spare oxygen tank, cause you're going deep into the net.
But now it's all so simple: Wikipedia. Google. Dictionary.com. Rinse, repeat. Finding stuff is about as hard as typing its name or simply typing out the question you've got.
.. or so I thought. I have spent over twenty minutes trying to locate the name of the chain that can be used to connect an earring to a nose ring. I have nothing. Wikipedia gives me nothing. BMEZine brings nothing to the table. Google drops simple prepositions, so a "chain for nose to ear" search becomes a "chain nose ear" search (which incidentally, I've also been trying - to no avail). I can barely even find mentions of the existence of this thing, though I am sure I've seen in half a dozen non-obscure films.
I think I'm actually going to have to go ask someone in person at a piercing shop what it's called.
I remember in the pre-google days where the Internet was a marginal and sometimes deceptive information-gathering resource, where finding stuff required actual skill and practice. Want the track listing for an album by some non-cutting edge band? Brace yourself for the trip through a dozen shitty (often wildly inaccurate) Geocities fanpages. Need to find a reasonably good and large image of men storming Normandy? Better get a spare oxygen tank, cause you're going deep into the net.
But now it's all so simple: Wikipedia. Google. Dictionary.com. Rinse, repeat. Finding stuff is about as hard as typing its name or simply typing out the question you've got.
.. or so I thought. I have spent over twenty minutes trying to locate the name of the chain that can be used to connect an earring to a nose ring. I have nothing. Wikipedia gives me nothing. BMEZine brings nothing to the table. Google drops simple prepositions, so a "chain for nose to ear" search becomes a "chain nose ear" search (which incidentally, I've also been trying - to no avail). I can barely even find mentions of the existence of this thing, though I am sure I've seen in half a dozen non-obscure films.
I think I'm actually going to have to go ask someone in person at a piercing shop what it's called.
Sunday, March 18, 2007
Not Asimovian Levels of Output
So this blog has not received the sort of effort that I really intended to invest in it. Considering that I am unemployed at the moment and should have all the time in the world to write, this does not bode well for future blogging efforts.
A step back to my most successful period of online chronicling:
When I was in my first year of university, I started a webpage purportedly to provide real-time updates on a computer game that I was building. The game didn't survive a month of development, but the webpage did. I was very lonely and I had a great deal of angst that served as fine fuel for creative output.
This was back in the heady days of 2000, before The Day Everything Changed, and also before the word "blog" existed. In the space before the mainstreaming of blogs (a process that, in my mind, is inextricably linked to Iraq and the crimes of the Bush administration), there was a hodgepodge of website classifications that denoted much of what has now fallen under the expansive umbrella of Blogger/Typepad. The thing perhaps most similar to blogs, and arguably their direct antecedent, was the E/N ("everything/nothing") site - an online space onto which content creators would toss whatever struck their fancy, and opine on it. Something like the op-ed section of a badly run high school newspaper. Some of these were totally awesome (SA, Seanbaby) and others were vaguely disguised conduits for pornographic link-farming (stileproject)
(as a total sidenote: Holy Shit. Stileproject is still online.)
Anyhow, I somehow found the time and the ideas to update my little E/N site at least once a week, and towards its height, almost every day. My last post there was That was right around six years ago. Compare with my journal-keeping efforts since:
(my somewhat secretive) Livejournal account: last post Jan 2006, but last regular post July 2002
Baker's & my community blog: 6 posts in total, ending July 2005
My second, less-secretive livejournal account: 8 posts total, ending March 2006
etc etc
So it is fair to say that I have somewhere along the way shed the bug that compelled me to log and opine as such a regular rate in my earlier years. That noted, I believe that writing has a therapeutic, historical, and skills-developing value, and so with this blog I aim to overcome my natural hesitance to journal-keeping.
The three things (and you will learn with me that most things can be captured in short, numerated lists) I expect to write most about are:
1. My social life
2. Recipes
3. What I perceive to be my intellectual and emotional growth
And if things go according to plan, I'll be able to look back on these writings in the future and catch the trends that weren't visible from up-close, thereby making #3 a two-fer.
A step back to my most successful period of online chronicling:
When I was in my first year of university, I started a webpage purportedly to provide real-time updates on a computer game that I was building. The game didn't survive a month of development, but the webpage did. I was very lonely and I had a great deal of angst that served as fine fuel for creative output.
This was back in the heady days of 2000, before The Day Everything Changed, and also before the word "blog" existed. In the space before the mainstreaming of blogs (a process that, in my mind, is inextricably linked to Iraq and the crimes of the Bush administration), there was a hodgepodge of website classifications that denoted much of what has now fallen under the expansive umbrella of Blogger/Typepad. The thing perhaps most similar to blogs, and arguably their direct antecedent, was the E/N ("everything/nothing") site - an online space onto which content creators would toss whatever struck their fancy, and opine on it. Something like the op-ed section of a badly run high school newspaper. Some of these were totally awesome (SA, Seanbaby) and others were vaguely disguised conduits for pornographic link-farming (stileproject)
(as a total sidenote: Holy Shit. Stileproject is still online.)
Anyhow, I somehow found the time and the ideas to update my little E/N site at least once a week, and towards its height, almost every day. My last post there was That was right around six years ago. Compare with my journal-keeping efforts since:
(my somewhat secretive) Livejournal account: last post Jan 2006, but last regular post July 2002
Baker's & my community blog: 6 posts in total, ending July 2005
My second, less-secretive livejournal account: 8 posts total, ending March 2006
etc etc
So it is fair to say that I have somewhere along the way shed the bug that compelled me to log and opine as such a regular rate in my earlier years. That noted, I believe that writing has a therapeutic, historical, and skills-developing value, and so with this blog I aim to overcome my natural hesitance to journal-keeping.
The three things (and you will learn with me that most things can be captured in short, numerated lists) I expect to write most about are:
1. My social life
2. Recipes
3. What I perceive to be my intellectual and emotional growth
And if things go according to plan, I'll be able to look back on these writings in the future and catch the trends that weren't visible from up-close, thereby making #3 a two-fer.
Friday, February 23, 2007
first post!! lol
Sweet. I've been trying to think of a blog name for what must be over half a year now and it just came to me while I was making coffee.
This blog's name is a total in-joke that probably no one but Al and I will get, although I find it completely hillarious. No, I won't explain it. Jokes are never funny after they've been explained.
This blog's name is a total in-joke that probably no one but Al and I will get, although I find it completely hillarious. No, I won't explain it. Jokes are never funny after they've been explained.
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