The weather's ears are always ringing, which is why it slowly goes insane.

Once when I worked at a small town drugstore, it was not busy and Frank liked to bug us. Once, Frank took a piece of paper and drew an "H" and then two lines at 45-degree angles, each connecting to an "O". "What is this?" he asked and I would say a water molecule. Because, duh.

Then he would draw a "Fe" with a line connected to a "Fe", to a line connected to a "Fe", and so on, in a circle.

"What is this one?" he asked, and I wondered if I would be less anemic if I would crumple the paper and eat it, and then I said "I don't know" and Frank said "A ferrous wheel!"

--

There is a festival on my promenade. It is called Burlington's "Sound of Music" festival, and it includes lots of unworthy musical acts, and a carnival. Tonight, I walked through it, and noticed first that children were somewhat few and far between. The Polar Express ride was spinning like an unexorcised octopus, but there was only one person in one car. There might have been five couples scattered amongst the ferris ferrous wheel cars, which definitely had iron content, because they don't make ferris wheels out of plastic and twine yet.

This was strange, because the waterfront was definitely boasting a mass of humanity beyond anything I have seen since I have been here.



There was a band playing on the main stage, and they were Jacksoul, which is Canada's most prominent response to soul music at the present time. It was weird, because they played somewhat soultastic versions of "High & Dry" by Radiohead and that Jane's Addiction song that goes "I WALKED RIGHT.....THROUGH THE DOOR.....WAAAALKED RIIIIGHT THROUGH THE DOOR", which I sort of always hated, but it makes a better soul song.

They also had a good original song, which was slow and soft and jazzy, and made extended use of Hammond organ. Hammond organ was much appreciated last night.

I also took the opportunity to use my new Ontario G2 driver's license, which is a driver's license which makes it seem like I just started driving a couple of months ago, but it does have proper evidence that I am at least nineteen, which is the drinking age in Canada as far as I know, and so I showed the security, and I entered the fenced-in beer tent area, and I drank two Kokanee's, which were not very tasty, and which gave me a headache this morning, which goes to show that I am becoming a lightweight and not drinking enough alcohol on a regular basis.

I was able to snap a last photo of the carnival, but the bastard ferris wheel had just shut off its glowwing lights.



Also, there was a considerable amount of necks surrounded by neon and/or flashing circular strands. Even though this was the case, there was a local white trash elevation factor of zero - almost unacceptable at such an event. Maybe white trash are not as likely to own forms of convenient transportation in Ontario, and they are simultaneously adverse to riding the bus. Or, say it ain't so, maybe white trash in Ontario are just not into carnivals.

Nostalgia Piece - The Littlest Hobo

This was a Canadian television show in maybe the early 80's. The dog? It belonged to no one! To no one! The dog would enter into a troubled family, turn their lives around, and ask nothing in return. Despite the pleadings of the renewed family for the dog to stay, the dog could not stay, because it belonged to no one. The dog went on its way, and a tearjerking theramin sequence preceded the heartwrenching theme song as the ending credits CONCLUSED you to be awash in the tears.

Kites of the Mesosphere

You can barely, just barely see my rainbow kite, which is not a kite that I own, but I did flight it on my second attempt, on Sunday, at the Griffis Sculpture Park. For awhile, I allowed a pregnant sculpture to fly my kite, which was in at least the troposphere. Heather did not take a picture, because she was prioritizing.

Here is a picture Heather took of me echanting my kite, prior to flight. This was basically me, recognizing the kite's need for magic, so that it could enter the mesosphere without tribulations, which are bad for kites.



There is a different pregnant sculpture, in the background, offering encouragements, because she had probably seen lots of kites in her day, but kites to the moon was something she had never figured.



Heather was feeling uber patriotic after we killed the fuck out of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi with missiles this weekend, so she showed her pride with her choice of kite. At one point, I did manage to convince this kite not to go to Iraq, after running in a sprint for fifty yards, diving through the air and barely snatching the updrifting string in my nimble fingers. However, I did not allow anyone to pat me on the back, because I am humble. Although, I think I may have been given the thumbs up from a freshghostly al-Zarqawi, who was a secret fan of kites. Especially kites with terrors strapped to them.

Our kites were not hoisting any terrors, and so we were able to get ours very high into the sky.

Sunday in Western New York was a good circumstance for kites, I think. Two months ago, I had forgotten all about kites, or even the idea of fabric taut with sticks on a string in the wind as some sort of sunny day activity. Kites were inadvertently dead to me. Sorry, kites.

I stole all of these pictures from Heather, but I took some of them, too. Heather would have given me permission, if I would have bothered to ask.

parade of lost double entendres

my week has been almost awash in anxiety which it had not earned. you should really earn your anxieties, because then they are more likely to abandon you when you need them the most, such as when you are climbing a mountain precipice.

with so much hollow doubt and worry, i have decided that i need to take time away from myself by giving my time to other things, such as activities. i have been looking, and maybe i can volunteer to plant trees. i have always wanted to volunteer, and almost helped to build a house for poor people once, except it was raining and i was feeling anxiety because it is tougher to do things by yourself.

there are lots of opportunities for big brothers, but maybe i am not outgoing enough for that sort of thing. although it would be neat to meet a little kid who has the hookups for the mary jane and all. oh, and the 'cid.

alternatively, i could join a soccer league, but i have not played in nine years, and i sort of doubt that i would enjoy it anymore.

there is no doubt that i have been ultra restless, and am anxious unless i am getting out of my apartment and beneath the sunshinerays, which might be made of photon-sized xanax.

also, my work is no different than it was two weeks ago, but all of a sudden i am much much less able to cope with how much of a drag it is. i think my next move will need to be almost drastic, maybe even to-wards something that feels personally fulfilling, such as planting trees, or dropping the 'cid.

it's just that i hate to be completely useless and pointless in the grander scope of the world. although it is true that the world is a fucking drag, itself.

the root of the problem? too much thinking, not enough television.

-

heather's fever reached one oh three point one, which is hott, and also i think a classical music station in buffalo or rochester. she would be dead, if we were fifty years into the future and antibiotics were hopelessly meek. i would get her a menthol lollipopsicle, but i do not think that such things have been derived or manufactured.

this weekend is the allentown arts festival in buffalo, and i think we are going. my favourite things are the glass globes that have swirling planets and nebulaes and galaxy-type things inside them, but the ones i like are at least one hundred dollars, maybe, although i should rather think of the loss of money as supporting a starving artiste, which is a fulfilling thing to do.

-

yesterday i was in old navy for the tenth time in two months, trying to make up for some of the ten years of clothes shopping that i have missed. there was a r&b pop song on the intercoms and i sort of liked it, more than the belle & sebastian disc that i was listening to in the car. this made me remember that i must be nearing thirty. i wonder if i should be more anxious?

-

did i mention that heather and i went kayaking twice last week? once was on the erie canal, and once was on oak orchard creek. it was my third and fourth time in a kayak, which is always fun to say, because it is a word developed by my iroquios forefathers, probably. the spirits of my iroquios forefathers made sure that heather and i did not turn upside down in our kayaks with our legs pinned inside, thus ensuring a slow and breathingless death. thank christ for my iroquios forefather spirits.

i got to be okay at very dramatic paddling and maneuvering, often requiring an impressively awesome amount of effort, with very little actual result, except for the very loud sounds of splashing water. this was justified, though, because it made everyone, including myself, wonder until the last second if i was going to be able to traverse the obstacle. and i always did, after paddling my portion of the creek dry. i blame our fat kayaks, which heather liked to compare to an elegant four-footed bath tub. it was also a lot like very small cargo frigate.

new pick-up line for boating excursions?

"i'm going to board your vessel."

woah, it is late. today was thursday.

Just another Tuesday for Mephistopheles

dear journal,

this evening is when they turned the fountains on, at the new glass building by the prahmahnahd. the new glass building might have been architectured by a pretentious nineteen-year-old, and i will compare its shape to a robot teardrop.

i had to dodge people with much more caring, tonight, because i was blessed with velocity, because i was donning my bicycle, which i have not let hurt my ass since maybe february, in florida.

i used to live in florida. just a little over two months ago. this is able to be forgotten, fairly easily. i can only tell by the messed up sense of seasons that i have had, with my december and january and february and march being so much sunnier and warmer than my april and may. despite all of these things, i do not miss florida.

journal, i have not properly introduced you to my second burlington. my first burlington was in 1998, in vermont, and that will probably remain my favourite, since i was twenty, and full of hormones and intensity, and in return, my first burlington was full of glancing sunlight and starry eyes and autumnals of circumstance. oh, once upon a time i had it made.

in my second burlington, i live in a very swank fifth floor condominium, which is very expensive. i would not be able to afford my swank condominium except that my company decided that they were really putting me out, to force me to work in canada and all, and so they are paying a substantial monthly stipend for the exclusive purposes of rent.

i do not know any of my neighbors at all, just like i have not known my neighbors anywhere. except there is gary, across the hall, who introduced himself in the elevator on sunday night. i introduced myself back. we are the youngest people in the building, probably. everyone else is well over sixty, and cranky. they are under the impression that this building is intended for "senior citizens", but they are wrong.

within twenty paces of my swank building's front door are two glorious english-style pubs, an indian reaturant, a japanese restaurant, a martini bar, two bistros, another pub, a beer store, and a liquor store.

i choose my abodes well, mayhaps.

i am two blocks from lake ontario, which is the same lake that i grew up twenty miles from. for this reason, i consider lake ontario to own a sort of gravity.

i started exercising out of boredom in florida, and i have been able to continue here, and i run almost every day along the prahmahnahd, which is a lot of red bricks that follow the lakeshore, and then i continue running along asphalt and dirt, and almost all of the way to the ship channel, where barges are entering and exiting the lake from burlington bay, appearing out of or disappearing into smokestacks and rusting towers.

so i was on my bicycle for a change, and i rode halfway to oakville, on the streets, through mazes of mansions and contented suburbias, and there was so much lawncare happening, or driveway basketball.

and then i rode to the ship channel, and i sat along the side to take pictures. unfortunately, my camera just does not have appropriate zooms, for being so far away. if your visions are prolific, then you can see the burlington skyline, which in actuality is much less pathetic than the picture makes it seem.



the last picture is a portrait of one of my darlings on the traintracks, behind the parking lot, at the factory where i work. it is a newer model combustion turbine, delicately wrapped in plastic. hamilton is where they made all of the turbines that i used to work on. i don't know where this one will go. probably across a few oceans, because no one in north america is buying them lately. this is the first combustion turbine i have ever seen on the train tracks, even though it used to happen all of the time.

that is all i am going to write for now, because i am hungry.

Hyperbole a million years long

Maybe the correctest things must happen by themselves, by accident. And maybe it is not correct to think of them as so correct, even though they are.

I have not been a success within the world of bloggering, lately, but here is me, and i will try.

Right now i am sitting in my blue beanbagger, upon my balcony, which is very open to the sunsettings, even the one which is happening tonight, and i can look down on the streets and trees and people at the martini bar, if i wanted, except that i would have to stand, because the beanbagger does not allow me such vaulted trajectories of vision, because it is low and smooshy.

If i were not so lazy and fearful of accumulating more apartment items, then i would seek out and procure balcony wickers, in which to sit with some heighth and dignity.

Today has been a pretty horrible day, actually. Not because of anything that has happened, but rather because my brain is fond of flat negatives, sometimes. And so when i would stop at traffic lights, there would be some overwhelming feeling of hopelessness, somehow. How melodramatic and out-of-nowhere awesome, huh?

Plus, i needed to traverse through three different ministry of transportation offices today, before i finally found one that was not bolting its doors for no reason, and had employees that were not adverse to upgrading a drivers license from a g2 to just a regular g. Golly. But now i am set, and it is on to the insurance and license plates, and then no one will be able to tell whether or not i am an american, at least when i am in my car.

--

There have been fifty-one days that have gone by since easter sunday 2006, which was actually a very boring day until approximately 8PM, when i was driving through the southern orleans county swamps, on route 63, and i was using my mobile telephone to dial the number of a girl named Heather. We met for coffee at maybe approximately 9:10PM, at delaware and chippewa. So it is fifty-one days later and there have been eleven dates, of varying, but mostly colossal durations. And it has been such a good thing. It would be a disservice to try and describe it in a blog. Or maybe it would just require more skill and creativity than i seem to be capable of at the moment. But anyway. There has been no better way to be spending all of this time. I look forward to the weekends and i am a bit down when they are over.

I have been very restless, also, today. The sun is in the finishes of its setting for the day, and it seems like i should be out walking and exchanging money for ice cream.

And so maybe i will.

I will try to be better about writing, and maybe backdating writtens for more bolstered posterity. And try to store some inside jokes here as well.