Now let’s see if I can post a pic here….

Stewey took this fun-tastic pic of me while we were shooting reference photos for some D&D drawings. Pretty fuckin’ funny.

Meanwhile…I’m thinking of having my birthday auction on Friday the 26th. What do you think?

The Summer of 2003.

Yesterday afternoon I went downtown to do some voice recording for Rockstar Vancouver. Then I came back and when I did, I got a call from Yvonne. We decided to go and see American Splendor, which, my friends, is fantastic. After that we had dinner at the Sugar Refinery where there was a fellow sleeping and the waiter seemed unusually furtive, but in a laid-back kind of way. To Yvonne’s new amazing house we went, where I helped her arrange her humongous room and tried rather unsuccessfully to be helpful while she and her roommates organized the kitchen. We ended up having a sleepover since I pretty much missed the last bus, but – and I’m going to blame the hot chocolate for this – I had the worst case of insomnia I’ve had in a long time. When I did sleep I had annoying dreams. So we spent the first half of today tooling around, wasting time, eating this, drinking that, poking around Zulu’s, second hand clothing stores and stationary stores. By the end of it, having spent an astonishing 21.5 hours together, we finally reluctantly decided to go our separate ways, Yvonne having a project for her school program to work on, and I having to prepare for tonight’s game of D&D.

It occurred to me, today, that summer will soon be over. Never before in my adult life have I so taken advantage of the good weather that BC offers than this summer. I wonder, given this precedent, what autumn will be like. What, indeed, the rest of my life will be like. Was it just a phase? I have a feeling that for the rest of my life I am going to look back on this summer with very fond memories.

On Friday night I went to see Eddie Izzard at the Vogue Theater and it was great. He started out with some Fantastic Four jokes and they resurfaced throughout the night. Elvis Costello was there, and though I wouldn’t know her to see her, Diana Krall was apparently there too. Eddie, for those of you who don’t know, is a British transvestite stand-up comic. A good chunk of his material is historical jokes (“we stole countries with the cunning use of flags”) and on Friday he was even wearing fake boobs, which he puts over his ears on airplanes to block out crying babies.

After the show, Chris, Darcey and I went to some sushi place on Granville, and then we went back to Chris’ work where participated in the hot new activity that is going to replace rollerblading (I can only hope) – the orbevator!!! Fun for the whole family – except for Uncle Steve.



IN THE NEWS: The Bush Administration issued a new environmental rule that will allow more than 17,000 power plants, refineries, mills, and chemical factories to upgrade their facilities without installing up-to-date antipollution technology, even in cases where the renovation will result in additional pollution. Jerk.

We played our rock show at the Railway. Unfortunately there was a mix up as to what time we were starting – we had to start an hour early than I had been telling people – otherwise it was very good. We played some songs we haven’t played in a long time (Big Robot Dinosaur, Jimmy the Squid). The kids loved us. Somebody came up from Colorado to see us. There was moshing. We were asked to sign autographs. I sold several CDs. Yeah…it was a good show. Apart from the usual costuming shenanigans I wore 3-D glasses and a purple clown wig. We gave out Pez brand candy flavoured popcorn (grape, lemon, orange flavours) to people who answered trivia questions. Fun fun stuff. The stage was too small for 6 people. Several times we waded into the crowd with instruments and microphones. We may play again on Hallowe’en. I am very tired now. I go to sleep. Pray for me. Goodnight.

Shawna thought I was 26.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAA!
She is moving back to Victoria in 3 weeks.
One less woman (and excellent company) in our D&D group. We had bubble tea. Lychee for her and mango for me.

Today we had band practice. It went well. I didn’t have to drive out to Chilliwack for a change (and in fact, I couldn’t – Stephane’s car is in…I don’t even know. “The East.”) We practiced at Vancouver Rock Space, which Jordan wished we could live in. We got a discount because I signed up to some music site called…okay that’s too boring to even finish the sentence. Anyway we practiced Big Robot Dinosaur and Jimmy the Squid so look out for those two hot numbers on Sunday.

I’m quite excited about seeing Eddie Izzard tomorrow (well today I guess now. It’s 2:33. Time for sleep with Kodos.)

Eat shit and die,
I mean, I love you….

Mighty Rabbit Orbs!” comes the cry!

Having…trouble…keeping…eyes…open….
Tomorrow…band…practice…

and then…
AND THEN…
A N D T H E N . . .
On Friday I see Eddie Izzard!

Now stop reading and go look at Mars.

I love you.

Augh – this convention stuff is taking up most of my time this week.

Anyway, tonight our very own red planet Mars is the closest it has been to Earth in over 60,000 years. Go outside tonight after dark and take a look.

Vancouver is a good city for free stuff. If you’re walking around town this week, try hitting some alleyways. People throw out perfectly good stuff like chairs, tables, even stereo equipment. They’re too lazy to even give stuff away to charity or the Salvation Army, they just dump it in the alleyways. End of the month is always the best time for scavenging around like a common raccoon, as is my wont. Health Tip: Don’t take any free beds or sofas.

Not much to say today: Played tennis in the rain. Got nominated for best lead actor in a short film at a film festival in Georgia (http://fright-fest.com/main.php) – that’s good for a chuckle.

I guess so as not to break the tradition of dull entries – I’ll repeat the poem I wrote somewhere else online:

I woke up an hour ago. But only parts of me. Something’s still sleeping in the back of my head. It’s been sleeping for years. I can feel it twitching, roiling; kicking like a drunk fetus in a new mother’s womb. I give it nothing, but it pulls me back to snug dream at every chance – when I let my guard down; when I let slip the cold lucid mask of civility and etiquette. It whispers deja vu in some strange tongue that seems familiar, but which I cannot place. It skitters away. It hides in my blind spot. The more the clumsy fingertips of my consciousness grope through cobwebbed corners, the more it dances outside my field of perception.

Perhaps one day I will find it awake in my hands, because my hands are finally doing nothing else.

In a sense: Everything is natural.

Everything that is man-made is natural. We are natural. We are part of nature. We make plastics – out of what? Not from some extra-dimensional anti-matter that we fish out of black holes–but of things we harvest from nature. This is a theory that I find tragically legitimate (though that doesn’t mean that I don’t find about 90% of what mankind does to be offensive).

Thousands of years ago we picked up a piece of bone and used it to cut something (probably whoever was hitting on our chosen mates). Is that natural? Is the wheel natural? Is the Michelin tire natural? So now…you decide. You tell me. Where does natural begin and end? Where do you draw the line?

Plagues & tornados are natural. Carnivores & cannibalism are natural. Homosexuality is natural. Pushing your baby sister out of the nest and killing her is natural. What’s good about nature? What’s bad about nature?

Speaking of natural, a completely naked man came to a garage sale that I was shopping at (at the corner of 12th and Alder). Completely naked, except for the hard hat he purchased. It made me smile. After all, it is a good day to be naked, so the Klingon proverb goes.

I am pleased to announce that our film, “Sebastian Snail in ‘The Souvenir’” placed in the top 10 (actually 11 since there was a tie) at the Reelfast 48 Hour Film Festival gala awards last night at the Commodore Ballroom. The films weren’t shown in any particular order, but Ang Hold used her psychic powers to predict that our film would be shown third. And it was. Then she predicted that we would eat pizza after we left. Also fulfilled. We didn’t win any awards: if anything I thought we might win Audience Pick, but in fact a film called “er” won that, and deservedly so. It was my favourite of the 11 films. Many of them I didn’t care for, but there were a few good ones.

My hair is now purple. Seriously.