I suppose this is a rather bizarre anecdote to introduce an edited digest of writing I published online between the years or 2002 and 2007. I had a love/hate affair with online journal writing; at times I would impulsively write what at the time I may have considered genius, insightful, or entertaining and then months later look at these scribblings with a bit of shame for it’s sheer indulgence and exhibitionism. It seemed like a scaled down, half focused shadow of the more poignant writing I was doing when I had dove headfirst into the zine culture of the mid to late 90s. I published a 80 page fiction zine in 1997 that even now I can’t comprehend how I wrote such a large piece of written work. Not to say that writing past that time was rubbish, it was just more fractured and never had the effort put into it to mold into something presentable physically, mainly due to my time going into playing a lot of music, doing design work, DJing, staying up late, doing some questionable things…

Anyway, I ended up giving the whole thing a big bulk erase treatment a few years back by completely erasing it from my server. Gone. Done. Finito. I, with discipline, told it to fuck off.

But with all this writing I’ve started to do recently I, with a little help of an internet tool called The Way Back Machine, dug the whole thing up again much like David Foley rigorously digging through a dirty trash can for that chocolate bar. I was mainly curious as having moved overseas without much in terms of personal effects I felt the need to have a record of something from way back when.

I read all the entries; sort of like reading a diary of another person; a younger me. Someone more frantic; a chip on their shoulder; still some mellowing out to. I’ve decided to skim out what I consider the good, entertaining, and readable bits from it and repost them; the bits that stand above the mire of day to day ramblings, complaining, scathing/adoring reviews of music and film, summaries of different types of mineral water I had drank (well, I kept one entry)…

This is mainly for myself but it might make for a good read for someone else too. I think it might be time to find a way to wrap this intro up as I sometimes have a tendency to ramble.

Oh, and as a final note, this is pretty much all intact except for some quick corrections of embarrassing spelling I had originally made in error and haste — that and making some names anonymous. Other than that, I can say that a little bit of chocolate once in a while doesn’t hurt.

19 JANUARY 2007 — DAYS IN A SNAP
fine-line illustration in back-end of clothing store as an artshow / Lo-fi digital videos against white walls in eccentric hotel rooms / talking about records with friends in a west end apartment / dirty martinis / organic gin / transferring vinyl records to digital format with all the clicks / bad Austrian films about stuffy teenage parties / finding out about the “magik” of Egypt complete with droning Juno 106 soundtrack / soups: marmite, bovril, beans, tomatoes / the humour of bad, epic trance / the new Arcade Fire song sounds like “We Are The World” meets classic Christmas music////

28 JANUARY 2005 — SOME LISTENINGS III
Simple Minds : New Gold Dream (81-82-83-84) | Einsteurzende Neubauten : Kollaps | Dizzee Rascal : Boy In Da Corner | newer Glass Candy stuff | James Chance/Contortions | Zoviet France | The Book Of Lists : demo | Wire : We Don’t Take Requests DVD | The Soft Pink Truth : Do You Want New Wave Or.. | Prosaics | TV On The Radio | Sunshine | Kas Product | Test Department | Japan | Crystal Wrists | a lot of my old hard core catalog.

22 JANUARY 2005 — MIXING BOWL (excerpts)
§ …I do like the aspect of having the both of us recording the bulk of the full-length; which is a first for me as all of the previous recordings I’ve been involved with involved doing the whole thing within set times at a studio. Props to all my friends who do their own recording; A Spectre is Haunting Europe, Secret Mommy, etc.

The light at the end of the work tunnel is coming for and more closer -- things will be “gooder and funner” again. Ha.

A few random snippets:
• “Why should we listen to those pansy-ass, tea-sipping Brits anyway?” -- a quote from a pro-Republican American regarding consulting with the British on UN issues. Reprinted from a pull-quote in a magazine I forget now (MacLeans?). I say “Why should we listen to those fucked-up, paranoid, cheeseburger-munching assholes anyway?”

• My apartment has turned into a black hole for anything that is a pen or looks like a pen. Even if I go out and purchase 3-4 good pens it’s a given they all vanish into some void within a few weeks.

• There are two twin cats that hang out in the hallway of our building. The first time I saw them I entered the hall and they ran towards me and then went into an apartment with it’s door ajar. It was like a feline version of the twins in The Shining initially. They are very affectionate however. One of the cats name is Jack as well.

• I’ve been exercising a lot lately, and eating carrots of all things; and enjoying it!

• Vancouver is turning into a lake.

• The Radio Berlin white van dubbed “Blanco Loco” is being sold, likely (fingers crossed) to another band here in town that might get more use out of it. That’s a great weight that’s been lifted.

09 JANUARY 2005 — DUOLOGY II : UPS ALTERNATE REALITY (excerpt)
On this InfoNotice™ that was left at the front door of our building, there’s a section at the bottom where the UPS courier can fill out where he left the package at your building. Here’s the options, and I’ve added a few more that I thought would be a little bit more truthful if I saw on one of these slips:

• Front door
• Back door
• Side door
• Garage
• Neighbour
• On the street somewhere
• I dunno
• Over there
• Around the ba… just kidding, you don’t actually have a package.
• My house; come get it bitch.

07 JANUARY 2005 -- DEAR TENANT (excerpt)
§
“..Pay your rent on time.?
“..Do not pay bouncing checks.?
“..Avoid vandalising your building.?
“..Deal with the management accordingly.?
“..If you have complains and concerns, we only entertain calls from 9:00am -- 8:00pm.?
“..Be smart and avoid problems from your negligence.?
“..Please be guided accordingly.?
“..Throw your garbage’s properly.?
“..Always have a bucket of water in case of water shutdown.?
“..Always communicate with your managers properly.”

02 JANUARY 2005 — GREAT WORDS FROM CLAGG
Joseph Clagg, of Action Driver (record label) fame, had this insight to share on the subject of 10xLPs:
“Yeah, If Yes called me up right now and wanted to do it, I’d have to find a way [to press a 10xLP] though, not that I like Yes that much, but you know… I doubt they’ll call though… When Yes asks you to do something, you do it and you don’t ask questions…”

02 DECEMBER 2004 — SOME LISTENINGS
COCTEAU TWINS : TREASURE LP / BABYLAND : THE FINGER CD / YEAR FUTURE : 12″ / ERASE ERRATA : LIVE AT CRYSTAL PALACE CD / WIRE : WE DON’T PLAY REQUESTS DVD / BLACK DICE : BEACHES AND CANYONS / THE FLOOR : FREEZE FRAME PROMO CD / THE MONORCHID : LET THEM EAT LP / TV ON THE RADIO : STARING AT THE SUN SINGLE / GUS : THE PROGRESSIVE SCIENCE OF BREEDING IDIOTS FOR A DUMBER SOCIETY CD / NIKKI SUDDEN AND ROWLAND S. HOWARD…

08 AUGUST 2004 — I PUT OUT SOME LISTENING LISTS
..sometimes: COLDER : AGAIN CD / IKE YARD (FIRST TWO RECORDS) / STEVE REICH : VARIATIONS / COCTEAU TWINS : GARLANDS / ANTIOCH ARROW : GEMS OF MASOCHISM / DJ HELL : NYC / PHILLIP WERREN : PHASES I. II. III / A SPECTRE IS HAUNTING EUROPE CD

19 JULY 2004 — THE LITTLE THINGS YOU (I) DO
Do you know what really makes life liveable? Especially in this sweltering summer (sweat pouring down yr back)? A hot shower. Feel that torrent run through your hair and down your spine. It’s really quite something.

08 FEBRUARY 2004 — LOOPFAX!
And probably being the longest lasting joke between myself and several other of my friends and acquiantances, the Loopfax is back in action! I could go into the description of this phenomenon but I let Loopfax’ recently created blog about this subject do the talking:

“I am a fax transmission of a paper loop (at least 3 pieces of paper, scotch-taped together, end to end, in a loop). I am sent to deserving victims. I am the low-tech equivalent of counter-SPAM. My first incarnation was as the sending of a 9000 page technical manual about an obsolete electronic device no one ever used or purchased, which proved too labour-intensive for my human progenitors. Now I am an effective weapon against all forms of faxed advertisements and other wretched, unwanted solicitations sent via fax. Use me! I will keep on sending to the victim, even if they unplug their machine. When they plug in again, I will continue to send the same three pages. Some of my favorite loops are:

1. Tables of Contents for technical documentation or other how-to manuals.

2. 3 pages of bad goth poetry written by someone with the mental age of 11.

3. Contracts between impossible entities (such as a contract between the sun and the moon for an agreement in principle on when to rise and set).

4. Printouts of internal corporate chat transcripts, where employees debate the relative merits of paperclips of different sizes. ”

07 FEBRUARY 2004 — WATER pt 1.0 (excerpt)
§ …Along with that urbanite twist my fluid consumption has also shifted to frequent drinking of carbonated mineral water. This habit has only been a week old but nowadays I’ll be catching myself drinking a bottle of San Pellegrino or Gerolsteiner (see older Fracture posts about myself drinking tall cans of German beer; similar habit). I like the carbonated fresh feeling I guess, that- coupled with the snobby health factor. Here’s a little run-down:

SAN PELLEGRINO: An old fashioned label that has those same graphic elements of a dollar bill (all those fine lines and what not). Slight citrus overtone.

GEROLSTEINER: Much more carbonated; although the claim is that all that carbonation is natural. I could only imagine bathing in the source of that water. Doing the backstroke in a pool of club soda? Or something like that. The label much more simple and to give the illusion of “modernity”.

Ok folks -- you can officially start shaking your heads when mass consumption of Perrier comes into effect. That might just be over the horizon I’m afraid…

23 JANUARY 2004 — ALTERED STATES (w/JJD)
Strange dreams last night I tell you. Usually I wake up and then within 15 minutes of my exposure to the physical world I only remember a fraction of the dreams I had the previous night or none at all. Here’s a point by point replay of some of the dreams I was experiencing last night:

1. The dream took place in what kind of looked like a mix of downtown West Vancouver and downtown North Vancouver and downtown Memphis TN. Lot’s of high-rises and the rest of the city built on the side of the mountain behind it.

2. My friend Alpha from XXXX was in the dream. He was driving this black Lexus with tinted windows. He “had just moved to _____ city” in my dream and had an office downtown. We were unloading CDs and LPs from his record label out of the back of his Lexus onto the street outside his office.

3. After the first load we come back outside to get more and open the trunk and find out all the records are gone but there’s all of these relics and artifacts in ZipLoc bags. We look up and find out we’ve been looking in the wrong car, which is in fact a police cruiser. Luckily there’s no officers around and if they are they for some reason don’t see us.

4. Our decision is that Alpha’s car has been towed or stolen. Alpha takes off with his girlfriend Beta to meet up with my late father to phone the towing company.

5. Next scene I remember I’m in a restaurant my sister, my four cousins on my dad’s side of the family who live in the Vancouver area and Gamma. The restaurant is half inside and half outside -- the menu is 40 pages long and filled with a lot of weird shit that I can’t eat (I’m a vegetarian). The restaurant looks kind of like a campground eating area; lots of picnic tables. This restaurant happens to be in the parking lot of the Park Royal shopping mall in West Vancouver.

6. I decide to take a walk across the lot to this Bingo/Legion hall on the other side. My friend Delta is standing on the edge of the lot and my other friend Epsilon is on a cruiser bike. Epsilon is riding up ramps that go up the sides of the wall of this Legion hall. She rides these ramps (which look like skateboard quarter-pipes) to the roof of the hall which is three stories high and then rides her bike off the roof and landed perfectly on the parking lot below. She keeps doing this in a loop.

7. I get back to the parking lot and my dad, Alpha and Beta meet us there and supposedly the towing company is run by the Polish mafia and they’re auctioning off the car for a starting bid of £5000 (UK).

8. …my cousins and my sister are leaning against a bar drinking Jägermeister and coke. The bar itself is in an establishment about 10 feet wide and 200 feet long and the floor is covered in straw. For some reason they won’t look at me when they talk to me.

9. …I’m taking pictures of Gamma in a room that looks like a Victorian mansion. She has long black hair with bright red streaks in it. The door to the room busts open and my other friend Zeta comes in wearing a witch/ninja outfit and starts kickboxing the air in the room. I’m taking pictures of this with my camera. Gamma gets mad and Zeta starts laughing and saying she’s sorry. As punishment Gamma makes Zeta piss herself…

At this point the phone rings and it’s 9.23 am. I realize that I’m supposed to be at a mastering studio to provide data files for a client. I guess the abruptness of my awakening has enabled me to retain so much from the dream. I dunno -- I just thought I’d post all of those points for the record.

20 DECEMBER 2002 — UNTITLED (excerpt)
Having screaming freak-outs in parking lots is always a good thing to do on a Thursday morning. Especially when that parking lot is located in Burnaby.

Note: This post is a return back to my writing days -- courtesy of inspiration of one Mr. Jay Watts, who is infuriated that none of his journal-keeping associates have been keeping to the journal-posting faith as of late.

Anyway, this post is all about turning over new leaves. I’ve never been one for the whole tradition of “new year’s resolutions” or any of that holiday-related cermonial stuff, but in my case it’s an adage that must be taken. Possibly playing out a role of the “most stressful week in recent memory”, I really need to assess what the hell it is that I should really be doing and things that make me happy. Needless to say this contemplation period will commence tomorrow with a drunken debaucherous evening in Victoria. I’m usually a responsible fellow: maybe I need to let loose, perhaps even “let my hair down”? Don’t worry folks, after watching the film adaptation of “Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas” the other week there will be no taking blotter sheets of acid in bathtubs or four times the recommended dosage of adrenochrome in these weekend plans. Just good times and touching base with people as I’ve seriously been a walking social disaster lately…

§

…It’s now 1am here on an early Friday morning. Records sprawled on the floor. We’ve got papers strewn all over the desk and shitty, half-legible notes to myself: “Bus @ 1:31 pm”, “Phone [name here]” and addresses to places I’ve been to once or twice and will probably never go to again.

02 NOVEMBER 2002 — UNTITLED (excerpt)
It would keep dropping my two dollar coin in the change return tray. What the fuck? I tried it again and the same think happened. I looked around and took in the white tiled sterility of the skytrain lobby. A couple of people here and there walking up to and from the descending escalators. No blue jackets. Good. I jumped on the escalator down to the train platform. The escalator was strange in that the tiles were on the same angle perpendicular to the angle of the escalator descent, therefore giving the illusion of gravity being off centre. I kept thinking of the poor people out there dealing with this phenomenon drunk, stoned or on acid and then being: “Whoa man, that’s totally fucked!” and then perhaps bailing and falling backwards down the escalator and bowling over a couple of club-going jetsetters.

This Skytrain lobby however always brings in retrospect the last five or six years that I’ve lived here. Going home drunk or penniless. Being poor. Having a strange experience at a show. Going home lonely after moving to such a stunningly vicious city. Going home lovestruck. Going home with a song in my head that needed to me banged out on a guitar or keyboard. Going home knowing that I had to get up early the next morning to do things that I didn’t want to do… §

30 OCTOBER 2002 - UNTITLED
Beetlejuice is a strange film. Avoiding writing letters.

29 OCTOBER 2002 - UNTITLED (excerpt)
The Transition: from strained used, humming coffee makers, scathing vicious dogs, fractured phone calls, miles of code when placed from end to end could possibly go around the fucking world, deadlines, “can you change that?”, looking at the clock and realizing you’re hungry, plans to buy records (my player has been humming silent lately and it’s sad), wondering about the state of relationships and affairs, i never talk about that sort of thing in public ‘cos it’s not for you, no humour, smell of orange cologne and bagels, toying around with this VIP pass wrist band all day, talking to people far away with technology not too far away.

to:

Sunny days in the fall, having to look around for that perfect scarf, retrieving guitars and it’s personal effects at the shady practice space downtown, waking up and not jumping into the thick of it, making plans, friends over on the weekend, starting anew, using experiences as the benchmark to make myself a better person, slicing an apple in half and eating the flesh of it, sleep and not taking it for granted, looking up at the sky more…

§

…Anyway, I arrived at XXXX’s drinking red wine and cinnamon whisky shooter and complaining how Electroclash has ruined her love for early 80′s new wave. “Now all I listen to is Christian Death and Siouxsie!”. I can relate… We head up to Joe’s cafe to catch up on things as our time hanging out has been scarce due to our flipped schedules. (this is what I refer to as “Ladyhawk” syndrome. Based on the 80′s fantasy flick starring Matthew Broderick and Michelle Pfieffer. This condition is best explained when one person is busy at a certain time of the day and when they are finally free to spend time with the other person, the other person’s free time has ended and then they are busy: therefore they never see each other. See the movie to catch the parallel.) Joe’s I don’t mind although it’s incessant use of blinding flourescent lights make it not a top JJD pick for coffee drinking spots on the Drive. We so then opt to sit outside, only after a middle aged Italian man, high on speed or cocaine or something, gets in a shouting match with the barista because he thought someone had but animal-based margarine on his turkey sandwich. Someone give this man an award for dietary knowledge and intelligence!

After that and several other bone-headed incidences, XXXX and I talk about ourselves, other people, our lives and basically everything in between. We’re sitting outside, our feet are cold. Sometimes you need to talk about everything. I would have to say this weekend has been pretty good for that. Yes, after weeks and weeks, I can now say I’ve had an amazing weekend. Done. Said.

17 OCTOBER 2002 — UNTITLED
I noticed them as I was crossing through what I call the “neutral zone” between downtown and the east side. I was making my way home from downtown on a bike. It was about 15 degrees out. The night was rather dead and still. The street was empty and silent. They were standing at a street corner to my left. She was wearing a reflective orange cycling vest; curly dirty blonde hair, jeans, mountain bike. He: stocky, sweatshirt, glasses, cropped hair. They were standing close to one another as if affiliated lovers. I passed by them: says he “hold on a second” -- faintly -- and she was breathing heavily and almost exasperated in some sort of fear. He was holding her strange. As quick as these images entered my mind I flew by them. For some reason it was sitting odd and suspicious with me. I felt this and turned around and took another look. Same scenario, same dark night. I was rationalizing the situation: either she had a bike accident or incident; OR they were in a relationship and in a fight; OR she was being accosted by a strange man. The latter reason sunk in like a blade and I all of a sudden felt a wave of panic. What if it was? Was it a good idea for me to keep on going just in case I intervened and realized it was an entirely less threatening affair? Or leave them be to the effects of some casualty in domestic violence? I keep riding -- I keep thinking.

12 OCTOBER 2002 — UNTITLED (excerpt)
§
• And isn’t it strange running into old staples from the past. He was a friend from high school. The running joke with this guy is that it looked like he never really aged and he still doesn’t really look terribly older. The same mannerisms, maybe a little less quirky than what I remember but you tend to loose those teenage charms to some degree on into your twenties. Very strange times. He lives alone now, drives a garbage truck at a recycled paper processing plant in the heart of Richmond. It sounded like such a mature, dullened life. He enjoys it. He has a motorcycle now.

• Playing host to people from abroad always instills that interest to fuck everything and just go go go go… New people with new personalities and mannerisms. I had a couple of rock bands stay at my once farm house. People in the devilish red bedroom. People on a newly acquired hide-a-bed, people on the spare couch, people in crowded vans parked outside, people sleeping under the counter on the kitchen floor. We show them around, we eat out late night (and they marvel: “You’re shittin’ me? The city’s got a 24-hour vegetarian restaurant?!”), we’re drinking wine and Jack Daniels at 3 in the morning talking about German electronic bands. One individual has a brother that got shot in a drive by on a cross country cycling trip while in San Francisco. He lays in a hospital for days, threatened to be kicked out on his ass on the street due to a lack of medical insurance (isn’t that fucked up?)… and you know where this is going…. Gordon Campbell, your head will end up on a stick… §

10 OCTOBER 2002 — UNTITLED
Slow day: depressing children’s books in the brightest of colours, unbalanced stereo speakers, salads, vanilla cola, choppy and broken instant messages, dumbfounded at computers, cold and beautiful cinematography of the classic THX 1138, Charleton Heston yelling the truth about the food of the future, Robert Smith sighing coyly in fog drenched rooms circa 1981, feeling empty, running on empty, loneliness, sifting through old paintings, admiring their lines, oh how how they match the strange paint on my wall!, the sound of vacuums and barking dogs, guest and acquaintances from far away, wanting to be outside more, making resolutions to get outside more, waiting to softly go to sleep.

08 OCTOBER 2002 — UNTITLED (Excerpt)
§ …For some reason I had the instant urge to start this pretentious, online music fanzine with my friend Jay Watts in Victoria. We’d make it too intellectual and art school for it’s own good. I’m sure it could be informative yet carry and underlying sense of self-humilation and excessive humour. Maybe later. Right now I’m going to try to re-install some applications on this computer. I need to fucking get out more! Luckily there are plenty of social and live music options this week! Saved once again from my own fusion with technology.

04 OCTOBER 2002 — UNTITLED
dilemma: lots of dirty laundry -- no change for the washer or dryer. Fuck.

03 OCTOBER 2002 — UNTITLED
Problem resolved. Backing up files to CDs. Drinking coffee. Animal Factory playing on Television. Antony and the Johnsons make live appearance in movie. Sunny day. Dreading drive to Port Coquitlam in an hour. I will stop the robot talk now.

17 SEPTEMBER 2002 — UNTITLED
I though I remembered him walking down the street. It was an old friend of mine from years ago. He was sitting on the sidewalk with a “Please spare some change” sign written hastily in felt pen on cardboard: lying on the sidewalk. He looked tired but not hopeless.

“Hey how’s it goin’?” I said.
“Oh, alright.” he said.
I looked through my wallet: it was pretty empty. “If I had any change I swear I’d give it to you.”
“It’s alright” he said.
I didn’t really know what else to say at that point. We had definately gone our seperate ways at that point in our lives. I have to hand him utmost respect and credit for sticking to his political guns when others have dropped their political motivations completely for more subjective and exhibitionist lifestyles. He was still fighting the good fight: or so they’d say. I didn’t really swing extreme to the extreme party lifestyle. I never really dropped out that far. It seems that sometimes I’m riding both sides of the coin. I don’t know which niche I sit in. That’s a good thing though. I think. Umm… You feel and know things of the world beingh incredibly wrong. Take an interest in learning. Maybe I should assert myself more. Maybe I should hope that my cold is gone by tomorrow or Friday.

01 SEPTEMBER 2002 — UNTITLED
Saw a little news blurb on the tele about some storefront where some people re-arranged the letters on the front to spell “AUTOMATIC WIT”. An old friend of mine was asked to comment. Automatic wit. Hmmm. Reminds of those kind of people that feel the need to be funny 24 hours a day but end up just being fake and annoying. That’s great insight for you!

14 JULY 2002 — UNTITLED
So I’ve decided to re-instate the journal. Fuck. I can’t make up my mind. I had two brief stints on the entity known as “Live Journal” but decided it was too much of an institutional, pop-culture thing for me (yet not the “Blogger” icon at the bottom of the page. I guess that makes me kind of a hypocrite). Oh well. I guess I sometimes think that my writing goes nowhere or should be profound, at least more so than: “Got up, went to work, hung out with Gus, went home…” -- that sorta thing.

I am sick today. My nose feels like it’s been ripped to shreds. Two trips to the local bank with a long line-up of impatient people: business people, old men looking to get their bank books updated, people paying their bills and rent in weird combinations of bills and change. Trying to hold back a sneeze in the teller line. Fuck.

Maybe I should be getting out more. I’m trying to plan more sporadic events into my day: at least that’s a resolution of mine. Sometimes I think I bog down my days to postpone the inevitable or loneliness: whatever and whereever that it. Some days you have people so close but you still have that feeling of being totally alone. Do you catch my drift? Or that just a “me” thing?

Early mornings lately and strange coffee. Runny noses and feeling and looking like shit. What a way to start off a journal. Hello world. More will be written later. This time I’m gonna stick to it. I’m not crossing my fingers as I say that. I swear.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0xRAju32tc