Ye Olde Scientology - The Return

I must say, I found myself wishing I was back in London today - so I could have been present for at least these two minutes of an anti-Scientology protest.

Maths

Plus: I recently tripped over a brilliant video store on Queen St. West called Suspect Video. They sell as well as rent, so it's worth going to even if you're just passing through. They have a great selection...I mean, they not only have Turkish Star Wars but they taught me of the existence of Turkish Superman.

They even have movies without Turkish in the title!

Minus: Some greasy, greased up bastards are teaching colonials how to speak in a British Accent, ostensibly, to impress the ladies.

Guys.

Guys.

That's my thing okay...

Good times on King Street West

Jorb!

Well, just some temp work...but it pays well, looks to be easy and is just around the corner. The news in Toronto is filled with stuff about a subway problem that's causing large delays and I'm all

Who cares, chumps?

Chumps care, that's who.

Given that a temp job led to a long term piece of employment when I was in England, I hope the same thing happens here. Then I can buy nice things and focus on writing, as well as other more interesting things to put here then "I hear job hunting is pretty unenjoyable. Also, do you like food? I like food"


CHUMPS
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Addendum

Oh fuck me, that last panel made me do a genuine spit take.

Meanwhile, it's been kind of fun being privy to Dino comics creative process. Perhaps, now that life is finally entering a stable period for the first time in months, I'll get back to my own little thing..

Murmurmurmurmurmurmur...

So the gallery showing was nice last night and it was interesting to try and tell what bits of "Kensington Market History" were real and which were constructions. I wish that there had been some more content, but for a free event you can't really complain.

One thing I was pleased to be reminded of when I was there, was the Toronto Arts Council's Murmur Project. It helped to compensate for learning that the Secret Swing has not only been taken down, but the narrow, pinched alley it was in has been filled. Take that, magical whimsy! But yeah, I think it's a clever way to make a city seem more engaging and alive than just the stereotypical human rat den built from concrete and the broken dreams of recent immigrants.

Meanwhile, the comprehensive list of things which made David Banner hulk out on the old TV series is pretty much Komedy Kgold. I rather enjoyed...
"75. Beaten up by all the other prisoners in the work camp, in the middle of the night while he is trying to sleep, when he emphatically told them not to beat him up that particular night"

I'm checking this oot tonight - an art gallery showing of people's reactions to and memories of my new neck of the woods. An interesting introduction to living here, to be sure.

Meanwhile, I just got my first jerk around by a recruitment agency. It's good to be job hunting again.

A slow day, though I plan to take in a show tonight. Progress is being made on the job front, which will be nice to get sorted because then I'll be able to focus more on my writing again. Toronto continues to be pretty okay despite a guy bumping into me yesterday and spilling hot chocolate all over my jacket.

And Victor and Ryan and I trying to meet up to see Cloverfield only to completely fail to find each other.

*Sob* These First World Problems will be the death of me yet...

Linky-rinky dinks!
It's drilling for science, now, but I think that maybe it could get put to another use?

A small start, though I cannot believe that planes and shipping are exempt from their calculations

This is a rather interesting option for home energy which I hope to explore.

Toronto finds a circuitous route back to segregation?

This is fucking awful.

Blood on the streets of Tranna

This summer, on the dark streets of Toeranna...

The End...?

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It's tempting as all hell to stop with only this, but that would be just a tad irresponsible...

So Victor, my new roommate, dropped a mason jar while washing the dishes. It shattered and his left hand got deeply cut as it went on it's way to try and catch the jar - meeting the shards at a goodly speed. There's no nerve damage or anything else that should be long term, luckily he was cut in "the best possible way", but he gets to put up with bandages and pain and all the rest for the next three weeks. He'll be fine, but maybe those of you who know him may want to drop a line?

Tokyo Police Club are neither police, a club nor are they from Tokyo

So this past Saturday I found some time to join Roberto and see a group of lads with skinny jeans and something to say about something something girls something something screw authority.Okay, that's really unfair...and yet? Tokyo Police Club did a free show at Nathan Phillips square, which lay right in front of Toronto's snazzy city hall. Aside from the stage, there was also a skating rink and all these crazy fire installations.The first three songs were really thrilling but then....what I'll dub "five men with guitars" fatigue started to set in. Despite giving them my full attention, the lyrics started to get less and less distinguishable and songs started to bleed into each other more and more. I think these kids have some promise to be sure, but I think they'll need to get a little more inventive and the vocalist might have to project a bit more to rise about the instruments before they can claim to be the next Arcade Fire or anything. For free though? Good fun.

I have a bed!

Two days without one can lead to cranky-panky, the far less loved sibling of hanky-panky.

The Internet situation is a bit absurd, but once it ceases to be I shall have some great pictures up from last Saturday night.

More as this situation develops

I would like to make love with your behind

More painting, job huntin' and such and such today. Nuttin' TOO exciting, so I thought I'd share this Dutch advertisement which made me smile. It's got so many swears.

Toe-Rannnnna

Well, I've been hoofing it around more and am starting to get a better sense of my bearings vis a vis the main streets of downtown Toronto. "College", "Bloor", "Yonge", "Bathurst" and "Spadina" are all lining up in my mental map and once that is settled I'll be able to quickly populate it with All The Neat Things. Soon enough I am going to find the Secret Swing and post it up here, if nothing else.

The transit system is also starting to make more sense, although I sorely miss the OC Transpo and London Transport journey planners. The TTC website is, in general, poorly designed and not nearly as much help in helping you figure out the best way to get from A to B.Meanwhile, I done helped paint my room today - doing the dawdling job that my lack of experience with house painting would allow. Oddly, it's pretty much the exact shade of paint that was used in my room when I lived in Ottawa's Chinatown about four years (and change) ago.

....and one about UFO's.

This video makes a very good point about the body of discourse in the American primaries thus far, as well as providing a reminder of the kind of timetable we're looking at in regards to climate change.

In less dire news, I AM GOING TO GO EAT SOME RAVIOLI AND YOU CANNOT STOP ME OR ANYONE ELSE WHO WISHES TO DO THE SAME. CHOKE ON THAT MUNDANE BULLSHIT, WHY DON'T YA?

This ruined me

Just more job hunting today, but I shall share a link to this video of anti-abortionists being asked "Were abortion illegal, what should be done to women who still have an abortion?". IT RUINED ME.

You uh, you fancy being ruined today?

Phase One...complete?

So I have a place and a room mate to share it with. That is pretty okay! It's downtown and near all sorts of neat things. I should be moving in this weekend and that's all that's fit to print right now. Life will continue to be a bit of a madhouse until I get a job and am settled into this new place, but hey - progress!

Tarahhhhna

Well, post #400 and I'm in Toronto now. Not where I expected to be by now, but then I rarely am.

I'll be pretty crappy for emails etc in the next two or three days as I figure out the neighborhood and attend to all sorts of tasks, but then "regular service" should resume.

One thing I will note about Toronto is that it seems to have a very similar relation to the rest of the country as London does to England - namely in the perceptions of those looking in and those looking out.

Looking in: It is dirty, crowded, crime-ridden and full of people with their head's up their arses. Some nice things to look at, though.

Looking out: The world more or less ends at city limits. Everything you could ever want is here, why live anywhere else? Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to book a vacation for somewhere with different weather, people.

These are, of course, sweeping generalizations but still worth noticing I think. I'm heading into towne tomorrow (the friend of the family with whom I'm temporarily staying is a little ways out from what most folk think of when they think of Toronto) and will most likely take a picture or two. I realize that this city is far less exotic to most of you, but I just see that as a challenge to find the really interesting bits.
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ALSO: This is just my damn favorite Scarygoround in some time, mostly for the first and last panels.

Can't see the woods for the housing developments

This is a pretty old story. We've all heard it enough times, but it keeps getting told.I think that if there is one trick our fuzzy neighbor to the south has taught us so far, it's that one of the tricks for making people accept something horrible is to do it often and without shame.These pictures work their way in from the edge to about a kilometer and a half into a section of woods not far from my home. The sunnier photographs are from March break 2001, while the overcast winter pics are from last week. I'm alternating between a photo of one spot from about six and a half years ago, then showing roughly the same location as it is now.I can barely walk five feet through here without tripping over a flashback to some important - or at least nostalgia inducing - moment from my life. The only area comparable to this part of Carp would be downtown Ottawa, in that both are densely laden with Firsts, Passion Plays, Unsolved Mysteries and other Memorables.This has served as my little escape from the world, when I've needed one.But a tedious, tedious story has begun to play out. The forest is being cleared for new housing, the likes of which tend to take their street and neighborhood names from the very terrain they are obliterating.Naturally there is a part of me which is furious, disappointed, disheartened and all the rest. There is also the part of me which knows that the owners of the land can either sit on it, making nothing, or sell it and make a very handsome retirement fund for themselves. Then my sense of taste is just outright offended by the style and size of homes being built, including how little they resemble anything else in the community, but that is very peripheral.Anyways.Eventually I'd come across a mound of earth which prods into the underbelly of a small lake and this is where Things would generally happen. On my own, I'd usually stop here to write or just close my eyes and clear my head. With others, a number of things might happen but the safe bet would be a good ol' bush party. In Carp, until you got your drivers license, your primary gateway to Adult Thrills would generally come via a bush party. A small circle of rocks sat there and was used for fires done up by tweens and teens for many a year.But it's recently gotten a lot less inviting.Yeah, private property and all that! I know! But dang if it isn't an unpleasant thing to see after being freely allowed to romp around this area all your life. It feels a bit childish of me to get uptight about seeing a polite, lurid, orange "Fuck off, unless you've got cash in exchange for planning rights" spray painted over somewhere you remember being led by your kindergarten teacher, along with all the other little ducklings, to see a beaver lodge. This isn't just where I discovered the folly of alcohol from that guy's dad's poorly locked liquor cabinet or how girls can be good for more than throwing snowballs at, it's where I made some of my earliest connections with nature - "Nature" being the primary element composing "The Earth".Yeah, it's fair to say that I'm being a little wrought up about this and that my personal perspective heavily influences how I feel about these changes. In this one post, I'm not even going to pretend to be objective. Once in a while, it's okay to emote - so long as you don't try to present it as something else. I am not Michael Moore, this is not the Charlton Heston segment of Bowling for Columbine.So that's that, then. I promised I'd show Carp and this is part of it. I feel that eventually I shall come back to take more pictures of Carp, but it won't be Carp anymore. It will be Stittsville or Kanata. It will be the new place that people want to move further away from, so as to live in "the country".I honestly try not to romanticize these woods, this village or it's inhabitants - the same way I try not to romanticize anything else, as doing so is a luxurious indulgence which obliterates objectivity and rational thought. This makes me sound like a goddamn Vulcan, but I'm just a guy who values seeing things clearly. But I can't see this sort of thing clearly through all the tears.

Ha!

Got you!

You thought this was going to get all stupid and weepy. No, no. I used to feel that way about the development in Carp and I still don't like it...but I find that I've reached an age and a certain level of knowledge where it becomes absurd to look at things in such a maudlin fashion. I'm still for denser, better planned development. I'm just no longer able to sustain the kind of intense angst and frustration which this shit used to provoke in me - I think the angst gland starts to shrivel on your twentieth birthday and is eventually passed like a kidney stone.

The fact of the matter is that I'm now seeing my frustrations with this shit with almost the same sense of temporal detachment that I see "all them memories" etc. Not being able to blind myself to other sides of the issue, I can't maintain the kind of tunnel vision required to be vehemently against or in favor. I do know that I wish the development was being done differently and for less assinine reasons, but I can no longer shake my fist at The Bastards and spit.

Fact: Wabasca is a small town in Alberta.

Researching for that web series I mentioned, I've come across some pretty interesting stuff - a lot of it being rather right wing, but then I suppose that was to be expected.

You might find it interesting too. If only there was a Historical Pre-enactment Society around to help me run a few scenarios that are percolating in the back of my mind. For now I'll have to settle for copious notes and a rather large world map that I've purchased, which helps keep me from forgetting key parts of the world.

Busy busy with getting ready for moving down to Toronto on Saturday, but I am going to my best to get that last big Carp post up before I go and everything gets even crazier. I certainly do feel like I'm managing about a dozen spinning plates right now.

"The Athiests!" next, on FOX

I was reminded of the FSTDT top 100* today and browsed some of the top entries. The following script of life with THE ATHIESTS twisted my nipples just right (the pictures are my little addition, otherwise it's unedited).
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Athiests as a Majority

This is what it would be like, if the majority of people were athiests.
ATHIEST KID: Mom, I'm going to go fuck a hooker.
ATHIEST MOM: Okay, son.
ATHIEST KID: Afterwards, I'm going to go smoke pot with my friends, since it's "not addictive."
ATHIEST MOM: Okay, come home soon!

The athiest kid leaves the room. The father comes home from work several minutes later.

ATHIEST DAD: Hey!
ATHIEST MOM: Hi, honey! I'm pregnant again. I guess I'll just get another abortion, since "fetuses don't count as human life."
ATHIEST DAD: Okay, get as many abortions as you want!
ATHIEST MOM: Oh, and don't go in the bedroom.
ATHIEST DAD: Why not?
ATHIEST MOM: There are two gay men fucking eachother in there.
ATHIEST DAD: Why are they here?
ATHIEST MOM: I wanted to watch them do it for awhile. They just aren't finished yet.
ATHIEST DAD: Okay, that's fine with me!

Suddenly, their neighbor runs into the house.

ATHIEST NEIGHBOR: Come quick, there's a Christian outside!
ATHIEST MOM: We'll be right there!

The athiest couple quickly put on a pair of black robes and hoods. They then exit the house, and run into the street, where a Christian is nailed to a large, wooden X. He is being burned alive. A crowd of athiests stand around him, all wearing black robes and hoods.

RANDOM ATHIEST: Damn you, Christian! We hate you! We claim to be tolerant of all religions. But we really hate your's! That's because we athiests are hypocritical like that! Die, Christian!THE END

Scary, isn't it?

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Read the original post and the responses which followed, if you dare (to waste time).

Meanwhile, you can tell I'm spending most of the day job hunting and taking breaks from job hunting....but no worries, something much more substantive will be up later today or first thing tomorrow.

*I've no interest in this post sparking any kind of debate and I definitely am aware that these are the worst of the worst, possibly taken out of context.