step 1. stay home alone in a house you just moved into which is around 50 years old.

2. order a video on demand flick from the horror menu. preferrably 'an american haunting' with donald sutherland.

3. turn off the lights.

4. have a couple beers.

5. midway through the movie, pause to check the front door, in the opposite end of the house, and realize you have left it unlocked. lock it. hurriedly.

6. have another beer.

7. watch the rest of the flick.

8. head to the can to take out contacts because they're dry as hell.

9. brush ass against a note your roommate left you on the counter in the bathroom causing a "shhhhhhhhhh" noise.

10. wonder where the fuck that "shhhhhhhhhh" noise came from.

11. retrace what you did when the noise occured.

12. pull up sleeve to check out goosebumps.

13. continue to step back and forth until finally you hear the same sound again and you piece together that it was in fact the note on the counter and not some supernatural entity trying to scare the living fuck out of you.

14. turn on all the lights and sit as close as you can to your big furry rotty/husky/shephard/lab mutt who will surely sense a ghost before you do.

15. have another beer.

technorati tags:an, american, haunting, donald, sutherland

yeah. i went to go see elton john play at gm place on wednesday night. i love sir elton, the music takes me back to my kidhood, i find it profoundly nostalgic.

we sat 7 rows up from the floor. i coulda sneezed and hit his piano. i took this pic with my cell camera from my seat:

that's how close he played tiny dancer and crocodile rock and daniel and all those other pretty songs that i'd shake my head to under the living room coffee table when i was 4.

the man is incredibly polite, he got up after each song and bowed in every direction.

the funny part, of all his beautiful songs that could have made me cry, especially with what's going on with mike right now, i busted out bawling to rocket man. go figure. it was just so overwhelming seeing that song played live like 20 ft in front of me. i couldn't keep it in. i'd imagine it's what seeing the beatles play hey jude would be like... if that were possible.

flawless show. flawless.

technorati tags:elton, john, concert, vancouver, gm, place

... i seem to have finally chilled out. seriously, i think i grew up in the matter of a week. we'll see if this sticks.

i spent the weekend on the couch, mostly because i had a horrendous stomach ache which i am guessing is stress related, being as every time i mention his name or even just think of him, i feel like that fat guy in stand by me at the pie eating contest, right before he sparked a purple puke party with his own violet vomit.

i watched a myriad of shitty movies, all of which made me think of him, which made my innards less and less stable. there was even a scene in domino (save your soul, don't watch it) where tom waits pops out of the desert in the middle of nowhere and starts predicting the future while his song jesus gonna be here soon is playing in the background. a song that mike and i had a conversation about, a conversation peppered with spontaneous renditions of it bouncing off prison walls and fighting the prison phone system white noise to find me all the way up here in canucktington, where it finally made my heart ache, a pleasant heartache, just wishing i could see him singing. hearing the song this weekend didn't give me the same pleasant heartache. it gave me nasty heartache. the kind of heartache that, in a conversation with yourself, utters, "what do you mean get off the couch and do something productive? what the fuck is the point?", the kind of heartache that makes you want to escape from yourself, just to not feel it anymore.

but, it is also the kind of heartache that reminds you that you had an opprotunity to feel something so profound. whether anything comes of it or not, you had this opportunity to feel a love so fucking profound that the loss of it, and the loss of it alone, is enough to give you a goddamned bleeding ulcer.

it's also the kind of heartache that reassures you that it can happen again.

this has literally tossed my world into turmoil. i don't know, my eyes opened wide two fridays ago, pinned open by sad letters from prison and spinning cop lights in our driveway and crying and arguing and then the weekend finally ended, i hoped for some peace, just a little peace. but the country which is currently home to my brother was thrown into instability and uncertainty. and though it's all turned out ok, at least ok enough to keep moving, it's made my eyes open like clockwork orange style, all viced out and shit.

with FEW exceptions, everyone is pretty much a clusterfuck. a shitstorm. everyone is their own personal shitstorm. can't figure out what's more important, drinking or freedom, drinking or life, drinking or really anything. all of you get behind the wheel. one day something horrific is going to happen and i don't plan on being around all of you to see it. i only hope it's nothing tragic, but just enough to make you see how much of an asshole you are.

i love someone who's locked up for 9 years. i will never understand what it's like for him, but i do know one thing. it's not a fucking joke. and you all are barrelling towards life in prison like you want it. yes, that's what you can get if you kill someone while driving under the influence. and no, you're not that one special person in the world, the one and only exception to the rule that drinking impairs your judgement. just ask yourself, have you ever done something while you were drunk that you may not have while sober? ever done anything particularly stupid? yeah. so, why would your judgment be impaired in those situations but not when you're behind a steering wheel? you're lying to yourself. and you'll be really fucking sorry one day.

we've all had our share of horrible shit happening in the last year. my only question is, what the hell has to happen for everyone to wake up and realize how old they are?

it's been a while since i spent a weekend on the couch, a while since i've had a beer-free saturday. it took me losing the most wonderful man on the planet to realize sometimes peace and quiet is alright. i hope none of you have to lose something as important to you before you get it.

technorati tags:drinking, driving, dui, drunk, prison

i promised myself i would never open a blog post or conversation or anything with, "hey ladies" or "hey girls" because girls and ladies are tools.

so, that leaves me with bitches. this post is for the bitches.

recently the man i love more than anything in the world asked me for a little time and space, and although it sounds funny, being as he's in the joint and 3000 miles away, sometimes space and time aren't always used literally.

my immediate response to his request was to give him what he wanted. why? because i love him, more than anything. i've told him over and over and over, i will do anything for him and that includes leaving him alone.

but when i talked to some of my friends about this, they gave me advice as any good friend would, but it was all so ridiculous.

"keep writing, he didn't say not to write"

"you should write him a thousand letters to prove how much he means to you!"

no. no, kids. this is not how it works. when you love someone, you want what's best for them. when you love someone as much as i love him, you will give him whatever it is he needs. even if that means walking away.

the thousand letter solution will only drive him away further. you must give him a chance to miss you, that is the absolute best way to deal with this.

of course, it could also be the end. in which case, FUCK EVERYTHING. especially the mailman. and goddamned prison. really, fuck prison hard.

technorati tags:space, prison, fuck

You sit there in your heartache
Waiting on some beautiful boy to
To save you from your old ways
You play forgiveness
Watch it now ... here he comes!

He doesn't look a thing like Jesus
But he talks like a gentleman
Like you imagined when you were young

the killers. when you were young. sam's town.

FUCK.

technorati tags:killers, sam's, town

only twice before have i ever had this feeling. this feeling like my body is rejecting my stomach, like my heart  is clenched in a vice and i'm overcome with panic. i'm panicking over how to make this feeling stop, how can i make it stop. it can't be real, denial. what can i do, what can i say to make this feeling stop, it just won't stop and it feels so wrong, so terribly wrong. my mind is immune to any other thoughts, they creep close and bounce back, deflected, unable to penetrate this fortress of sorrow, of loss and of pure panic. i've only felt this twice before. once when sydney died, and when he disappeared the last time.

it's panic, it's instinctive, like survival. when you find yourself in a very obviously dangerous situation with little time to react, that kind of panic. watching a shark's jaws open before you, or a scorpion's tail raise above your skin. sitting in the seat of a car veering uncontrollably toward some massive impenetrable obstruction. simple panic, i must get out of this situation now, i have to get out.

i have been feeling this way for almost a week now. like my body is trying to purge my organs, i don't want to feel, i'm sick of feeling like this.

while trying very hard to go on like this, things continue to crumble.

i am usually the bad guy, the voice of reason, the sane person who keeps people out of trouble but as such i'm seen as a bit of a square. i bitch when people want to drive intoxicated, i don't feel that firearms or explosives or any such weaponry is necessary to have a decent time. i don't think that my housemates should be riding dirt bikes across our grass and laying rubber on our driveway at 3am.

and this past friday i became the really bad guy. the really, really bad guy. i was cornered, i was in a situation where it was either i become this bad guy, or i take a hit for the team. i'm sick of taking hits for the team. and this time it might have been in the form of a criminal record. but here i am, sitting with a friend, trying to talk about something i can barely contain, something i don't know how to handle, and she gets up and says, "i can't take this anymore, i can't be at your house, it's a fucking zoo". i can't blame her, and a massive, hurtful , emotional argument ensued through the night and even when i tried to succumb to my violent need for rest, the crowds kept rolling into my room until 8am.

the rest of the weekend was spent explaining my position over and over to people older than me, until i fell into exhaustion. and that's when becky called. i didn't answer, she calls again, i'm almost catatonic, i don't answer, mike3 is snoring next to me on the couch and i feel like snoring, i'm so tired i can't feel, i'm not even sure i know what the sound of the phone ringing means. the room has a red hue to it and my eyes are dry from so much crying, i feel nothing but an enormous lack of sleep and energy, so much that i can't even close my eyes, i can't i just stare and the phone rings and the phone rings and the phone rings. she shows, she's bawling so hard she's hiccuping. the problem, it sounds hard and cold and i feel terrible for her and she cries. i finally fall into my bed and stare at the ceiling until 4am and sleep miraculously arrives as i'm about to expire from a lack of it.

the next day i sit and i stare and i can't eat, i can't drink, i can't breathe hardly. i just stare. i turned on the tv and watched cspan and the evangelists and all the christ-criers and some of the tv listings. i just stare. i stare and stare and stare and the amazing race comes on and the first team eliminated is from ohio and i bawl. i go to bed. i can't handle awakeness.

the following day another friend calls, and she's upset. so i stay up with her and she cries. and then i crash into bed again, and i stare at the ceiling again, actually, i believe i had the after hours ringing and colored stripes screen courtesy of the cbc on in my room. 3 am rolls around. tomorrow should be a better day, i thought, i'm getting used to this not checking the mail thing.

but then i woke up this morning and i sit down at my computer and get ready to pump out some serious work, and my brother is online. from thailand. he asks if i've seen the news today. i check my email and sure enough there's a breaking news bulletin from cnn that tanks have rolled into bangkok, they've taken over all the tv stations in the country, a state of emergency has been declared as has an unofficial coup, which looks as though it should be official within hours. the problem is that the prime minister plans to return from new york and fight it. and in amongst all that, the marshall law, the possible violence, the closing of bars and restaurants and tourist attractions and possibly the airport, the military state, sits my brother, already homesick, already having trouble adjusting to his new home in phuket. i made him register with the embassy online this morning so at least he will be notified if the canadian government thinks that canadians are unsafe there.

and through all of this, all i can think about is you. my heart is eating itself. i am exhausted. i have never been so exhausted, my life has become a joke over the past few days, a cyclone of hellfire singing the hairs on my arms and the tips of my eyelashes. and all the fuck i can do is think about you. how are you doing, how are you doing, good fucking god please let him be ok. i feel nothing for myself, although maybe i should, i feel nothing for me. i've had my eyelashes singed before. they grew back. i don't know how you are. i don't know how you are... that's all that fucking matters to me. why can't someone fucking cure me of this?

my brother is in thailand, where a coup is underway. a state of emergency has been declared, most tv stations have taken over and are playing only footage of the king and military music, and tanks rolled through the streets of bangkok today. out of concern for my brother, i have been paying close attention to this and i'm still not sure what to make of it because of the different ways each major news channel has been reporting it.

• the bbc: "so far everything remains calm and peaceful"
• fox news : "oh my fucking god get the fuck out you're all going to die!!!!!"
• cnn: "uhh, what? polls indicate bush's approval rating has risen. me me me i i i god bless america baseball hot dog apple pie stars and stripes o say can you seeeeeee"
• cbc: "there has been little impact on tourists. many cover patios of pubs all over the city, drinking beer... mmmmm... beer"
  

technorati tags:thailand, bangkok, coup, phuket

i have lost my inspiration, i've lost my soulmate, my breath, my beating heart. i've lost comfort, love and support, i've lost a friend, a great friend, the greatest friend. i've lost the only person who is so different from me but so exactly the same at the same time. i've lost the ability to lift my eyelids, to watch football, grey's anatomy, house, listen to killswitch engage, dredg and REM without sobbing. i've lost my best friend. i fucking lost my best friend.

and the worst part is, he's lost me.

technorati tags:friends, soul, mates, loss

this kinda slipped out in a letter to mike:

p.s. i fucking KNEW boogie would win. although will deserved it more, cause he even had mike in his pocket. mike woulda sacrificed his win and brought will to the final two oh fuck seriously who the hell cares. i'm going to go sit in front of the tupperware cupboard and stare for 6 hours. maybe the microwavable alliance will start voting out the salad bowls one by one. i'll make an early prediction that the salad spinner and the popsicle molds develop a pretty steamy showmance. dial random numbers and ask who deserves the shopping spree at spice world more, the sauce cups or the salt and pepper shakers. "canada's chosen, my little plastic friends, looks like salt and pepper are finally going to... SPICE it up a little... ba ha ha" at which point i'll hit my head on the counter and pass out. well, we can hope.

technorati tags:big, brother, 7, all, stars, chilltown, boogie

what do you do when the one person in your life who gives you more inspiration than you thought humanly possible, loses it? what do you do when that person who makes you want to do better, the person who owns your admiration, the person who gets through the roughest of times with a grace normally reserved for a ballerina, breaks down and gives up? what do you do when the most compassionate soul you've ever had the honor of knowing, the most loving person you've ever spoken to, the most brilliant mind you think could ever exist, has succumbed to the abnormal stresses that lay in front of him?

what do you do when the man in possession of you heart and your soul, no longer seems to exist? what the fuck do you do?

technorati tags:prison

From: CNNBreakingNews@mail.cnn.com
Subject: CNN International Breaking News
Date: September 7, 2006 7:05:08 AM PDT (CA)
To: vlu777@GMAIL.COM

-- British Prime Minister Tony Blair says he will resign from office within a year.

ahem.

hallelujah.

technorati tags:tony, blair, resignation, hallelujah

i did the absolutely unthinkable today. something i've never done before. i bought a fucking pc. and i'm about ready to slice my wrists open with a little jagged piece of the flying windows window after i smash it with a sledgehammer. FUCK WINDOWS.

i may be a geek but i'm not that much of a geek. i bought the damned thing because the fucking goddamned accountants FINALLY got me to bend over so they could shove their windows loving wangs in my ass. i just was so fucking tired of hearing from them that my filemaker database, which is actually an entire program *I* wrote custom for our needs, isn't something they want to learn. i built it over 3 years and the stupid fucking accountants keep whining, "we don't understand this, you need to use quickbooks" but the problem is the canadian version of quickbooks for mac only functions in one currency and we have clients all over the world. so i finally gave in and went out and bought a fucking pc with fucking quickbooks and now i feel like i've been raped by satan.

when i bring home a new mac, i open it, stick it on my desk, power up and i'm on the internet and i can work. i can get work done, thus keeping clients happy by avoiding having to keep them waiting, which in turn leads to us getting paid and eating and being able to afford our bills.

when i brought this fucking pc laptop home, with an open mind, i opened the damned thing, powered up and then all these little pop-up windows assault me with, "update this!", "holy SHIT, you need to update THAT", "your computer will explode if you don't do a virus scan now!!!" so of course, i click yes to do the virus scan and there's a big beep and another warning, "UPDATE YOUR MOTHERFUCKING VIRUS SOFTWARE". not in so many words, but you get the idea. so i run all the updaters and scans and shit and that takes me a good four hours. then i have to install quickbooks, so i go to print out some shit for it, and the fucking thing won't recognize any of the FOUR printers we have on the network. see, right out of the box, my mac can print from a printer hooked up to any computer, pc or mac, on the network without running any setup shit. not so easy for the little pc that couldn't. so after an hour of trying to figure it out, i finally realize that the wonderful people at apple have built a little utility to help windows out with recognizing printers on networks. so download, install, setup (takes a good 15 minutes), then i finally print (yes, i realize i could have just printed it out from my mac and gotten it done faster, but i can't walk away from a challenge like that, i won't sleep). go to install quickbooks and this warning box comes up, "the arguments are invalid". what the fuck does that mean?? the arguments are invalid? was i arguing with the fucking computer? how about plain english??? FUCK.

mac warning box: "Alert! The file or folder you are looking for no longer exists."

pc warning: "101011100000111110000000011100000, motherfucker!"

so it tells me i should restart my computer and try again. and it happens again. so i restart and try again. this is where i whine, "jooohhhhhhhnnnn?? can you help me install this?" and he gets it going. but a few minutes later the installer quits. so i cross my fingers and hope that it was installed fully anyway, and thank god it was. cause one more little mishap and i would have just smashed the thing.

i haven't restarted my mac since i moved in. even after installing lots and lots of software. i've restarted my pc probably a good 30 times today. my mac and my pc have the same processor speed and the mac runs twice as fast.

fuck windows. fuck it so bad.

technorati tags:windows, xp, microsoft, apple, mac, os, x

Macleans.ca | 5 years on, hunt for bin Laden is chasing shadows and raising local tensions

look, americans, seriously... what have you and your fellow citizens sacrificed since 9/11 to find bin laden, the mother of all perpetrators?

do you honestly think that a government capable of all that it's done, the intelligence it collects on a daily basis, the wiretapping, the bank record monitoring, the tightening of all security check points. do you think a government capable of all of these things, can believably be having trouble trying to find a man who's face the entire world knows, who needs a dialisis machine to survive?

do you think perhaps maybe there's more to this story than we're being told?

technorati tags:osama, bin, laden

We've blogged before about Anthony Graves, who has been on Texas' death row for 12 years for a crime he almost certainly did not commit.Well, Anthony could soon be gaining his freedom. The state of Texas apparently has until mid-September to retry him or set him free. Lawyers right now are pushing for Anthony to be released on bail.In addition to the above link, you can read a CBS Evening News report about Graves' case here.

Abolish the Death Penalty: Breaking news: Yet another innocent person about to be freed from death row

i've read entirely too much about the death penalty. it's exhausting. i give the folks at Abolish the Death Penalty mad props for being able to expose themselves to this corrupt murder day in and day out because when i do it, i turned into this depressed pile of goop that just yells at people because all they ever think about is who's going to be voted off big brother this week, or what band is realeasing what album.

i read a couple of books that were specifically on the topic of innocent men and women facing the death penalty. one such book was actual innocence by the guys who run the innocence project. no matter which side of the debate you're on, i highly suggest this book, as i'm sure, even if you're a death penalty supporter, you don't support the murder of men and women by the state who are guilty of absolutely nothing.

the most surprising aspect of this book was the illumination of the many factors that lead to false convictions. the liklihood of false confessions, eyewitnesses getting the identification wrong, and police, lawyer and judge corruption is absolutely astounding. it will blow your mind.

technorati tags:death, row, capital, punishment, wrongful, convictions

so last night my roommate and i decided to watch a flick, and being as we're both pretty interested in conspiracy theories (doesn't mean we believe them all), we decided on the documentary entitled, the protocols of zion.

immediately the flick got my attention because the filmmaker, marc levin, asserts that a good chunk of people support the claim that jews were secretly behind 9/11. i'd never heard that theory before, and as much as i found it utterly absurd, i had to know more about it.

i wanted to see how marc would refute the claim. unfortunately this didn't happen. he went out and interviewed people on both sides of the fence, and people caught in the middle so you'd think there would be a good picture being painted here, except that when he interviewed jews, he interviewed respected jews in their community, people with long-standing reputations and education and age and knowledge and wisdom. when he interviewed people who believed very strongly in this conspiracy theory, he interviewed cracked out street screamers. when he interviewed members of the arab community? he interviewed a bunch of 20-something kids hanging out in the streets of new york! an arab man in a suit, an older man, walked up to this interview with arab kids as it took place and crapped all over marc levin because he wasn't interviewing the right people. why doesn't he interview someone who'd been through school, someone who held a job, who's opinions were based more in fact than emotion, like these young arab-americans. marc didn't take his advice.

one of the claims from these conspiracy theorists was that 4000 jews were saved on september 11th. they were told beforehand that an attack would happen and not to go to work. they claim that no jewish bodies were recovered, that there was no coverage of jewish memorial services, and thus there had been no jews killed on 9/11. now this, i figured, was a total gimme. easy to refute, go find a coroner involved, rescue workers involved and find out if they saw any jews. and this is new york city for shit's sake, of course jews died in 9/11. all you have to do is find the readily available evidence that will take this whole absurd conspiracy theory and make it a joke. but marc couldn't do that. he even had a friend, a jewish friend, who worked identifying the remains of the victims of 9/11. he spoke only of one jew who died, a friend of his. one. levin didn't offer any statistics, not even an idea of how many jews actually died. he only told us about one. and then, as though it would solidify things, he interviewed the deceased jewish man's wife about the man's judaism. i think he thought that the audience would question whether or not this one single man was jewish, when what's really going on in the audience's mind, is, "just tell us how many jews died on 9/11!!". seemed pretty basic to me. but marc... ahem... missed the mark.

this movie was shit and all it is, is a bunch of people running around whining with no particular organization, order, reasoning, or factual evidence. it's pretty much just randomly spliced together footage of new yorkers being assholes to each other.

so, does anyone know how many jews really did die in 9/11? cause i find it hard to believe there was only one.

technorati tags:protocols, of, zion, 9/11, september, 11th, jewish, conspiracy, marc, levin