Malaise (n) 1. A vague feeling of bodily discomfort, as at the beginning of an illness. 2. A general sense of depression or unease.
What a contrast today is from yesterday. Yesterday my agenda was full to capacity. Today I’ve got no plans. There’s aways work. I wonder what everyone else is doing today. I could call and find out…couldn’t I? I’ve been feeling lately that the summer is a time when I should accept everyone’s invitation to do anything at all – no matter what my work schedule is like. I want to savour this summer, much more so than usual. Usually the summer, to me, is little different than any other season, except that it gets really hot in here. I want to do new and different things. I want to spend time with my friends, for a change! So, next time your doing something – and you wouldn’t mind me being a part of it – please gimme a call. I took a walk around the neighborhood this morning (early afternoon) looking for garage sales. I found four. There was nothing worth buying.
I’m not usually one to dwell on age, but it was recently my one month anniversary of my last birthday. Maybe I’m just at that exact age when birthdays seem to mean more than they really do. Before my birthday my feeling was “crap, my birthday’s coming up” but afterwards it was more “phew, well, now’s the MOST amount of time until my next birthday”. Which is retarded since the actual day is just an arbitrary marker of age (unlike replacing the filter in the Brita). It’s not like POINK!!!I’m significantly older now. I still can’t decide if I should have a regular old birthday party or one of my infamous birthday auctions. What’s your vote? You’re invited of course.
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You go through your life, thinking, “gosh (or shit, or whatever), if I just had this and this and this, I would be set. Life would be great. I would be satisfied.” If I just had a girlfriend and/or a better job and/or a nice house and/or etc etc. But it doesn’t matter what you have. Once you accomplish a goal, you set your sights on something else, don’t you? You’re never satisfied.
There are brief, placid moments in my life – ticks of the third hand – where I feel genuinely satisfied: After sex with someone I truly love; freshly holding in my hand a book in which I had a substantial creative input. After these moments pass – there’s always something more. Something else out there that I crave. I think that’s natural, a desire for that which is not yet experienced, attained, acquired. I think that’s “ambition”, or at least the catalyst for it. But it also leads to a feeling of unfulfilment. That I “should” have this, or I “could” have that by now, if I had played my cards right. And is that fair…to myself? That I don’t know….
I need to travel more (and farther) when I get some money. Or somebody drops a free trip in my lap.
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Well, I got my blog working again. Though as you can see, I had to reset everything. All the links are gone. I’ll get to them whenever the hell I want to. And you’ll like it! I also changed my comment service – so please feel free to post comments. I’ll give you a big sloppy wet kiss if you do. Or, if you don’t want me to give you big sloppy wet kiss, post a comment or else I will!
Today was a very busy day. I started out getting a call from Shawna about a half hour after I got up. I offered to help her move and she took me up on it. So I took the bus down to her old place downtown, and met Dave her boyfriend, and Dave’s parents, and Phil, and Sabrina her now ex-roommate. Then we moved stuff. Oh the stuff we moved! Actually it wasn’t so bad, in fact it’s one of the easiest moves I’ve done. I got all sweaty, so it made up for not playing tennis for days.
Let the word go forth: If you are moving, I will help you move. No questions asked. Actually, there is a caveat: if you’re not in walking distance of my place, you pay for my bus fare.
Phil drove me home and we talked about roleplaying games and H.P. Lovecraft’s Birthday Party. Yesterday an old client of mine, Mark Prince, got in touch with me. He asked me if I’d ever thought about selling my art at the Comicshop (on W 4th). I thought it was a whacky idea. Who would buy my art from a comic store? Who has the money? Why would the folks at a comic store want my art taking up space? But he knows Keith the manager there and said I should stop by. So after I got home from helping Shawna move, I threw together some art samples and walked down to the Comicshop. I talked to Keith and Matt and now I’m going to try to sell my artwork at the Comicshop. They were very friendly and open-minded about it so I guess we’ll just have to see what happens. I will actually be surprised if anyone is willing to buy my crap, but I suppose it’s not impossible.
While I was poking about the store I saw a beholdier miniature that I didn’t have, so I had to spend the $12 on that baby. Hopefully Jamie will paint it and glue it up for me. He’s been doing a stellar job on a good handful of my minis. He’s going to custom make me a gelatinous cube out of epoxy. I am, to use the parlance of our times, stoked. Then on my way back I walked past Zulu Records – I decided to go in and see what they had in the used section. They had a Cake album and the new Weezer album. I picked up both for 10 bucks each.
I walked back home, taped Powerpuff Girls, and then took the bus to Stephane’s. He had his BBQ/Housewarming party tonight. It wasn’t bad – Jamie was there and Sheri, of course, and a whole slew (slough?) of people that I didn’t know. CONS: Some girl talked to me about how astrology is a science and I stared blankly back at her; There were hideous singalongs. PROS: we played lots of colecovision games (Burger Time, Zaxxon, Pepper 2, Ladybug); chicken tandoori; blueberries; Stephan played piano.
I spent several hours tonight on cdnow.com which is basically amazon.com, looking for samples of music. I’ve been listening to a lot of music lately. Sometimes I go for weeks and weeks without listening to any music. It’s just that nothing gets put into the CD player. That seems crazy to me now. I’ve been listening to Swervedriver, Cake, Ween, QotSA, Radiohead, Hanson Brothers, Supergrass. I even put SNFU in for a spin, which I haven’t listened to for probably at least a year. Ang Hold made me a mixed CD which I’ve only sort of haphazardly listened to. It’s hard to get into the groove of unfamiliar music, oftentimes. Don’t you agree? Something about the comfort of familiarity, I suppose. But I am making a bona fide (that’s FIED, not FIDAY, Y.H. ;)) effort.
I was taping for Kirsten the last few episodes of Clone High that she hadn’t seen. For about the millionth time one of the songs on the show got into my head, and I finally decided to do something about it. I went to clonehighusa.com and read the lists they have of what bands appeared in what episodes. I systematically dropped the band names into the cdnow search function and listened to whatever samples were available. Kind of exhausting really, but I did get a few winners – or at least some potentials. Anyone heard of Dashboard Confessional, Abandoned Pools, Illyah Kuryahkin, or Bumblefoot? This last one I had to go to bumblefoot.com to hear samples – there were none on cdnow. There are multiple albums but most of them seem to be guitar noodling/solos, but one album called “Uncool” has this great Tom Jones knock-off. If you want to hear it, I can email it to you. It’s funny yet heavy.
Also there’s The Get Up Kids. I’ve heard of them before, usually in Marlo’s blog. Apparently Marlo’s supposed to be making me a mixed tape (nudge nudge) in exchange for a VHS of Samurai Jack – now that she’s in Vancouver maybe we can actually arrange for the trade. Hopefully something inspiring from The Get Up Kids will be represented thereon.
Stephane was telling me about this fellow who was interested in his barter site (www.chumpchange.ca) who wanted to trade DVDs (temporarily – just to watch). I think that’s a good idea, if all of us can extend and be worthy of one another’s trust, and furthermore, I think for music it’s an even better idea. I’ve been lending out a lot of CDs lately, especially my precious Masters of Reality (the band, not the album of the same name by Black Sabbath).
