Dogwater Soup

Alec and I have been joking around lately that common sense is so rare these days that it’s become a superpower.

Today I witnessed one of the most ridiculous lacks of said sense.

I decided to take a little road trip up the sea to sky highway and see what I could find for photo opportunities. As soon as I passed the 5 lane clusterfuck that is known as the Horseshoe Bay Ferry Terminal I soon realized that I was in for a lot of road construction as BC tries to prepare for the wonderful Olympics.

Basically 2/3rds of the highway is under construction so traffic is down to one 50 kmh lane most of the way. Not a big deal for me today as I wasn’t in a hurry.

So anyway, there’s a bunch of people all lined up, weaving and snaking through a slow construction zone. As we come out of the construction and the road opens up to two lanes everyone picks up speed and people are passing etc etc. I’m picking up speed but not passing so I stay in the right lane. We all no sooner get up to our regular traveling speeds when we enter a BLIND two lane corner. Well as I come around the corner to my utter astonishment there is some fucking MORON in a red Toyota Yaris stopped dead halfway in the right lane and half on the narrow shoulder. They’re literally straddling the white shoulder line, passenger door is open and some knob is out pissing, puking, traking a picture …I don’t know. I was too busy trying to avoid a fucking collision to notice exactly what the fuck they were doing.

So what part of the brain looks at this situation and thinks, yeah, I know people are anxious to get going, coming out of a construction zone, two lanes of highspeed traffic on one of the most dangerous pieces of highway in the province but “fuck it” lets stop here on the side of a blind corner with half my car in the lane while my idiot fuckwad friend gets out to do whatever it was he was doing??

If I had more time to think while avoiding a rear-end collision with your moron-mobile, sending it slamming into the rock face I would have pulled over, walked back and punched the driver square in the fucking face. Use your fucking brain or stay home.

Back to your regular scheduled PG programming.

Every since I saw the movie of the same name starring Val Kilmer I’ve been drawn to find out more and eventually photograph this desolate forgotten place. At the end of the movie Val’s character throws a trumpet into a body of water with a tree sticking out of it. I have found those trees and many other beautifully depressing things to photograph. I spent the 22nd of March here, and since I’ve been home I want to go back and spend more time and longer hours waiting for the perfect light in which to capture this place once again.

I have seen the documentary “Plagues and Pleasures”, I have visited the Sonny Bono Wildlife Refuge and viewed many online resources and other peoples photography of the sea. It is one of those things that will not be there forever. It will change, either by time erroding what’s left into the earth or by the revitalization of the sea changing the now abandoned landscape into a desireable place to populate. What was once on the road to becoming the next Palm Springs is currently nothing more than a salty putrid body of water rimmed by dead fish. Some say polluted, some say “just salty”. I guess time will tell, one way or another.

Here is what I saw in the form of my photography:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/waynerd/sets/72157604565574898/

Here is the site for the documentary:
http://www.saltonseadoc.com

Here is the Sonny Bono Refuge site:
http://www.fws.gov/pacific/refuges/field/CA_sbono.htm

for people that have none.

So I’m at the Vancouver International Auto Show, there’s cars and trucks everywhere and tons of people. Fair enough, they’re not all bad but here’s a few instances where there should simply be a moron policing system that simply extracates some of them from the planet.

I enter the main area and find the 2009 Dodge Challenger, I’ve been drooling about this car since it was announced. As I’m taking some pics I see out of the corner of my eye some idiot standing on the back of another car, on the painted bumper of a brand new car to take a photo of the Challenger. As the poor car dealer person asks him nicely to get down the idiot gives him attitude like there’s nothing wrong with standing on someone elses new car. What the Fuck?

A few minutes later some “parent” (using the term loosely) allowed his 5 year old to climb up the front hood of a sports car on display. Excuse me, are you high? If you can’t control your spawn leave them at home with granny.
There were literally kids running around climbing in and on cars like it was the ball room at fuckin McDonalds. No wonder a lot of kids are useless fuck-ups these days if that’s the extent of the discipline they’re getting.

…and I don’t know what it is with me but it seems whenever I’m carrying my camera people walking toward me will look right at me, make eye contact then proceed to walk right into me. I don’t get it. If I don’t make some evasive manouvers they’re hitting me and my gear. If I ever become that stupid, ignorant or comatose that I can’t even respect other peoples space/belongs/rights etc,…just shoot me in the back of the head.

There’s my rant for the day, please proceed with your day.

Yesterday I went to rehearse with aband and on the way I was reminded that my truck had an issue. It was leaking anti-freeze inside of the cab, the heater core was leaking. It had been doing it for a little while and I had wet carpet etc on the passenger side floor.

Attached to the same building as the rehearsal rooms is “Tong’s Mechanical” A small two bay garage just off of West 2nd Ave. run by a small elderly asian man. Upon arrival I decided to ask him about my turcks problem, he figured it was the heater core, told me what it would cost and I left him the truck. He had other cars in the shop but still managed to call me at 7pm on a Sunday to tell me my truck was ready. I went down today on my lunch hour to pick up my truck and was very impressed.

My price was what he quoted me, he showed me the old heater core and how it was leaking. I got in the truck to drive home and noticed that he had cleaned the floor mat and my carpeting of all liquid and mess.

So Kudos to Tongs. I recommend them to anyone with car problems.

I just finished watching this movie with Will Farrel and Maggie Gyllenhal. If you’ve seen this flick hopefully you “got” it. If you haven’t seen it I recommend you see it.

This is an incredible piece of screenwriting and an awesome movie. I have seen something this original since “Being John Malkovich” and “Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind”. I laughed and I cried, yes, I cried. Damn brilliant!! Will Farrell did an awesome job and the story is so odd that it carries you along, keeping you wondering “what the fuck”?

Nice to see some good ones are still bing made. SEE IT!

So a while back I decided to get do the responsible thing and end the stream of paper bills that come in my snail mailbox thus trying to save a few trees in the process. Any company that I deal with that offered online invoices had my attention. So as with my cable and my bank statement etc etc I was getting notices for my cell phone that my online invoices were ready to view. Rogers would send me the email and then I would try to log in to see my invoices.

Nothing. I would get password errors, I would get username errors, I would get some time out error etc etc. Every single time I would get an email alert and try to log in I would be denied. I finally got fed up and called to get my bills back to being sent in paper format. The fucking automated asshole on the other end of the line hangs up on me. I call back, get transfered to three different departments all just to get my bills back. When I suggest that perhaps someone should fix the web site the guy on the other end sheepishly in a defeated tone says, “yeah well, it’s been broken for about 8 months now”.

Excuse me? Eight months? I’m glad to see Rogers is on top of things, about as together as Telus. Perhaps I’ll try a new cell carrier soon, one that has their shit together.

Fucking Morons.

There once was a boy who long ago used to to listen to the radio, a small portable transistor radio with an antennea and all, that ran on a single 9 volt battery. He used to listen to it often but usually at night while forced to “go to sleep” he’d hide it under his pillow and listen quietly to the songs that would play through the feathers.

As time went on and he grew older, his parents graciously bought him a small beat-up drum kit in which he would learn to play, playing along to many songs from many bands but always coming back to a certain band for a challenge and inspiration. As this boy grew up, heading into juniour highschool The Police became the underlying soundtrack to his existance, “Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic” still sends him back to his first crush on a girl, (Chrissy Bohmer was beautiful and never did show any interest in him). As time went on and the boy was at the age to go to concerts The Police had called it quits as a band and there was no chance for him to see them live.

As life went on and drumming became the forefront of his plans The Police and especially Stewart Copeland were always there to inspire and conspire within his mind. Collaborating with the likes of Zeppelin and the late great John Bonham to help this boy develop his own style of drumming (if you can call it that).

The boy grew into a man (okay almost) and over the years has had a little taste of the golden apple but as life moves on priorities change and this boy is presently doing other things other than drumming.

On the 27th and 30th of May somewhere in GM Place here in Vancouver there will be a small boy within a man with the biggest fucking smile on his face that you’ve ever seen. As The Police start off they’re reunion tour after 23 years of waiting there will be a rush of memories as this boys soundtrack starts to rewind. From highschool memories to drum chops he wished he could pull off there will be a solid constant in that every song will have it’s own place in this boy’s heart and mind. One thing you can be as sure as the sun will rise tomorrow is that when The Police break into “Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic”, well….you get the picture.

Ok please tell me I’m not the only one that sees this. Is it not fucking obvious that this most recent “threat”to the free world’s security is just another blatant sign that GW is a complete lying sack of shit moron president?

Let’s recap shall we. September 11th happens (and was allowed to happen because Bush was too busy on vacation to read the briefings a month earlier). He allows the Saudis to fly away free and clear and the “war on terrorism” is launched. Except that instead of spending the time and money to hunt down Osama Bin Laden Bush sends his troops in a bee-line to Iraq to bomb the shit out of innocent people for their oil. Ohhhh, but he had to liberate them from Hussein, yeah sure and he’s been in custody how many years now while the US helps Iraq “rebuild and restructure”. That’s going so well the Iraqis are driving car bombs into the troops. Good on ya GW.

Now while all this is going on nobody’s bothered to look for the real guy that was responsible for 9/11 because unless he’s carrying around billions of gallons of oil well, we really don’t care too much about him.

Now look what’s happened. All this time Osama’s little evil fucks have been plotting “bigger and better” things for the western world and now the airports are locked down like 5 years ago and we’re in a “code red”. The media is in “fear spewing” mode again and everyone is anxious about flying, boat cruises etc etc.

So while GW was playing war for some tasty oil, blowing money and resources (and lives) in Iraq, Osama’s been playing with his chemistry set and plotting new ways to kill us all. Excellent, perhaps the retarded fucking Americans can vote him in again for another term and he can read “dick and jane” with some more 3rd graders while we get our asses handed to us for a third time.

I was given advanced screen passes to this new movie tonight. I thought it was well done and a fresh way to present a story, allowing watchers to really escape into something different.

Action/Adventure, Drama and Science Fiction/Fantasy

Starring:
Keanu Reeves, Winona Ryder, Robert Downey Jr., Woody Harrelson, Rory Cochrane

Story by: Philip. K. Dick

Directed By: Richard Linklater

Synopsis:

Set in a future world where America has lost the war on drugs, an undercover cop, Fred, is one of many agents hooked on the popular drug, Substance D, which causes its users to develop split personalities. Fred, for instance, is also Bob, a notorious drug dealer. Along with his superior officers, Fred sets up an elaborate scheme to catch Bob and tear down his operation.

I thought this film was cleverly written and very well done. The whole film was shot digitally then put through a process called rotoscoping. The effect presents an intriguing experience for watchers as the characters look like the actors but are definitely animated. As a fan of various kinds of animation I was drawn into this world and really appreciated the diversion from normal films. I think the animation effect helps watchers become more involved in the fantasy themed story as it’s set in the near future. This movie at moments reminded me of the animated classic Heavy Metal, more for it’s rogue attempt at something a little new.

I highly recommend this film, especially if you’re a fan of animation.

Official Site | IMDB Page