last vic trip/sock return

Sunny and hot. It’s mid-May and wildfires and already raging in BC and Alberta. It’s my last day in Shawnigan and I’m stressed to the tits with moving but have to run to Victoria to pick up a fucking vintage rug I dropped off to be repaired at a 5-star rug shop about two months ago. It wasn’t supposed to take this long but buddy had some “family emergency” (of course he did), plus he grossly underestimated how big the repair job on my rug was. Mentioned this numerous times, how much longer and how many more materials it took, how it cost him a lot of money. I assume he was hoping I’d be like “please, let me pay you however much you think is fair” but fuck that. I already paid way too much for this stupid thing and had to pester the cunt even to have it done by this, my last day in the south island. Thanks a lot for all the hassles, pal.

Anyway, I pick up the rug, it goes fine. It looks good, at least. He mentions the extra time and materials again, I’m like “thanks so much, I really appreciate it” but don’t offer to pay extra.

Next I go to a little shop to return some fun socks I bought a few weeks ago. The cashier is a short, obese Gen Z female with badly dyed hair. I tell her the socks are flawed and cut into my feet so I’d like to exchange them. I present the receipt. She stares at me and says “ummmm I’m not sure what to tell you, you wore them and didn’t like them?…” and makes a weird face. I correct her and state it’s not a matter of dislike, I say they cut my feet. I show her the stitching that is not stretchy while the rest of the sock is. She keeps repeating her worthless, misinformed take on the situation. After several tries and too many instances of her weird wincing expression that tell me she is really struggling with this interaction, I ask if there is a manager I can speak to. She haltingly says “I don’t think there’s anyone that…” but then I hear a woman upstairs somewhere say, “I’ll be right down, Josie.” A mature woman comes down, we have a normal conversation, and she says of course I can exchange the socks. I am in a rush at this point after wasting so much time pointlessly bickering with the troll so I quickly peruse the rack and find a pair of very nice, very purple eggplant-themed socks. I take them to the hideous creature and say “I’ll take these.” She realizes then that she made a mistake when she marked up my receipt (of course she did), corrects it, and then says “ok you’re all set.” I thank her as if I don’t want to slap her silly and inform her that if she has this much trouble with even the slightest confrontation, life is only going to get much, much worse for her. I leave the store happy with my new socks.

I meet with Cody for bubble tea. We bump into each other on the street. He is dressed perfectly casually and looks great. A breath of fresh air after the sock mutant. The only bubble tea place open this early is one we’ve never gone to, SH91. I’m dubious but it turns out to be great. Cody is a gem. I will miss him in the north island. We chat about his schooling, work, how much working sucks, how much moving sucks. He walks me back to my car, we hug goodbye.

I drive home and dive back in to packing like a madman.

people who actually matter dying

I just read a news article about four wildfire fighters in BC who died in a car accident while driving late at night after fighting fires. Usually I don’t give a shit when people die because most humans suck and don’t matter, but this summer I have been thinking a lot about how I think wildfire fighters are doing perhaps the single most important job around right now. I mean, this year was a terrible year for fires even with those people busting their asses to save ours — if no one does that grueling, dangerous work, even more cities, towns, businesses, animals, forests, etc will burn than is already happening. I just can’t believe that they put their lives on line in such brutal conditions.

When several wildfire fighters died on the job over the summer, it contributed to my hopelessness at our situation. Now four more of them dying at once…fuck, man. That’s a lot of young people doing the hardest front line work, dying horrible deaths while trying to save everyone else’s asses. It’s sad and it’s scary. The wildfire service is already stretched thin, now there are just that many less experienced workers to return to the job next year. That’s bad.

I wonder when wildfire fighters are going to say “fuck it, our pay is shit, and these fires and conditions are too much. I’m going to quit and focus on me and my loved ones before the whole world is consumed by flames.” I won’t be surprised if we see a lot of that in the next five years or so as temperatures continue to rise and the fires get worse and worse. I won’t blame them for it. I’d do the same.

…aaaaand back into the muck, like a pig to shit

I’ve been on a news diet for about 1.5 weeks after getting fairly depressed about the global climate situation. I was feeling inundated with bad news that I have felt has been coming down the pipe for decades, and I feel helpless to do anything about it, so why keep listening to the grim news if all it does is make me feel shitty?

^{This will be us soon.}

But you know me, I can’t stay away from the grim, the bleak, the hopelessness. Today I hit the BBC website and came across a collection of photographs from around the globe illustrating what a fucked month July was everywhere. I couldn’t resist, and now I’m in the thick of it again. That page is here in case you also want to feel bad.

^{Vacationing in a wasteland. It’s actually happening, right now. You can’t tell me this doesn’t portend ominous things, that this is a one-off, that things are going to get better soon.}

But I don’t feel as bad as I did the 1.5 weeks ago. I’m currently back in a place where I can laugh at the horror — at times like these, I like to think about the story of Nero fiddling as Rome burned, and I want to aspire to something like that. I want to be able to laugh at the absurdity of all of this, preferably right up until I too starve to death, am consumed by wildfire flames, or killed and eaten by my starving neighbour.

Fat chance. It’s easy to fantasize about staying chill and detached when the threat isn’t on your doorstep. I bet when the shit hits the fan, I will become as ragged and fucked as the next person, willing to do whatever I have to to protect Jenn, myself, and our shit. I’ve always wondered if we’d appreciate being alive more than we currently do, if existence would feel more vital if it was threatened each and every day, like that of a prey animal out in the wild. I don’t think it will though, I imagine it will just be far, far scarier.

Ps, I’m currently reading The Road by Cormac McCarthy. I used to think the end of human civilization would look like Mad Max but now I think The Road is a more accurate depiction. Ash everywhere, starving people becoming cannibals to survive, everything dead, grey, bleak. No moments of joy anywhere. Mad Max had too many hot rods and fun, wild costumes. No one will have the resources for that shit when fire has razed everything.

Sleep well.

I like New York choking on smoke: I’ve been scared for years and am glad that others finally are now too

Canadian forests are burning like fucking crazy this year, all across the country. The smoke has blanketed the eastern US and stirred up a lot of concern out there, and I couldn’t be happier about it.

See, I’ve spent decades fretting about the effects we humans have been having on this planet, trying to convince everyone who would listen to do our parts to decrease our impact here. Eventually, maybe five or six years ago, I realized that it’s a sinking ship, that it’s too late and there is no hope, that 99% of people either don’t know how bad things are (despite events like all of Canada’s forests burning) or they just don’t care, and there’s nothing I can do about it. At that point I decided that all I can do is my personal part to have as small a footprint on this planet as I can, and enjoy the show as Earth descends into a hellish chaos.

And this is part of that show. Finally, now that major cities are forced to stare at the result of choices humanity has made, even regular dumbass people are scared, and I find that immensely gratifying. I spent so many years worrying about this stuff, feeling like a freak because scant few shared my concern. Now, at long last, more people are feeling as fucked as I did for all those years, and I’m feeling a great sense of “I told you so.”

I’m excited to see where this snowball rolling downhill goes. Despite the growing fear, I don’t believe people will change or give up their comforts. We’ll all be eating Big Macs and buying the new iPhones and driving gas hog trucks and having 12 kids right up until the fire is at our doors. Even if we were to give all that stuff up, I think it would still be too late — things like these massive fires are now feeding the very cycles that started them in the first place. And since we WON’T give anything up, the chaos will only continue to accelerate, which I’m fine with. It just means I’ll get to see even more amazing, crazy shit before I die.

It’s the end of the world as we know it, and I feel GREAT! Welcome the cataclysm, praise the abyss!

the breaks

Jenn and I have had some lousy luck lately. It’s actually been so consistent and remarkable that it’s funny.

A few nights ago, we tried to go for ice cream and an evening swim with Alex. I was late getting off work though, then we had trouble finding the ice cream place (it’s a new one I’d heard of but never been to), then when did find it it had just closed. Then the restaurant next door gave us free popsicles (very nice of them) but they had no taste at all and totally sucked (they told us this was why they were giving them away). We got to the beach with both our and Alex’s dogs but the private beach spots were all taken. We looked to see if the main beach was quiet enough for us to bring the dogs but nope, jam packed. We settled for a murky, swampy, rocky private “beach” that we found off a small trail. It totally sucked and Jenn wouldn’t even get in the water, even though she picked the spot. I forced myself to swim and the second I pushed out, I encountered massive weeds, a fucking wall of them. Not pleasant. I abandoned swimming and tried to console myself with the bottle of root beer Jenn had brought for me. Lo, it was not a twist off cap! Who makes bottled pop in anything but twist off caps? Does Barq’s think that little kids are running around with bottle openers on their keychains? FFS. I tried my damndest to open the thing but that cap was made of titanium, I’m sure. No joke, I shattered a large rock trying to bust the cap off. I gave up then.

^{There should absolutely be a “NOT A TWIST OFF CAP” disclaimer.}

Luckily, at that point some people left one of the private beaches so we relocated and could actually swim. However, we then realized Jenn had only brought the already open, almost empty bags of chips, so we had to ration them out. Then the sun went down about 15 minutes after we got there, and that was it. It’s funny because at the start we were all a little dejected about how the evening was going but by the end each additional detail was so absurdly perfect that we were all enjoying the incredible shittiness of the evening.

Yesterday was similar. Jenn and I had a Port Alberni day trip planned for the last eight months and finally got to it, but the hike which the day was planned around was a total bust. First we got lost and went up a dangerously steep mountainside, then bushwhacked on overgrown train tracks for a while before turning around, bushwhacking out, and slowly, carefully climbing back down the steep trail. We continued on the dirt road that we were supposed to follow in the first place, but then a miserable old bitch told us we were there illegally (we weren’t really but we decided not to argue with her and cause a scene) and to turn around. Jenn then tried to make friendly conversation with the lady as we were leaving but she would no longer acknowledge us, the cow.

Then we tried thrift shopping in Port Alberni but most of the stores were closed due to covid-19, even though their websites said they were open.

Then we went swimming at the Hole in the Wall and the water was ice cold, like nuts up inside your body cold. We swam anyway because we were there and we had talked about doing this for months, but it was not enjoyable. The place was beautiful though, I have to give it that. All in all, our Port Alberni day trip was a bit of a bust.

My third terrifying tale of woe is actually from the future, ooooOOOOoooOOOooo: we were supposed to hike to Century Sam lake and the ice cave near Cumberland next week. We even made reservations at a hotel in Courtenay so we could relax there after the hike, which is quite fancy for us dirtbags. But Jenn happened to check a hiking group page on FB and saw that the Century Sam hike had just been closed due to high wildfire danger, so that trip is now cancelled. You know it’s bad when things progress from ‘plans going poorly’ to ‘plans falling apart before you even get started.’ I know cancelling plans isn’t ridiculously terrible but when considered in the context of these other fun days that turned out to be comical flops, I think a common theme is clearly present here.

All that said, I’ve been having a good time lately. And I don’t mind the smoke from the US wildfires too much. It’s a little unnerving but it’s also kind of exciting. If the fires were closer to us it would be a whole different story. That will probably happen next year though. It’s amazing that we’ve had a relatively cool summer with few wildfires in BC while just south of the border, all of the western US states are going up in flames. We got off lucky this year. It’s only a matter of time though, we’ll probably get our fair share of fire and destruction and panic next year to make up for 2019 and 2020 being such chill years in terms of wildfires in BC.

Goodbye to summer 2020

It’s September 1st, and I’m thrilled about it. Despite the pandemic, I actually had a really nice summer. I wish there could have been more hanging out with friends but it wasn’t a total loss or anything. We still did a decent amount of fun stuff like swimming, campfires, outdoor horror movie nights, up island exploring, tubing on the river, etc. Even helping with getting hay for the horse was pleasant this year (probably because we did it with friends this time, and also got to use the hay elevator Jenn bought in the spring). The weather has been great too, it has mostly been pretty temperate — no big droughts or heat waves, and we had that amazing lightning storm a few weeks ago. Lots to be thankful for, despite all the doom and gloom going on in the world right now.

Last weekend, Jenn rode in her one and only horse show of the year. She had been really looking forward to lots of competitions in 2020 now that her horse is finally ready for it but then the pandemic happened and all the horse shows were cancelled (which is pretty dumb since close physical contact with people is easy to avoid at horse shows, but I digress). Then Jenn learned at the last minute about a small show not far from us so she signed up and competed there on Sunday. My mom and I went to watch her, and it was a fab time. The grass was yellow and dry and all the cars were parked on it, and I felt that beautiful, bittersweet, end-of-summer vibe that I love. It was sunny but not scorching hot. Jenn and her horse did well in the competition, and she was thrilled with how it went, and that was really cute to see. She’s perpetually childlike when it comes to horses, it’s pretty amazing. I had to pick up her test scores and prize, and I got to pick the prize from a table of stuff. There was some nice homemade black licorice soap in the shape of a tombstone that was both really funny and cute, and I adore black licorice so that was the clear choice. Then my mom and Jenn had a nice bonding moment with the horse which was nice to see.

The show was over by then so almost everyone had packed up and left, and the bittersweet feeling intensified for me. Seeing the flattened yellow grass where all the people had walked and parked their vehicles, having seen the kids and parents milling about the place but now it was empty, the soft yellow afternoon sun…it was perfect. Absolutely heartbreaking. Jenn being so happy with her and her horse’s performance was part of it too. The whole experience was pretty far out.

Then we went to Romeo’s in Duncan for dinner and it was great too. It started raining on our way there and the air had that dusty summer rain smell that everyone loves — I say that because I’ve never met a person who doesn’t like it, but there must be a few. Anyway, Romeo’s is such a great, kind of crappy but actually totally decent restaurant. Both the food and the service was excellent. Jenn was still buzzing from her show and talked about it lots, and it warmed my icy heart to see her so happy. It was a nice evening.

The day was a perfect way to end summer. I know we still technically have three more weeks of it but man, once September hits, I’m over the hump and feel the tension of summer melt away. This fall and winter will obviously be very different due to covid-19 but that’s fine, it doesn’t ruin it for me. There will still be lots of fun to be had.

Wait, one bummer I have to note: a friend just pointed out that Halloween is on a Saturday this year. That’s very disappointing for me because it would have been really special for my Misfits cover band to play our annual Halloween season show, on the actual night of Halloween. Dang, man. Double dang. Oh well, what can you do?

don’t care

Another post relating to my lack of empathy. I’ve been reading some “woe is me” stuff online and I don’t know if I can feel any less sympathetic about it.

Any time I hear people living in beautiful cities, in nice homes, with lots of friends and family, money for food, and access to social assistance, a good medical system, and even limitless entertainment complaining about how down they feel, all I want to do is drop them in the middle of a some country ripped apart by civil war where food and water are hard to come by, family and friends have been or could soon be killed, people live in shanties, the few jobs available are dangerous as all hell and pay virtually nothing, there is no medical system or social assistance to speak of, and the police force and government are either non-existent or rife with corruption. I wish I could immerse these whiny “I don’t feel good” people into truly dire circumstances so they can see how absurd it is to navel gaze and look for reasons to be unhappy when they are actually blessed in virtually every way imaginable.

I think that boredom and easy lives are terrible things for a lot of people. Without enough real stuff to do or think about, we go looking for imaginary problems, something to occupy our time. And for whatever reason — probably because so many people around us are equally bored and thus feel the same way — we validate this bullshit and convince each other that these bad feelings are real problems that genuinely need to be investigated.

I don’t buy it. Bad feelings are not a real problem. Drought, war, famine, crippling poverty, wildfires, widespread corruption, lack of access to clean water — these are real problems. It’s true that I lack empathy, but I think it’s also fair to say that whiny piss babies lack empathy too, because they should be able to put themselves in the positions of people who are legitimately suffering and realize they have absolutely nothing to complain about.

“Put yourself in someone else’s shoes,” shouted the unsympathetic, self-absorbed clod.

world aflame — hello, 2020

There’s so much debate about whether climate change is real and whether we’re accelerating it, but I don’t think there’s anything to debate. I was thinking about the number of catastrophic wildfires in the world that have occurred in the last few years, and there are a lot of them: this year alone, there are the bushfires all over Australia; the Amazon in Brazil; California in the US; Alberta in Canada; and summer fires in the Canadian Arctic and across Russia. The trend is undeniable — there are more and bigger wildfires around the globe each year.

Normally, BC burns terribly each summer but this year we got off lucky. I think it makes us forget how bad it has been every other year in the last decade. And in 2016, the city of Fort McMurray in Alberta was razed by fires — approximately 88,000 people were evacuated, and 1,600 structures were destroyed. California seems to burn every year as well, and on top of that they’re running out of water from consecutive years of droughts.

All of this just makes me wonder how quickly the global wildfire situation is going to worsen, when we’re going to have a big fire do some serious damage here in my community (we’ve had several in recent years but they’ve all be contained before doing too much damage), and ultimately, when we’re going to start seeing mass fatalities and casualties from them. I feel like it’s all an inevitability at this point so we may as well just enjoy the time we have left and fiddle away. That might sound ludicrous but eh, I think lying awake at night or wringing our hands thinking about things we can’t change or prevent is a more ludicrous option.

Just remember that we are all recycled particles of stardust and when we eventually burn to death, we will rejoin the dirt, plants, animals, other people, and yes, even stardust, and that’s a beautiful, amazing thing — there’s nothing to fear so fuck it. Fiddle on, friends.

Happy new year!

reiteration of why we shouldn’t be sad about the impending end of the human race

I keep thinking about something I blogged about recently, which is how I am less worried about the various global crises going on — like unprecedented droughts, wildfires, and heat waves — because instead of seeing this as the end of something good, I see it more as the beginning of something else that will also be good. And today, I thought of an analogy for it that I like.

Think of Mother Nature as a pet owner, and the human race and/or the world as we know it as a senior pet, like an old Golden Retriever.

Old Goldie been a nice dog but it’s getting on in age, and it’s going to die soon. That’s a bit sad but that’s the circle of life.

And on the bright side, what happens after the nice old dog dies? The pet owner gets a new puppy.

That’s it. Pretty straightforward, hey? The jist, to simplify it even further, is that we will disappear from the planet but we will be replaced by other neat things, and that’s neat in itself. If we can look beyond our own interests and see the big picture, we should be able to be happy for the new puppy that will replace us, and its owner which will be happy with its new pet. I think that’s a great thing to strive for.

In essence, yes, I’m suggesting we should all rejoice at the demise of the human race. I’m just putting a cute spin on it to make the idea attractive to the commoners. How positively satanic of me. I am pleased with myself.

I don’t like the Langford Cineplex

Last night, Jenn and I went to the Langford Cineplex movie theater to watch the new Jurassic Park flick. Normally, I would insist on going to the Duncan Caprice theater but we had a gift card for Cineplex to use up, and she loves dinosaur movies. It was an unpleasant experience.

To start with, the guy who sold us our tickets and snacks was fucking weird, and terrible at his job. He looked young, about 17 or so, and it’s July now so maybe he actually is that young and is just starting a new summer job, but it’s not like he was trying hard to start with. He was really bored and disinterested in his customers and everything he was doing, and absurdly slow and inefficient at every task. When people ordered their snacks, he’d tilt his head to one side, put his arms straight down by his sides, heave a big sigh, and sluggishly shuffle over to the popcorn machine. He honestly looked like a kid having a minor tantrum about having to do whatever he was doing. And if he had a group of three people ordering three popcorns, he would do this three separate times for them. I wanted to fucking scream.

Then after he finished with those customers, he would do his head tilted, arms straight down shuffle to the employee area in the back for a minute before re-emerging in the exact same fashion and then beginning the plodding performance all over again for the next customers. I wondered what he could possibly be doing in the back. Probably checking his god damned phone, or stuffing some free popcorn in his chubby face. Oh, he had that gross, low muscle tone thing going on too. Every inch of his body looked so fucking soft. You knew just by looking at him that he would absolutely be the first to die if shit hit the fan.

We finally made our way past the gate troll and watched the horrible garbage movie, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom. I won’t bother tearing this worthless piece of trash apart because anyone with a modicum of common sense should be able to see it for the steaming waste it is: terrible typical story arcs, terrible typical characters, terrible acting. But I did just see that it’s dominating the weekend box office ratings or whatever they’re called. How reassuring to see that vapid people still love vapid movies.

The worst part of my experience at the theater last night was the popcorn. It was as dry as the desert. Yes, it was yellow and tasted (sort of) like butter, but it was so dry and un-greasy that it seemed like they used some kind of seasoning rather than any butter- or oil-based topping. Or maybe they’re just cheap and don’t use enough butter there. Regardless, greasy fucking popcorn is, to me, one of the most important reasons to go to the movies, so this was unforgivable. When I go to the Duncan Caprice theater, they offer to layer the butter on my popcorn — that is, to half fill the bag, pour butter on it, finish filling the bag, and pour more butter on it. That’s fantastic. That’s what I want. When I eat shit, I don’t want to do it on moderation. I want to be a full-on glutton, and the Duncan Caprice theater indulges me in that regard. The Langford Cineplex, sadly, did not.

When Jenn and I got out of the theater, there was a smell of wood smoke and the sky was red and hazy with brown-ish clouds. It seemed like the summer wildfires had started suddenly while we were watching that piece of shit movie, and we had exited to find the world on the verge of the fiery apocalypse yet again — just another summer here in BC, the new normal around in these parts.

So overall, it was a really lousy experience. I hate the Langford theater, I hate the new Jurassic Park film, and I hate summer.

On the bright side, we’re past June 21st so the days are getting shorter again. Praise Baal for that. Bring on the cold and dark. Until it arrives, I’ll be hiding in the cool, air-conditioned Duncan Caprice theater.

Oh, the perfect hideousness of it all.