NASA's Twin Spacecraft on Final Approach for Moon Orbit

NASA's Twin Spacecraft on Final Approach for Moon Orbit

GRAIL-A is just now slipping into lunar orbit.

GRAIL-B will be arriving tomorrow, New Year's Day, about 2 pm PST.

Then the fun begins. Studying the Moon inside and out. This is simply wonderful stuff.

It's making me want to work on Revisitor. It'll come. Other writing projects are more pressing.

Evil? Moi?

Tonight, I shall be evil.

Yes, after three hundred hours of playing Mister Goody across the vast wastes of my well-enjoyed Game-of-the-Year Fallout 3, tonight I shall start...playing evil.

I haven't completely finished every side quest in the Goody playthrough, not quite. But I've maxed out my stats, acquired more abilities and exotic weaponry than ever I could use. Frankly, it's become boring, inevitably the champion of any fight now. And there's something horrible in my good-character's ability to obliterate even an adversary composed of pixels with a single shot.

I'll return to the Goody game, I will. I am a completionist.

But how now to Be Evil?...Hmmm.

Ugh, if it's as simple and mean as killing every friendly soul my bad-guy comes across, that isn't going to keep me playing more than the weekend. I can see I'll have to reach down inside me, find the evil place. Steal kiddies' teddy bears, perhaps.

That wasn't so hard. Hmmm...I'm somewhat disturbed at the revelation.

Perspective

WOO’HOO! Happy Winter Solstice!

Well, it will be at 9:30 tonight, Vancouver time. Paper lanterns are glowing even now, downtown, within the Dr. Sun Yat Sen Chinese Garden.

I feel like, I dunno, rolling a wheel on fire down a hillside, or something similarly festive.
I’d probably be arrested, though. For being pagan without a permit, perhaps.

No. I’ll remain properly urbanized, unimaginative, unmoved.
Earth may be tilted just so tonight. But I shall sit up straight, behave. I am just finishing off work. Perhaps I’ll flick on an extra light or two, in marking this especially long night, and the sun’s return.
Tomorrow will be 1 second longer. I can imagine summer already!

Right right right. Some folks on our big blue world don’t have to imagine summer. I’m referring to folks some folks might say see things upside down, of course. Really, though, it's a matter of perspective.

Hang on a sec while I Google them…

WOO and HOO, again!
I’d just like to wish folks in currently drizzly and tropical Fiji a very Happy Summer Solstice. Yeah. Wish I was there, too.

Not that I’m stuck here…

O' If I had an Extra Kidney

Among current writing projects I'm hoping to return to, now the weekend's here at last, Saturday groceries gotten, and Christmas gift-hunting done, but for the bills to come, there's Revisitor. A spacey tale. Only the central character doesn't know it at first. It's being re-worked.

Awesome and inspiring spacey photos, such as those from HubbleSite, transport me to a place perfect for pre-writing sci-fi of the spacey kind. I've already saved to the story-inspiring screensaver one spectacular pic released by HubbleSite this week, of nebula Sharpless 2-106, I saw first as a thrilling little video modeling the nebula in 3-D. Shrouded in red glowing dust and gas, and afire inside, it really resembles a nest of stars. Here, stars are born.

Actually, there's one central fierce star firing up the heart of this blue beauty. Also, hundreds of brown dwarf stars, too small to turn on and shine, and surely other stellar curiosities I'd gladly take a long break from the job to go see.

I'd pack extra lunches, of course. And the Thermos. Set the email auto-reply at work...Will be away for a couple thousand light years. And head out immediately.

Only the ship's in the shop, awaiting a drive doohickey, from outta town, as Fred my mechanic put it via telepathy. Ship would also need better shields anyway. Shields aren't cheap, everybody knows that. I'd have to sell another kidney. Left one hasn't grown back yet. So, that's that. I should probably just get a new ship.

Pre-Triggerin'

I’m tapping away at this just to be writing something.

Long day.

Had an idea fully fleshed this morn and zero opportunity to jot any of it down.
It’s gone, of course. Only fragments of remembering I had it this morning.
ALL the chapter.

I’m not going to jot the bits down here. It’d be too messy. I’m about to go home. I’ll map it out, scribble and draw the bits, branch and-or connect whatever. It’s how I re-construct, too often these nights. It can be a better way to work up plot and all, though. Funny thing is the map will probably trigger other ideas, other maps. That wouldn’t have happened this morning, rushing breakfast, hurrying out the door to work.

Early to Rise...Nuthin' t'see

The less said about the entire workweek, and yesterday...night especially, the better. So, to this Saturday morn!

It's cloudy. That's keeping me indoors and tapping this over the keyboard. Somewhere, other than Vancouver, there's a total lunar eclipse happening. Ah well. Any lunar eclipse is only the good Earth passing between sun and moon, anyway. Just a small wow event for the skywatchers.

Right right, I'm a skywatcher. When local skies cooperate.

I'll go visit skywatcher sites around the web later. Do my oohing-aahing then. Have a list of Saturday doings to get at first. And early. I might as well get to the chores, seeing as there isn't anything wow to see...over in the west...as the sun begins to rise in the east.

Charlie Brown Theme (Array Mbira)

I wrote last night. After dinner and friends and over-analyzing someone's American Beauty dvd. I wrote when I got home. I only planned on jotting something, anything. Xbox 360 and Mass Effect lay waiting. Instead, I wrote. Early into Sunday morn, because I could. And...stuff had connected in my brain and it felt like there was no stopping me.

I'm careful not to get in my own way when all my lights are flashing green. I didn't stop me.

Turns out it was Space Week over on Marc's Daily Writing Practice. LAST WEEK. I felt as if I had missed the last ship away. So I wrote him a little something about how I felt about that. IT WAS FUN writing it, too.

---

I'm restarting Revisitor. POV's wrong. I started into it with less idea than Snoopy exactly what the Big Music's all about. It's kinda important I know, at least.

To keep me in the mood for reworking it, and to return me to the right mood, y'know, during the work week, I've picked this reminder, this moodifyin' version of the Charlie Brown theme.

It's being played on an array mbira. Picture the African mbira, plucky thumb piano, flying to California and having a makeover.

Repose

Just fifteen wants I want. One for every day and eve the second half of this past NaNo lost to the job I must love so much I simply couldn't tear myself away from it.

I want rest.

I want to play again, Fallout 3, or Mass Effect, or Dragon Age Origins, or good ol' Morrowind, or just four or five Sudoku, or hunt the skies over Europe in a Hurricane in IL-2 Sturmovik.

I want Protagonize, and to protagonize with protagonizers I know and the new ones I shall meet.

I want my Music Mondays, and Melody Gardot singing Baby I'm a Fool in a bubble bath with her glasses on.

I want those fifteen days back, you hear!

I want a time machine, yeah.

I want to wink back and forth through time and take notes, and snap pictures, and have lots of batteries, a solar charger in my MEC knapsack, and megalo-terrabyte memory cards for the camera, o'yeah.

I want to meet famous people, and be an inexplicable puzzle across history's portraits and black-and-white souvenir snapshots.

I want to be Zelig, or Woody Allen, only taller.

I want to drag young Adolph from 1919 along with me, back-packing India, to broaden his mind, and convince him his future lies in commercial art.

I want a Swiss bank account, which has been amassing interest for as long as those Europeans have been honouring Switzerland's unique standing of neutrality.

I want world peace.

I want something Chinese for dinner tonight.

I want a really nice tea.

I want to write.

LANA DEL REY-VIDEO GAMES

The two obvious side-benefits of saying no to cable tv have been the money saved, and the time gained I might've lost forever to waiting for something good to come on. Just what's Good, of course, is subjective. The greatest benefit has been my return to the radio for more than the mundane, and the weather. Weather always trumps the mundane, I say. But enough about the weather, for now. Let's talk about music immersion the radio has also always been about, from the longago crystal set to the tech-toy marvels of this I-generation.

Actually...no, music immersion is probably too big a subject for tackling this moment, past two in the morning. Let's just say I've been listening all around the radio dial, and to a lot of music. As in to all the world'ful of music. Including my eclectic collection of CDs. I've been, metaphorically speaking here, in a comfy bath of music up to the ears. And happy as a clam, to mishmash the image further.

I Revisitor popped into existence as a result of a fusion of single meaningful scene meets mind-mapping during an afternoon of perhaps a little too much Bob Marley. The story's on current hold. I have it all plotted. It'll be great, when I can do it right. But I don't like the first-person present-tense POV. It needs re-thinking. That's going to have to wait. NaNoWriMo has priority. That is the NaNo project has whatever time remains available that I don't have to put in with the day-early-eve-job. And the job's going to stay busy through New Year's.

All that aside now. A particularly lovely song floated through me in my metaphorical bath last week, again tonight, during a UK Hits show on local radio in Vancouver. I caught the artist's name tonight. Lana Del Rey. Her voice lifted me one whole inch higher in my aforementioned bath. I haven't digested Video Games enough to explain the song's meaning. I only know I like it. And will be listening for more from Lana Del Rey.

Prelude

I'm moving. My neighbourhood Real Canadian Superstore. I'm moving in, I've decided.

Superstore's got everything I might conceivably want in a home. Home furnishings, for instance. Bedding, comfy pillows. And pillow cases. Even lawn furniture. Yes, lawn furniture. For the bright someday lawn perhaps not abused by nocturnal dog-walkers as a pet toilet.

I digress. Reality intruded there. Reality, inconsiderate humans, and slave-jobbin' in a world-class city shall this crisp bright Saturday gain no more mental ground for sprouting their strangling weedlings.

Where was I? Moving into the Superstore. I'm packing, just as soon as this is tapped out.

I know where I'll be dining tonight. The Superstore! Food? Oh sure they have food. Fresh greens. Other colours, too. And exotics, from places around the world I've only dreamed of visiting. You want canned, packaged, frozen? Superstore's got 'em, sure. You want your dinner...alive, before you dispatch it, dish it, dine upon it? There's the aquarium. Well, okay, a Seafood Section. Tilapia and rainbow trout in tanks, headed into the current off the aerator and all going nowhere. Crustaceans and crabs, flexing their rubber-banded claws. And shellfish from the intertidal zone. It's as educational as the Vancouver Aquarium, really. Every show's no charge admission. I'm so glad tourists haven't heard about it.

Hey, but save room for dessert. Possibly the best part of any dining experience, the dessert. Cummon, admit it. Cake, cookies, confections, Superstore's sure to please any sweet tooth. I might sit down...no, lounge...I might lounge tonight, after whatever dinner's gonna be, and treat myself to four litres of Neapolitan ice cream. And a wafer cone.

Changed my mind. Popcorn, from aisle 20. Ginger ale from 3. They're currently looping Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 2 on the big screen in the Electronics department at Superstore. I will definitely roll the lounger over.

Now, to packing. Maybe also a little hammering away at the NaNo fantasy before I head over. I'm in the mood now.

Remembrance Day, 2011

Today isn't the day for anti-war rants about the causes.

"Causes ain't goin' away. I can rant about 'em tomorrow just as easy." That's me being funny, not disrespectful.

Today is for Remembering. And for a lament. I like this particular version, the lament in a wild desolate place.

---

I haven't served. I was only ever a cadet, back in the Cold War days. It was like boy scouts, occasionally with FN semi-automatic rifles. We spent summers in the Okanagan, at Vernon, the army camp above the town. Map and compass work. Lots of marching. Fond memories. But one stands out.

North of Vernon, out a week on dusty Glenemma, where tankers rolled around and gunners fired their Howitzers, at the end of one day we marched back to camp in the pines, aware other companies were watching. For those eyes watching, we marched in column, pretty as a picture behind our company pennant.

Our column began to split, from the head of it. Boys in green stepping left and right, like hikers sidestepping cow pies. Glenemma had lots of cow pies. I reached the spot where we were parting. I saw why. The dark shining curve of something we all assumed unexploded, probably a dummy round, showing in the dusty track between our marching feet.

Anyway, I never joined up Canada's regular forces. I out-grew cadets, in time became a regular in Vancouver's Peace Marches.

My dad's dad served his country in the First Great War. He's been gone a decade. I loved him. We didn't get around to talking about his war experiences. He was an unquestioning patriot to his country. I was and remain one who questions such blind faith. Had we talked, I'm guessing it would have been a superficial one. I have his medals. They're in the fire-safe, they mean that much to me. They're service medals, only that. Base metal, with ribbon attached. However, I know history. I can imagine some of what he experienced.

I've stopped counting the days without cable tv. Old tv, no dtv to analog whatzit, on antenna only, can pull in Vision. Amusing.
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I CAN SEE! Yup. VISION, heh. Old tv can pick up whatever channel Survivor's on, too. When the weather's okay.
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I've made friends with the radio again. Wander the internet, too. But I've missed those nature shows. Fixed that today.
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Superstore had to show something...WOW on display tvs, heh. They showed BBC Planet Earth. I lingered, long, before the beauty.
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I saw bits of BBC Planet Earth maybe last year, during Saturday morn groceries getting. Superstore's electronics. Wall o'tvs!
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Sis's giftcard, and worthwhile little Mastercard extra. I didn't the original series when it aired. I did see bits, tho,
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I got it! BBC Planet Earth 6-disc Special Edition. Future Shop during lunch. Used birthday gift card from sis.
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Kate Bush - Wild Man - radio edit still video

I've been waiting a lonnng time for any new Kate Bush.
Wild Man's here.
50 Words for Snow will be coming November 29th.

Fuel

Mine ALL MINE.
Mwaahhhaahaa.
These should keep my inner NaNoWrimo monster happy past midnight tonight.

Monster need munchie.
I need to finish plotting whatever the story’s gonna be. And write the first anything before bed.

Yeah. I’m goin’ for it again this year.

V for Vancouver - Daytrippin' Occupy Vancouver

Went Saturday to Occupy Vancouver, hoping to witness and participate in a V for Vendetta kinda happening. Peaceful. Determined. Y'know, the needs of the many...et cetera, and our collective willing of substantial change to benefit all...simply winning out. Greed lifts its snout from the trough, shakes itself alert, sees reason and with a genuine smile mutters, "Oh. Sorry, slave." Happy beginnings all around.

Could happen. BC electorate squashed the HST. We did do that, for better or worse, depending on whose spin catches media attention.

That's enough politics. Need my weekend.

I, Revisitor got Featured over on Protagonize. Am smiling BIG over that. Have to go there, say Thanks. Ghost about and read some too. And work up chapter 4. Have been having too much fun with chapter 5 and plotting.

Done enuf marchg. Been countd, i guess. On bus homewdbound. Feel...good. Realistic, tho. Missd seeing mr v. Transit =$dinner.
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Iphones. Starbucks cup underfoot. 5bucks is it? Corps aint quakin, not so long as we keep buyin +they see profits.
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Sea of heads smilg folk. Monkeymind signs sway tho evry issue. Am cynical old enuf have seen this hope bfore. Still gotta hope
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Hear pktradio riots roma denver. Vpd polite wary. Starbucks on radio re wrldcoffee crop sustainability. Cant eat coffee
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Am at vag occupyvan.noisy.families kids feelsgud like peacemarches of old.on move.
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Digital Apocalypse...Day 15

It's been two weeks since the Digital Apocalypse swept Canada. Two weeks. Am remembering I had every channel at breakfast. Checked news and traffic. Weather Network. Ten minutes of Sandy Dennis making her way Up the Down Staircase on Turner Classic Movies, before heading for work. Home again after sundown, after work, the teevee universe had gone dark.

Thursday night, two weeks ago. None of my fiddlings and positionings of rabbit-ears, of omni-directional bargain-bin antenna scavenged in the spring, none of it pulled in more than a single channel, CHEK 6, from Vancouver Island. And it appeared to be snowing heavily there. Possibly high on the Malahat.

It felt just exactly like an ending of something would feel like. The stars extinguished in a blackening universe. Yes, the Digital Apocalypse sweeping Canada. I was alone, sudden'like, isolated in the unnatural heart of the, um, world's n'th most livable city (downgraded as of August — Darn you, Malahat![Shakes fist]).

---

Am not a victim, no. No. Had canceled Shaw cable before summer. In the spring, Shaw had switched off some channels I'd paid for, said they had gone Digital, said I'd need a for-now free wee box if ever I wanted to see those channels again. They sounded like kidnappers, Heh. And I didn't like the word NEED. NEED smelled of weakness of character, and stubborn is my main flaw, and I won't negotiate with kidnappers. Shaw didn't switch off immediately, though, 'Bless 'em. Maybe Shaw figured I'd be back. Maybe Shaw figured it an unnecessary effort, to turn off one party-poopin' NTSC luddite when the Great Analogue Cut-Off in a single efficient sweep would switch off the thousands of us who wished to chance Canada's digital future without NEED of Shaw services* and the wee box.

* Along with Shaw, add Telus, Rogers, Bell. Am visualizing them all, imagining the CRTC hosted Labour Day long weekend barbecue. Beer and burgers. And clapping all around for the great job of turning Canada's airwaves pay-per-view.

Am not boasting: I could have afforded to go ATSC, to pay, to continue to see their idea of the teevee universe. I'm stubborn when it comes to being force-fed, though; also count my pennies; I've chosen not to join the party.

But what about Canadians who cannot afford to pay? I hate to say a word against [Fanfare] Vancouver, world's n'th most livable city, but there are folks, living in the heart of post-Olympics Here, who not only couldn't afford to go to the warmest winter Oly' ever, they also cannot afford to pay for tv they used to see for free over rabbit ears, over [gasp] rooftop fishbones.

Information, at its best, is also education. Am only wondering if this Digital Apocalypse also heralds the beginning of a separation: There'll be Canadians not in the information loop. And how can the CRTC see that a good thing? Why can't Marshall McLuhan step from behind a theatre curtain and save the day, Heh?

---

That, above, is more wordy than I intended. It says what's on my mind, though.
Am doing fine, gleaning news, entertainment, and interesting bits from internet and around the radio dial. Just the same as folks did before teevee.
Radio, I mean.
They didn't have internet.
They probably just talked to their neighbours. Real chat rooms, that kinda thing. Tea and cakes, too.

Digital Apocalypse...Day 5

Was eating my Labour Day breakfast. Also trying to polish the blog draft I've been picking at since Saturday. Doing all one-handed. So spooning away at my oats in milk. Being careful not to spill over the keyboard. One finger holding down SHIFT for capitalizing. One finger going for P for Probably. And [cuss cuss] Windows decided to activate StickyKeys!

Okay. Read the pop-up explanation. Yes, Thanks, much, really. Not in the final stages of a time sensitive project. CANCEL.

Didn't cancel.

Held down SHIFT again. Duplicating what I did. Explanatory pop-up returned. Careful didn't fix it and it was déjà vu all over again.

It was a blur after that. Trying to clear multiple documents The Machine wouldn't allow me to de-select. I surrendered to the moment, reasoned that reason wasn't much use before breakfast and should take one step back, yeah, that's good. Emotion obliterated evolution. And wonderfully, as it turned out. I had tapped into something powerful, perhaps always there, in our 21st Century collective human soul, waiting in a dark corner. Perhaps I used the Force. Or perhaps one of my opposable thumbs tapped the correct canceling key in the correct sequence.

---

Now Saturday's blog draft feels...too late. It was timely at the time. I'll just post the nice bits then and be done with it. Maybe. It was intended, perhaps, to begin a series of posts...My Life Without Cable TV, A Survivor's Diary, something like that. Humorous. Exploratory. Possibly even daily. Just imagine all the writing exercise I might benefit from from posting a thing DAILY.

Anyway. Apart from the time used up by my job, I'm fully expecting to discover scads of other-time now for actually writing, now that I've said No to cable tv. Said No to all that stuff I'd never watch. It was the right time, too. Am planning to experiment some, discover, and re-discover information options in the age after free teevee. Am sayin' it's free when you can pull it out of the air with a coat hanger. Can't do that any longer, unless a wave of the hand can transform the old electronic fireplace, from NTSC to ATSC. The Great Analogue Cut-Off has swept Canada, you see. And the Digital Apocalypse is banging at our doors. They'd like to sell you DTV.

Actually. That, above, is better than the draft. 'Figures. Okay, done.

'Wonder what's on the radio?

Perseids...or SpaceWeather Radio

Perseids meteor shower is peaking. The BEST night sky show, most years. Fortified by thermos o'tea, I've lounged in rooftop lawn chair, oooh'd and aaah'd into many a dawn.

Most years. Tonight, I'll need the moon lotion. Until the clouds roll over. Just about Go time, if Environment Canada's oracles have seen it right. Shootin' star viewing is further likely to be hampered by precipitation pattering upon the eye before dawn Sunday.

Ah well. There's always SpaceWeather Radio. An audio stream off the U.S.A.F. Space Surveillance Radar in Texas. Eerie radar pings and echoes off...whatever happens to whiz overhead.

Intro...Nat

Introducing...this guy. 'Suppose an introduction is in order. Yes, the guy from this very space in cyberspace last week. The same guy painted high on my imaginary apartment wall, over the framed summer morn in a kayak. Am naming him Nat.

He's a natural guy, y'see, a...nature man. No, Nature Man sounds as if he should be at heroic doings with his spear. Prodding plodding politicians and poking polluters, perhaps. He's just Nat. Nobody's hero. Only an example of humankind I'd like to re-connect with. The back-to-basics kinda guy, following his true nature. Nat never would sell his days for a pay-cheque. Nat's on the trail of all his dreams. And daydreams.

Nat simply happened, last week. I had prehistoric Lascaux on the brain and could never have rendered an ice-age horse. I could draw Nat. Wanted to, even. Nat was fun, easy. Nat might have been waiting ten thousand years for me to paint him on a computer with a wonky mouse, he happened so effortlessly.

Cannot say the same for the handprint...which isn't there, nope. I couldn't do it right. Spitting mouthfuls of pigment over my hand would've worked just fine for leaving my mark on rock. Not so well on a monitor.

I feel like drawing Nat for a while.

First 100 Words

I like Saturday mornings. Wish every morning was Saturday morning. Unlike those other used-up mornings, Saturday morning is all potential. All is possible. Anything might happen. The first one hundred words, perhaps.

For me, most Saturday morns begin with groceries shopping, the urban human's nod to the ancient need to hunt down dinner. Only I am pushing a shopping cart. And the ground beef is easier prey. Have an inexplicable hankering now to fingerpaint the apartment walls like Lascaux: the hunt for the great ground beef, its one-pound pieces across the freezer case, and my hand print.

Heh, Yes, Saturday morning groceries-gettin'. I've become fond of going the couple of miles east to the Superstore. There's the hunt, already mentioned. Just as useful, because on occasion I write, is the Saturday morning opportunity for people-watching. Useful, for the research. People-watching also is non-fattening, free entertainment.

Saw the expected this morning. People ignoring the mostly vacant parking lot away from the store: the resultant gridlock of too many cars and not enough parking at the store front. And folks chattering away on cell phones as they shopped.

And some really quite personal chatter, y'know. Hey, I don't consider it eavesdropping when someone decides to chatter private matters, in a public place, and loudly enough this weekend writer hungry for research can hear them from the next aisle over. They're lucky I'm discreet.

Did spot one scene. It happened before me like a scene. Like something that might work in sci-fi. The bluetooth flashing ear-bug directing a fit-looking fellow in unnecessarily bright beach shorts and t-shirt along the pasta aisle.

---

It is a nice sunny Saturday out, too. I'd like the beach...

Beach Day - Scratch That

Went out yesterday, believing a change of scenery and gut'ful of fresh sea air might do me good. Perhaps be, as it were, the flashing saber, and shear the cork end off my bottled up writing ambitions. Yeah, no, flashing the fresh scenery was, and distracting, as it turned out.

Swung by the mall first. I was multi-tasking: there was an hour and half until the tide would be as I like it; I had window shopping in mind, and one chore. Dealt with the chore: renewed auto insurance. Quickly visited HMV, EB games; Indigo Books, when I spotted it, an actual bookstore I could not walk past.

My all-time fave bookstore disappeared years ago: replaced by an Apple Store, and not mmm'tasty non-trademarked apples either.

Anyway. Exited Indigo Books with two jewels. Brit Lit, both. Terry Pratchett's, The Colour of Magic (Enjoyed Mr. Pratchett's Night Watch: wanted to begin DiscWorld from the beginning). Neil Gaiman's, NEVERWHERE (Urban alienation, and horror, and He's...Neil Gaiman: and I liked his recent add to the Doctor Who canon).

I proceeded to the beach.

Multi-tasking was my undoing, I see now.

Kayak'd, just the hour allotted. Reviewed notes, but I kept seeing rippling sun-dappled water, and wanted to kayak more than the hour allotted. Restarted reviewing notes, but there was all that unfamiliar beachy scenery. Cars and girls on bikes and people and cars and thundering trucks all flashing by. And the kayak, just there. Began reading NEVERWHERE, because I didn't feel like reviewing nor scribbling more than a few notes. Then hit the sun'headache from squinting at the beachy scenery. Or maybe from trying too hard. After lunch, when I'd sucked dry the two juiceboxes of non-trademarked apple, I packed, went home.

No, not the fun and productive beach day I'd envisioned.

Today, this afternoon, I'm home and happy at screen and keyboard, currently doing but one thing, and in pleasantly unstimulating surroundings.

Crosshairs

Sheba's a pan-dimensional pirate, foot to the floor, taking all she can from this shade world, while she remains here. Soul harvester. Loving the swing and swerve of this place. Of the clumsy machine she acquired. Air reeking of sour brimstone. Wailings of the damned.

Her disguise slips but briefly. Glimpsed horns. Nasty grin, all teeth. She isn't concerned. No one ever believes the horror they've seen.

She re-composes her mask, removes her one eye from the flatworlder road, relishes the slow thumping of her heart, and checks new email. The buyer willing to sign, his life, his children's, for the cramped box in the sky.



Okay, so it's only my artistic impression of what the entity perhaps be. Am on vacation, at last, y'see. Needed a free writing exercise.

BC's HST...Yeah, Yes Means...No

Ahhh, that felt good. Needed a good, long laugh tonight, at the close of another work week. Trust government to make Yes mean No. And, yes, now No means Yes. Yeah.

And on Vancouver Island, at least one mischievous naysayer (who is really saying "Yes, this tax is a good thing) has been changing Yes signs to No. Amusing little corner of the world, this.

I will find a big brown envelope, when it's time to carry my multi-enveloped ballot out for mailing. Just to be extra extra safe. Y'know.

Herald of Tranquility

I've become...da'da'da'daaa...the Herald of Tranquility. In Fallout 3, that is. Karmic leaning: Good. Aye, am a do-gooder by nature, wanting to bring about only Good Things to a ruined land (on my first playthrough). Have max'd my useful skills. Level'd 27 of the 30 available in the Game of the Year Edition. And become adept enough I no longer must kill if I'm to survive some hostile encounter. For y’see I have grown weary of massacring creatures and people, even though they be fantastical and make-believe.

Last night, I pardoned myself from the questing. From the killing. Stowed away the unnecessaries in my Megaton home. Geared on the bare necessaries. A scope…for wildlife observation: silenced Infiltrator assault rifle happens to be attached to the scope. And vicious Man-Opener, should ever I be cornered. Donning the Chinese stealth armour, I headed northwest over the Capital Wasteland. Because I hadn't seen much of the northwest.

Ghoul mask, too, right right. I did not forget to bring along the ghoul mask. Possibly the most useful disguise: convinces ghouls the wearer is one of them, and ghouls remain calm and non-hostile. I don’t want to kill ghouls I don’t have to. Post-Apocalyptia has been hard enough on them: I don’t want to kill them to clear my way, or for the small keepsakes of their former human existence.

Didn’t wander too far last night. Ignored the slavers of Paradise Falls. For last night. I squatted on a high rock in the wilderness, stealth’like, watched a pair of deathclaws, from a distance. Essentially, deathclaws are velociraptors. Was able to sneak close by them, undetected. They trod about, here to there and back. No, they didn’t forage: they’re a program. Still, it felt as thrilling as birdwatching, and surviving. Deathclaws aren’t so bad, so long as they don’t sense you’re there.

There is this question I’d like to answer myself. Scattered throughout Fallout 3 are these ham radios, hissing only static. I've also sighted radio transmission towers here, there. I’m curious if there’s a correlation. I do not want to go searching the Fallout forums about it. I feel like playing cartographer for a while. And naturalist. And kill nothing.

On The Bright Side...

Saw my first swallow of the season today.
It barrel-rolled twice across the noonday sun.
Inspiring enough that I might play IL-2 Sturmovik tonight before bed.

What am I thinking? It's bedtime already.

Did a goodly lot of mind-mapping and outlining tonight.
Saw clearly the darker middle of the NaNo project.
Can see all the puzzle pieces fitting into place to the end.

But it's bedtime.
Maybe a little Fallout 3. Half an hour of exploring.

Happy Earth Day...um, Earth

Lamp post will be next.
Just watch.
Even though a green lamp post.
Perhaps it's not 'green' enough.
The tree was green.
And greening, every day greening more.
Look what happened to the tree.

Seriously...?

Ohh. Yeah. Whatever.

Sometimes it's best just to laugh.

Had to chuck all the blog writin' exercise I was planning on posting here. I'd tapped together a decent paragraph o'humourous rant, about the glacial progress of municipal tree pruning: all while chomping down this morning's breakfast oats. Before heading out for groceries. And tankful of western Canadian gasoline pricier per litre than fine paperbag wine.

But am a stickler for detail, for simply telling the thing right as I can.

I've seen things...since breakfast.

Facts have changed. The rant wouldn't have been right in its details. Fixing the rant would've been more work than fun. And I need fun. I've worked enough. I'd rather write, or play, than work, or rant. Seriously.

Gotta Bad Feeling About This...

The No-Parking-We's-Prunin' signs have been up all the past week.

Nothing has happened.

Not yet.

Or better to say...the only thing happening is the trees haven't noticed, have gone on greening over.

Am keeping one eye open.

And an ear...You might guess what I mean. Listening for chainsaws.

If five cherry trees fall in Vancouver, will they make a sound?

Earth Hour: My Way

How's this for one way to observe Earth Hour: Go out, watch the stars come out after sunset, and need no light at all?

That was my plan last night. But it was cloudy. Still, it was pleasant, west of Vancouver Airport by the sea. Planes came and went. A heron, like a still life, waited over something in the marsh at Iona. The colour dimmed from the world.

I've got a hand-crank pocket radio: crank the handle, charge the internal battery, great for living off the grid. It has a single LED flashlight, too. I used it to find my way from the marsh back to where I'd parked. No, the flashlight wasn't really necessary. I can see fine in the dark when there's a big bright airport one mile south. The handcrank-powered flashlight was to prove a point.

Lights Out

They banned the incandescent lightbulb here, did you know? It was called an evil thing and banned. And the ban was thought so good a thing, and forward-thinking, BC's Provincials enacted it rather quietly around the New Year.

The ban applied to power-wasting higher wattage bulbs, the 75's, the 100-watters. I'd never heard of a 75-watter. I've only ever burned 60's: from the day I fledged, and buying lightbulbs became my own grown-up responsibility. Retailers ran out of stock for every useful watter, though. A post-New-Year lightbulb buying frenzy, apparently. Some shops posted signs, cited the Government edict. Then filled the shelves with compact fluorescent lamps. I won't use CFLs. Never again.

It's March end. The more-useful 60-watt incandescent lightbulbs have returned to shop shelves. At double the previous price.

I must mention something unsettling I heard, over and over, during my winter's odyssey in search of golden lightbulbs. From people I met at bare shop shelves. Most had no inkling a CFL contained toxic mercury, and when dead should properly be disposed of. None knew where to bring them. All had known CFLs that had died early deaths. All had simply tossed the duds in the garbage.

I can't say which is scarier. A lake of mercury pooling beneath the landfill. Politicians whooping it up, riding the Eco-Yada-Yada bandwagon.

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Am offering this. For the writing exercise of doing this, I'll admit, yes. Also, more importantly, because I've always cared, I'm offering this in observance of Earth Hour. Y'know, the annual symbolic eco-green-hug-fest.

I can see it already. Tonight's late night news. People. Well-meaning people. Masses of people texting, posting pix, You-Tubing video, and calling it good, switching off the light and each burning a smoking candle all of one hour.

SuperMoon'd

It was a supermoon earlier Saturday night, magnified even larger at moonrise through the thicker lens of Earth's atmosphere above the eastern horizon.

It's 1:30 Sunday morning. Bars and clubs are letting out. Wildlife howls under the moon. Under lamplight.

This Space Reserved for Anti-Nuke Polemic

Or maybe the next space up.
If I like this space as is.
But one of these spaces will definitely hold a polemic, of the No-Nuke kind.
Once I'm done editing the rant out of it.
It should be a polite polemic, probably, I suppose.
Oh, and witty.
Witty's a good thing in any polemic.
And politeness.
Laughs all around and nobody has to feel bad about ploppin'down simmering nuclear kettles in earthquake zones.
Funny word...ploppin'down.

Banana. A Question.

Okay, so there's a ban on cell-phone use while driving. Texting while driving. Changing a sweater.

What about…eating a banana?

On the drive in to work this morning. Reddish Pathfinder brushed past a silver Mercedes. Pathfinder driver was eating a banana. And doing 70 kilometres per hour on the slowing-down curve of southbound off-ramp into flood-prone Richmond.

Had to toss in ‘Flood-prone’ because I liked the sound of it.

Back to the human munching his breakfast banana while single-handedly piloting his ton and a half o’Pathfinder. Only I’m wondering how he peeled his banana. Oh, of course. Of course. Human. Adaptable animal, the human. Sometimes even clever. Descended from monkey. Fitting word: monkey.

Eww. So he must’ve been driving with shoes and socks off then.