Category: Uncategorized

I think i had an okay day. My days are enrobed in an eternal sadness and misery, but there are moments where i can reflect back on the day, like today and say that overall I did good today. That today I did more good for myself and others than harm. That I was an active participant in my life. That I wasn’t holed up in some basement suite killing myself in a slow isolation.

Worked a satisfying 9 hours, came home and talked to my good friend who’s in England doing her masters. She gave me a good recipe for chicken fried rice. went to the store, got the ingredients. met up with my friend and we cam back to my place and I made us chicken fried rice whilst he learned to play Battlefield 2. Afterwards, went downstairs to give JR her MP3 player, but decided i wanted to be around Anna for a while. I was feeling really in need of physical closeness. I wanted to cuddle with her, but i thought asking would be weird. JR came in an hour later with Leah. I cuddled with JR for a bit then went home.
I think it was okay that I wanted that physical attention in that moment. I don’t think that is something i need to think about changing.

I did some financial assessment of my earning and spending and realized just how much i actually spend on eating out every month. It’s atrocious and it is stopping beginning with dinner. No more eating out dinner everyday. Once a week is okay for now. Lunches will soon follow.

Counsellors are funny. You tell them you’re depressed and they ask you what you are happy about. My counsellor asked me what really stimulates me in life. I said I didn’t know. I’d like to change that. I’d like more than anything to be passionate about some aspect of living. For the following list I’d like to define thing that stimulate me as things that are more than just good. To get on this list, a list of things that stimulate me, they have to be on par with getting-high-kinf-of-profound. Here’s a beginning of a list (not including sexual actitivities)…

Hey ****, I miss you too. Tell me about the rut, holy shit. I am really missing putting up work out there, i had a memory the other day of that unmatched thrill and self-gratification of putting up a stencil or poster in a public place.

Remember that mary with the cogs poster i made? I have a six foot tall stencil of her with the cogs, i just need to cut it.

My life has turned so normal in the past six months. Without even meaning to I transitioned from a career artist, actively pursuing my artwork to a “normal” life of working 9-5 and getting paid every friday and eating dinner at restaurants every night and going to bed at a reasonable time. fuck, it’s frustrating cause I miss my old life.

this got my attention.

nick.

I’ve been doing a lot of Google searches for phrase strings such as “powerbook g4 hard drive dead” and “powerbook g4 system profiler recognize”. I’ve just read a lot of other PowerBook owner’s woes described on their blogs about their PowerBook’s failed hard drive.

As you can tell, I’ve had my own disaster this week. About a week ago I was doing dishes and when I turned around my PowerBook was flashing the ominous “Flashing Question Mark of Death”. This means that the computer cannot find the system disk, the hard disk which contains the operating system. With no operating system the computer just flashes the question mark telling you it needs an operating system to run off of. So, I booted up off the OSX install CD, and ran Disk Utility and could not find my internal hard drive. I installed a fresh copy of OSX on an external drive and booted off that. Ran Disk Utility, Disk Warrior, Tech Tool Pro, Drive Genus with no luck. No drive.

I gave up on my internal drive and have been making due with the basic install of 10.3.2 on the external drive.

Today I decided to give my internal one last chance to live. I carefully opened my powerbook, which took about 45 minutes to do properly. They certainly don’t make it easy to access the PowerBook’s guts. once inside, i removed the HD and holding it in my hand shook it in the air in every direction vigorously for 20 seconds. Put it back in and hooked up the internal ribbon to the keryboard so i could boot er up. No luck booting off the internal drive, but atleast I wasn’t getting the dreaded question mark. Instead, I would get to the startup progress bar to have it sit and stall at “Waiting for Local Disks”. I restarted, booting in safe mode OS off the external drive. Presto. I open system profiler and see that my computer is now recognizing my internal drive. YAY! Without wasting any time, I am now backing up the entire contents of the internal drive to the external drive. Once done, I will run a series of diagnostics on the internal drive. I’m sure it’s days are numbered. Harddrives are like tires on a car, they are spinning constantly and eventually wear out. I will have to get a new one eventually, but atleast this clever manouvre saved me all my otherwise lost data.

Rent day and I almost forgot. I made it to Raymar Realty to give them my cash 5 minutes before close. I haven’t even been a day late for paying rent since I moved in here 5 months ago. On the counter was ICBC’s statistics for the top 10 highest accident locations in the GVRD. I drove through 7 of the top 10 intersections today.

My flu/cold whatever sickness may be receding.

I have nothing really to complain about. I’m pretty content. Nay, I am pretty satisfied today right now.

I had coffee with my old sponsor a few days ago. He is moving to L.A. to make some records with a certain Metallica producer, the distance being the reason that I had to find a new sponsor. He told me that I’ve changed an unbelievable amount, the I’ve come a long way this time around, sober for 9 months. I though he was jjust flattering me so I asked for specifics. He mentioned moving in to my own place, maintaining a steady job and not just a coffee-shop job, actually doing the step work, and that I’m not a sketchy skid anymore. He said the my change has been profound and the most drastic change he’s seen in a person in that short a time. I liked hearing that. It was encouraging cause I don’t really feel I’ve changed much cause it happened so gradually from my perspective. However, in one instance I reflect on what I used to write in my blog, what I used to write a year ago. My writing style, my thinking, my feelings, my personality have totally changed as reflected in my writing.

Watching snowflakes melt on the windshield reminds me of crystalized dope melting into liquid in a blown test-tube pipe. Time the melting cycle. snowflake… 1… 2… 3… 4… liquid…. wiper…. snowflake… 1… 2… 3… 4… liquid… wiper…

Glad I blog.

I’m feeling sick. I think I am coming down with a flu. It came upon me really suddenly and now I am bundled in clothes but still really cold. my feet are freezing. my head just feels all wrong and i ache. i wish i had a girl to take care of me. make me soup and make me go to bed and tuck me in.

I bought a new computer on friday. Got paid 2200 bucks and spent 1400 on a new fast-ass comp. Funnily enough I am typing this on my PowerBook, not my new computer. Ah… living in excess… strange. I feel a little guilty. the sole purpose of my new comp is for gaming. I’m sure eventually I’ll learn how to manage my finances… but that doesn;t seem to be a part of my life yet. Better than buying an ounce of meth, i guess.

my hands are not my own. they are worker’s hands. rough and leather. i have callouses everywhere and a constant scar or two.

Jesse told me if i learn QuarkXPress i could get a job with her ad company doing pre-press work. hard to learn a program i don’t have. trying to download it but can’t find it anywhere. it’s several thousand dollars… so buying it is out. I’m sure i could learn it well within a week once i get it.

Throwing stone wheat thins in my chicken noodle soup.

maybe i’ll have to take tomorrow off work

i think it’s funny that our society smiles bearing teeth in photos. I think it’s kinda scary looking and not a very attractive pose.

did some work on my amends list this weekend. now just the willingess to overcome my fears and make my amends.

soup is mostly hot water.

i’m gonna quit smoking before my birthday

i’m gonna just write more tomorrow, when i actually feel passionate about the day’s events.

Took the train in to town today. Got on a bus to get to Uptown, a shopping district that was supposed to be cool. It was similar to Broadway in Seattle, but no where near as good. It is shocking how many black people there are in the states, and particularly this city. At one point on the bus ride the three of us were the only three caucasians onboard a full bus. I hate the state of fear of the black population that is instilled in me through the media and years of societal conditioning. I took note of the subtle fear and nervousness that I felt when surrounded by people who just had a different skin color and how when I got off the bus and back in to the mall, surrounded by white people again I felt okay. Black people down here are what asians are in Vancouver and maybe it just takes time to adjust to it.

I am looking forward to returning to Vancouver tomorrow. I do like getting out of the city. I really enjoy airports and airplanes and flying. But Minneapolis is boring and I am bored of this hotel room. I’ve spent a great deal of time lying on my bed watching American TV, ordering room service and sleeping. After a while, lying about in a hotel room makes getting some drugs a good plan.

I’m sitting in room 259 of the Minneapolis Airport Marriott in Bloomington, Minnesota. It’s cold outside. There is ice on everything. watching a man scrape ice off his windshield and I realize I haven’t seen that occurrence in a long time. There is a freeway a couple hundred yards outside the window and there is the airport a kilometer away. On the otherside of the hotel is the Mall of America and the biggest Ikea I have ever seen.

We finished the store today. It looks good. It feels good to look at the finished product and to feel the completion of this project which has been about three or four weeks long. The installation took 16 hours yesterday and another 11 today. There was our crew of 4: Ben, Chuck, Karl and me, and there was the contractors from here which added another four. the union electricians were four and the work space was about 400 square feet. It was crowded and frustrating trying to work. There was really not a lot I could do. I felt valuable during the unloading phase but the actual installation was a lot of standing around and watching.

Supposedly the Mall of America is a terrorist target, but I highly doubt anyone would waste explosives on this sack of shit place. There’s nothing here.

My lips are dry and chapped. My skin is dry and itchy. I am used to the rainforest, not the arid prairies.

After work today Ben and I napped in our room and then charged a pizza and a movie to our room. I charged internet to the room. The whole bill is picked up my Craig, owner of the store we built. I am wide awake now and it is 2:30 in the morning.

Tomorrow we are going to find a gun range and rent some guns. Never shot a gun before and I feel the need to change that.

Looking forward to the flight. I love flying and i have 7 hours of flying back to Vancouver.

Oh, i almost forgot. On the way here Ben and I went through Las Vegas. We had a few hours between flights so we took a cap to the strip. We walked through The Venetian and I marveled at the intricate interior design. All the moulding and murals that no one puts the time in to anymore in their houses. Back at the airport we played 3 bucks worth of slots and I won two pulls which totaled 8 bucks. I cashed out and commented to ben that that’s why I always win at gambling. I know when to pull my money. I think i picked that up from a lot of playing Dope Wars in grade 8.

I leave next Tuesday for Minneapolis. I received my itinerary yesterday. I am flying out of Vancouver at 6pm bound for San Francisco, layover, then to Las Vegas, layover, then to Minneapolis. I love flying and airports, so I don’t mind the 9 hour trip there or the 12 hour flight back. Incase I didn’t already make a note of it in this blog, our crew got a contract to build two stores within Sam Goody’s locations in Deptford, New Jersey and Bloomington, Minnesota. The stores we are building within the Sam Goody record stores are small versions of Bang-On stores. The design is pretty rad and they have been fun to put together. I spent an entire day fixing up the vinyl sticker “bacteria” design walls that enrobe each store. It was reminiscent of stencil cutting and I was really good at it.

So, flying around is fun. And staying at the Marriott in Minneapolis. Hitting up Camp Snoopy, the world’s largest indoor amusement park as well. Charles Schultz, creator of Peanuts was born in Minneapolis.

Our crew is also building a new Cherry Bomb, vintage clothing store on Granville between Robson and Smithe, below the current Cherry Bomb and where the old “Corner Market” used to be. Apparently the guy who owned the shop got busted running a child porn biz out of the back room and was forced to shut down the store. I personally had to gut that back room and it was creepy to say the least. I spent the day today ripping down the decrepit drywall that covered the ceiling to uncover the original celing treatment from when the building was conceived in the 20’s. Yellow stamped tin patterned ceiling tiles and moulded tin crown moulding. It looks really good and will be perfect for the new establishment going in.

I also spent a good part of the day up to my ass in rat shit to expose the bare solid-tree beams in the place. my hammer would rip off a slat holding up some sheeting and an entire rat’s nest would fall everywhere, some i would inhale even through my mask, and the rest would hang around in the air and settle on me and whoever else was around. Those animals shit an incredible amount, and wthout discretion, just wherever they feel like it. My coworker, Ben and I have been competing all week on a corpse count. He found the first, a fully-intact mummified rat carcass in the heating duct. the body measured well over 8 inches not including the tail, which doubled it’s length. In it’s hay-day that rat could have given most cats a run for their money. My entry in to the competition came with the skelton of the back half of a rat, and today I added two very dead mice to the collection. We crucified all the bodies to the wall on either side of a line drawn to mark Ben’s score and my score. Ben wins by weight, but i win my number.

I want to rant about my current stance on alcoholism and addiction on here, but I have been talking about it so much the past few days with people that I need to give it a rest.

Going to as few meetings as I can the past few days and I feel great. The meetings I regularly go to haven’t been doing it for me the past few weeks, so I decided to cut back my involvement with them for this week and see how I feel. Like i said, I feel great.

Yours truly,
00000000

quoted from an email sent to a friend of mine:

“I don’t think I interact with females very well. I have what i think could be thought of as a complex where I need attention (communicative, emotional, physical or sexual) from women and when I get it it’s okay, but if i don’t get it then i suddenly mount a resentment towards them for not providing me with that. if i sense a lack of attention, I grow resentful and act out childishly with a “i’ll hurt you before you can hurt me” atttitude.

I am really not proud of this behavior and I really dislike this part of myself. I’d like to know how to change. Over time the reaction has remained as a reliable defect. My efforts to change it have not worked. I am curious as to how I can change this behavior and hope to have deep, healthy relationships with women without manipulating and hurting them and as a result never feeling satisfied in the relationship.

I don’t really know why i’m telling you this, other than to try to stimulate some sort of intellectual conversation that may deepen our relationship. however, i can see how you being female and me discussing my female complexities with you could make you uncomfortable. if this is the case, i’m sorry.”