Insomnia

My job has a very odd shift. I work at two-thirty in the afternoon. This would seem to be awesome on paper, as me sleeping in is a gross abuse of the term. I mean, who can't make it in to work in the afternoon? It's not like I have any kind of grounds for an excuse if I'm somehow late for two freakin' thirty in the afternoon! "Uhh, I um... slept in." That just wouldn't wash...Unfortunately, it's really thrown my sleep schedule out of whack. I'm really not tired late at night or in the early morning anymore when I should be sleeping. I mean, theoretically, if I wanted eight hours of sleep (which is overly generous) and still wanted some wiggle room, I could sleep at four a.m. and wake up by noon. And so, I find myself doing a lot of thinking late at night, looking at my life, looking at myself, and whiling away the time with various entertainments (of which I have a lot, trust me) My backlog of amusements is so bad I forget what I have sometimes and never get around to watching this DVD or playing that game. I waste more time debating what to do than actually doing it some nights. Presently, I'm munching my way through a box of Girl Guide cookies. I wasn't paying attention in the mall and got cornered, and how can you say no to a little kid in a uniform? Vile pixies blink their puppy dog eyes and the next thing you know you're walking away with six boxes. Brilliant marketing strategy if ever there was one..do you want to refuse them in public? Suddenly mothers are pelting you with rotten vegetables and little old ladies are whacking the heartless man's shins with their canes. I think I avoid sleep as much as possible because when it does come, it's rarely ever restful. The dreams come, and they fade away so quickly upon waking, but the vaguely unsettling feeling in my gut tells me they weren't about fields of cotton candy and rivers of spice. At least I don't have an ulcer yet, so far as I know (knock on wood).

Oh Brother...

Tomorrow is my brother's birthday. He is twenty-seven, and that makes my thirty seem all the wearier...it's a cliche but the time certainly does fly. It seems like just the other day he was a little baby robbing my three-and-a-1/2 year old self of precious attention. To reward himself, this morning he went to his first outdoor paint-ball excursion, though it's definitely not his first time to dance by any means, they've just all been indoors up to this point. Apparently, it's a very different experience. He spent quite a lot of time preparing his gear "for deployment", as he says. Over the past month and a half or so, he's become quite the paint-ball ubersonderkommando. For this special occasion, he bought a crapload of gun upgrades intended to increase his lethality (at least on paper). From his account, it appears that he got his ass pwned big time. I don't imagine running around the green and brown woods in midnight black fatigues had anything to do with it. Needless to say, he will be investing in some decent camo gear very soon. But he had a lot of fun, and the weather cooperated with a really beautiful day, so at least he got the fun and the exercise. Later that evening, we went to Montana's for dinner but I didn't have that much of an appetite. It looks like beef rib leftovers for work tomorrow...Anyway, his present obsession has gone so far as to purchase an official Tony Hawk helmet cam to tape his games. As soon as I get my hands on it, I can think of all sorts of fun and practical applications. For example, I could tape it to my head and record my typical day in a very documentary, cinema verite tone. Or I could mount it on my dashboard and record a drive somewhere, oh, like work or the mall. Then I could post these undoubtedly boring videos on YouTube and be ever so famous...hmm, if only I could fasten it to a very large bird and let it go, only I suppose there'd be the issue of retrieving the camera. The large family of Canada geese at work would do. I hate it when they decide to march their family across the only access road in a very long, drawn-out single file line. I mean, I'm not so heartless as to run them over, you know. But they're sooo slow, just ambling across with all the time in the world. They're not even afraid of you in your car. Ah, those wacky antics of theirs...

Happy Victoria Day

It's supposed to be the 24 weekend, as the kids say these days, but Victoria Day is one of those strange holidays that falls on a particular day rather than a date, which is odd when you consider that it's supposed to be commemorating Queen Victoria's birthday. Accordingly, you would imagine that she knew very well the definite date that her birthday fell on; but no, Victoria Day is like the third Monday of May, go figure. Yes, in other words it's actually gone and past as of last Monday the 21st. It is not unlike Labour Day in that regard, but at least they're both an excuse to blow some sh#t up, by which I mean fireworks. The fireworks magically appear from the extradimensional warehouse they've been sitting in all year, then come Tuesday they're all illegal again and poof! they're gone to the same place Christmas CDs go until next year. So I had a really long weekend, which for me is really saying something. As in, a four day weekend as opposed to three...at some point, that will become the week rather than the weekend...four days is more than half the week, after all. I didn't do too much, mostly relaxed (maybe a little too much, such a waste of time sleeping) and while on the one hand it's a nice break, it's also time I am not working and therefore not making money. That is not so good. Ah well, c'est la vie...

It's no webline, but it'll do...

Well, after this experience I think I have some small approximation of what Spider-Man must feel like every day swinging around Manhattan. With great power must come great responsibility, after all...although I'm more of the "crush your enemies, drive them before you, and hear the lamentations of their women" school of thought these days...although I must admit the world does look awful pretty from up there. How deceiving that is...

Michael Bay, eat your heart out...

Here I am going all tactical, fast-roping out of an ominously hovering Blackhawk, tightly gripping my Heckler & Koch MP5A3, filthy brown tangos centred in my reflex sights...gotta teach 'em freedom isn't free (cue thrashing guitar riff)...

The bullseye

Yesterday was one of our periodic team building days at work. What that pretty much entails is closing down the library for the entirety of the morning and running out back to the day camp to roast marshmallows, climb trees, etc. This year we came to the rather interesting group consensus of the group swing and archery. I must admit that upon first seeing the group swing I was a little unnerved as it is high...around 35 feet high at it maximum apex. See, it requires other people to hoist you up to whatever height you desire (to that maximum of course) at which point you take a deep breath, nervously eye the carabiners and ropes and trust in their reputed strength (a couple of school buses I am told), and then pull the catch and release yourself (as the final insult in case you do die, I suppose). What happens next is a very interactive physics lesson as you swing around like a horrified pendulum and the earth rushes towards you. Centripetal force takes over at some point and you start spinning in a circle with the rhythm of the earth, and it's actually quite soothing. I suppose I liked it, although I don't think it's something I feel the need to repeat on, say, a daily basis. At least I threw my hat in the ring, as not everyone actually tried this experience.
Next came some archery. Now, I would like to take a moment to express my respect for various famous archers of the past, both real and fictitious: William Tell, Robin Hood, Green Arrow, Hawkeye, all English/Welsh longbowmen circa Hundred Years' War period, and every single one of the Khan's (Genghis, Kublai, Ogadai, it's all good) Mongol horse archers. I have a deep and newfound respect for what they all do (or did) naturally on a daily basis as effortlessly as breathing. I am, alas, not as skilled as they are/were. This is understandable as a properly trained archer practiced daily for hours...from a very young age...with progressively larger bows as they matured. On the occasion that we happen to unearth their remains their skeletons have markedly more developed bones in their drawing arms, that is the measure of their resolve. They worked that side out to the extent that one arm was noticeably larger than the other. Think about that. Now that having been said, I am nowhere near that good, obviously. But I never missed or overshot the target, fortunately, although I didn't pop any balloons...oh well. I cannot fathom the amount of dedication required to hit such targets whilst moving, much less on rapidly galloping horseback. So I salute them.

Matters of housekeeping...bookend one

I, like many millions of others, keep a MySpace profile kicking around for farts and giggles, among other reasons. I was keeping a blog there as well, so in the interests of continuity and ensuring that my very potent vitriol reaches as wide an audience as possible, to say nothing of my scintillating wit and powerful intellect (yeah right), I am going to repost that archive here as well. The dates may not make any sense, and the content may confound, but I hope there's some palatable bits in this verbal fruit salad I'm about to serve up. That would be everything prior to "A grand experiment", for those interested in such minutiae.

A grand experiment

Recently, the library in which I work has decided to take advantage of my fresh, young, eager junior status to pile on the special projects deep and thick, hopefully before I get all jaded and indifferent like the old-timers. I can't say that I really mind, as: a) it does keep me busy on quiet evenings and b) it helps to pad out my semi-monthly activity reports so that it looks like I'm useful, nay, indispensable come salary negotiation time (ahem). In that vein, I am currently under standing orders to examine the fine art of blogging in all its many wondrous facets. They are thinking of publishing a campus wide organ of the state through which to disseminate that which needs to be disseminated, chastise that which needs to be chastised, kudos where kudos is due, etc. Their schemes and visions are indeed wondrous to behold, no?

As part of this initiative, I have decided to start one of my own as merely one of many phases in the grand experiment of my life. For various reasons which should become clear, I have spent the last few years as a shell of a person. I have existed, in that life has gone on and I have gone through its motions, but I have not lived in the true sense of the word. The human mind has some funny (and merciful, I guess) ways of coping with extreme trauma, and oddly enough I think I've blacked out most of the year 2004. I tell you all this honestly so that you, gentle reader (and I hope there are some of you out there), might understand where I am coming from in order to understand where I am and, hopefully, where I am going. I've found it somewhat therapeutic to write all this sort of thing down lately, to leave this baggage here on the printed (virtual) page rather than harbour it in my soul. At any rate, there's no names or salient details to incriminate anyone so no harm done, although I suppose you could piece it all together if you knew me and knew what I was talking about. And that's fine with me; those who know, know, and those who don't can still learn a thing or two. And the kings and shadows continue to wheel in the night sky...