Choke on it.

Talk about paralysis. I'm trying to sum up the last year of my life. I'm trying to be poignant, poised, insightful and succinct. I've got several thousand words of snippets and thoughts and memories and fear and hope and promise and delusion and wonder and you name it - can you say "not succinct"?

Life moves on though and I'm setting aside my grand wrap up for the sake of random pulp. An attempt to dislodge the furball of despair that has been preventing me from writing.

I love LEGO. My mom knows I love lego. She sent me some pictures of what a crazy lego person can accomplish to, in part, express their faith.

• How long to build it? It was about a year and a half of planning, building and photographing.
• How many pieces of LEGO to build it? more than 75,000
• How big is it? About 7 feet by 5 1/2 feet by 30 inches (2.2 m x 1.7 m x .76 m)
• How many LEGO people does it seat? 1,372
• How many windows? 3,976
• It features a balcony, a Narthex, stairs to the balcony, restrooms, coat rooms, several mosaics, a nave, a baptistery, an altar, a crucifix, a pulpit and an elaborate pipe organ.

Its funny you know, this kind of makes me feel better of myself for not accomplishing more in my 2 months in hell. That being said, anyone want to join the "Adult Lego building community" with me and build something spectacular? I'm serious.... unfortunately :)

There's something coercive about the way some people smile...Wide open as if to say, "Come on in and browse a while."

Lowest of the Low, The Horseshoe Tavern

This band holds a healthy dose of nostalgia for me. I've seen them a bunch of times over the years, with new friends, old friends, best friends and random acquaintance types. It was a little bit disjoint that I found myself checking them out alone last Tuesday. Although there have been a couple of false starts, this time was to be their last show in Toronto and I tend to believe them this go around.

Generally everyone looks to have been youthful in their aging, but the backup guitarist seems to be mostly shunned from the band and looks like he's been to the bottom of every bottle between Buffalo and Brandon Manitoba. Thats a lot of drinking in case you were keeping tabs.

Concert going has changed a lot in the last few years. Not that I have seen a lot of shows in this time frame, but I now expect to gaze past a sea of small LCD screens while watching any band these days. I was reminiscing over an encore where they played "Subversives" (which I think is a pretty striking love song by any right) and was disappointed that there were only two instances of the video recording from the night on Youtube and both were of pretty poor quality.

There's nothing conclusive in this whole world
'Cause flags can change and martyrs die and there're many towns left to burn
But somewhere between there and here, for one night, hold me near
And sing my shallow tears
And we'll drink but not to forget
But to remember instead
All our happy years

R.I.P. Lowest of the Low.

Whatever, it twas a good show and it brought back a lot of memories for me. Jay, Corina, Janette and Sey - would have been great if you were there :(

One yearning satisfied

I'm starting to eek out a life. Starting with the purchase of the best bed that my money could buy. Yes.. it is the bowling ball bed. I love this bed, as anyone who has spent more than 5 minutes with me of late has heard at least twice.

I just took a second look at this picture and find it both humorous and horrifying that my passport now serves as a coaster. I also find it distressing that it is supporting my sixth cup on the day.

Anywho. My bed rocks. That is all.

How Inconveinent

There are few better places in the world to catch up on the backlog of TV and movies that is created by 8 months of abstinence than Garth's couch. Weeds, Heroes, Southpark, 24.. you name it, its there in all in all of its scintillating, mind numbing glory.

I watched An Inconvenient Truth. It made me angry. For my part, I find that my thoughts are shifting from nebulous nothingness back to science where they belong (don't even get me started on Dawkins). This isn't a blind subservience, I am just in a position where I want to reevaluate everything around me. I am surrounded by inconvenient truths and am trying to find the strength to face them. Logic is the one thing that can lend its power to me, but its so easy to slip. I like it but am scared. Its fresh and daunting after spending five years of my life with my head in the sand. Whether the science of this movie is good or bad, or it was a complete partisan piece of shit, or Al gore is an alien sent to colonize earth in the name of Lothar is completely inconsequential to me. The world is warming up. Carbon dioxide emissions, at the very least, are a contributing factor. Although there may be a natural, cyclical process at play here, the evidence that I can find makes a pretty strong case for the fact that humans are accelerating the process.

I am also using this downtime to catch up on my Harpers subscription. [EDITOR'S NOTE: This is a kick ass publication.] In the "Harper's Index" from April, 2007:

"Percentage of GOP House and Senate members in an April 2006 poll who believe humans are causing climate change: 23"

"Percentage who believed this in January 2007: 16"

What? Are they privy to some sort of scientific data that I've missed somewhere?

Those who want to protect the status quo should be summarily rounded up, given a lollipop and some building blocks and be tucked away in a room somewhere to play "big man" house with all of their friends. Starting with this guy.

I feel like everything I hear around me these days is being spoken directly to me. Its a bit unnerving sometimes, but it gives me a lot to think about. Winston Churchill was quoted in the movie:

"The era of procrastination, of half-measures, of soothing and baffling expedients, of delays, is coming to a close. In its place we are entering a period of consequence."

Mr. Churchill, I hope that it will be fair to apply this to me in the coming months. However, I have trouble applying this statement on the large scale and for the today. I think that most people of consequence are choosing to put their head back in the sand. Please let me not be one of them.

Way back to 2004 in more ways than one.

I'm finding new and creative ways to not pour through every piece of paper that I've touched in the last five years.

Listening to some old tunes. Eminem's track "Mosh" once again doesn't disappoint. He's not really my favorite artist, but he is brilliant and this song strikes an important chord with me. Free speech is ill, but not dead.

"Back To Reality, Oops There Goes Gravity"

So I missed my daily post ideal by a _long_ shot. I tripped on my way to a beach in southern Cambodia and woke up on Garth's couch. Some things in my life were causing me grief and not everything can be taken care of from 12 time zones away.. as much as I will it to be different.

So I'm back, reality is taking a bit (a lot) of getting used to. The blog lives on, just need a couple more days to deal with a nagging feeling in my head that I am in hell.

One good reason to not live in Cambodia

You will have to look at these two pictures in tandem unfortunately. They are out of focus and poorly lit. So was I obviosly. WiMax is surprising, but Cambodia also had one of the fastest and highest cell phone adoption around in the early days. I guess when you have no existing sunk cost of infrastructure, you are free to adopt newer technologies as a cost savings (ones that don't involve burrying billions of dollars of medium).

Lame post in my quest for daily thoughts.

I've been a busy boy; leaving scant moments to think about blogging. I am also cheating a bit with my daily posts, me being 11 hours ahead of the blogger clock and all. Its actually the 4th where this comes from.

I'm about to hop into a boat for the day to go fishing with my new best "friend" before slipping back into Thailand for the 50th time.

The Time Traveler's Wife (Yet another book report)

I lost my copy of The Trial. I got rudely awoken from a coma on a long bus trip in Thailand. It was 4am and time to switch buses. How rude. I left; witless and bookless. I guess it could have been worse. It was a great story, or at least the first half. In perhaps the biggest swing in reading history, I picked up a love story called “The Time Traveler's Wife” at a used bookstore. Selection is generally limited in such places and I tend to find myself picking up anything that I’ve heard of and this title had recently received a glowing recommendation from a friend. I always try to read books that people recommend to me, so it was a better situation than I would normally find myself in.

Book’d but still witless, I powered through this delightful tomb in short order. I found myself hopelessly in love with Claire (the female main of the book - someone or other’s wife) and sympathetic for the time traveler and all of the issues that his affliction causes. The author nicely side stepped the whole time line pollution / what comes before what / space time continuum / collision / infinite number of timelines or 5 timelines… or whatever… that usually dogs time travel stories. She just didn’t talk about it which was actually refreshing. As soon as a story tries to address the proposed “science” or philosophical implications of time travel it either becomes impenetrable or so full of holes that you spend too much time trying to fill them. Anyone recently watched “Back to the Future”? They kind of explain part of the problems of time travel (Marty McFly meeting his mother etc.) which makes you start to be worried about polluting / changing events in the future, but then they do things like Marty (from the future who doesn’t even exist yet) being the impetus for the guitar sound of Chuck Berry. How did Marty know how to play Johnny B Good if Berry never found his “sound” without the help of Marty? There are a bunch of points that regress infinitely or circle back on each in these types of stories. In any event, Back to the Future isn’t a stunning example of theoretical time traveling wisdom. Neither is “The Time Traveler's Wife” I guess, but I didn’t even think about the chronicle ins and outs. I was more than happy to just agree that this was how it was and to wonder along with the characters about what was going on.

Not quite like Stienbeck’s uncanny ability to devote 3 pages to the colour of dirt, but the writing style of Audrey Niffenegger definitely indicates that her topics are very well researched (or well experienced). I didn’t know anything about making paper but there were quite detailed and enjoyable descriptions of the process. She didn’t say “they played a game of pool and a ball was sunk”; she described the play by play in detail. I’ll call it a pleasing compromise between sparse and ad nauseum.

I’ve rewritten the following 10 times. I didn’t know the name of the author until I was done the book, didn’t even look. By the end of it though, I was convinced that the author was a dude. I really don’t think that I am predisposed to assume that about something that I am reading, but maybe I am? I’ve never really thought about it. I hope that there is something in the style and content that made me start to feel that way and that I began this book with a completely neutral opinion about it. I have never read 500 pages without knowing the author, so I don’t have a lot of data on how my brain works. How do I identify with the author of fiction that I read (and what role does their gender play in this?)

Does it matter?

Looks like it is going to be a film. I look forward to it.

Off the rails in Phnom Penh

Hmmm it has been a while. Updating ye old blog hasn’t been top on the list. I’m trying to write more, but haven’t been successful. I’m going to update something here every day of November to try and keep me a bit more regimented. Only time will tell whether the following tidbit of info is fortunate or not, but this month will also see me updating from my old stomping grounds of Canada. Yikes.

D and I headed up to Bangkok and on to Cambodia. It came down to a choice of staying a week in Thailand waiting for the full moon or moving on to something a little bit more “active”. I was hesitant to come back here. It had been almost 10 years since my last visit and it is abundantly clear to me of late that you can never go back. I had also heard some distressing things. A friend who I have a strong attachment with (and also just happened to bear witness to my less than stellar start to traveling) had recently been to Cambodia, knew how I felt about my time there and told me in no uncertain terms that I should never return. That the place had turned into Disneyland and that whatever it was that I had found back in the day, it was not to be found here today. Five starred, air-conditioned bus ferried, sweaty, conical hat sporting tourists running amok in the most intense and favourite of the countries I had visited. This is the stuff that nightmares are made of. So I had to steel myself against coming back. In reality it was more an exercise in dissociation, around which I was mostly successful. So now I have two different visits to two radically different countries that just so happen to occupy the same geographical borders. There will inevitably be some posts around this, but my thoughts are still somewhat immature.

My self honouring kick took a little bit of a kicking. We somehow found a way to drink ourselves heavily across Cambodia. Hank became the villainous mastermind for everything from our debauchery to making a chair particularly uncomfortable. He did introduce us, and if that hadn’t of happened then we wouldn’t be nursing such ravenous hangovers. Simple logic really. Damn you Henry.

It was fun to travel with someone for a bit. Shared experience isn’t something that I have been having a lot of and we saw some strange shit together. When you assess the wreckage of countless beers, snakes on sticks, beef/goose/liver/??? lok lak (basically plates of quick, stir fried meat) and 5 drunk Khmers its nice to have someone sitting beside you who at least knows how to pronounce your name. Well, for most of the night anyways (sorry highschool). If I was out by myself that night then I would have brought my camera instead of relying on someone else. Henry – thanks for nothing. Why do you hate me so much? See? Its kind of fun :)

The caveat to having someone to talk to and share perspective is that some of my weaker moments were also born witness to. Like my lack of any sense of direction and poor haggling skills. Like leaving the door ajar to the room in our guest house one night and my resembling anything but a 'guide'. Or this fun late night diversion - hunkering down with some street side locals for a round of gambling in a card game that I didn't know the rules of. I always feel like there is a material cost for learning new games. It just so happened that there was so little English available to me that I spent $3 on learning almost nothing. Paying out mysterious odds and needing help to organize my hand against the house does not bode well for raking in mass amounts of cash. Derek says that I got robbed. I say that I was just the most unlucky tourist in the country. The truth is probably in between those two extremes, likely closer to Derek's estimate than I would like to admit. We ended up gambling more than I would have thought. Betting on baccarat, drinking bathtub gin at a casino in Cambodia is not something that you get to do with just any old friend. Do you know how to play baccarat? Neither do we. All said, I was able to keep my very surprising and perfect, 20 year in the running, every country I have ever been in, record of breaking even while gambling. Phew!

D doesn’t pull punches, shares the same humour as me and is one smart dude. I guess what I am saying here is that I didn’t really know him at all :) Good times, but remarkably unsustainable.