1982-2008

And you may find yourself living in a shotgun shack
And you may find yourself in another part of the world
And you may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile
And you may find yourself in a beautiful house, with a beautiful
Wife
And you may ask yourself-well...how did I get here?

Letting the days go by/let the water hold me down
Letting the days go by/water flowing underground
Into the blue again/after the moneys gone
Once in a lifetime/water flowing underground.

And you may ask yourself
How do I work this?
And you may ask yourself
Where is that large automobile?
And you may tell yourself
This is not my beautiful house!
And you may tell yourself
This is not my beautiful wife!

Letting the days go by/let the water hold me down
Letting the days go by/water flowing underground
Into the blue again/after the moneys gone
Once in a lifetime/water flowing underground.

Same as it ever was...same as it ever was...same as it ever was...
Same as it ever was...same as it ever was...same as it ever was...
Same as it ever was...same as it ever was...

Water dissolving...and water removing
There is water at the bottom of the ocean
Carry the water at the bottom of the ocean
Remove the water at the bottom of the ocean!

Letting the days go by/let the water hold me down
Letting the days go by/water flowing underground
Into the blue again/in the silent water
Under the rocks and stones/there is water underground.

Letting the days go by/let the water hold me down
Letting the days go by/water flowing underground
Into the blue again/after the moneys gone
Once in a lifetime/water flowing underground.

And you may ask yourself
What is that beautiful house?
And you may ask yourself
Where does that highway go?
And you may ask yourself
Am I right? ...am I wrong?
And you may tell yourself
My god!...what have I done?

Letting the days go by/let the water hold me down
Letting the days go by/water flowing underground
Into the blue again/in the silent water
Under the rocks and stones/there is water underground.

Letting the days go by/let the water hold me down
Letting the days go by/water flowing underground
Into the blue again/after the moneys gone
Once in a lifetime/water flowing underground.

Same as it ever was...same as it ever was...same as it ever was...
Same as it ever was...same as it ever was...same as it ever was...
Same as it ever was...same as it ever was...

Cats Dream 2008

 

 

 

 

On the weekend the neighbourhood was visited by great thick crows. There were six of them in the backyard although I could only capture two in the photo. We also found a dead one in the neighbours garden. I like crows. For me their croaking always reminds me of waking up to blue skies and pine fresh air on a summer day at the cottage.

Mara Muffin

 

 

 

Oil Painting

A friend from work got me into this oil painting class. She's an interesting person. She does boxing, paints, knits, writes and lived in the Yukon for two years and her car has flames on the side. Yep she's cool. Maybe she's Ernest Hemingway reborn. Oh and her paintings are really good.

The class was small which was nice because even though I've painted with acrylics a lot, I needed a lot of hands on advice to get started. What I learned this evening was how to transfer my image to the canvas by making a yellow ochre grid, the colour wheel, colour theory and how to thin my paints. I'm painting a jellyfish from a photo I took at the aquarium in Boston. What was I thinking. have you seen how many tentacles those things have?

Time O Big Changes

This fall is the fall of big changes, not only am I finally dealing with some personal issues that went unresolved for 10 years, but I'm on an exercise regime, taking painting class and will soon be taking yoga and sculpture all while working full time and trying to maintain a long-distant relationship. That's a lot for me to take on but it's a period of growth. Sometimes it takes a cosmic 'slap in the face' to make the next move. Well I've been slapped.

Elections

The election is coming up soon (Canadian) and it really feels like a no win situation. Harper is about as appealing as a weird uncle and voting for Dion is like voting for a second helping of an undercooked meal. There is Layton who has a 1970's porn star mustache. I guess that's something. Maybe I should look at their policies and then decide.

As for the election down south I think the VP debates should be fun (funny) as Bush-in-a-Dress gets to perform against Joe Biden.

National Do Not Call List

Today I registered my home phone number with the National Do Not Call List. This requires that telemarketers remove your phone number from their lists by Oct. 31. Hooray. The site has proven so popular that it was crashing all morning. I did however finally get through.

www.lnnte-dncl.gc.ca

From Fall to Winter

The leaves have started to change and it looks like it will be another brilliant year. I may rent a car this weekend and go up into the hills to do some photography with my new camera. It's very cold today however. It feels more like winter coming on. It will be time to pull out my favourite wool hat and mitts at this rate. Wasn't that an exciting post! Live hard and play harder.

Ministry of Silly Walks Dept.

It must be funny walk day in Ottawa. when I went out earlier I saw this very tall man, easily 6'2" if not taller. He was walking in the same direction as me about a block ahead except he was walking down the centre of the road, backwards. I saw him do this for about three blocks until I had to turn.

Then on the way home I met the hip-hop walker. He too was 'walking' down the middle of the street with a kind of side step and a twist of his hips so that he was going more or less sideways as he moved on down the road.
Another strange site was seeing 5 Montreal SPVM motorcycle cops and a Longueuil police van racing down Rideau street!?!

Me & My Skunk

 

Zombie Dawn: 404 Daly Avenue

 

September Epilogue: 404 Daly Avenue

 

Sleeper

 

Another Side of Blue

 

James Bird

 

Things I Have Lost Recently

12 CDs
5 lbs
myself FOUND Sept. 23rd. 2008 at 10:05 am.

Mouffette

Concerning the Whitechapel Club

I'm reading the Erik Larson book 'Devil in the White City'. It tells the factual story of the architect of the 1893 Chicago World's Fair and that of the depraved serial murderer who lured victims from the fair to their sorrowful fates in his macabre mansion. One of the more uncanny elements of the milieu was the Whitechapel Club

Founded by Chicago newspapermen in 1889, in the rear room of a Chicago saloon, the Whitechapel Club was a notorious press club named after the area of London where Jack the Ripper committed his nefarious deeds. The club lasted five years,but remains legendary for it's bizarre and disturbing doings.


The Whitechapel Club circa 1890


The Club HQ circa 1907

Inside, on the first floor, was a table in the shape of a shoe smithed for a mule's hind foot. At each place was a churchwarden's pipe and a tobacco-filled bowl that had once been the brain pan of a human skull. Dr. John C. Spray, a member who was superintendent of a hospital for the insane, had made a study of skulls to try to determine differences between skulls of normal persons and those of the mentally ill. He contributed his collection to the Whitechapel Club, and the club's chaplain, decorator, and all-round handyman, Chrysostom "Tombstone" Thompson, neatly sawed off the tops, implanted brightly colored glass in the eye holes and rigged the skulls as shades for the club's gas lighting fixtures. The flames flickered eerily against walls covered with the canary yellow paper matrices of type forms. A communal keg stood in the corner for members who wanted beer. At the bar were corked bottles for those who preferred something stronger. On nights when Whitechapelers entertained guests, they served a punch concocted by Wallace Rice. In some members' memories the favorite was a milk punch they called "wild cow's milk," but Rice said that was only a rumor, one of the many unfounded stories the club would inspire.

In a smaller room on the second floor, drinkers gathered around a coffin-shaped table studded with nails with big brass heads. The boys tilted their armchairs back against the wall, put their feet up on the table, and "kept time to their own dreadful singing by hammering with their beer mugs" on the top. They held board meetings at that table and dealt poker on it, though not for money. "Playing cards and dice for money was strictly forbidden," Rice remembered. Rolling the dice for drinks was about as far as they went.

In the center of the coffin table was another skull, its top still attached. It had been the head of an Indian girl and it was among the souvenirs Herald reporter Charlie Seymour had brought back from the West. At least two other Sioux Indian skulls were part of the macabre decorations, both donated to the club by a Captain Stuart. Serving as a cup for honored guests was the silver-lined skull of a woman said to be "a lady of notoriously easy virtue" called Waterford Jane, Queen of the Sands. The Sands, or Sand Lots, a red-light district just north of where the Chicago River empties into Lake Michigan, was a favorite stopping place for sailors off the schooners that once tied up at the city's docks.

The walls of the upstairs room were covered with Indian blankets (in legend they were deeply stained with blood) and so-called ghost shirts--shirts that had been blessed by medicine men to make their wearers impervious to the bullets of U.S. cavalrymen. Seymour had collected those, too. There were nooses that had hoisted badmen in the west; pistols and knives seized as murder weapons and donated to the club by law officers; portions of fire engines destroyed in the great Chicago fire of 1871; and Indian war bonnets, tomahawks and bows and arrows. Buffalo Bill Cody, in full costume, looked down from a handsome, autographed portrait hung on one wall. Cody had bestowed it on the Herald's Brand Whitlock after the reporter had trailed him through Chicago's saloons one afternoon interviewing him, and Whitlock had carted it to the clubhouse. A series of photographs showed Chinese pirates before and after beheading. The decorations served as symbols of the often-dark world the members covered and of the mocking posture they assumed toward it. The devices also served as totems of their fraternity.

From 'Defining Chicago's Newspapermen in the 1890s'
American Journalism, 15:1 (Winter, 1998), 83-102.

Ghost House by Robert Frost

I DWELL in a lonely house I know
That vanished many a summer ago,
And left no trace but the cellar walls,
And a cellar in which the daylight falls,
And the purple-stemmed wild raspberries grow.

O'er ruined fences the grape-vines shield
The woods come back to the mowing field;
The orchard tree has grown one copse
Of new wood and old where the woodpecker chops;
The footpath down to the well is healed.

I dwell with a strangely aching heart
In that vanished abode there far apart
On that disused and forgotten road
That has no dust-bath now for the toad.
Night comes; the black bats tumble and dart;

The whippoorwill is coming to shout
And hush and cluck and flutter about:
I hear him begin far enough away
Full many a time to say his say
Before he arrives to say it out.

It is under the small, dim, summer star.
I know not who these mute folk are
Who share the unlit place with me--
Those stones out under the low-limbed tree
Doubtless bear names that the mosses mar.

They are tireless folk, but slow and sad,
Though two, close-keeping, are lass and lad,--
With none among them that ever sings,
And yet, in view of how many things,
As sweet companions as might be had.

The Strangest Place on Earth

I found this on the blog "Dark Roasted Blend", a blog of 'weird and wonderful things'



The place is an island in the Indian Ocean called Socotra Island and is home to hundreds of unique species of plantlife. The entry is titled "The Most Alien-Looking Place on Earth"

Palin Around With Republicans

According to this New York Times article Sarah Palin is indeed cut from the same cloth as George Bush (remember him he's still President)



"Once Elected, Palin Hired Friends and Lashed Foes"

Read more >>

Last Weekend

It was a fun weekend the last. Saturday I went over to my bosses house for some great homemade pesto, garlic bread and roasted red peppers. Mmmmmmm. They even bought one of my favourite beers, Mill Street's Tankhouse Ale. After dinner we sat around drank a Brazilian red wine and told ghost stories. Some eerie things happen out East is all I can say. Afterwards I stopped off at my old friend Jan's. We ended up going around the corner to the Elmdale Tavern and had some Beau's a fine local brew, and watched a corny but good old time country band. A lot of Carleton students hang out there so we sat in on one tables conversation. It was sad and strange watching the really drunk old guy dragging his girlfriend around the floor trying to dance, when clearly she didn't want to. Finally she sat down and he danced all by himself.

I slept at Jan's and made my way home for a meeting with a friend to go see the exhibit at the National gallery. It was a great collection of European works on the theme of "the New Man" that developed along with Fascism. They had works by Kandinsky, Picasso and all the other usual suspects. It was an interesting balance of art that glorified a fascist ideal and that which critiqued it.

Afterward we went for Vietnamese food even though it's Ramadan and my friend should not have been eating until sundown. We capped it off with some bubble tea before I finally ran to a standstill and went home straight to bed at the late hour of 6pm.

Bad Kitty

She killed another plant and decides to sleep in it's soily grave.



She's also strangely fascinated by smoke. I have a feeling she may have been a stoner in another life.

Mara and Sharon

Mouffie

 

Rainy Morning

So much water. Water never stops moving,it travels constantly around the planet. As oceans, rivers, rain, clouds, as floating blocks of ice dissolving in warmer bodies. It's ever changing state: gas/liquid/solid. It enters our bodies and those of the plants and creatures we consume, but it's only ever passing through taking the essence of its vessel with it: sweat, tears, spit, blood, juice. We need it more than we need electricity, because it is us. When we pass from this world do we only return to dust?

End of Summer

Signs that that this summer has come to an end, in spirit at least,are everywhere. Two buses were so full this morning that they didn't even stop to pick anyone up. Also the new crop of students are all over the downtown core doing activities for various charities. My roomate moved in yesterday. She is a lawyer in Civil Law, which is what they use in Quebec. She will be studying Common Law which is what they use in the rest of Canada. She's really great but it's going to take getting used to not having my sweet Leslie at home.

Vet School Gone Bad

Labour Day Weekend

The new room-mate is coming tomorrow. I'm almost ready, but not really. Too many memories seeping through the knit. Reminder: it's different this time.

Katini Anyone?

Boston, Little Italy, 2006

Update

I just noticed that I actually joined blogger in 2002 so I will have to change that header graphic on Tuesday. I don't have the .psd file at home.

One Year Later

I'm back. I wasn't really gone anywhere of course, I just haven't been blogging. After 4 years of posting almost every day I took a sabbatical. It's no coincidence of course that I took this during the year that Leslie and I have been living together. In the past my postings have tended to be very personal and at times effusive. Being in a relationship I felt that I couldn't expose all of that in such a public forum as a blog.

Now Leslie is living in Philadelphia, attending University and on her way to becoming one of the world's top veterinarians. I'm extremely proud that she got into the program although I never doubted that she would. I miss her tremendously but at the same time it's really wonderful to see that she has taken this huge step towards making her dream come true. I can't wait to see you Leslie.

American Beer, Canadian Myth

Growing up in the late 70s early 80s in Central Canada I was taught that Americans made shitty swill for beer and Canadians made the good stuff. I believed it for years even though at the time all you could buy in Canada was straw coloured Molson, Labatts or O'keefe products. The story was that American canned beer was lower in alcohol and flavour. The truth was that American macrobrews were as bland as Canadian macrobrews.
To make a long sordid story short and clean I know that you yanks make good beer. Harpoon, Sierra Nevada, Sam Adams, and so many more as we make Maudite, St. Ambroise, Coup de Grisou, Sgt. something. So the moral of this story is drink it, taste it and don't worry where it was made. Focus on where it's going. In your gullet.

Last Friday we made a special beer run to Quebec and bought some gemful Cheval Blanc products. The weekend before we bought A case of Harpoon, some Magi Cat (Magic Hat?) and some Sierra Nevada. Oh and we ran into my Aunt and Uncle at a rest stop just across the US border near Brockville. We were all a bit freaked out by that.

American moves to Canada reach record high

Come on the rest of you. There's plenty of room.>>

The number of Americans admitted to Canada last year reached a 30-year high, with a 20 per cent increase over the previous year and nearly double the number that arrived in 2000.
from the CBC

Approaching

I've never been so nervous about anything in my life. Leslie is going to be living with me tomorrow. Another way to say that is that we will be living together. A subtle but significant distinction.I was never this nervous when we got married or at a job interview. If I have this bad a case of the jitters I wonder how she feels? It's nothing to do with being scared of committment either. What scares me is blowing the whole thing. Saying the wrong words. Doing the wrong thing. This isn't like before where you hang up the phone and go on with the day. This is life full time. I hope we are both ready!

I should stress that yes I am delighted. She is the best.

A Pause Before Midnight

I can't even begin to fathom my own excitement at the fact that tonight Leslie is arriving to live in Canada. I know that it is harder for her because she is leaving her familiar surroundings, her friends and family to start a new kind of life. I have to keep that fact in my own perspective. It's not going to just be all champagne and rooses for her. And yet I want her to know how happy she makes me and that I will do my best to listen and be understanding. She's so good to me. I hope this effusive post doesn't embarass her too much but I love her!

Update on Manhunt

They captured young Jesse >>

He was busting into a man's home near Portage-du-fort which is a few miles West of our cottage. you cross there to go to Renfrew on the Ontario side.

When Bad People Come to Your Neck of the Woods

Great...Leslie arrives tomorrow and there is a manhunt for an armed and dangerous serial killer in the Ottawa valley including up at Shawville where my parents are staying at the cottage. Kripes. This punk bastard strangled a man and kiled two old people. they found his truck up near Renfrew Ontario recently. I hope they find him soon or mayb a farmer will mistakenly shoot the bastard thinking it was a deer.
The story >>

The wanted man

The Witching Hour

"At last my love has come along" as the old song says. Leslie arrives tomorrow at the scheduled time of 11:59. I don't know what else to say. I can hardly believe we made it this far after so much time just dreaming.
Now we awake...

She's Coming Next Week!!!

Brutality

What the fuck is wrong with people? It's enough to make you give up on humanity >>

No Jewelers On Duty

Flickr: Photos from SNWEB.ORG Photography

An abandoned factory in Gary, Indiana. This photo is public © All rights reserved. Uploaded on May 30, 2007 · 0 comments. An abandoned factory in Gary, ...

Abandoned City

"Gary Indiana is about the closest thing I have ever seen to an abandoned city. It is becoming a modern day Mayan city, buildings remaining but people getting out.

Just across the border from Chicago, Gary is a city that has fallen on bad times. I heard a lot of things about Gary before coming there. It was supposed to have a high crime rate, white people had been warned to stay out of town. But David from Forgotten Detroit assured me it was safe to explore. Sure enough we had no problems when we were there. No one bothered us or gave us a second look. I didn't feel unsafe at any time. It was an okay place to explore. Even though whole city blocks had been abandoned and bulldozed it looked okay."

From urbanadventure.org

Gary Indiana - America's Ghost Town

I don't know why but the words Gary Indiana were ringing through my head so I looked it up. It must be mentioned in one of the millions of songs I've heard. Here is a tour of Gary Indiana courtesy of www.forbidden-places.ba




" Alecia Perkins
28 Mar 2007, 09:33
My husband and I are real estate investors and are buying properties in the Gary area. I was saddened by what I saw on a recent tour I took. The town is completely in ruins. And looks like a great plague wiped out the residents. Downtown is full of empty stores and abandoned buildings...sad indeed.

I will say that there are some efforts to revitalize Gary. However, there are brand new buildings right around the corner from the most empty and dilapidated city blocks I've ever seen. I guess efforts are being made but the new structures next to the existing crumbling ones looks really odd. I have heard contractors and developers saying that they would have better luck bulldozing the whole entire city and starting from scratch. :o( "



and don't miss The Furniture of Gary Indiana >>



Here are the lyrics. they are by LA 'punk' band X circa 1984. They were commenting on the Reagan USA but remain salient:

Honest to goodness the bars weren't open this morning
They must have been voting for the president or something
"do you have a quarter?"
I said yes because I did
Honest to goodness the tears have been falling all over the country's face
It was better before before they voted for whats his name, this is suppose to be the New World
Flint, Ford auto, Mobil, Alabama, windshield wiper, Buffalo, New York, Gary, Indiana, don't forget the motor city, Baltimore and D.C.
Now all we need is, don't forget the Motor City this was suppose to be the New World All we need is money just give us what you can spare, twenty or thirty pounds of potatoes or twenty of thirty beers, a turkey on thanks giving like alms for the poor
All we need are the necessities and more
It was better before they voted for what his name, this is suppose to be the New World
Don't forget the motor city this was suppose to be the new world

Stynx

OK here it is Lorelei by the Saint Clairsville Singers



Followed by everyone's favourite "I just realized I might have an alcohol problem" song "Who Are You?" introduced by funnyman Ronald McDonald

Bears Turned Inside Out

Yes I should be asleep. I'm sick though and I simply can't. So I've been up writing e-mails to old friends, playing online scrabble reading the news. I recently got in touch with my friend Alefia from Montreal. She has a fantastic gallery of photos from a trip she took to India where her family originates. You can see it here>>

I've also recently reacquainted myself with four other old friends ranging from Grad school to way way back in Vanier Rez days at York. All of this via Face Book. The internet has proven to be a radical social element in my life. Thank god for it. My god it's how I make my living even. the strangest thing is to think back to when I started University in 1984 and for all intents and purposes there was no internet. Imagine if someone told me how I would meet all of these people including and especially Leslie as well as make a career based upon presenting information through this medium? It would have sounded ludicrous.

Now for the bears turned inside out. This series of photographs takes me back to when I was a child. my mother sewed a lot of stuffed animals for us including a Pooh bear that I still possess. I not only appreciated the craft that went into making these creatures, but there was a magic seeing them go from inside out to a "living" thing. it was magic to my young mind when all the sewn up bits folded in on themselves and burst open as a bear or tiger or piglet. Ah piglet where are you now?

Here is the site>>

Squirrel Attack

I heard this awful scratching at the screen window behind me. It sounded like a cat was trying to get in. I live on a high second floor of an old house. It wasn't a cat. It was a squirrelly squirrel. he wasn't very afraid of me or the dog either. I clanked some bottles together and he leaped onto the wall of the back staircase like spider-man. He stared back at me for a while I hissed and he took his time going back down. I hope he doesn't figure out that there is no screen on the sun room!

Take One For the Boss

Bush intervened on the sentencing of Scooter Libby. It's true the laws that apply to everyone don't apply to cronies. Take the fall and get a free pass.

Babe

I woke up from a nap yesterday with that awful Styx song "Babe" running through my head. I don't own that song and haven't consciously heard it since when? I took Luna for a walk and as we walked down Coburg a car pulls over and parks. Guess what song the driver was playing? Yes. Play if you dare!!!

Blog Fusion Confusion

There are two Glob and Wails now. This one and one that looks the same but contains everything prior to May 2007. I had to do this because it takes forever to publish to any of three servers I tried. I'm not sure why but this blogspot version will be the new version.