Category: Introspection

Three finished drawings per day for two days is… a lot of work. Walking Marlo to the bus stop this evening is the first time I’ve been outside since Sunday.

I like trying new things. A lot of people don’t like the risk. When it comes to food – the risk is acceptable to me. I got a flyer for a new Chinese restaurant called the Varsity Grill. There were coupons on the back and the menu seemed good so I suggested to Marlo that we have it for dinner tonight, delivery-wise. It may not be the worst Chinese food I’ve ever had, but it was in the bottom five. A lot of the egg fu yung has been egg fu flung to Kodos.

I’ve tried the peanut butter Kit Kat. I’ve tried the Latte Coffee Crisp and the Caramel Coffee Crisp. All were disappointments, but I’ll keep on trying these new culinary experiments. I won’t try the “inside out” Reese Peanut Butter cups and I’ll tell you why: a regular pack contains 3 cups – the new pack contains 2 cups for the same price. Sorry Reese. There’s so many stupid new candy bar variations now – I’ve lost track of all the different Kit Kats. Oh wait – I found the website: check this out:

1931 The KIT KAT wafer bar is introduced.
2000 The KIT KAT BIG KAT/CHUNK wafer bar is introduced.
2002 KIT KAT Limited Edition White Chocolate and Dark Chocolate wafer bars are introduced.
2003 KIT KAT expands its limited edition line to include mint and orange flavors.
2004 KIT KAT BIG KAT Limited Edition White Chocolate and KIT KAT Triple Chocolate wafer bars are introduced.

Wow, look at that big gap between 1931 and 2000. How did the product manage to survive without all the gimmicky varieties for three score years and change? I don’t even see the peanut butter variety on the list, and I bet there’s a caramel one too.

They’re doing the same thing to Reese’s cups, Aero bar (I do like the orange flavoured Aero, I know Yvonne will balk), and now Coffee Crisp. I shouldn’t complain about having more variety to choose from in my snacks, but Smarties* in a bar form with white chocolate? It seems like they could be working on something better. That said, good job on the sundae flavoured Smarties, Nestle.

My American readers – our Smarties are different than yours – see here: http://www.bewarethecheese.com/smartiepants.htm

While I’ve been drawing I’ve been:

Dubbing Clone High for Jordan & Tara.
Finishing off mixed tapes.
Listening to a lot of my old tapes made years ago, including tapes of “Laugh Tracks” recorded from the radio in the mid ’80s, and the Shuffle Demons.

I’ve said it before. Having too much work to do is troublesome. It’s causing problems. I feel like I’ve been neglecting my friends. Since I got my new day job shortly after I started dating Marlo, it’s probably pretty easy for the other people in my life to think that I’m spending all my time with my new girlfriend at the expense of my other friendships. The truth is, the reason Marlo gets so much time with me is because she comes over and sits on the couch watching TV while I basically ignore her – plugging away at (what I like to call) my first job: drawing. This is not the optimum way to spend time with one’s sweetheart, and I feel bad about it.

But…
It is amazing to think that at any time I can go up to Marlo and touch her hand or steal a kiss. I never want to take that for granted. I have always cared for Marlo, and with each passing day I love her more than ever before. Which is lots. At my day job, every day, I write a letter to her during my breaks. We talked for hours last night. Marlo makes my depressing day job sufferable, and every day that I know I’m going to see her later puts a spring in my step. The longest relationship I’ve had was 2 years. I hope Marlo stays with me until I die. And I hope we die at exactly the same time. But I hope it’s not tomorrow.

You’ll never have a quiet world till you knock the patriotism out of the human race.
– George Bernard Shaw

One of the many many many books I see on a daily basis is “How to be a Canadian.” My cynicism meter shot right up and the first thing I answered (yes, I talk to the books) is – “be born in Canada, or immigrate.” Of course the book isn’t how to become a citizen of Canada, but about Canadian culture. My problem is with Canadian stereotypes, in the same way I have problems with any cultural or country stereotypes. I don’t drink beer, I dislike hockey. I spend more time looking at American politics than I do Canadian. But I’m a still a Canadian. There are peace-loving, hippie Canadians, there are warmongering naziesque Canadians. There are nice Canadians, there are asshole Canadians. There are Canadians out there in third world countries who are healing the sick and feeding the hungry. There are also Canadians that blow things and people up in the name of religion or whathaveyou. There are good things and there are bad things about every individual who is by definition Canadian. I think identifying yourself with a group of people because you were born in the same country is silly, and outdated. The race to a peaceful future is not a team sport. Nobody wins by wearing matching jerseys and waving flags around. That serves to alienate everyone who isn’t wearing your jersey and waving your flag, and it brings out the worst kind of competitiveness – the global kind; the 1980’s America vs Russia kind. There are more positive, useful things to pride yourself in other than the flag you share with X million people whom you do not know. If you need to be proud of something – be proud of the good things* that you yourself do that make this world a better place; of the happiness you bring to your friends and family*; of healing the sick, teaching the young, bringing art and literature into the world, etc.

See how I turned that negative cynicism into something warm and mushy? I planned that.

* where applicable.

Have I mentioned this already?

A little while ago I deleted my friendster account. I never liked friendster, really. Sometimes I hated it. It was novel at first. One thing that especially irked me was the people who have over 100 people on their ‘friends’ list. I guess different people use it for different things. I chose to take the ‘friends’ in frienster literally. I had a policy where if I didn’t actually see you regularly, or if you weren’t in Vancouver – basically if you weren’t actually my friend – I wouldn’t approve your ‘friendship’ request. To me friendster is mostly a thinly veiled dating service. Why would it be used for anything else, when any decent email program has an address book that you can just make a ‘friends’ entry for your bulk emails? When I did occasionally visit the friendster website, which was primarily when I got an email saying that I had a message (it would be too easy for friendster just to forward the actual message to me), sometimes I would check the ‘gallery’ to see if any of my friends had friends of friends who were single. Nothing ever came of it – I never emailed someone to say “hey – you don’t know me, but you do know John who knows Sally who knows me, so hey…how about a date, huh?”

I was a violent child. I pushed kids off bikes. I kicked a girl in the crotch. I used to get in bouts with my brother, though most of the time I was taunting him and then running away from him around the table or locking myself in the bathroom. I also tried to kiss a lot of kids – and that’s the worst violence of all. But now, post-puberty, I am a pacifist/coward. Violence scares me. Not movie violence – when it’s not gratuitous it’s fine, sometimes even cool; cartoon violence cool and funny. And I think that people who can’t tell the difference between fictional violence and real violence have something wrong with their respective brains. In D&D whenever a player character kills a monster, I am occasionally quite graphic with descriptions of, say, gore spraying across your face as the weight of your sword slices through the neck of your opponent.

I’m sure everyone has their own history of violence. Jon was telling me about how he used to go to bars in Surrey and get drunk and pick fights. The telling of the story was hilarious, the horror insulated by time. Looking back on my youth, I can both laugh and cringe at my own antics. I definitely took more lumps than I gave out, over the years, and my only scars are from animals and accidents with glass and nails. I can’t remember the last time I actually hit somebody on purpose, with meaning. It must have been elementary school – almost 20 years ago. I remember shoving my second girlfriend hard enough that she fell down (in a grocery store, no less – I was 19 or 20 at the time), but holy crap did I ever weep about that and beg for forgiveness shortly after (she forgave me easily and I’m thankful for that). I can’t imagine any circumstance in which I would want to inflict violence on another human being. I sometimes doubt if I’d be capable of it, but I think in certain stressful situations, I could surprise myself. I hope that if Marlo was being raped I wouldn’t just stand there yelping and throwing packing peanuts at the guy.

Personally, it boggles my mind that there is so much violence in the world; that there are people out there, right now, punching one another in the face, probably not that far from me. And worse that others are shooting and stabbing eachother. I would like to propose that that is wrong.

That is, according to Transformers the movie, the universal greeting.

Fahrenheit 9/11 is now out on DVD with 90 new minutes of footage. “These extras include never-before-seen footage outside Abu Ghraib prison, plus footage which we shot in Iraq just weeks before the invasion that clearly showed what we were in for (“Please tell America that Iraq will be their cemetery”), more words of truth from our soldiers in Iraq, and footage of Bush and Condoleezza Rice that is so frightening you will understand why the networks never showed it to you.”

Tonight is another round of free kung fu, this time downtown. If anyone is interested in coming out for our next bout, give me a shout out, lout.

Three things you may not know about the jobs I have had.

1. I worked for way too long at DeVry Greenhouses in Rosedale (Chilliwack). That’s where I learned how to say “may I please suck on your nipple” in Dutch. I think everyone I ever knew in Chilliwack worked there for at least a day. The menial labour was very rewarding. Oh no, wait – it wasn’t. What was rewarding was capturing the tree frogs that lived on the pointsettias and bringing them home to my aquarium, where I fed them crickets purchased at the pet store. They eventually all escaped, and I found one mummified behind the radiator. I kept it in a little plastic bubble for years, and I think I finally sold it at one of my birthday auctions.

2. Chris Woods and I got a job together painting a motel. Not the artistic kind of painting, the boring whitewash kind of painting. We both had long hair back then and the paint kept getting in my hair. We listened to a lot of Guns and Roses from the mechanics next door. The whole experience was dreadful beyond belief. We were there less than two weeks I believe when one day the boss didn’t show up. We never found out why, and we didn’t really care. But we did see his car outside the AA building shortly after that and we drew our own conclusions.

3. For a few weeks I had a job involving my two favourite things – liquid glue in squeeze bottles and burning plastic. We were in a warehouse with this makeshift operation constructing filters for (if I recall correctly) a sewage treatment plant. There were stacks and stacks of corrugated plastic sheets which we would pile on top of eachother and send through this furnace/grill which burned the sides so the sheets would melt together. If any spots didn’t stick, we would apply the glue and use clothes pegs to fasten the sheets together. I swear that job took 10 years off my life.

I may be forced to find some part time work if no fantastic assignments fall in my lap this month. So, if you know of anyone looking to hire a guy who has arms and legs and a typing speed of over 80 wpm, do pass it along. Data entry would suit me fine. I have this weird hankering for manual labor since I haven’t been doing anything active except the occassional swim lately (by the way, the tennis courts by my house are now just piles of dirt). I do not want to do anything that involves sales or calling people, or generally interacting with human beings, cuz those are the worst kind of beings. Maybe I should apply at the library.

Kodos missed me so desperately that he peed on things. I don’t blame him, I peed on a few things myself over the weekend. Mostly urinal cakes.

On Thursday Marlo and I went to ye olde Greyhound station and sat around waiting for the bus to come, which it did. Oh how it came! They moved the ‘Gifts ‘n’ Shit’ store since I was there last, but otherwise things are pretty much as I remember them. On the bus we played 20 questions, which turned into 47 questions, and we played with the channel changers on the back of the seats in front of us. There were 5 channels. We didn’t have any headphones, so we just decided to change the channel to reflect how antsy we were to get off the bus (I got up to 3 shortly before Abbotsford). Once we got to Ford of Abbots, we walked the 40 minute walk from the bus depot to Warren’s place. Somebody in a truck yelled something at us as they drove by, so you’ll be pleased to know that the culture in Abbotsford has not declined. Most eateries were closed by the time we got to them (10-ish) but I got some kind of veggie wrap just before War’s place. Warren had just got in as we arrived. He tucked us into bed and suddenly it was…

Friday morning. Marlo and I went to White Spot and had breakfast while Warren was at school. We both got the same thing but my sandwich had a toothpick with blue celophane to match my blue shirt, and Marlo’s had a toothpick with green celophane to match her green shirt. We learned that Sylvia was coming with us to Portland but that she wasn’t arriving until about 2 because her car had a flat tire. She was coming in from Vancouver. Marlo napped on my lap while I read Warren’s D&D books and conspired (with myself) to make my Thursday campaign just that much more interesting (and by ‘interesting’ I mean ‘nasty’). Once she arrived I managed to leave my jacket behind and we were off to those united states of America. The border check was uneventful. We got some snacks when we filled up for gas several hours into the trip, and I got my favourite exotic US candy bar Whatchamacallit as well as some Jelly Belly flavoured Smartie-like candies. They had instant soup in a can – pizza flavoured – that I found entertaining but I wasn’t brave enough to try it.

Traffic was dreadful so we got into Portland midway through the first block of films – around 8:30 I think. Marlo and I had dinner at Chin’s authentic Chinese restaurant just behind the Hollywood Theater and their egg foo young came as four greasy patties. We got well fed for about $6.50 Canadian each, and had the experience of take-out in those little folding boxes that you see on American TV shows and movies. Grood! That night I introduced Marlo to everybody (her blog has details) and we watched a bunch of shorts, most of which were so-so, but entertaining. I gave Marlo my schedule (which was in fact her schedule) so I’m lost. Afterwards there was an informal get-together at a pub, but since we got there late all the cool tables were full up, so we had to make our own cool table. John Tynes and Jenny showed up (by the way, John’s blog “dispatches from Revland” is http://www.johntynes.com to make the cool table legitimately labelled, and soon Scott Glancy snaked over, scraping along a miniature-size picnic table for a chair. Oh how I wished I hadn’t left my jacket in Canada, but we got the keys off of Warren and I found an extra shirt. Brian, Andrew & others talked Warren & I into performing some ‘unplugged’ Thickets. The first snag was that nobody had a pick for the guitar that somebody brought, so Warren ended up using Brian’s tie clip. The second snag was that halfway through the second song (The Innsmouth Look) the staff asked us to cut it out! The waitress said it was because the people next door complain (this was out on the back patio) but I think it was just because she didn’t like good old Cthulhu Rock.

The company was good but both Marlo and I were a bit burned out and we just wanted to go somewhere quiet and bed-like (possibly bed) but as both our hosts (Andrew and Linda) and our transportation (Warren) stayed later than almost anyone else, our schedule was a chattel to the ringleader of partydom. How ironic then that when we finally got to Andrew’s house the partying began in earnest! We partied as we blew up air mattresses, pushed couches together to make a nutty kookoo super couch, and brushed our teeth. Marlo and I ended up sleeping alone in the basement on a Jenga-puzzle of a couch set that was as wide in the middle as one of those stools that goes with the set, but it turned out fine and it was in fact only marginally narrower than Marlo’s bed at home. It was just hard to get in and out of in the dark. This was complicated by us hearing a strange sound shortly after we went to bed. It sounded like a dull moan, or whiney alarm from an expiring washer/dryer. It lasted only for a second, and then silence, but it sounded ominously close. We weren’t too concerned about it until it happened again, a minute or two later. Then again, and again. We decided it was a cow mooing, and we started stumbling around, looking for light switches and combing the room for the source. Since there was at least a good minute inbetween moos, this became frustratingly difficult. I found some kind of electronic dinosaur push-button learning interface, and looked for a power button. Of course dinosaurs don’t moo, traditionally, but it was all that I had at the moment. I pushed the power button, and new noises filled the room. While I was doing that, Marlo found the farmyard set that was in fact the source of the sound, but there didn’t seem to be any power button – just an array of things to touch. She touched. More noises. A cacophony of oinking, clucking, neighing and some awful midi song no doubt carried up the stairs along with our frantic giggling (caused by imagining what we would look like if somebody came down the stair fumbling around with these preschool toys in our underwear). I turned the whole playset over only to find that you need a screwdriver to take the batteries out. So I was scrounging around for something to unscrew the battery cover or, alternately, something big enough to smash the whole thing, Marlo figured out that the moo was triggered by the barn door being opened, so we just made sure it was properly shut and prayed that it would stop. It did.

In the morning (this is Sunday now), after some new and exciting American sugary cereals (which Andrew & Linda always buy especially for me, and I love them for it!) Warren, Sylvia and I went downtown to explore Powell Books. There were some good art books there that I couldn’t afford, but now I know they exist so I can keep them ‘on file.’ I did buy the first book in the Black Company series, so that was good. It was seemingly the last copy they had. We spent over two hours there and ran in to just about everyone we met the night before – John & Jenny, Aaron & Kirsten, Donovan and his wife whose name I forget. Funny how a bunch of Lovecraft nerds flock to a big bookstore. Apres that Marlo & I separated from Warren et al, and just started browsing downtown. First we went in circles looking for somewhere to eat before finally coming across a Mexican place. US restaurants give you a lot of food. And that’s good, because am I ever hungry! I had the nachos, and the nachos had me. Then we just wandered around till our feet hurt badly, popping in and out of stores and sitting in parks watching the yellow leaves fall from the trees. I don’t know about you, but I get a little nervous about public transit in unfamiliar cities. There are just so many unknowns, it stresses me out. So I was constantly looking at bus stops and asking people and consulting maps and finding exact change — and making sure Marlo was well apprised of my anal bus-tracking ways — just to figure out a simple route back to the cinema. Turns out it was pretty straight-forward, and we ended up arriving with the perfect amount of timelyness back to the cinema, but it was all thanks to me. ME, I TELL YOU! That night we watched more movies, and we got a ride back to Andrew’s with Aaron & Kirsten. Oh, and by the way, if you live in the US and you’re hounded by canvassers on the street, just say you’re from Canada and they’ll immediately lose interest in trying to get your signature or whathaveyou. But don’t not register to vote. Unless you’re voting for Bush. Anyway…

Sunday was the traditional HPLFF brunch, which is always the highlight for me. This year not only were delectibles supplied by Linda and experienced short order cook Warren Banks, but Andrew had a catering company supplement the home cooked buffet. It was amazing, with lots of fresh pineapple, plus we got to hear the annual “night before christmas’-like telling of the legendary Pagan Publishing severed dog’s head story courtesy of Scott, watched various guests do their impression of S.T. Joshi, and chatted with Lee Moyer about the art of Henry Clews, communism, and being a gaming illustrator. People started heading back to the theater for the matinees, so we hugged everyone goodbye and headed north. On the way back we stopped in at another Mexican place and had some really tasty burritos. The trip back took just under 5 hours and when we got to Abbotsford, Sylvia was nice enough to give me and Marlo a ride back to Vancouver – it was even on her way. We listened to the Eagles of Death Metal that I purchased in Portland for about $11 Cdn and it was very satisfying. Now I can give the burned copy that Sid made me to my brother or Garett & Lea, because I’m sure they’ll appreciate it.

At C&K’s wedding reception some guy came up to me at our table and asked if I was Toren Atkinson. I gave confirmation. Then he didn’t say anything so I asked him why he asked, expecting that maybe he wanted to ask me a question or a favour or something, but his response was only that he had heard “so much” about me – that I was (I’m trying to remember his exact words but I can’t) a famous gamer (or maybe artist?) and a rock star and stuff. That made me feel awkward and I didn’t know what to say, so I tried to divert the attention to somebody else (in this case, Stewie, who was seated beside me). I don’t know why that sort of thing bothers me so much. I mean, I am proud of some of the accomplishments in my life, but being singled out and put on a pedestal makes me feel uncomfortable. Maybe it’s the fact that this guy doesn’t really know me. I’m betting he doesn’t even know if I’m a good artist or a good musician, and he certainly doesn’t know about all the uncool, jerky stuff that I’ve done to balance out the cool stuff. Maybe it’s the fact that all the other people at the table were just as cool as me and I felt like I was hogging all of the spotlight. I mean it’s not like I’ve singlehandedly saved the panda bears or brought the country out of a recession. Maybe it’s that I’m too much like Marge’s art teacher – “I don’t take praise very well!”