Graphikty Truckin'

Couldn't get back to this 'til the day after.

[Whispers] The j-o-b, as always, or seems so.

Lucky, I suppose, busy workdays yesterday and today, that I got to post the prettified truck pic when I did. Can't say what I had in mind, as in comments, to go along with it. Whatever...the thought was gone by day's end.

Suppose I'm making do. As the artist did: found himself a canvas, or wall. Though I thought there was some sorta code, among graffitists, not to illustrate private property. Well, maybe artist and driver of the rolling art shook hands on some deal. Might happen, in a world perfect as this.

Saturday...Half Empty, or Full?

It doesn't feel it, still this is perhaps the most productive first half of any Saturday I've had in weeks.

Usual Saturday morning chores already done. Groceries gotten, and put away. Bills paid, online and effortlessly, and banking records recorded. Laundry's laundered, too, and all the rest of it's no longer in my way: the accumulated domesticana I hadn't time for all this workweek.

Even done, the correspondence not related to Protag, the blog, writin' projects. While the day was young and my head clear, three emails composed and sent to family and one remote friend scattered around the geography.

Still, it doesn't feel totally satisfying, nooo. It feels like desk-clearing, that spent away half the day. Now that I've done the chores part of Saturday, I'm all too aware it is a Saturday. And the sun's out...out there.

Beauty where U Find It...Aw, it's only because I can't abide untitled stuff

I have no idea what to...blog about. Don't especially wanna think. Been thinking all week. Tired of thinking. Tired of work. Wanna write. Play. Go...somewhere. Go nowhere. Don't even wanna jab at that Canada Line, easy tho it'd be to. Or maybe I do.

Spotted more Canada Line hilarity this morning, y'see, returning from grocery shopping along Kent Avenue. Drizzly Saturday. The calm before the return to work storm, I'm antici...pating, after this Labour Day long weekend, when commuters will demonstrate reality. Many of their bus routes simply gone, or re-routed. All those souls being routed to feed this. This unifying snake. Effective on Monday, the only way across the river between two swarms of population. Compelled aboard two-car trains. Now a brain might anticipate, and increase the frequency of rush-time trains: say, from a train every four minutes, to every...two.

I dunno why I'm thinking about that. It's not my job to think about that. I don't want to think about that. I just wanna jab them. Just in passing. Only to sneer about this morning. How this morning says so much about this entire pre-Olympics farce.

Construction signage - flashing sign-boxes: CAMBIE CLOSED - [then some yada yada] - BUSINESS OPEN

I really felt for the delivery van, pulled over at wooden barriers — naturally — at Kent and Cambie, his hazards flashing. When passing traffic had cleared him, the driver hurried out from behind his wheel, dragged aside the barriers. Yesss, some little human mistake. Someone didn't get the message, or didn't think.

And that's enough thinking.
Snapped a little art through the smashed open side of an abandoned building. I liked the stacked pallets as much.

Canada Line Doesn't Stop Here

"Stop, please. I work here. Quite a number of us, actually. Customs brokers. Freight forwarders. Cargo handlers. All the business of the wide world passes through these terminals. Canadian exports. Hawaiian mango sliced in your dessert.

"There's...NO stop...not here, not any longer? But...that yellow kiosk, down there, the 100 from Marpole stopped there, for decades. Before this advancement in mass rapid transit. Even with that stupid Fare Zone crossing, and $3.75 one-way, it was just ten minutes to this stop, and work, riding the 100, south from Marpole, across the Arthur Laing, across the Fare Zone line drawn in the river, and west.

"Sweeping changes coming in September — really? Such as? Does it include this YVR Add-fare I've been hearing of? Sounds odd, that, as if the YVR track is...some kind of add-on, and couldn't be in anyone's daily commute. It would make it $12 a day, from Marpole, where the planes take-off past our windows.

"I see. My 100 no longer will brave the storms of autumn and winter south and west of the river. I'll have to get to my hole in the hedge earlier. Catch the 10...eastbound. Oh. Five minutes, east. Then catch this...Line, ten minutes, south and west.

"Two stations bracket these cargo terminals. I can de-train at the station a half-mile short. Only that's open ground, and a foul long slog in the storms of autumn and winter. I might just ride the train past, I suppose. Eye the cargo buildings in passing. And walk the half-mile down from YVR. Buildings along that stretch should offer some shelter during the gales.

"Actually, I'm feeling a bit stunned. Just now. I'd prefer not hearing about the YVR Add-fare, for the moment. Where'd I stow my foul-weather gear, anyway? Gonna haveta dress like Amundsen striking for the Pole, this winter.

10 Days in August

The 2009 World Police and Fire Games are just finishing in the Lower Mainland...Vancouver, and suburbs all around. From July 31 through August 9. 10 days of firefighters and police-persons from around the world taking a break from saving the rest of us; instead, doing their athletic best in competition that resembles more play, than anything Olympic.

Close to 10,600 participants. All events were free to watch, at any of 69 event venues. 69 pre-existing venues, as it happens. No Olympic'like anything monumental to build, nor fund for. Nor pay for, for the next thirty years. No billion-dollar athletes' village. No years-long construction nightmare for locals to navigate, and business to survive. I've only seen smiles all around.

And that's about all there is to say about these 10 days in August.

Day Stealer

There it is. The day stealer that blew in to my Sunday afternoon. And me feeling like writing — I dunno — a couple of novels, maybe. Little thing, eh?

Suppose I should be thankful for the other stuff, yeah. For what turned out right. For D, the apartment super, actually in. That I was able, at last, to convince D a fizzing water pipe inside the second-floor ceiling, and resultant dribbling thru my bathroom ceiling below, did actually warrant an emergency call to ANY plumber. I am especially thankful for the Chinese gent, coming on a Sunday, hauling upstairs his case of tools, three and a half hours later.

I wonder how the really good writers, the ones we all know and love, how they managed, or worked around, the little day stealers in their lives...

Picturing...mmm...Miss Shakespeare. For my fun of it.

"Millie. Millie, cut me free of these constraining garments. And set another ewer under yonder weeping joist. Wait. Ack, poor ewer. I knew him, Millie. Ewer bore my beer. Fetch another, Millie."

Meh, just funnin' about. Late Sunday night, I jotted a start to...Fond Memory...working title. Maybe something for Protag. Only put down the idea, and some imagery. Too hot, too tired, to do more.

How Do I Hate Thee?

No, not here. Elsewhere, I'll list the whys.

I've stopped myself polluting my blog, for today, with a particularly witty, I thought, though nasty rant. About so many colliding things I see wrong with this picture-perfect...place on the plain. I can't call Vancouver a city, not without laughing. And lose the by the sea bit — I'm writing this. Imagery of a mirage of a city splayed like a blurry dream across a broiling plain especially fits, for its ominous connection with a divine smack from on high, impending and even deserved, to my current mind. Of course, it's people who are responsible for the state of...everything. You and me — all of big-U Us — either group-hugging, or snarling, like the animals humans really are. In every small choice we make, we build, or destroy.

I've become a destroyer. In my small way. And actually don't much care. Fed up, after decades of doing my bit so that, as it's turned out, the clearly uncaring, and their progeny, could breathe cleaner air, I've parked my bike. I motor about, these days. Haven't barked once. There is a mean look in my eyes, when I glimpse myself in the mirror. Prob'ly I'm only squinting against the bright sun. I do especially like that because they wouldn't share with skinny me cranking along the road edge they now have to, with five thousand pounds of pick-up truck, and me, grinning, unpleasantly, in front of them.

Have to qualify my meaning there. I care that I don't care. I've lost something more than the daily chance to raise my heart rate.

But, again, the rant of all that won't blacken this blog. While going for groceries this milder morn, I arrived at that decision, and came up with the idea I could do it as a story. A most twisted story. A Rant, for the therapy. And writing exercise. So I can have my rant — make them eat it, too — Mwwaahh'Haa'Haahhh! Already thinking of a pair of characters, opposites, naturally. Really need to get going on my adds over at Protag, tho.

Snapped the reflective pic before work Thursday morn. Went out of my way to find a little quiet worth looking at...[odd sentence, that oddly works].