How we’re feeling lately.

swordfight-iseesaidtheblindman.mov [3.3MB QuickTime]

…then he picked up his hammer and saw.

OK this one’s for Ryanne.

swordfight-sunset2.mov [2.5MB QuickTime]

source: http://ryanedit.blogspot.com/2006/06/today-is-my-birthday.html

On the road to Big Sur, California, USA.

“If you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.”
–F. Nietzsche

swordfight-coastalcliff.mov [3.3MB QuickTime]

music by me

Back in New Brunswick–at my parents’ place for Father’s Day. Vloggercon was thirteen different flavours of rad. I sifted through some footage last night, I’ll post some stuff when I get back home to Gaspereau Forks.

I tagged along with the people of The Pan on a road trip down to Big Sur. Here’s a frame I grabbed out of iMovie ~

Clockwise from Raymond: Raymond, Nelson, Weagel and Quirk. I like this picture partly because the angle makes Chris Weagel look like a giant standing beside Erik Nelson who in reality is a 6’6″ power forward.

In the meantime here’s a quick video I shot yesterday on the drive back to New Brunswick. The only thing that could cure my profanity-laced tirade was some good old Canadian classic rock.

swordfight-iliketorock.mov [7.3MB QuickTime]

warning: profanity-laced tirade
music: “I Like To Rock” by April Wine

It’s some kind of business to cross a continent. Takes you all friggin’ day.

They weren’t going to let me on the plane. I didn’t have the right papers. The agents looked away, froze me out. “We can’t let you on the plane without proper proof of citizenship.”

A guy at the next counter took my case unto himself and phoned and faxed and expedited. Within an hour I got a birth certificate faxed from Vital Statistics in New Brunswick. Good thing I showed up nice and early at the airport.

In Boston the passport person at customs looked at the fax upside-down and right side up and said, “They probably shouldn’t have let you on the plane with this.” I’d already had a full morning of ups and downs. Then she smiled at me and put her finger over her lips–shhh–and hit me with a rubber stamp. Now I want to kiss a cute blonde in honour of the Boston customs agent. Thank you for not doing your job properly. Thank you for keeping America unsafe!

At any moment I half-expected a bunch of troopers to come after me with handcuffs and dogs. But after I got on the plane in Boston no one troubled me again. I just hope that fax gets me back into Canada.

Stopover. Fast motion moving sidewalks. Along the wall there’s a montage of large photographs taken from the area around Salt Lake City, which is in Utah, which is Zion. A zippy tour of molten lava mountains, alien landscape descent from sun into darkness. The walls pass in a blur. “Ray Of Light… The Delicate Arch… The Frogs Of Moab…” Whoa, wait… what? Bring that shit back.

I woke up this morning at the House Of Schlomo in San Francisco, California. Vloggercon 2006.

swordfight-vcon01-wakeup.mov [6MB QuickTime]

After some vacillation, I bought a plane ticket, I’m going to San Francisco to Vloggercon.

I got a couple hundred bucks in donations, that’s rad. So I went ahead and put the plane ticket on my VISA. I have joined the special club for people who are irresponsible with credit cards. Seems there are a lot of us in this club, in fact I walked through the door of the clubhouse and shook hands with about a million people.

I’m going to California for a week, from the 8th to the 15th and it’s going to be awesome.

The only rule is, after I get back my car is not allowed to suffer any major expensive breakdowns. Because if that were to happen I’d be screwed.

I finalized the transaction last night. And this morning I went out and got in the car and turned it on.

R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R

Mean nasty noise coming from under the hood. And it got worse when I shifted into drive.

I limped into town and went straight to the mechanic. He said the rattling noise might be from a loose engine mount and told me to leave the car and come back in two hours.

Two hours later I returned and the car was up on the hoist and the mechanic was underneath shaking his head. Not the engine mount. He told me to come back in two more hours.

At this point, I went across the street to the village drugstore and purchased a lottery ticket.

When I returned two hours later the car was down off the hoist and the hood was up. The mechanic was doing something to the engine with a crowbar. I thought: now this looks promising.

I was half-expecting the mechanic to just start whaling away at the engine block with that crowbar. That would’ve been fine, as long as I got a turn.

Turns out he’d replaced the water pump. And it hadn’t affected the noise one bit. He was still trying to figuring out what was causing the problem.

After running the engine and poking around inside it for a while with the crowbar and with a long screwdriver, he pronounced that I must be in need of a new balancer. So I drove my noisy car away, and I have to take it back to the garage tomorrow to get a new balancer put on.

A new balancer? I don’t even know what that is. What does a balancer do, anyway? Balances, I suppose. Wouldn’t want your car to tip over right in the middle of the Trans-Canada Highway. No, that would not be good.

This is not the best of news.

So after I get back to Canada next week I’ll probably have to look into leaving my country home and moving back into town, because I’ll need to start working more and making more money and sorting out this debt. I have to live someplace where I don’t have to depend on having a car. I’d consider Halifax. I’d consider Montreal. I’d consider St. John’s, Newfoundland or Whitehorse, Yukon or Paris, France. If you hear of any leads let me know.

I think my brain needs a new balancer.

Send me your address if you want a postcard from California.

Holy shit!

Mission Of Burma have a new album!

Is it possible for your body to change in the way it reacts to insect bites? Or maybe the bugs are just getting nastier. I have all these bites that have swollen into hard, red bumps. All up and down my arms. My forehead. I look like someone was trying to shoot me in the face with a BB gun.

I’m sitting out on the sidewalk at some cafe in downtown Fredericton. There are humans everywhere I look. We don’t have many of those where I live.

Last night I played a hot and sweaty set down at The Capital. A bunch of the Giraffecycle posse showed up and lemme tell ya, those kids know how to enjoy live music as much as anyone anywhere. The sound was crystal-clear. I punched somebody in the nose busting out my hardcore straightedge dance moves. Sorry whoever it was, unless it was that barney who came in at the end who was trying to heckle, in which case, ha ha.

I brought a bottle in the shape of an owl that once held Avon aftershave or something and the chorus to every other song morphed into variations on “O RLY???”

“YA RLY. SRSLY! NO WAAAAIIIII!”

The boys have official titles now. Gary Flanagan is the Prime Minister of New Wave. Patrick aka The Trick is The Mayor of Fun. Or “Funville.”

Not really sure what I am yet. I have so much mosquito venom running through my veins right now that I feel like I should be receving the benefit of some kind of super power. Malaria Man?

A/V: The Prince Of Poison.

I’m downloading about ten different videos from pouringdown.tv right now. High-speed wireless internet blows my mind. No wonder people love videoblogging. You can actually download the videos.

Being on dialup out in the woods is holding me back from being a functional member of society. Sometimes it deters me from making videos because I just think “ahh boo it’ll take three hours to upload this thing.”

Vloggercon is in a week. The fact is I do not have a plane ticket.

I’m having a war between the two hemispheres of my brain. The left side of my brain says, “You are poor, you will always be poor and you can’t afford this.” The right side of my brain says “Credit card!” The left side of brain says, “Irresponsible. No job, no future, no hope.” The right side of brain says “All the more reason to do it now.”

Sometimes you’ve just got to live a little.

I’ve gotten some donations via Paypal this week. It’s making all the difference. Here’s an idea If you’d like to help out but aren’t in a position to contribute funds. I’m not a very experienced traveller and I have this notion that other people have some magical insight into how to find cheap flights. I’ve been trying to research airfare but I find it a little confusing. Maybe you can suggest the best website I should be looking at to set this up? I want to fly from Saint John, NB to San Francisco, California. If you can help me save on the airfare, that’s as good as money in the bank.

It’s like there’s some kind of acid in these bug bites. They burn as much as they itch.

I wish I had my video camera on me right now. I would film this street and upload the vid, just because I could. Hmm, what I have I got kicking around on my hard drive? Homemade porn. Oh wait, here’s a video of a really cool band from Halifax called HOTSHOTROBOT. I caught them on tape at Gus’s Pub doing a cover of an A/V song, “Explode Upon Impact.”

swordfight-hotshotrobot.mov [ten big megabytes of QuickTime action]