As I toiled in the sweltering heat of the summer of 1994, in various hellholes scattered across northern BC, I dreamed of escape. Escape from the gruelling phyical labor of treeplanting, the monotony and uselessness of replanting clearcuts that were only going to be logged again in 60 years if the trees actually survived, and the spirit crushing reality that we were so very far away from anything.

I sang in my head to rid myself of the pain of this reality. Reggae, the music of 400 hundred years of suffering, offered little other than eventual but distant salvation, and the occasional dose of revenge. What I love to sing was Steely Dan, and while looking through my CDs tonight, I saw a track I had to play, if only to make me feel grateful that I am not out there with the cold, heat, bugs, bears, stinging nettle, devils club, and rednecks.

This is what I would sing:

Bad sneakers and a pina colada my friend

stomping on the avenue by radio city with a

transistor and a large sum of money to spend

Perhaps you are wondering if I managed to beat coffee.

I did not.

How much time are you wasting?

I have noticed recently that events that unrelated to work that occupies people's time during regular working hours are now being measured for their negative impact on productivity. I first noticed this with Star Wars, but have seen it measured again due to England's positive showing in World Cup 2002. Some predictions are drastic, but never fear, for any problem, whether real or percieved, there is a consultant waiting to bill you.

If David Frum had his way, every sporting event will have its productivity cost worked into its project justification. I can't wait.

Today is my first day without coffee. I will make it. I will win.
Why am I quitting? Oh, the headaches, sleeplessness, and not to mention the ulcer-like feeling in my stomach.

This only reminds me why I don't live in the US. Has anyone heard Ashcroft sing? Do you Americans out there not realize this only encourages other nations to despise the American government even more intensely?

From Gary Shteyngart in this week's New York Times magazine.

"The past 100 years have been just horrific for Russians. They're history's losers. Their country has become a third-world cesspool. Yet the Russian people survive somehow. I'm not excusing criminality, especially the violence., but I do try to understand it."

If you have not already done so, GET YOUR WAR ON!

I hate writing proposals. The client only reads the last page anyway. They just want to know how much, not why we are buying this. I just spent 4 hours writing some crap on what a CPU license is, and how 5x12 tech support differs from 7X24 support. Can you figure out that one?

This pays my way but it corrodes my soul.....

And the mountains shall drop sweet wine, and the hills shall melt.

i am off to see Attack of the Clones tonight. Part of me is bracing for disappointment, while part of me is bracing for the annoyance of standing in line with hundreds of children and adults alike, dressed in Darth Vader costumes and sporting light sabres.


Do you ever blow off work? I did today, and I don't feel guilty, which is unusual because I feel guilty taking an hour long lunch break. My absenteeism was for a worthy cause, as my sister is visiting from Montreal, and I feel I have to help her babysit my 2 nephews. I am not much of a babysitter; i just put a video on the tv and them come up here to use my brother's computer.

Our public speaking club was booted out of its meeting room yesterday, even though we booked the room. No one respects our Outlook bookings. Actually, I was glad it was broken up because it was starting to really annoy me. The topic of the day seemed to be "luck" and people were talking about moments of luck in their lives.

Moments where I have been tremendously lucky:


Falling over a cliff while skiing and landing in a soft pillow of snow between to jagged rock pillars

Crashing my truck at 50pmh and missing that snowplow by a few feet.

Never having contracted any STD or caused any women to be "up the stick", despite frequent unprotected sex.

Sometimes I need to be left alone. Today is not one of them, but sometimes I would like to be able to bring my plate of prawn vindaloo from the common area microwave back to my desk without any comments from my coworkers; " Oh, that smells good", "What's that, did you make it yourself?" I was doing just this last Tuesday, walking quickly to avoid their glances, picking the loneliest route through the labyrynthine layout of the cubicles, thinking to myself that the first person who comments will be told to fuck off.

No one said a word.

Perhaps it was the scowl I wore to scare them away. I have perfected this scowl from my interactions with panhandlers, who are littered on Vancouver's corners; discarded humans on welfare, or long-term disability, former and current heroin addicts, "displaced" forestry and fishery workers, who all seem to have said "fuck it" and now spend their days pushing shopping carts full of pop cans (this is the real reason Vancouver is so clean). As I approach them I let my face turn mean and sour, and I stare right into their eyes. The point is to challenge them, and they will not even bother asking for the change.

The first real day of spring in Vancouver. Not today, of course, as it is chilly as November outside. On April 30. Warm breezes for the first time since early September. I am happily paying my taxes, so delightful a citizen to pony up right away, right by the time i said i would. how noble it seemed for something that so many have tried and failed to avoid.

Giving the government all that money had lifted my spirits and had me in the mood to give more. Tim Horton's offered me the perfect chance to treat my colleagues with a family pack of Timbits. I grabbed a box of them and a coffee and headed out into the mid-morning sun, convinced that life was good. The Canadiens had only the evening before defeated the Boston Bruins 2-1 to win the best of seven series in six games. It is not truly spring in Montreal until that happens.

Spring. My best spring ever had to have been 1996, in a place called Morgins, crammed into a valley next to the French border. Teaching a group of 16 year old American and Egyptian girls from Cairo how to snowboard. Days were spent jumping off a quarterpipe that we had convinced a groomer to build for us. It was a perfect vertical launch, with a soft and easy landing. ( I pulled my one and only 360 on this jump). My students were more interested in learning to be snowboarders than actually snowboarding. But that was okay with me, who saw my role not only as a snowboard instructor (a job for which I had no training; I had never even taken a lesson), but as the facilitator of their memorable vacation to Switzerland. If that meant 5 nights of drinking but snowboarding every morning then it was fine with me.

This ski camp for wealth expatriates and diplo-brats was run by alcoholics and lunatics, unable to find suitable employment that would tolerate their bizarre personal skills and excessive drinking. It is unpleasant to deal with people who are hungover all the time

It always starts this way; with a simple admission, an innocent remark that "mistakes may have been made". There is no doubt the truth will be revealed, but it is doubtful there will be anything done about it. Not with Dubya looking out for his dad's friends.

Come on France, you can do better than this.

As for me, well life in corporate servitude continues. This job is so boring, yet I get up every day and can't wait to do it. It must be that how well I work has a strong correlation with how much money I make. As that famous 1980s chanteur said,
this position i hold


it paves my way but it corrodes my soul

i must leave here, i must go quickly

i want to go down in celluloid history

Alright then. Too jacked up on late afternoon coffee to get any thoughts processed right now. My Aeron chair has been returned to it rightful owner and now I am back in my spine crunching, circulation-blocking stool.

Right then.

Ahh yes... all that technology on the American side can't compensate for their grade 2 educations. And these are our friends?

Although I am repulsed by the vapid writing in Leah McLaren's columns, I am drawn to it every Saturday, if only to remind myself how ahead I am of whatever curve she is describing. I am not alone in this strange repulstion/attraction. My wife read it once, (I think it was the column on black maxi-pads) and asked why I would waste 3 minutes every Saturday reading something that annoyed me. "But it's only to make myself feel cooler. By reading about someone else try to define what is cool, I can feel cooler if I have already identified, assessed and judged the trend in question as coo/uncool. The point is that I know about it before she writes about it."

What repulses me is that she acts like my little sister did when stealing my Grateful Dead tapes, or my cigarettes, or weed. Suddenly something is cool, but it is cool for my younger sister, (read "the masses") and then I have to wonder if I really want to stay attached to this cultural item.

She particulary enraged me with her recent piece on Ali-G, and the Queen Mum "getting" hip-hop. It's a spoof, the Queen Mum got it, but would Americans, she asks. This is her nudging attempt at exposing how much more subtle, satirical and stylish the Brits are, perhaps in anticipation of her announcement to more to London. No, Americans would not "get" Ali G; rather, Ali-G would "get" shot. It would be impossible for a white boy in America to ridicule hip hop in the Ali-G does, simply because every white kid in America is emulating their hip hip idols.

Her latest article is now on how she has moved to London and how expensive it is, and how "our" generation is defined by its record debt levels. Well, have fun Leah. Find a rich Brit with an inverted, white and pasty chest to pay your bills. Turn a blind eye when he needs to get surgery on his buttocks due to his spanking obsession. While you are over there, why don't you go work with the rest of the Canada-hating, ink-stained wretches under the watchful guise of Lord Black. This nation bids you adieu.

Quarter end. Stress like I have never felt before. Is there something that I can do tell these people at the University of Toledo that I need them to bend to my wishes- today. Right now, in fact. Please get up from your desk and do as I ask. I have been reasonable. I have been flexibile. You have been inflexible, intractible and unyielding. I do not want to go through this again.

Of course, the blame lies on myself. i am like the university student late submitting a paper because the car broke down on the way dropping it off at the prof's house 10 minutes before the deadline. Well, you should not have left it to the last day. However, sometimes it works out that way.

Recently I have been watching a lot of movies, mostly because we don't have cable tv. So this week I watched All About Eve and Pusher. I had seen Pusher before, but I loved watching it for the second time. Perhaps I still feel the twinges of my youthful obsession with European track suits, drug dealing life gone wrong, and bad Serbian gangsters. What exactly is a draftpak schemie?

I have ignored this for far too long. What has happened in my life, let me repeat MY life since I last posted? Well, Scott and Eva came to visit our lovely city, and were treated to the most bizarre three days of weather in Vancouver. Torrential rain, clear blue skies and then snow. Finally it seems that some sense of spring has arrived in Vancouver, and with it my new spring wardrobe, which really consists of my 3 pairs of chinos rotated every other day. Only, now I talk about it. Oh, yeat there was that one spring-y looking shirt I got at the Banana Republic, which led to numerous comments at the place where I get my hair cut. I don't want to say "salon", but then I can't honestly describe this place as a barbershop either. It is staffed with homosexuals, blares either house or disco on the stereo, and I have to endure an assortment of innuendos from the male owner.

My style really hasn't changed since I was 16. I have tried many different styles, but I have returned to the only one that ever worked for me: pseudo -outdoorsy-prep-West-coast-malcontent. Nothing else has ever worked for me but chinos and a button down. Sounds really boring, but that is all I can muster up. Let me list the styles I have tried:
Surfer (only surfed on one trip to Costa Rica; cannot rightly claim to be one)
Snowboarder ( I have been snowborading for 7 years, so this is one style I could claim as my own. However, the rebel attitude does not match my Richie Cunningham face)
Mountain man ( having lived in Whistler for 4 years, I could also make a legitimate claim to be a mountain man. Don't like the Sorels or the fleece. I once owned these purple fleece pants that were floods- oh the horror)
Raver (didn't give this one too much of a chance. I was already 27 when I came along this scene. the clothes were so expensive for such poor quality)
Hippie - never actually owned any guatemalan print clothing or birkenstocks, but I did have long hair and a bandana. the waspy face and freckles assured that I would never pull this one off without people thinking I was a trustafarian.
Redneck- Kodiaks and jeans, ball cap and mack jacket. What the hell was I thinking.

Which brings me back to the age of 16 and chinos and button downs. Please note however, that I have never owned Topsiders.

It's true. I have always wanted to know the lyrics to this song.

How sad that Leah McLaren is on vacation. I was looking forward to reading her column to work myself into an frenzy so I would be awake by the time I got to the office.
Yes, the office. Sadly, I am at work on a Saturday, again.

Do you worry about the youth of today? What generation has not worried about the generation behind it? On a visit to my 97 year old grandmother earlier this year, I was lectured on how the young people today feel they can walk away from any commitment that has become inconvenient. She was specfically referring to my cousin, who had recently left her husband and young child. For what, I don't know. Because my family is old-school Catholic, there were immediate assumptions that she had become a lesbian. I asked my mother if it was true, that my cousin was a lesbian. "Well, I'm not sure", she replied, citing how she had moved in with old friend who was a lesbian.

Anyway, back to bad kids. The Atlantic has an article about young men turned killers in the normally staid state of Vermont. Having lived in Vermont, I can say that boredom must have been the reason.

Since one depressing story of teen violence and moral depravity deserves another, I watched Bully, Larry Clark's follow up to Kids. Simliar to Kids, only it takes place in south Florida. a stranger place I have not visited.

Sorry about the gap in everything here. I have been working too much lately. Now for my follow up on Free Trade. Vancouver and BC are in a sorry state, and the only solution I can see to end our dependency on natural resources is to create a free trade zone in Vancouver. We shall become the sister city of Hong Kong, complete with exorbitant real estate prices ( we already have them), a booming illicit drug trade, sweatshops and hot pot houses.....

In all my life of being a Canadian, I have never felt an event having such an impact on our national identity and self esteem as the Olympic mens hockey final on Sunday. The Free Trade Agreement comes close, but a gold in the hockey is badly needed by the country. It has been battered about lately, from softwood lumber tariffs, alleged control of our military, to the downward pressure on our loonie.

We simply must win this as a matter of national pride. I have never felt it this strongly before. This one is going to be tense.

Somehow I doubt that after Dubya wakes up in the morning, and while shaving, peering into the mirror, fancying himself as Chuck Norris sorting out the Taliban once and for all, he thinks of this.