When your heartstrings break

Spent the day working at Annemarie's office, putting together bookshelves. Tonight, I'll probably swing by Dave's Pizza on St. Clair, where Sam (Petite... plays in the Backstabbers) and Helen (a frequent guest at country sundays at Grafitti's in the market) and another guitar player whose name I forget are playing. Also, I'll go by the Queenhead where Rich is DJing tonight (aka DJ Rankin' Whitey).

As for the week: started work on some articles for the Gleaner, applied for a few jobs, and generally was at least semi-productive this week. Actually, generally speaking this week has been pretty awesome.

Scrabblicious!

Phew, it's been a busy week and a bit since my last post. I'll start with my weekend... I got off work on Saturday at 4pm, came home to eat dinner, then it was time for the fifth and deciding game of my scrabble series with J. To recap: the series began at the cottage back the first week of August with a friendly game, which J won. Being a gentlemanly sort, he allowed me a rematch, which I won. Shortly upon our return to Toronto, we played what was meant to be the rubber match... I won by a small margin, but didn't feel as though such a victory was satisfying, due to its close margin and a couple of questionable turns. So, I offered to continue the series into 5 games. J repaid me for my kindness by kicking my ass solidly in game 4 - our first 3 games were all decided by less than 10 points and were evenly matched throughout... game 4 J won by, like, 30 or 40 points. So, it was on to game 5... below is a photo essay detailing the evening.

Left: J unzips his travel scrabble set, where it all began at the cottage, and home of the holy score sheets.

Right: The sacred documents of game 1-4.


























Above: me reinacting my despondent face after game 4.






















The last few moves were the most tense... going into the final couple of moves, J had a solid, pretty much insurmountable lead; I had an "A" left, and I had pretty much conceded victory to J. BUT... at the last minute, I found a place to place it - spelling "MA" & "AX", a 13 point play! Which gave me the lead... victory was now mine! HOWEVER... J had different plans, placing an "F" on a double letter score to spell "FOR" - a 10 point play! giving him the lead! BUT WAIT... it's still not over.... because J had one extra tile, and I had none, meaning the 1 point value of his letter gets added to my score and subtracted to mine... making the game a perfect TIE! But, the scrabble rule book has something to say about that too... as the photo above demonstrates, the player who has the highest point total before the extra tile scoring is calculated wins in case of a tie... Thus, J emerged victorious.

Right after that intense scrabble match, I went to this crazy retro 80's dance party thing which I would never normally go to, but a bunch of Gleaner (community newspapers I used to work for) folks were there who I don't see often enough. It was really fun, and I got way too drunk, stayed out to 3am, only having to wake up at 8am the next morning because I'd told Andria that I'd go to Paws in the Park with her in the morning. Which was fun, even with my hangover in the rain. I got home, slept for a couple of hours, just to go out again for dj night. Which was fun, although a little quiet cuz it was raining so much. But DJ Short Pants (aka my brother, who's going to hate that I called him that) was really good... next time he dj's, you suckers who stayed home had better come.

With all that going on during my weekend, I can't even remember right now how I spent last week... oh yeah, I got posters done for Bedhead... check 'em out on a lamp post near you.

Speaking of crazyness, I'm currently functioning on almost no sleep again today, after yet another crazy night last night. But crazy in a different way. A good way... That I'm afraid to jinx by writing about it. Sorry... maybe next time.

Just a boy/totally dressed in corduroy

It's a good thing I do a weekly dj night, or else I'd never update this blog... but instead of just telling you about this edition, i'm actually going to open the door into what's going on in my life.

But first, I'll get the dj stuff out of the way: bearded guest dj - check. music I wanna play: Replacements, Death Cab for Cutie (their new record is really excellent by the way), Postal Service, Magnetic Fields, International Noise Conspiracy, Richard Buckner, Bruce Springsteen, etc, etc... y'know, the usual sorta stuff, with a few curves thrown in there for good measure.

As for what else is new: had my back bike tire stolen... fuckin' jerks. ah well, i guess this is a sign that I should buy a new bike... although i'm hesitant to buy one now, when the winter's coming and I don't know where I'll keep a shiny new bike all winter. So I may buy a very basic, cheap ride, which is all I really need. If anyone has any bike buying advice, I'm all ears...
I may give my old bike to bikes to cuba, who have set up shop at the car free day events today on Concord Ave. south of Bloor (just south of my house). Speaking of which, if anyone reads this in time, they're playing a movie called the End of Suburbia in the parking lot of Long & Mcquade on Bloor at 8pm tonight, which should be cool.

Also, I hung out with Paul on Wednesday. Our usual talk of socialism and baseball also included a discussion on the benefits of corduroy pants. Stay tuned for a gallery of corduroy pants. Feel free to send me pictures of your corduroy pants; i'll post them!

Other than that, not much is new. I didn't accomplish as much as I wanted this week (dj night posters remain unfinished, and I still have some other design stuff I need to do). I'm sort of feeling like I'm at a crossroads now... I'm nearly ready to quit my job, I may wanna move outta my house soon, and I'm trying to figure out what to do next. Ever since I got back from my trip to Spain, etc, back late last year, I haven't really made any long term plans. I had stuff I wanted to do, and I've accomplished very few of these things so far because I was working too much for the most part. Even over the past month I've been part-time, I've added extra shifts pretty often, because I was a bit worried about money. which was a stupid way of thinking, I think... there's too many other things I wanna do that I need the time for. I'm approaching the one-year anniversary of when I left for that trip (Oct. 10), and I'm either going to start developing long term plans soon via a new job, and some other changes, or else I may just find a new adventure and skip town. I'm determined to quit my job before the end of the year, and if i don't have another, i'll probably skip town again for a while. That's all I've managed to figure out so far. Most of this week, I've been sorta down, because I haven't been productive enough. I've been sleeping in wayyy too much... and I'm wondering why I don't have that thing in my life that makes you wanna get out of bed in the morning (that is, besides the crappy job that *forces* you out of bed in the morning), and I'm wondering what that thing is for me.

Anyway, that's my little rant for the week...
also, check out my new links on the right side of the page... in particular, I've discovered the flying spaghetti monster, the deity of a religion whose followers dress in pirate outfits, are called "pastafarians", and, well, that's just the tip of the iceberg really.

9-11 DJ night

Tonight is the September 11th edition of Bedhead Sundays, featuring DJ Dirka Dirka. We'll try to avoid any planes crashing into the Queenhead, and we'll do our best not to curtail your civil liberties. However, don't be surprised if some wild conspiracy theories are thrown around, and possibly a plot to overthrow the president of the united states. Using pillows.

Pillow fight revolution! Rise up people!

It's sunday, folks... c'mon down.

Hurricane Fatigue

I have to admit that up until recently I haven't been following the New Orleans hurricane devistation too closely. Firstly, I just don't follow current events as closely as I used to. Plus, I'm so used to the media hyping up hurricanes like this that always happen... it's kind of a 'never cry wolf' complex.
But wow... reading over the last couple of days its hard not to have your mind blown by the devastation of a city that size. And now, the only people left, and the only people effected, are the poorest of the poor... that's what struck me today. And the fact that it takes the largest natural disaster in American history for the American news media to pay any attention at all to poverty, and those that are poor.
Then there are the "lucky" ones who got out, who stayed at hotels and are running out of money fast. Thousands who are quickly becoming nomads out of a Steinbeck novel.
The other thing I think about... geez, this'll probably put a damper on Mardi Gras this year...
I was going to post this great picture I found in the Globe today of a guy with a shotgun, who works at a bar in New Orleans and takes his shotgun to work in order to keep the bar open (now that's dedication) - but I couldn't find it online.
So, instead I'll post something a little more uplifting... If I was in Spain, I could be at the Tomatina festival, covered in tomatoes. Awesome.