How you doin'?

Greetings, o special ones.  I am glad to find you here at this time and in this place.  

It has been said, 'There is nothing like taking a break.  An extended, possibly never-ending break.  It can be refreshing, restorative, and remind one why one did certain things in the first place...also it's nice to disappear'.

Of course, others may forget you if you don't call once in a while.  No letters?  No texts, sexts, daily instagrammatical email posts?  No?  Is this thing on?

My country got so oblonged I lost it for a while.  Let's let psychedelic Jesus welcome us all back...Ciao!

For now...

another year, another...yadda yadda yadda

 Well I can now say that I've had a surprise party thrown for me.  'Twas very sweet.  That is my new tag line, now that I'm thirty-eight.

 Warm fuzzies all round.  Lucky to have some pretty cool friends and family.  A surprise party beats all-night internet sesh hands down.

 It's a good omen when the young and the old come together to celebrate the passing of time!

 Come to realize that deer-in-the-headlights is my standard party look.

 I felt like a not-so-fresh prince.

 Thanks everybody!

o lucky man!

 Returned yesterday from the first real vacation I've had in years.  It was awesome.  Visited Trinidad and Tobago for the first time, the place where my birth-mother's side of the family is from.  These photos are from my first day (a lot of firsts) there.  It is the beach at Mayaro, where my grandmother grew up.

 I have never been south of the equator, never seen beaches and such like these.  The heat!  The humidity!  It was glorious!

 My last trip to a completely new-to-me place was when I went to Japan for a couple of weeks a few years ago.  I had forgotten what traveling to an unfamiliar environment is like--how the experience opens you up, exposes you to new challenges, etc etc etc.  I've got a bit of the convert's energy at the moment, I can tell.

 And it is a good time to arrive back home in Saskatchewan...the melt has finally begun, and it's not minus forty-one....

Vintage Vice

Do you guys listen to Echo and the the Bunnymen?

YOU SHOULD.

Everything I miss about Wales.  Sorry dudes, I'm drunk.  This is all I got--up the FlatCap!  Up the Gunners!

You too cool?

 First off, and this is a little late--but RIP Stompin' Tom.  I listened to a few shows on the CBC that were paying tribute to him.  Honestly I did not listen to him much while he was alive.  But hearing him interviewed about his life and his commitment to Canada and our culture--I teared up more than once...it's not often you get to listen to someone who is the real fucking deal.

 Because why not?  Yes we are a frigid colony based upon the destruction of the aboriginal inhabitants.

 We are also, in the alchemical sense, the petri dish of a new society.  Full stop.

Beaver Creek

 The Cocktail Party improved greatly--specifically the conversation at the end of act two between Celia and Reilly.  I found it to be an excellent meditation on the nature of (some) relationships.  Saved the play for me, reilly.  I mean really.

The sacrifice of the mistress in order to preserve the traditional relationship is not where I expected things to proceed...up until the serious turn I believed Celia would decamp to Hollywood with Peter...well on to the next: The Confidential Clerk.  I'm writing a short book; it's called Paragraphical Synopsi of Eliot's Plays.

Skunk O'Pantsie

 Mr. Pooder is back from an extended visit in Prince Albert with my parents.  Today we drove around and ran some errands with Iceage playing our soundtrack.  First walk at Furdale in a few weeks.  The entire place smelt, tasted, felt like skunk.  Beautiful day-sun blue sky white clouds.  But the olfactory senses took a beating.  Mine that is.  Pooder found several certain diametres of snow to roll around in...once enclosed in the truck it became obvious he had managed to acquire some of the stink....

 Watched the Life of Pi last night.  Visually stunning but the book told the story better.  Excited to start reading The Occult Establishment by James Webb.  Having trouble finishing The Cocktail Party by Eliot.  I wish Wilde had written it.

 Can you spot the bird?  Typical--I was entreating this fellow to hold still a moment, meanwhile one of his buddies landed on a branch a foot from my head and started chirping me.

 Don't think I'll ever tire of the skies around Furdale--always large and elliptically pleasing.

 And finally, to the city.  Petrol, lottery ticket, a box of clothes to char-i-dee.  Then home for pasta and Lusine IcI.

i phoneus u

Well a couple or so weeks ago I buckled, turdled, curdled...my treasured and feathered bombproof Samsung flip-top went the way of all flesh--well not quite.  I gifted it to my dad.  His first mobile phone.  Pay-as-you-go for emergencies and humourous out-of-the-blue parental texts.

After perusing various youtube reviews, none of which I can claim to have understood, I ponied up for the iphone 4s.  Not the newest 'device', but new enough pour moi.  These are the first shwack of photos taken on the camera phone.

The first thing I noticed is that I started to leave my digital camera(s) at home.  The issue: the iphone camera is just good enough to make one not want to haul around any other hardware, but it's not as good as an 'actual' camera.  C'est la fookin' vie, I suppose.

The second thing I noticed is that when you have a camera that is just good enough with you at all times, every moment becomes recordable--is this annoying, or adorable?

For: you're always ready for the luck of the visual draw.

For instance: decades long buddy-buddy in jokes, all of a sudden, REAL!

Right there!  On some van's windshield!

For: capturing your buddies mid-flow at exactly the right time...

Against: the archiving of the banal.  Seriously though, that was such a good beer.  Like, really, man.

For: instantaneous recording of the ridic, and the divine.

Right now I'm typhoid Mary.  I'm on a four pill vaccination program before I go for my holiday, and it's making me sick.  Better here than there I suppose.

Old school friends.  Way smoother than me.

I read somewhere that people be taking shots of their caffeine cups.  Here's mine.

And the Pharcyde at Amigo's.  Excellent show.  The best one I've been to in a while.  Actually, the only one I've been to in a while.  Temporarily destroyed my left ear drum.

Much dancing much fun much love.

Don't ask.

A rare shot of the best looking man in Saskatoon.

And the cutest baby in toon-town.

Currently reading T.S. Eliot's plays.  I would recommend Murder in the Cathedral, interesting to read at this time of turmoil for the Catholic church.  I would not recommend The Family Reunion, and apparently neither would Eliot.  Next up, The Cocktail Party.