Angry days and dogfood
December 7, 2007
I bought my cat dog food last night. I’m not proud of it, but I did it. I’m going to have to complain a little to explain why; I’m not real proud of that either.
My cable bill was due on the 4th [1]. On the 3rd I realized they were serious and considered going; only it was snowing that real sleazy wet snow that just pisses me off. So I waited a day. On the afternoon of the 4th proper I walked into Rogers, paid my bill in full, and…after they processed the payment, they informed me my account had been marked for disconnection a couple hours before, so there would be a 100ish $ fee to reactivate it. I have rarely hated as purely as I did in that moment. I wanted to smash his gap toothed fucking face, with his clacky fucking keyboard, until you couldn’t tell one from the other. Instead I thanked him for his time, and informed him I would consider the information I’d been given. Read the rest of this entry »
Hot Water Theatre (a tragic true story)
November 28, 2007
I’ve been having a lot of trouble sleeping of late. The initial transitions into unconsciousness goes fine, but I soon awake either shivering, or burning hot…my sheets swamped with every drop of moisture pulled from my desiccated body. I initially suspected Ebola and sat on my couch and waited to die. That proved somewhat alarmist.
It’s bad enough when it’s brilliant
November 14, 2007
I listened to Ginsberg read and fail at his own poem, aloud; this flat recitation of thoughts a generation removed. You could tell he’d chewed over the words until they were strangers, but still felt obligated enough by their brilliance to make some show of enthusiasm. It was like one of those of end of relationship fucks that are more resentment and habit than release; where you’re tracing the lines hard enough the paper tears.
Domesticity
September 18, 2007
I bought furniture last night. I’m not much for nesting, but my apartment was barren enough I felt like some junkie flophouse squatter. I picked a agreeable little couch (with two companionable footstools), functional table, and two black lamps. I went to IKEA, not out any particular allegiance, rather it’s the only furniture type store that has permeated my awareness to any degree.
Tertiary life crisis
September 4, 2007
I almost quit my job this morning. Partly this was inspired by being moved to a whole new position and contract after being given four hours of the required two week minimum training period [1], and informed I would be working 60+ hour work weeks for the next while. The other part was the realization that if I hit the snooze button one more time I could wake up a forty year old entry level IT bachelor eating cold beans in the park on my birthday.
Moving Day
August 1, 2007
Let me preface this post by stating I feel like an old boot fished out of the bottom of a medical waste dumpster. I have (currently) at my disposal (approximately) the mental faculties that such a boot might possess, and my wasted visage is akin to leather wrought from the skin of albino sea horses.
I moved yesterday; though in retrospect It seemed more the world I had known receded away from me, leaving bare a cracked dystopian shale of residential indiscretion. That’s a tad strong. The move, however, was last minute and ill fortuned. You have to [1] understand that my new apartment wasn’t fully secured until the 31st at noon, four hours before I had to move out my previous apartment. Half of my packing was down the mouth of our second floor garbage chute[2]; half of our moving involved walking large objects down the street to the new place, assaulted by the hoots and catcalls of passing motorists.
Bitch: Etymology and Select Typologies
April 5, 2007
In several recent posts the term ‘bitch’ has been bantered around quite loosely. We here at Beats Entropy have used the term in various ways, sometimes with loving respect, other times with disquieted camaraderie , and occasionally it has come up in somewhat more serious discourse.
Etymologically speaking, the term ‘bitch’ has a few common and a few uncommon meanings.
“Oh hey Kenji! Long time no see…
March 7, 2007
…So what have you been up to?”
“I don’t know, nothing and everything all at once?”
I need to come up with a better way to tackle this area of smalltalk. It tires me. Maybe I should simply ignore the question and go straight to rhetoric or tomfoolery. And I hate resorting to any of the typical subjects like work, school, the weather and/or getting drunk.
Thirty years of cool chicks, good love, and bad judgment.
February 14, 2007
I am not so much a slow learner, as I am a hard learner. Easy lessons lack the traction to burr my awareness; at most serving as a hindsight kick in the teeth, post judgement lapse. As a child I got my head stuck in more banisters, and tongue stuck to more icy fences than any child not riding the short bus. As much as I disliked the outcome there was something so seductive about self defeating behaviour.
Every winter [1] I would fall through the ice walking across the river on my way home; and every winter I found myself seeking out the black patches and planning my escape route to the shore. As destructive as the behaviour was, I needed a dangerously broad sampling of the consequences before I could resign myself to walking to a correct path.
As young adult my experiential masochism moved into the romantic arena; though given the collateral damage inflicted there was likely a nasty undercurrent of sadism. I sought out bad love, broken edges, and car crash incompatibility of near mythic proportion. I confused sex with romance, romance with love, love with possession; and all of the above with a disturbed intensity of connection and mutual fascination.
Read the rest of this entry »
An athletic complication
February 5, 2007
I had forgotten what it felt like to be an athlete. The bottom up shift in mentality and perception as testosterone surges and focus turns inwards. That smug sense of entitlement and separation; the casual arrogance and go fuck yourself aggression that comes with being stronger and faster. There is this rush of animal identity and a acetic buzz from pushing through the pain and exhaustion. It’s a trip, and a familiar one at that. Sort of.
The thing is I’m not the insecure, angry little puppy I used to be. I don’t need the crutch, and I sure hell don’t need the arrogance. That snarling, strutting child has long grown up, so the experience is filtered through a very different being. Every shirtless moment spent posing in mirrors is interlaced with wry threads of amusement and absurdity. That seeking, aching, need for belonging has softened; replaced with a more achievable internal mandate. The end result of this hard won maturation has given a very different voice to my reemerging jock tendencies. There is a self deprecating ease to the confidence, and a understated surety to the aggression. I understand why I am striving, and who I am striving against.
Damn
January 25, 2007
Today I have balls so blue the Pacific would weep for their cerulean majesty. The baboon that works in the kitchen stopped by my desk and he was like “Nigga, I’ve been a Baboon all my life…and your ball are so blue they’re freaking me out.” And he was right to fear them.
I’m walking like a wounded cowboy, and seriously considering violating the sanctity of the handicap washroom. I fear, however, the pressure has built up to such an extent that the negative pressure generated by a sudden release would turn me inside out; leaving my inverted corpse on the soiled tiled floor as proof of my shame. Such is my burden.
Between Activism and Constipation: why maintain a dialogue with zealous idealogues?
January 23, 2007
So yesterday a good friend asked me a very important question: “why do you bother?”
The question was in regards to a series of posts I made in a public forum. The forum, which was loosely discussing Canadian politics, was very much dominated by a vocal minority of what I like to describe as postmodern conservatives.
What are postmodern conservatives? Well, what I mean by pomo-cons (as I affectionately refer to them) is a relatively quick growing segment of the 20-30 somethings educated population that have married basic critical thinking skills they acquired in university or college, a post modern critique of hope and optimism, and a petty bourgeois retreat to fiscal and political conservatism. The result is a group of young, relatively intelligent, ardent conservatives eager to point out the folly of civic engagement and touting a neo-con agenda dressed up in quixotic intellectualism, enter the pomo-cons.
Now lets pause for a moment. While I am probably describable as a ‘lefty,’ this is not about being against conservatives. Despite not usually seeing eye to eye with many on the political and social right, I do listen and respect those who are willing to discuss their ideas and beliefs. Even here in the close nit family of Beats Entropy, we do not all share the same political visions. I do not begrudge people the right to hold to what political and social values they choose, provided they (and I) remain open to a meaningful dialogue through which either or both views may change.
In advocacy of the Blind
January 12, 2007
I just watched a commercial for the blind. Well not really for the blind, it’s wasn’t just sound or anything…I guess It was a commercial in advocacy of the blind. Anyways, the message this commercial was trying to impart was fairly nebulous and a little unsettling. Pictures this:
A couple of asshole twenty something dudes are walking along and spy an older blind gentleman standing at a crosswalk. The two jackasses marvel at the strange site, circle their prize, then proceed to visually mock and wave hands in front of the old blind mans face. They then bound away, laughing and high fiving at how awesome they are. The camera then cuts back to the blind man: he watches the jackasses walk away, then waves his own hands in front of his face to indicate he saw the whole thing. The narrator then kicks in with “not all people that appear blind are completely blind, many have partial to significant vision”. Then the commercial ends.
On Bottled Water: a polemic
January 4, 2007
There are very few things in this world that illustrate the simultaneous absurd and heinous nature of late modern capitalism as well as the bottled water industry. Now, before you run off, hear me out. This is not some guilt producing tirade aimed at making you give up some petty luxury in order to forward some neo-hippy abstract philosophy.
This isn’t even strictly about the environment (that place we all depend on for existence, and from whence most of our stuff comes), this is about being fucked (in a bad non-consensual great uncle Metaphoric sort of way), and you sure as shit don’t need to be a radical tree hugger to get incensed about being molested.
I know what you’re thinking, how can he start by making wild comparisons between bottled water and sexual abuse? Well let me show you.
The basic business model for bottled water is as follows:
Produce plastic bottles as cheaply as possible, typically using neither a sustainable nor environmentally responsible production model. Fill empty bottles with tap water, sometimes filtered, sometimes not. Sell bottled water at exorbitant prices.
Essentially what happens is that companies like Pepsi or Coca-Cola take water that you pay for with your taxes, filter it (or not), then sell it back to you at approximately 200% the average cost per liter of gasoline.
However the fun does not end here.
3D Model Trains:
December 12, 2006
Well it finally happened; the last few worn nubby teeth of Western civilization have passed into gummy oblivion. While I’m largely devoid of the self hating white guilt that plagues my generation, this morning I discovered something so sad and recursive it slapped the smug ethnocentric grin from my face. A word from the maker of 3d Model Train Set (Abacus studios):
“Model trains is a PC-based software that emulates the working of model trains as well as layout design. With this software you can plan and construct your own model train set complete with a ’shopping list’ of parts and accessories to the scale you choose. 3D Model Trains reproduces some of the major model train and accessories manufacturers products that you’ll use to create your own table top train set“
