Keep It Clean

This almost didn't happen, but a few things from the weekend stick out in my mind. I must share them. I was sitting in a McDonalds in North Van, nursing a hang over with a Big Breakfast, there's something terribly unfair about the fact that the Sausage McMuffin, and the Big Breakfast are the same thing, but in different packaging. I looked around at the clientele, old people mainly, drinking discount coffee in small cups. Photogray coated glasses or clip on sunglasses, you couldn't see their eyes, but could tell most of them were lonely. Except for one guy. Just to my right, he had finished his breakfast long ago, the wrapping sitting on the plastic tray beside him, must have been Hot Cakes I thought. I noticed him right away because he was fully engrossed in his 12" G4 iBook. I was amazed, I had never seen this before. A senior citizen using a computer, and not in some library, this was a real machine, this was an iBook in McDonalds. He had a digital camera hooked up to his laptop, and from what I could tell was making slide shows in iPhoto. He must have been 75. I thought, there's a commercial here somewhere. Later, waiting for the ferry, killing time, smoking in the parking lot, he emerged from the yellow arched, brown and red McDonalds. Carrying his technology in an old vinyl bowling ball bag, he walked with a little shuffle, small steps, but still lifting his knee's higher than necessary. It seemed like the walk of someone that had been ridiculed for much of their lives, but he was having the last laugh. As he strapped his bag to the gas tank of his Suzuki GS750, and rode away, the icy stares of the widow's watching through their dark sunglasses followed his understated red helmet through the parking lot, and out onto the highway. Getting old doesn't seem so bad.

Later, on the ferry to the Sunshine Coast, I found a place in the sun, and sat on the hard metal deck floor outside, painted grey, with a non-slip texture. It was windy, very windy, my hair was flying all over the place and I felt exposed in my small t-shirt and shorts. Not used to showing so much skin. I wasn't alone for long. Shortly after I sat down, a small group of guys dressed in weekend office worker attire, shorts most likely bought at Sears, maybe Mark's Work Warehouse, fleece vests, a Billabong T-shirt here or there, decent haircuts, all very safe. They had on those god awful teva sandals. They were really loud, each of them vying for position in the conversation. The loudest though, I could hear through the wind, even though it was buffeting my ears, making the situation more intense than necessary. He was outlining his favourite places to hang out in Vancouver, "Yeah, the Sandbar is good, lots of targets." Targets? I tried to figure out what he might be referring to, other than women, trying to give him the benefit of doubt. Then a young woman's napkin blew by his feet, grabbing it he said to her, "I don't know where the garbage is, but you can hang on to it until you find one." The woman thanked him, turned, and walked away, he smiled, and took a long look at her ass. I looked at his Teva's again. Target's are women. She was a target. Being single can seem so lonely.

Beer and Cheez

Tried to get everyone in this blurry shot, but there were little groups on the couch and in the kitchen.

Had an unplanned party, apologies to all the ladies, I wasn't expecting guests, ran out of toilet paper. Quite a surreal AM, indeed.

Warhol! Warhol! Warhol! The #10 Granville was coated in stickers announcing the impressive show at the VAG. I always find it odd when artists who were once viewed as avante garde, or radical, wind up in the most unlikely places. I was telling a friend last night about this McDonalds in Winnipeg that had its walls decorated with an excellent suite of Van Gogh reproductions. I used to sit in there and imagine myself as an apparition, putting my hand on Vincent's shoulder in a corn field in the south of France. I would show him the future. Its a crime that he never knew how important his work would be to the cannon of painting, and justice that he died without the knowledge of said McDonalds, or Van Gogh napkins and Starry Night neck ties. Warhol on the other hand probably would have liked the bus emblazoned with his name.

On the subject of cheese, albeit more palatable than corporate culture sucking the life force from real culture, I found these incredibly sappy songs the other day, and find myself indulging in them more often than I should. Turns out hip hoppers have a sensitive side, not all of them are smackin the ho.

Allow me to introduce:

The Streets - Dry Your Eyes - mp3 - more info

SOSO - It Goes - mp3 - more info

Epic Local Only - Running Away from Saskatoon - mp3 - more info

Goodbye...

Today has come and gone. Strangely, I feel nothing. Perhaps this holiday should have been treated with more respect, celebration was kept to a minimum. Dinner was tuna sandwich and potato chips.

Spent most of the weekend sweating with a fat, dramatic, dickens novel in the most lovely shade of cerilian blue. Had a late night troubled visitor Saturday, brandishing a 6 pack of Kokanee. Watched Garfield, the movie that should never have been made. Lusted after Jennifer Love Hewitt's kindness, but knew all along, in real life she's a bitch. Spent an afternoon at the water park, some parents were drinking beer and smoking, I read, and watched, everyone seemed happy.

I cleaned out my closet today, and finally threw out my Vasanji shirt. I have been meaning to unload this garment for ages, I never wear it, its no longer a shirt, instead, it is material, sentimental material. I bought it over fourteen years ago, its made of velour, and has gold stripes. My friends and I used to spend Saturdays buying and stealing nice clothes to wear out to the bar, this one I actually paid for. I wonder if I really ever liked it? Anyway, I heard someone rummaging in the dumpster and snapped a photo of this garbage picker wearing my shirt. I had a moment, as he road off, with my memories.

First and Last

My own private pool of youth. Served chilled, in a clear glass.

The sun is setting. I feel this river flowing through me --its past, its ancient soil, its changing climate. The hills gently girdle about it, its course is fixed.

-Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer



It was the best of times, it was the worst of times...

-Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

I ended my two month journey through Miller's Tropic of Cancer this morning in bed. I was handed a copy of Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities last night and told to get reading, which essentially is what I have been doing all day, besides a trip to the local franchise for a frap, and a smoke. Lovely day.

Why bother? That's my attitude towards this little spec of code among the wash of text out there. Low's, the name says it all, started in desperation, a competition if you will, one that I lost of course. Also an experiment to see if anyone would be interested in a blog written by a male. My gostats reveals the results of that test quite willingly, average hits per day: 2. Doesn't matter if anyone is reading really, probably better that way, just gets a little boring and indulgent at times. So onward we go, I guess, until perhaps this site becomes a grave, like so many other dead blogs I have found out there while googling, the last post reading like an epitaph, its author never realizing that they are writing their last entry. Its like a loved one that walks out the door and never returns.

Don't worry my 2.5 readers, my three J's, I will continue on a little longer. But the nature of this site must change, my journey has ended, and a new one will begin, but not one that I am willing to share so freely. So I thank you all for dropping by on a regular basis, I have enjoyed rolling my blue collar vocabulary off your tongue. For now I will return to bed, with my book, and read some real writing.

CRASH

Racing along the viaduct. Been goin way too fast lately.

It was Tuesday, must have been about 11:30. I was sitting in a crowded bar, in the back corner, I looked around, and that's when it happened, the bottom fell out of my certainty. There was no comfort, not in the friends I had surrounded myself with, not the drinks I had poured into my stomach, nor the woman sitting across from me, desperate to catch my eye. I switched my beer to water, stopped talking, went cold, everything changed in 2 seconds. Everything. I am no longer the spectator, the flaneur, sitting idle, observing. I have imprinted myself upon this group, effecting them. I am known.

Gossip spreads through a forest like wild fire, snapping and cracking the dry branches as it breathes and eats all in its path. The past couple days I have went from lion, to coyote, mutt of the open plain with trapped paw in a cold metal clamp in the dead of winter. Licking blood soaked fur in a field coated with white snow, brown naked trees encased in ice, thrashing to get free only causes more pain, discomfort, delusion. Visions so quiet they are as loud as a Starbucks at 9am, stuffed with khaki covered office workers discussing their exercise routines. I hurt, so I hurt others.

Wednesday and Thursday was slow. Friday will be fast. Speed, induced by italian drug dealers in muscles cars, their protection spitting on the sidewalk in long drawn out gobs pushed through the teeth.

Saturday, unknown.

Smoke and Mirrors

If you were hurting, would you even let me know?

I wish they didn't set mirrors behind the bar

Listen to THIS.


To my legions of fans, please accept my apologies, short on words as of late. Lost my depression somewhere, and my muse. No worries, this can't last long, or can it?

Droppin Ballz

sweaty cool drinks, shaky palms, and cigs

Woke up with my hang-over on, its starting to smell. I guess i'll wash it, hang it out to dry for all to see. Saved my last smoke for this morning, which was hard, the student body can't afford their own. Who am I talking to here? Oh, yeah. Hi. Can't talk to you anymore...

Layin' Low

Hot Linked - Robson St.

Its been a rather quiet drawl since last weeks absolute debauchery, which is good, I have a feeling things are going to get wild again, real soon. Pathetic? Yes. Indulgent? Oh yes! Stupid? You bet! Honestly, I can't see this behavior lasting much longer, but good god its fun, and oh, the cost! Let's not even go there, please...but on that note, I am going furniture shopping next week.

Quiet is nice nice though, lazy bus rides up and down Robson St., a little sunshine, hangin at the Jugo Juice, looking at pretty girls, laughing at idiots with flashy cars, convertibles, blasting abba, Asian men with dyed orange hair.

This morning was different though. Lots of twitchin and yelling. I saw an older gent, in his electric blue chevy corsica, he looked like the mad scientist type. He was pounding his steering wheel, screaming, "You FUCKERS!" at the top of his lungs, I could hear him from all the way inside the bus. The street in front of him was empty.

Talk to you soon...hang tight, and a shout out to all my bro's in Edmonton!