It's A Beautiful Day For A Revolution

I Occupied Vancouver today. Or is it Occupy Vancouvered?  Here are some things that happened.

First we ate at the Re:Up BBQ Cart. Pulled pork and bacon with sauce and bacon...oooh...and some sweet tea to wash it down.  After all, we couldn't protest poverty and hunger on empty stomachs.

No pictures of the food, it just got ate too damn fast.

This is my kind of drum circle.

We are protesting all kinds of things today.

They are smiling because I just told them that I will use the picture to prove to my out of town friends how handsome Vancouver cops are.

This woman is occupying some revolutionary shoes.

Waiting for the iPhone 5.

It was a VERY peaceful protest.

You can tell it's ironic because of how tight his pants are.

After I took this picture he let me cup his balls.

The soles of Darren's shoes are perfect. It's like he didn't protest at all!

Main Street Occupies Vancouver

The wind got pretty cold, so we walked down to Gastown to occupy Re:Volver for a while and have a coffee, but it was very occupied already, so we occupied the St. Regis hotel bar for a pint and a warm, leathery booth.

My favourite sign I saw all day said, "You can still be rich, just not THAT rich".  Which I think pretty much sums it up.

Good job, everyone!

What I Am Doing With My Life.

Whatever I want, no kidding. A friend and I were swigging whiskey into the wee hours at an art opening at Save On Meats the other night, (the air was full of pork), and this friend, who likes to get a bit loud and to the marrow of things, wanted to know my life's ambition. Immediately I said, "I want my own show." So we discussed ways of getting me to New York City to do it. It was exciting, and all future vision, etc. Over the course of the next bits of conversation I twice had realizations and further distilled my life's ambition, arriving finally at "I just want to do my thing." We both understood at the same time that I have actually achieved said ambition and am very happily doing my own thing. We high fived. It was probably four in the morning by then, so we ate the last remaining olives, swigged our last remaining whiskey, and swaggered on out into the Downtown Eastside night, elated with knowing we were in the right place, at the right time.

I Dream I Am A Child

This is a dream I had last night, the one just before waking, and it has not left my body all day long. It came at the end of a long night of dreams of running from riots, of constant motion to stay ahead of danger, and keep my loved ones safe. Of hiding and watching helplessly as suffering and fire erupted all around me. I woke several times, but always fell back into the same dreams. The world, I think, is on fire, and I am feeling such strong empathy for all human creation. Plus, I'm working some of my own demons out. Here is the last dream before waking, and when I woke, I was sobbing.

I am an eight year old child. A black boy. My father is dying. He is my only protection and companion in the world. I lost him, but have found him again, in a small apartment, furnished only with the skinny, wooden platform on which his body lies. There are some remnants of clothing and some garbage bags strewn about the room, the walls are white, and there are tattered bamboo blinds on the windows, which are half closed. A flickering light comes through them, which is hazy, and looks like night, though it is day, because of the smoke. All around us in the streets there are riots, chaos, danger. The shouting and screaming never stops except for the occasional moment, when it seems as if all the souls are taking a collective in breath at the same moment. A small window of opportunity for reflection. It is in one of these moments, when I am lost in the streets and desperate to find my father, that a kind woman points me in the right direction. She tells me he is dying, so I think I am prepared, and she warns me it will happen soon, and I should go straight there, as if I would stop anywhere. Suddenly I find myself in a skinny stairwell, the walls are a dirty green, and the stairs were painted black, but are peeling and rotting in some places. Then I am in his room, with the smoky, orange light, and the flickers of all the flames outside making strange shadow plays on the wall. My father is under a thin blanket, and he does not look sick, but he seems to be disappearing. For a minute I am grateful to be out of the streets, to be somewhere where no one is chasing me, where the threat of violence seems temporarily far away, a background noise. He explains to me that he is dying, that he is on fire from the inside. Then he reaches into himself and begins to pull out his bones, which are made of charcoal, to prove to me that he is burning. I take a bone he hands me and it squeaks and turns to dust in my hand as I squeeze it so tight. I keep it in my fist as my father sits up and I throw myself into his arms, screaming and sobbing, “Daddy, please don’t die. Please don’t go, daddy.” Screaming in his arms, holding his bones in my tiny frame, hearing the squeaking of him as he is turning to charcoal dust in my hands. He holds me that tight, too, and my small frame is overloaded with grief and fear, and the feeling of imminent loneliness.

FIRST WORLD INVENTORY

I just got a new camera. To replace a broken camera. It made me think about all the electronics I have laying around. I dug deep in my brain to see if I could remember what they all are. I am thoroughly disgusted with myself.

4 digital point and shoot cameras
2 Casios, both broken (second one bought to replace first one, which I dropped the first day I had it)
2 Panasonics, one broken (first one bought to replace the 2nd Casio, which I dropped eventually, second purchased to replace the one I dropped on Christmas Day)

1 digital SLR camera, working but complicated beyond my scope and needs

1 35 mm SLR camera, broken (would still like to get this fixed, still miss 35mm)

1 Polaroid Camera (I love it, but hard to find film now, also – not useful for recording comedy sets in any way)

1 Sony video camera (great little video camera, but only has firewire output, and my MacBook does not have a firewire port)

5 (!!!) Cellular telephones
1 LG Telus phone – still works
1 Motorola Telus phone – still works
1 Pantech Telus phone – my all time favourite phone, now discontinued, and wanted to use it when I moved to Fido last month, but it started doing weird things, and then Fido said I had to get one of their phones, anyway.
1 Nokia Fido phone
1 Kyocera phone – my New York number and hands down the worst piece of electronic equipment I have ever used.

1 MacBook Aluminum – love it and excellent, except no Firewire port
1 Mac Powerbook laptop – super old but good for running Final Cut Pro
1 Mac Mini – older model, hand me down and down – ethernet ports don’t work but otherwise solid

1 iPod touch 4
1 iPod shuffle 2nd gen
1 iPod shuffle 1st gen
1 iPod mini – broken, after being dropped

Seemingly hundreds of sundry cords, connectors and chargers for various things. Miles of ethernet and phone cable.

I think that covers it. I just wanted to lay it out in my mind, before I get home and lay it out physically and take pictures. It’s incredible how much electronic equipment I have amassed. This list doesn’t even include speakers, microphones, headphones, electronic instruments…..

The Anonymous Mask of the Internet and the Effects on Humanity

I play Scrabble online. Live and in real time. With real, though anonymous, people. They are from all over the world and play at all different levels. The games are timed and range from 3 minutes per player to much, much longer. Though I tend to stick to the 5-10 minute range. Players have ratings based on their number of wins and losses and the ratings of their opponents. I am rated somewhere amongst the average player, I think. There are several players registered who play in tournaments and such, and are much better than I am, and also care more deeply about winning. You can chat with the person you are playing against if you like, though some players have settings that don't allow for chatting during play, so as to not be distracted. I had never considered setting my play so that I could not be chatted with, but something has changed in the last couple of months. I used to chat with people a bit, or not, and have friendly exchanges. I don't know if something has changed because I am playing faster games, or my rating is getting higher, but lately a number of my opponents have been very obnoxious. I have been routinely accused of cheating when I am winning, have been sworn at, and told to grow up when I suggested that winning wasn't the most important part of play to me. Well, actually, the exchange took place during a very fast game, 3 minutes per side, me with a rating of 1300 and them with a rating of 1500. (Usually the ratings adjustments are 3-7 points up or down per game.) It went something like this: (we are taking turns the whole time and it's fast, so there's probably a word being played every sentence we type)

me: (plays "then" leaving a triple open)
them: (plays "soirees" on the triple) You can't do that to a 1500 player.
me: do what?
them: open a triple like that. they'll pounce on it.
me: oh, well, it's a fast game, so i'm just playing.
them: you don't care about winning?
me: it doesn't particularly bum me out if i don't win.
them: you're an idiot.
me: i am just trying to get better at playing fast games.
them: maybe less chatter would help, idiot.
me: why are you so snide?
them: because it distracts my opponent and makes it easier to win. trashtalking is a big part of winning.
me: whatevs. i am winning at life, so i'm happy.
them: you can't win at life.
me: i can! i am!
them: you can't win at a game for which there are no rules.
me: i love my life, so i am winning!
them: grow up.
me: you grow up. nyah nyah!

This is just one example. I have been called a fucking loser, an asshole, a cheating piece of shit...I have been flamed with dirty names by someone who I wasn't even playing, but who was chatting with someone I had just been playing with who had been calling me names and got their friend to start calling me names, too.

These are people I have never met, I assume, and never will, I also assume. Probably we would never know it even if we did meet. I make lots of assumptions, because I actually get upset when these incidences occur. The assumptions I make are along the unkind lines of deciding these people are lonely, angry, dirty, smelly, ugly shut-ins who are resentful of all the beauty in the world and would like to drag everyone into their own personal little hell. I can see why so many people have decided it's better not to be chatted with while you are playing. I used to have these lovely conversations with people about where we were both from, the weather, sometimes philosophy...but I guess I got better, and now there are petty, competitive sadsacks who have one goal in life - to spread misery.

I am making an effort not to feel the tingle of anxiety and bile when someone I will never know is anonymously mean to me in text over the internet. It's not easy. But, you know something? Blogging about it helps. Is that ironic enough to be hip?

xoRH