acache

war vlogs

Darn it! It’s often quite late in the day when I start writing my little blog here. I get home from work and what do I do with the time between about 5:30 pm and 12 am or 1 am which is usually when I go to bed. Right now it is ten to twelve and here I am just beginning to write.

Well, today I worked a little bit of overtime and then went shopping for some food on the way home from work. Then my neighbor came over to borrow twenty bucks and have a smoke. We watched the news for a bit and then he asked me if I like white bread. I was like, “yeah white bread, I like it it’s ok” so then he was like, “alright I’ll go upstairs and bring down some white bread for you, I gotta go upstairs to cut it and then I’ll bring it down”. So then he went upstairs and  I started to cook dinner. Tonight dinner was yams, broccoli and kale. My neighbor came back and gave me two slices of white bread, just like he said. Then he went back upstairs to his apartment.

Continuing to make dinner, I kept the tv on and some celebrity news tv show was on. They were talking about Britney Spears and how she has to take random drug testing and stuff because they think she might not be taking care of her kids very well. And they talked about OJ Simpson who is being charged with kidnappping (who? I dontknow) and apparently he stole a bunch of sports memorabilia – but all the stuff is about him, pictures of him and his own football career (so in a way it ‘belongs’ to him, sez defence, except that it doesn’t really belong to him – he is the subject but not necessarily the owner). I was only half watching the show because also I was checking out videos online. And eating dinner too.

My friend called me up telling me that he just got a new computer and was saying how he was going to hook it up tonight. He reminded me of how I should check out these ‘Bored In Iraq’ video productions of soldiers who make videos of what their lives are like while they serve in Iraq. I did, and that was really cool, to see what they are like, hanging out with each other and joking around.

Which reminds me of this theme I’ve been thinking about… which is how do we deal with tragic and stressful  and possibly life-and-death scenarios on a day-to-day basis? Like when there is a constant threat of the possibility of death, not just being killed but having to kill maybe – the effect it has on how you interact with others and how you spend the time. Some of them were doing daredevil stunts on bikes, jumping and doing tricks and landing in the sand dunes in the desert. But most of them, a large portion of the footage for various different videos was dancing. There was all this cool footage of soldiers dancing, all in their uniforms and some of them were really grooving.

One of my favs was this footage of an American soldier who was goofing around and dancing with Iraqi soldiers who where showing the Yank how to do this Iraqi dance where they have like one hand on their head and the other on their waist. It was so… peace-keeping mission styles – like what the soldiers are supposed to be there for, that is what the president has said they are there for: peace-keeping and that was what they were doing, even though it seems contradictary to seea uniformed army guy wearing camo, boots and weaponry while he does a little jig with the so-called ‘enemy’!

But my total fav soldier video was these two guys who have a show called The Dank Show. It is them in their room in Iraq and they are just hanging out like how they probably hang out when there isn’t a video – ie they are not trying to be all “interesting” they are joking around. I was only able to find two episodes but maybe there are or there will be more episodes. In the second episode two of their friends come into their room and they are goofing with each other and acting kinda sweet too.

And they are in the midst of a war. They are actively fighting in a war and risking their lives everyday. But of course the day is made up of all the “normal” moments that can be so funny and the “mundane” moments that are surprisingly super interesting. Like when one of their friends is saying that he just got back from midnight… what did he call it… midnight grub? He had just eaten and they were like, “what did you eat” and he said, “an omelette” and then he proceeded to say what was in the omlette, (everything but onions – everything being a bunch of stuff, including green peppers, for example). And I was totally interested in what he ate because it was I guess something I can relate to??

One of the main guys was in the shot but he is all on his computer the whole time but having him there in the shot was cool, he would join in on the others’ conversation with each other and the camera sometimes or turn the laptop to the camera so we could see what he was doing.

It seems that when you are in a dire situation, you have to be super-serious and actively and constantly prepared to act and/or acting and be productive to accomplish whatever your Mission may be at the time. But then it’s like you have to have these in-between-tim es where you are being goofy and joking around about the reality of your situation and not serious at all or else stuff like these videos wouldn’t get made either!i

So prior to this post I was YouTubing it, looking at vlogs, especially some really good ones about how to vlog. Next I’ll need a webcam won’t I.

concert casino party movie

This photo was taken years ago, it looks almost like a staged photograph in a way.

This past weekend was fun. On Saturday I went to see Burt Bacharach at the River Rock Casino. W had tix and invited me, otherwise I would have never gone to the show. And it was amazing! I can’t believe how many solid hits BB wrote and performed. The musicians in his band were top notch, and the singers were the best. He is 82 and still going strong – he even had some political statements to make about the war in Iraq and his dim view of it and the president who stands behind it. The entire show was awesome. I love when BB had little chats with the audience in between sets, telling us about his career and all his songs.

After the show we wnet into the casino. The last time I remember being in a casino I was 12 with my dad in Reno and I wasn’t in the casino per se, but in the arcade where the kids hung out while their parents gambled next door. It was a huge room decorated with huge fake trees and table after table of games going full tilt and slot machines as far as the eye could see, filled with hundreds players of every demographic.

We played blackjack. At first I didn’t know how to play (I knew the goal is to get 21 and not over but that’s it). But they showed me how to tap the table when I wanted the dealer to hit me and to swish my hand sideways when I wanted to stay with the cards I had and not add anymore. It was so fun! W sometimes had to tell me when to ask for a hit and when to stay because he was watching the dealer’s cards to see whether they were high or low. He got 21 like over five times! We both ended up winning. Then we played the slot machines which was cool. It’s all about the themes of each slot game – there are so many different themes – we played the Swamp Thing theme with a sub-theme of a snack bar bonus where animated cartoon snacks win you bonus money. The weiner dog hot dog won me the most points!

After that we went to friends’ birthday party. It was in a choice location and the music was awesome, but I spent a lot of time standing outside talking to people I hadn’t seen in a long time. It was kinda hard to talk inside because the music was pretty loud. And I realized how much I miss the people I got to see that night. There was another party after that one, with wicked music.

Sunday I went with D to go see the latest Harry Potter movie. I haven’t yet read any of the books yet and this is the first time that I’ve seen one of the movies all the way through. It was awesome! I’ve always loved witches and wizards and magic and magical creatures… I love the characters. It’s funny how HP is the most stressed out hero ever! His friends are always looking at each other worriedly. And probably so glad they aren’t him…!

views on a walk

This graffiti face was seen while on a walk around Science World, or rather Telus World of Science, as it is now called.

Rocks balanced by the water and behind them, the sphere of the imax theater.

Melting Arctic

It’s Friday and it felt like it at work. We were all little extra chatty and joking. I brought in the individually wrapped chocolates that S gave me when we were at yoga yesterday. (She has a whole swack of chocolates for free because technically they have expired but they are good to eat for another year…) Treats at work make it somewhat festive.

The subject of turtles came up, maybe because that “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” DVD has been sitting on the desk for like weeks and I haven’t moved it. Then D was all, “can I borrow this for my son to watch?” He said he himself wasn’t going to watch it, even though me and G were like telling him that he should watch it and spend quality time with his son to boot. He wasn’t so convinced even when we were telling him how good the special bonus section of the movie is. It has all the main characters’ profiles – their likes and dislikes, their favourite foods and even their favourite books. (I actually wrote all the books down and was going to read them all – in consecutive order as they appear in the turtles’ and their co-star’s bios).

So I drew a ittle turtle on a p;ost-it note (I retardedly had to google turtle images even when drawing the equivalent of a stick turtle) and stuck it on one of the plants that sit on our desks. What’s special about this plant is that it is systematically getting covered in drawings we do on post-it notes and then stick to the leaves of the plants. The drawings are mostly of cute cartoon animals and there are now a couple of human faces added, plus several drawings of candy food – a lollipop, a bonbon.

Then G was going around finding out what the word for turtle is in all different languages. He collected the foreign words for turtle from everybody who spoke a language other than English and made a list of them all. It was fun and multicultural!

After work I went to D’s store, then over to F’s and we went for coffee on Main. I youtubed it for a while at home then went over to D’s house.We hung out with here roommates and did some zine content collection from her sketchbooks. She showed me this book that had all these cool doodles from various artists in it. As D said, the art “made you feel ok about being weird”…

The article below??: the brighter side of global warming!

“Vancouver could benefit from melting Arctic

Tuesday, September 11th, 2007

Global warming means the Northwest Passage could become the new Panama Canal.And that means vessels could start using the Canadian Arctic as a trade route as early as next year, Joseph Spears of Horseshoe Bay Marine Group told the Canada Maritime Conference Monday.

“It creates an awesome opportunity for Vancouver,” Spears said later. “With melting ice, you’re going to get a change in perception and, all of a sudden, vessels that were restricted by the Panama Canal will be able to transit the Northwest Passage.”

That means larger ships could take a much shorter route from Vancouver to Northern Europe, Africa and parts of South America, he said, without going around Cape Horn.

And for ships that normally go through the Panama Canal, a Northwest Passage route could cut about 9,000 kilometres off the journey, he said.

“It may be a lot cheaper to ship something from Halifax to Vancouver by water and it’s much cheaper than by rail,” he added. “The Northwest Passage could very well become the new Panama Canal and Canada could fund some of its costs through charges. We need to start thinking about that.”

Spears said apart from some expedition cruise ships, there is no regular service through the Northwest Passage.

“That’s not to say that couldn’t occur next year.” he said. “With international shipping, it’s a function of economic forces.”

Spear told the conference that in 2000 there were periods where there was no ice on the Arctic route.

“It’s now 2007 and the Arctic ice is rapidly melting,” he said. “What you are seeing is that there’s open water. You can go from Halifax to Vancouver ice-free.”

He said the Arctic thaw has huge implications as 25% of the world’s future oil reserves may exist in the far north.

Bill Drew, executive director of the Churchill Gateway Development Corp. told delegates that the shipping season for non-ice-class vessels grows each year and now runs from July 20 to Nov. 5.

He said that the captain of this year’s first ship, which arrived on July 22, told him, “There’s more ice in this glass than I saw coming in here last week.”

From http://www.canada.com

Treeschool

So many photos I have I took out the window of the car, while driving. Like the one above. It’s out of focus but the shadows and the branches together make a weird texture surface over the windows.

Lately in the news there has been more shootings in the past few weeks than I remember in years of living here in Vancouver. Wonder why all the guns, have they always been here. Or is it easier to get guns in Canada now? The latest news was a man got shot when he was in his car (a Hummer, no less), dropping his 14-year-old son off at school one morning. In the news story they reported that they had taken his other son, a 16-year-old, into custody. But they didn’t go into any detail as to why the older son was under suspicion…

Often the shootings are defined as ‘gang-related’ shootings. An inner group of guys with guns and vendettas against each other and deadly scores to settle. All kinds of people are involved in the underground scene. Then it erupts and it’s all over the news, spills over into the mainstream. Criminals and cops seem to be trigger-happy lately, or that’s the impression that all these news stories give. Of guns going off and people getting shot, and hails of bullets flying through crowds of onlookers who aren’t expecting to be gunned down on any given evening. It’s brutal.

Check this out from news site http://vancouvergo.com/blog/:

“Gang-styl shootups becoming the norm in Vancouver?

Wednesday, September 12th, 2007

Vancouver’s latest restaurant shooting — this time in Kitsilano — is causing concern that gun-related crime is becoming the norm on weekend nights, as the city gears up to host the 2010 Winter Olympics.

On Saturday night, an Indo-Canadian man was the target of masked gunmen who opened fire through the window of the posh Quattro restaurant, hitting him in the back and sending him to hospital with serous abdominal injuries.

A 21-year-old woman was also shot four times in the leg during the incident, which comes just one month after a restaurant shooting at the Fortune Happiness eatery in East Vancouver that left two dead and six wounded.

Police say attacks like these are hardly unusual.

Saturday’s Quattro shooting was one of five that police reported having to respond to in Vancouver that evening.

“We deal with almost a gun a day,” said Vancouver Police Dept. Const. Tim Fanning.

“At the weekends, five incidents involving guns is unfortunately something that we see all too often in Vancouver.”

Police, who have yet to make any arrests following last month’s Fortune Happiness shooting, are not getting much help in tracking down the gunmen who showed up outside the Quattro Restaurant on Saturday.”

Is the world just getting more violent or was it always this way? Weapons shape the evolution of war.

yoga & sushi

It has been nice weather these past coupla days, the last days of summer. My plans got changed this evening. I was going to meet up with D, getting our content together for the zine. But then she had some water trouble – the water line at her house broke or something like that and she had to take care of it. We said we’d meet on Friday, or rather she said that it was tentative (I guess she might be dealing with the water then still?).

S had told me about this yoga place that she hadfree passes for, so we went. Haven’t gone to a class in a few months, and it was interesting to go to a new place with a different type of yoga. It was good to be moving and stretching again. The class was packed and sweaty. At the end of some poses, there was a tingling sensation in some areas, like the lower backwhere the kidneys are. Like I could feel the blood was circulating more in certain areas as a result of the poses. One of the things that the various yoga poses do is to inhibit the flow of blood to an area and then when you release the pose the blood flow will suddenly flood back in.

We met another friend, S at the yoga place. Then another person we knew, A was there too. So after class we went out for sushi downtown, to his place on Davie. A was telling us about hoew he had gone to Burning Man this year and how amazing it was. (He is talking about constructing a teepee for next time, a tee pee out of silver so that it would reflect the sun…)

He was telling us about this guy who was at Burning Man who tried to kinda ‘sabotage’ the burning of the man part of the festival. They have a huge figure of a man made of straw or something and on the Saturday they light it on fire and it goes down in flames. This guy went and lit the straw man and burned it down on the Tuesday before the Saturday. So they constructed a whole new man in the four days that were left. The new man was a bit shorter than the original man but no matter, they burned him on the Saturday as planned.

The funny thing is, the guy who had torched the first straw man on the Tuesday was out on bail (I guess he went to jail for that??) and what he did was he returned to the festival and was all signing autographs. His claim to fame was that he was the guy who prematurely burned down the man earlier that week…

Walking back to the car after sushi, we met this lady who was walking her five big dogs. My friend said he had seen her around before. We stopped and talked with her about her dogs, where they are all from (they are all rescued from some placeo r another. One of the dogs was even rescued from hurrican e katrina – he had become homeless and she adopted him.

Made me think about my cat who I had for years but then one day a few years ago she just disappeared and I still miss her so much. My cat in photo.

new old tree

The photo was taken in August. It’s me and D at hoko’s, which is this cool little japanese restaurant in japan town. They have some of the best live music/singers that I have seen. That night we had eaten a huge amount of sushi and terriyaki noodles and beer. The book we are looking through is the list of all the karaoke songs they have in their collection. We didn’t sing that night, the live music was playing.
I am watering his plants while he is away. Well actually I was supposed to go there this last weekend to water the plants but then I didn’t…

Saturday I was rewriting my piece for the play and the words weren’t exactly flowing. So I kinda got a bit stressed about it and thought for some reason that I would be more likely to write it if I didn’t do the other stuff I was going to do. One of those things was to water my dad’s plants. When nighttime fell, I was still stressing and I had made some progress but hadn’t written much. Then CJ and D invited me to go to this art gallery event called Swarm. It is an annual event where for one weekend a bunch of art galleries get together and there are all sorts of shows, talks, workshops during the days and into the evening. I didn’t go to that, either, and I totally wish I had attended some (or one) of their events.

My friend J came over and I gave her this print-out of an image that I had got online. She is making special boxes for her friends and was going to use it to decorate one of the boxes. The image is of a ‘punk skull in a Union Jack flag tshirt with spiked hair. She was saying how it’s funny thatt the picture isn’t of sid vicious perse, but to look at it that is hwat you see – sid vicious, not just some nameless skull in punk attire. The power of symbols. Like the power of suggestion. Like seeing not always what is literally before us, but what is being represented or implied.

Today I finally went to water the plants and it turns out my dad had just gotten home a few hours earlier. (I should have gone when I was supposed to goddammit).

My father had gotton me a present that arrived in the mail. It is a Wollemi pine tree, a prehistoric tree from Australia. They call it a “living fossil” in the brochure; it is from the Jurrasic era. The story is that a patch of these trees was found unexpectedly in a remote area of Austrailia that had not been touched by humans since the age of the dinosuars. The location of this original area of trees is kept secret still. But they sell cuttings and small trees that have been started – they ship this tree around the worldTheir website is www.wollemipine.com.

civic strike

The pic above is of a little critter that is stapled to this wooden pole that is in the alleyway behind my workplace.

At work today someone brought the fact that the city is growing faster than the services/resources that are in place for it’s population. The civic/outdoor/indoor city worker’s strike has been on all summer and continues. The number of homeless people is growing – but there doesn’t seem to be a working plan in place to deal with this… (Apart from the idea put forward that the homeless be shipped out to the old abandoned insane asylum/mental institution on the outskirts of town).

We have this civic strike going on in the city and the garbage is piling up. People have no where to take their garbage to dispose of it and the city is getting smellier and smellier. Especially on the lovely hot summer days, when we get them.

It seems like everything in the city nowadays is somehow connected to the upcoming Olympic games that we will be hosting here in Vancouver.

I was talking to my friend today and she said that one of the issues with the strike is the fact that the city proposess a contract that runs out  just after the end of the Olympics. A lot of money and effort is going into preparing the city for the games. When they are done, the real cost of putting the games on will be known. At that time the City of Vancouver my try to pay off this Olympic debt by cutting spending… and jobs – civic workers’ jobs, maybe. Which seems totally reasonable. But critics have said that that is like trying to negotiate to guarantee a Job For Life – a job that you aren’t or can;t get fired from…

On the mayor’s website (www.mayorsamsullivan.ca/) is a message posted explaining what the proposed wage increases for civic workers will cost taxpayers, if those increases are agreed upon and implemented. There is also speculation according to the Georgia Strait “that the strike is political action against (Mayor) Sullivan”, and that the focus of the strike isn’t getting better wages for the workers, but that it a personal and staged opposition to the Mayor.

But as the Georgia Strait reports, union rep “Faoro denies that the strike is a political action against Sullivan. “The mayor’s leadership to date has been poor, and I think the public are going to make that decision next year and I don’t think the public needs a strike to reinforce that Mayor Sullivan hasn’t delivered strong leadership to the city,” he said. “This strike is about the city’s attempt to take away existing rights from our union.”

ice cream sun

The civic worker’s strike here in Vancouver has been going on for over six weeks. Garbage is piling up around smithrites and city streets and now there is concern that this is creating a health hazard. The rat population is up, out and about. The old garbage smell wafted over CJ and me as we were riding our bikes today. Today was the first day of rehersal for this community play that we’re going to be in. And speaking of the garbage piling up as a result of the  city workers strike: the community center where our play is supposed to happen is also closed down because of the strike. We don’t know if we’ll be having the play in the community center or not yet…

I was a bit nervous but I knew it would be fun, and it totally was. We did some improv exercises and then we each ran through or individual one minute pieces that we each wrote. All of them are then put together to make up the entire play…

Before rehersal I did a video conferencing call for the first time. My brother called me and even though I don’t have a camera, we did one-way video conferencing. I could see him but he couldn’t see me. He took me all around his house, showing me all the different rooms… It looks like such a lovely place – there was really cool stuff on the walls, too! We talked for almost an hour. Now I want to get a “ball” camera as my brother calls it so to be able to see everyone else when we’re talking long distance.

After rehersal CJ and me left on our bikes and rode around looking for a place to have an early dinner. The sun was out and it felt like summer wasn’t ending; warm breeze. We rode around and everything seemed to be closed – and it was only 5;45 pm but it was on a Sunday. We ended up going to the Chinatown night market where they have outside stalls and some of them have food. There, we got this noodle dish – but I’d never seen a noodle like it – it was like cooked in one big flat layer right before your eyes. Then they add egg, shrimp, green onion and other things plus sauce and serve it up.

We sat on a park bench and at our dinner, and the mono-noodle dish turned out to be pretty good – there were a couple of mouthfuls where the flavour would go from good to all of a sudden my stomach does a little flip. But that happened more near the last few mouthfuls… And we had hand-fried dumplings and veggie chow mein as well. But we ended up taking those with us, in little white plastic bags hanging from the handlebars.

Since sun was still out and it was warm and we rode our bikes to the ice cream place. It was packed, as usual, the music was loud and everyone was trying to decide what ice cream flavour to get. The thing is there are 218 flavours so… I took so long to choose flavours (2 scoops we had), plus you get to try whatever flavour you want before you make your decision. I told CJ she should get Cherimoya. The flavour is of a tropical fruit that you can’t get here (or at least I’ve never seen it here). But we eat it in Peru all the time and it is delicious. She ended up getting Cherimoya with Chocolate Peanut Butter and I got Cherimoya and the Strawberry Fudge.

Across the street from the ice cream place is an ‘ice cream eating park’ where everybody is sitting there doing the same thing. But it was a little too shady. To stay in the last of the sun we sat next to the park, on the sidewalk against a wall. Then a carful of young guys pulled up and one of them got out, said “Ladies” to us, and then sat beside us, asking us what we were doing. Another guy got out of the car and was telling us how he didn’t like his “loud shoes”. Then they got back in the car and as theydrove away one of them said they’d be back and when they were, he would make out with one of us…

Dripping Face

This is one of my favourite pics. It was spray painted onto the side of a phone booth. This is a nighttime shot. When I went back a few days later, it was gone. The phone booth had been cleaned of all the cool stuff it had on it.