afternoon musings

So, I now have an apartment in Fredericton. Well, I'm not in it yet but we're going in Monday to sign stuff and hand over money. It's a fairly spacious place, I think it will fit the ridiculously booked lifestyles that we lead.

I know that if I wanted to be environmentally friendly and give that Al Gore his wings I could buy e-books, or maybe even go big and shell out for a Kindle but I enjoy the texture of books, and I enjoy owning things so I just keep buying them. I'm in Chapters right now considering picking up Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game, it's absence from my collection a serious black mark against my geek credibility.

I'm also thinking about picking up a book from the other side of the fence. If you enter Chapters from the parking lot instead of the mall, you pass buy a table filled with books debating spirituality. The new paperback edition of the God Delusion is there (which is suggested reading for anyone and I'll happily lend my copy to you folks) along with Letter to a Christian Nation and other atheist points of view, but I'm already on that side. So, I was thinking about picking up one of the books that defends Christianity and creationism from these arguments. You know, just to see how the other side thinks. And you can take that as a reaching out in understanding way or a Sun Tzu's know your enemy kind of way, though in truth it falls between the two.

I was thinking about books and printing things as I left the Super Store earlier today. I had deposited some money in to the bank machine and when you do that you don't get the option of not taking a receipt. So I threw it in the garbage and Al Gore cried and then I thought about killing trees and removing them as homes for little animals and then pulping them which pollutes water and the air and all that jazz, and I still think that books are worth it. At least it's a renewable resource, it could be worse if wrote stuff down on plastic. But mostly I was just thinking that being able to give untarnished information to others is worth pretty much anything to me. By untarnished I guess I meant to say immutable, as verbal discussions are bound to change the info in some way. And while I don't think anyone would argue that having life saving non-fiction like a list of poison symptoms and antidotes is a bad thing, I say that fiction, and even outright blatant lies pretending to be non-fiction are important enough to write down. Like Mein Kampf, one of the most dangerous volatile books ever written, is important to keep around so we understand just how easy it is subvert frightened or uneducated people with bigotry. The only problem I have with printed lies is that a lot of the time you can only sort them from truth looking back at them years later.

Of course these days that argument doesn't work for the justification of environmental damage and "but I like it" isn't an argument at all, so maybe I will save up for a kindle

Dave's a junkie

So, it had been about a year, but now I'm the wagon. I'd been clean since last February but I couldn't help it, I caved and got a fix. Yup, I'm buying comics again.
But I'm limiting myself! No superhero stuff! They are huge on their crossovers and before you know it you're suckered into reading all the stuff they print just to find out what's happening. So, I'm sticking to Vertigo and indy titles. When I went I picked up stuff only from two authors, Mike Carey and Brian Wood who are both fantastic, but I need to go through my old books and find out where I left off and see if Derick can find them for me. And I don't even know if books like Sam Noir: Samurai Detective, or Rex Libris are even being published anymore. Oh! Even though it had been a year, Jason still remembered my name. Yeah, I don't know if this self imposed limit can hold, but I'll give it a try.

Stay Away

Oh man, so I've been out of Corner Brook for over a month and it just feels so good. There are a few things there I'm gonna miss. Mostly the park. I heart that little spot, all shaded by the waterfall. Sit down with my discman and a book or an old TPB of Preacher and waste away a day. Or sitting next to the dammed up stream swimming pool and playing go with Dan. Those were fun times. And I miss Brewed Awakening, a cozy little coffee shop that played good music. But oh man there are way more things I'll be happy to never ever see or hear again.

Let's make a list!

- the streets: You have never ever seen streets as messed up as in Corner Brook. Ignoring the fact that structurally they were in shambles, the way they were laid out boggles the mind. In all the places worth going to, like the theatres or the downtown area there are more one way streets than two-way ones. And one of the malls has a one way parking lot where you have to circle the whole building to leave again, unless you are trying to turn left onto the main drag, then you have to leave on the other side of the mall on an access road to the mill and take two extra streets to get back on track. And that's not even the worst situation I've come across, just the easiest to explain. Hate the streets. And good luck trying to find a map of the place

- the streetlights: The only thing that made the streets worse is the streetlights. They last about a minute and a half and aren't traffic actuated. So if you get a red light, you might as well put the car in park. Even if there's nothing coming the other way you'll be there a while. And for some unknown reason, they put them all in 4-way stop / flashing red mode at 11 pm. I can't think of any reason why you wouldn't want your street lights working, but I guess someone did.

- the crosswalks: You know they only way you can screw up a crosswalk? Instead of putting up a crosswalk, you put up traffic lights that also last about a minute and half. And you put 3 of them on the biggest road. I've stopped for a kid at one of them, had him cross and go into a store and was on his way out by the time I got to go again. It's insane! Crosswalks don't need traffic lights, just those flashing lights at most to grab your attention

- the crazy people: Corner Brook is home the craziest of the crazy people. One time, this guy came into the Ultramar at 3AM. He looked at the magazines and picked out a national geographic and started reading it, talking about some park in BC that his daughter went to one time and how he was gonna buy it for her but he'd have to come back with the money. This guy looked pretty homeless. He was wearing a touque with ratty holes in it, three grandpa sweaters and sweat pants that were tucked into his socks and rubber boots. And he was wearing those plastic sports glasses frames with the elastic band in the back, except these were broken and taped back together. He left then came back later with enough change to buy it, and no coins bigger than a quarter. When I told this story to a co-worker another time when he was in the store, I was informed he was the town's surgeon. I was surprised he wasn't the mayor

- the language: Yes I know that it's Newfoundland, and everyone makes fun of the accent, but if I never hear "can a drink" ever again it'll be too soon. Plus some weird usage of the word after that I just can't reproduce... it doesn't make sense anyway. And that's just when I could understand what people were asking me.

- the snow: If it's somewhere between the months of September and May you can safely bet on it snowing. And not just snowing, on it snowing all day, just like the last two weeks. I'd never had to brush off my car 5 times in one day before, but it soon became habit. Anywhere you stopped and went inside, you'd have to clean it of when you got back out, no matter how quick you were. And it turned out that our little tucked away street got the most snow in the city.

- the stores: There is not a whole lot of places to go shop in Corner Brook, unless you're looking for Christian literature. No comic book store and the malls shut down at 6pm. It's a consumer paradise! Also, they had no Wendy's or Burger King, which is just horrible. And we bought a pizza that was so bad that we threw it away. I've never thrown away pizza before, not even when I worked a pizza place for years, I always took it and ate it.


I'm sure there's more things I disliked, like gas prices or just how far away it is from here, but that's enough to get across my warnings. Don't move to Corner Brook.

Back in the saddle at the keyboard

So, what with me being on the dial-up and how horrible that is, I've basically ignored this blog. But it's been over a month so I should have something down here. So, I'm in Harvey and looking for a place in Fredericton and a job and so forth.

Going in tomorrow to have a look around at places with Liz and try to find a decent 2 bedroom in a decent place for a decent price. Yeah, Liz is gonna be moving in with me and Danielle, presumably because she wants to hear us doing it thinks we're nice people. It'll be good to live in town again and have the internets, I'm running out of anime to watch and I'm dangerously close to actually emptying my 'To Read' book pile.