your purpose in life is to bitch about traffic

This may be stating the obvious, but not being able to breathe really puts a cramp in your whole day.

Back at work today. I was hoping that I would experience some rustiness at the controls, but then I've only been gone a week. It was too much to expect. I fell into it like a freshman into a pile of puke.

I'm waiting for a chunk to fall out of the routine I go through at work... I'd like to see my day in a different way. I'm a smart guy, I think - I should be able to come up with an idea to improve the process. But I've been there eight months now, and nothing's come to mind yet. Maybe it's because I don't fucking care.

God, not working was fun. I got absolutely none of the things I was saving for my holidays done, but it was great nonetheless.

erm... dead cats made into diesel fuel...

Come on. Mine somebody else's vein. I need to go clear my sinuses with chili.

"TDM"?

This, from the awesomely titled Edmonton Journal piece "Klein to Harper: 'stay out of our face'", printed this morning:

(Klein) also said he would like Harper to deal with some of the issues "that are irksome to Albertans, like the gun registration and TDM - that's 'traditional definition of marriage.'"

It sounds like a specialty cable channel.

You know what, the gun registry doesn't bother me as a taxpayer. I realize it cost $2 billion to implement, but that money is sunk. We're not getting it back. Maybe we'd get a nickel back on the dollar for the computers.

Operating costs would be saved if it were scrapped, but in 2004-05 it cost $92 million to run, down from the $200 million high in 00-01, and logic would seem to point to further decreases: now that most of Canada's guns are in fact registered, a one-time only requirement, most of the costs incurred by the program will be through licensing only - required every five years.

When you renew your license, you're subject to an extensive background check. You're also required to complete a gun safety course. The Conservatives say they'll keep these requirements intact through their proposed certification process. Which, by the way, thank God if it's true. But that's going to cost money, and it'll be money that wasn't being spent before C-68 was passed. So that's going to eat into the savings.

Also required for license renewal for long guns: a spouse's, or ex-spouse's, signature. That means you have to convince at least one other person in your family that having a gun on your farm is a good idea. This little step goes a long way in curbing domestic violence, as well as reducing the incidence of rural suicides. No such provision would exist in the Conservatives' proposed certification plan. And exactly how much money are you saving here? I wouldn't think it to be much.

C-68 turned farmers and duck hunters into criminals, the complaint runs. But it didn't, really. All they had to do was register their firearms, and - badabing, badaboom! - they were law-abiding killers of living things once again.

The money we save by scrapping the registry will work out to a pittance, especially after the Conservatives introduce their certification program to replace it. There are other costs associated with the registry, mostly to do with its enforcement and the extra costs of jailing its transgressors; these work out to another fifteen or twenty million a year. So we're looking at a total of around a hundred ten, a hundred fifteen.

Big deal. If Alberta charged the oil companies here the amount of royalties to which we're entitled, we could pay for the registry ourselves about fifty times over.

Which if you want to talk irksome, there's a good place to start.

plus I bet you could think of a better band name if you tried a little bit

If it weren't for the new, independently-owned modern rock station we have here in Edmonton (which I suppose we should be thankful for, even though they play like way, way too much Our Lady Peace, and which, yeah, you know, I'd sooner actually listen to the new smooth jazz station), I never would have heard the Subways.

I just never would have bothered to investigate. I see their ad on the Pitchfork site and the bass player's a cute blonde, but I'm not ripping any Samantha Fox tracks, am I?

Anyways, so I've heard them. Or at least their single "Rock and roll queen". Which sucks.

Conclusion: our new modern rock radio station sucks. They are introducing me to new bands that I don't fucking like very much.

And I am writing this why. Come on, g, you can get something out of this train. The song sucks because the lyrics are sad, sad, sad. They are in the vein of trying to be so totally composed of moldy old rock cliches but in a new-fangled energetic presentation that drags the real meaning back out of them again, i.e. so that when the lead singer attacks the last line "be my little rock and roll queen" with what must be admitted to be a fairly impressive exorcist-level screech, you really feel he's being quite insistent about your in fact going ahead and being his rock and roll queen and like now, dammit.

But that's ridiculous. How can you be so emphatic about such a meaningless demand? Without wandering accidentally into Poseurland and breaking all the china? What is there to feel that emphatic about? Nothing, that's what, and therefore the Subways are full of shit. Not knowing anything at all about the band except the cuteness factor attached to the bass player, I am forced to assume that English is their second language. If it's not, they should be truly ashamed. If it is, then they're a more aggro Shonen Knife, and I didn't like Shonen Knife much the first time around but hardly ever wished they'd get crunchier and scream more, know whut I mean?

It's just a song. It's just one single. Maybe they're like the Killers and put out their most annoying single first. But this one is so bad, it leaves me wondering - someone somewhere had to like this an awful lot for them to get signed, and to get the airplay they're getting. I have a two part question: who the fuck is this person, and what are they in charge of? Cause I need to sell that fuckin shit short fast.

i am drunk

Which is a good portent. Since I hate pretty much everyone when I'm drunk. E#SPECIALLY ME.



IT ALL ATARTED WITH A BIRTHDAY. TWO PEOLE FUCT AND AQT LEAST ONE OF THEM DIDN'T EVEN LIKE FUCING AND THEY MADE ME./\ THEN TWO MORE PEOPLE FUCT AND MADE THIS OTHERT GUY WHO I AM FIENDS WITH. HIS MOTHR LICT FUCING BUT NOT WITH MEN SO HE AND HIS TWO BROTHERS WERE ACCIDENTS. HES A NICDE GUY BUT HIS FRIENDS ARE ASSHOLESA AND I AM ONE OF THEM. GUD NIGHT. i have busines to attend to fuckers.

blog will eat itself

Is there a way I can make this blog exist in negative space? Like if every keystroke I'm making now erases something from the beginning of the blog, until I finally catch up with what's being written now and there's nothing left of it? Because I'm looking at my readership and it's just me. There isn't any further into uselessness I can go, unless I can make this blog start to degenerate into the nothingness it most closely resembles.

My brother, if you are unlucky enough to be trapped in conversation with him, willl explain to you that anything that exists on the internet is of no value at all since it cannot be made corporeal. He'd never use the word "corporeal", but you know what I mean. It's like a really unpleasant Socratic kind of dialogue he does with people. I say unpleasant because he's unpleasant. These days. He really has a way of making almost anyone feel uncomfortable. Which Socrates probably also did. I mean, the writings go into that, don't they? How Zeno and Parmenides are just kind of sitting there with smiles on their faces like they smell something awful and they're trying not to let on how much it bothers them when this Socrates kid is arguing points everyone else in the room would just prefer to let go of?

Then later in his life he'd be humoured; guys like Thrasymachus and Adeimantus would just hang out with him cause they didn't have shit to do on a Friday night. Whatever. If you ever say anything to the guy besides yeah, yeah, nodding your head, you only make him more upset. My brother, I mean. He would find it hilarious to know I had a blog. So would Socrates, probably. He'd tell me, listen kid, why don't you just go down to the market and try to actually talk to someone if you're looking for a dialogue?

Then I'd tell him how I don't really post comments on other people's blogs anymore because nobody ever reciprocates anyways, so but even if they did reciprocate I'm not sure that's what I really even would want. I mean thinking about it that way, as in, I'll comment on your blog if you comment on mine and so that way we both end up with a comment on our respective blogs and that will make us feel better about our stupid hobby like it's not even less of a waste of time than watching television, I'm not sure that's really even worth anything. I think it would kind of prove my brother's point. Or Socrates'.

My point.: I have no idea what I am trying to do with my blog. And certainly the fact that I am the only one who reads it is a pretty huge signifier that whatever it is that I am trying to do with my blog is almost certainly a waste of my time. But I just don't feel that way about it. I feel guilty when I let big lengths of time go by without having added something here. Why should I feel guilty if noone cares but me? And yet I do care. There has to be a reason. But it's not that I'm looking for a dialogue.

Maybe it's fame.

Look. I 'm not down here in the cellar of readership levels bleating, Ah, yes, blogging! I too have a blog with interesting and funny parts, some things you may agree with, and some little bits that remind you how you're not alone in the universe so come read me! I mean when you're done with busblog and talking points, hey, check it out! I'm a blankety-blank in the ding-dong universe!

It's not like that. I have the sitemeter link just to let anyone who does check it out know: this is something noone reads. As in: are you interested in such a thing? Because if you are, then you're my kind of person.

What I'm looking for is the accidental connection. It doesn't help if you find something on the internet that your friend told you about. That's just you and your friend being friends, and would have happened without the internet. What I want is for someone to happen upon this blog through no other vehicle of exploration but one which is entirely random.

And I want it to end up making me famous. That's all.

I want, need, desire fame. I think that in this Kelly Clarkson era, it's just best to be honest and upfront about it. The first reason, and possibly the last one, why I should be famous is that I so, so desperately want it. Thank you. Thank you. I love you so much.

the incredible sulk

We were breakfasting at the Blue Plate, and this couple comes in - they're boho, edgy, but older, you know. They have energy, good smiles. Jacket that wants to be a couch and a naughts variation on cat's-eye glasses for her, puma gear and gravity pope shoes for him. Probably vestibules at home layered with confusing sex toys. Letters-to-the-editor sheen. They're nearing fifty.

Two minutes after they sit down, they both get up and they're standing in the middle of the restaurant, looking with chins perched on fists at the new painting on the wall directly between me and the woman of my dreams. Basically they are staring at us, and in a really ostentatious way, which means that now everyone is looking at us to see how we'll respond to this awful, dickish behaviour.

The painting itself is a Nintendo oil-slick of pastel blue and splotches of Mondrian red and gold. It looks like someone's dream of Super Mario Bros. It's hard to eat beside, actually. But I didn't hate it until this fucking couple made a capital p point of taking it in.

There's art all over the walls, everywhere, and this painting beside my head isn't the only new one. It sure is the loudest thing around, though, and so of course this guy with the bright shiny green workout jacket and his SO with the carefully measured bangs are flies on cowshit with it. Which would be fine if it were our living room and we'd invited them over. That was not, however, the reality of the fucking situation.

Whatever I said would have been some kind of comment on the situation, and there'd be no way to keep that out of my voice. So I couldn't really say anything. I couldn't try to ignore them and get back to what we were talking about, either, because what we were talking about was how I should really try to find some kind of job where I'm interacting with people more, because I feel like I'm getting better with that, and so does she, feel that way about me, meaning. In the fullness of time, I'm seeing that I really am doing better, and so maybe it's time to get a job where I can move forward and build on these burgeoning people skills instead of just being a security guard again. I feel like if I get a job as a security guard (once we get to Ireland, meaning. I really haved no idea if I could be a loader operator over there, though I'm sure they have loaders, and they are having some celtic tiger crap with their strong economy, so I guess anything is possible but what I'm saying is that I have no idea what I'll get a job doing there or what will be possible), I'll be taking a huge step backwards.

So we can't return to this conversation, especially because it's just now coming to me how if I were a fully functional agent of appropriate social behaviour I would tell these horrible people to please sit down and stop making us feel uncomfortable. I am not going to say anything like that, or crack something like asking them if they'd prefer if my girlfriend and I switched seats so they could get an idea what it would look like in a different setting, so how good am I doing with people, really, anyways? If I can't put these metrotwats in their place? The very situation was negating the conversation it had interrupted.

So we were hostage to silence, waiting until they were finished. I started to think, too - are we becoming these people? Is this us in twenty years? It must never be allowed to happen.