Company!

My old High school pal, comrade at arms, ex-roommate and general "like one of the family" friend Salacious D is coming to visit from Ontario this weekend. Hurrah! Now to clean the house!

Or lunch first. yeah.

Tempus Fugit

It's been one of those fortnights where everything electronic and utility-oriented has been futzing, I'm afraid, (oh thank you, Shaw and Fido) and since I don't like to post from work, things have been quiet. At least I've got my phone working again...

News in brief:

1) The car is working nicely, thank you.

2) I'm currently sorting out some "miscellaneous" boxes that have become jumbled full of things-post Japan, Japan, Juanabees, Grad pictures (both grads), programs of shows I was in, programs of shows my friends were in, you name it. These are those stereotypical "last boxes to be packed" at the very end of a move where the box is the only thing available , so it inevitably shatters later and the items get mixed in another box, and so on, and...slowflowing chaos. Wrenching, wearying worktrying to sift it. And then I think about how I get to pack my life back up again in boxes in...9 or 10 months? Dee-lightful.

3)The family is well.

4)The cat is fascinated with our bathroom doin's. No, I have no idea why.

Gathering of the Wryes

So I was over on the Island on the weekend to see some long lost relatives, and had a blast. The sailing was on time, Georgia Strait was like glass, and the weather was warm enough I could stay ondeck for more of the two hour voyage in a muscle shirt. Paradise. Everyone is hale and healthy, and sends their love.

(Disclaimer: Wrye is not our actual family name, although it is, I am given to understand, a name with a proud lineage of its own that I first accidentally appropriated way back in the heady days of 1998.)

Anyway, when three wings of the clan Wrye gather, politics get discussed. When my right-wing Albertan and Island cousins are in agreement with me and mine, it's a rare event. And we all agree we're all mighty angry about New Orleans indeed. But I presume you've read all about that catalogue of murderous incompetence by now...

In other news, Lady Wrye hasn't been impressed with my blogging efforts so far.

"I'm hardly in it at all", she says.

I try to explain that this is a blog about comforting the uncomfortable, discomfiting the powerful, and witnessing history, but she's having none of it.

"It's all facts and news and things. Where's your sense of humour? Why isn't it more like Fafblog?"

Well, I explain, there already is a Fafblog, but she assures me I'm even funnier. Hrm.

Later I check my email, and there's three messages from Fafblog, wanting to get ahold of Lady Wrye to confirm that they're going to see the soup poets exhibit on Wednesday.

Bloody Fafblog. I hate those guys.

What makes me Canadian...

1) The sudden urge to see the government announce it will be taking in a number of refugees from hurricane Katrina;

2) Not wanting to post this on any of the very shouty America blogs I frequent, so as not to contribute to the problem.

Still, if PM PM were do announce this, I'd cheerfully have his baby, biology be damned...

Await Lightning

We of Gen X have been waiting for doomsday since we first grasped the concept, so I suppose we're stopped clocks on the subject of zero hour--right twice a day at best. For us, it will always be 12-31-99, waiting for the bomb to fall. So we're pessimists by nature, but on the other hand, I find myself somehow primed in times of war and disaster, overdosing on information. Trying to understand what the hell is going on. And the thought occurs:

Is it just me, or has American discourse completely disintegrated?

I don't mean it in that tiresome "America is going down the tubes" sense, either. Wolf wolf wolf wolf wolf. I just find it hard to read anything on an American website that doesn't disntegrate into partisan screaming.

Well of course it does, you say. But look, that's not normal. In most countries, if the government fumbles in a crisis, you criticize the government. If Ottawa messes up, whoever is in charge wears it. It's that simple. It doesn't make you a Conservative to criticize Paul Martin, PM, anymore than criticizing Mulroney made you a liberal--he's your employee. You have the right and the obligation to criticize the PM.

So, Katrina.

Looking at the hard questions that are starting to emerge over the failure of leadership south of the border-criticizing the government's response seems to instantaneously trigger counter-accusations of "seizing the moment for partisan adavantage", "Is there anything you won't seize on to discredit Bush?" and the like. Democrats are burning with righteous fury, Republicans are indignant (so much so it suggests fear and denial) and the entire media coverage of the tragedy seems shot through with sensationalism, race, and class. I mean more than usual, o jaded ones. The actual event itself gets lost amid the struggle over the idea of what it will mean. Will GWB wrap himself in the flag once more? Will he get away with it? Will the opposition be able to take advantage? But there is no opposition, now is there? America is angry. Corpses in the streets. The butcher's bill for this will be in the thousands. And George Bush--whose only real job is to show up, look like things are being done, and act, you know, like the goddamn President--plays guitar. My Pet Goat, take 2. It's all completely batf-ck insane.

Well of course it is, you say. America was always that way. But you'd be wrong. America can't long survive like this. Not in the form we've known. There's no longer a there, there. Nature abhors a vacumn--and into it comes...what?

Futurelessness, is what this feeeling is called. Where the hell is this all leading? And can we get past our own apocalypse fixation long enough to do anything about it?







It's finally happened--the blinding flash of Light!

No wait, it was only lightning...

Workin' in the coal mine...

Hmm. I see blogger's interface looks much more sane on IE than Safari...one more temptation to procrastination. bah.

In blogging tonight: When countries go mad.

For Alan Hughes, Wherever he is...

In Agatha Christie's The Mousetrap,

THE DETECTIVE DID IT.

There is now no point in your ever paying money to see that play.
That is all.

Oh, no. Don't tell me-

Sex and Death in Prince George

is the headline on globeandmail.com, about a sensational murder trial. It's a great article title--except for the fact that the Murder, the Murderer, and the Murder Victim were all from VANDERHOOF, not Prince George. Geographically, this is like confusing Hamilton with Niagara Falls. Prince George has enough problems to deal with without getting blamed for crimes of passion committed 100 kilometers away.

Well, lets see if the editors in Kingston--sorry, I mean Toronto--print THAT letter. hah.

The Last Forecast

...In the evening the moon will shine
And be quite bright.
There will be, it has to be said,
A brisk wind
But it will die out by midnight.
Nothing further will happen.

This is the last forecast.

Harold Pinter March 2003


for most of the day, I've been looking at the following words, from a complete stranger, whom I've never heard of or read before today, and wondered if they were her last:


(no subject) @ 06:43 am
building next door collapsed. this may go soon wall missing big cracks.
fun trip love you



but she's alive, and New Orleans has escaped with a few dozen dead at most (edit: I'm now hearing 55 for the whole US), instead of 50,000 and the destruction of a city. If this is a birthday present, I'll take it.

Sometimes God puts a bullet in your brain, sometines he just leans over and whispers, "bang".

The US may learn from this or not, but no one can say they never got a warning shot...

So what about that big one due to hit Vancouver, eh?

F-ck You Like a Hurricane

So it appears that New Orleans, which we must recall is under sea level, is about to absorb a direct hit from the third largest hurricane in recorded history--take it away, Dr. Jeff Masters, weather expert; the emphasis is mine.

the weakest Katrina is likely to get before landfall is a Category 4 hurricane with 145 mph winds. Katrina is so huge and powerful that she will still do incredible damage even at this level. The track forecast has not changed significantly, and the area from New Orleans to the Mississippi-Louisiana border is going to get a catastrophic blow. I put the odds of New Orleans getting its levees breached and the city submerged at about 70%. This scenario, which has been discussed extensively in literature I have read, could result in a death toll in the thousands, since many people will be unable or unwilling to get out of the city. I recommend that if you are trapped in New Orleans tomorrow, that you wear a life jacket and a helmet if you have them.

So all that's left, from afar, is gallows humour and the strange sense of being unable to do anything but wait to see how catastrophic it gets, and donate to the Red Cross. Katrina will possibly hammer the US Oil industry in the gulf and will become another example to be held up or dismissed as an example of the effects of Global Warming. But this will be a hard one for the warming-deniers to explain away. Will the US be ready to respond to the disaster? Will Bush cut his vacation short?

How would any of us face what New Orleaneans are about to? I'd like to think with calm and focus, or failing that, cueing up "New Orleans is sinking" and cracking open the good wine. But it's likely to be awful, on a scale we've never seen in North America. It's kind of numbing.

We have sown the wind...


UPDATE: worse than I thought. from the US National Weather Service,

DEVASTATING DAMAGE EXPECTED
HURRICANE KATRINA

A MOST POWERFUL HURRICANE WITH UNPRECEDENTED STRENGTH...RIVALING THE INTENSITY OF HURRICANE CAMILLE OF 1969.

MOST OF THE AREA WILL BE UNINHABITABLE FOR WEEKS...PERHAPS LONGER. AT LEAST ONE HALF OF WELL CONSTRUCTED HOMES WILL HAVE ROOF AND WALL FAILURE. ALL GABLED ROOFS WILL FAIL...LEAVING THOSE HOMES SEVERELY DAMAGED OR DESTROYED.

THE MAJORITY OF INDUSTRIAL BUILDINGS WILL BECOME NON FUNCTIONAL. PARTIAL TO COMPLETE WALL AND ROOF FAILURE IS EXPECTED. ALL WOOD FRAMED LOW RISING APARTMENT BUILDINGS WILL BE DESTROYED. CONCRETE BLOCK LOW RISE APARTMENTS WILL SUSTAIN MAJOR DAMAGE...INCLUDING SOME WALL AND ROOF FAILURE.

HIGH RISE OFFICE AND APARTMENT BUILDINGS WILL SWAY DANGEROUSLY...A FEW TO THE POINT OF TOTAL OLLAPSE. ALL WINDOWS WILL BLOW OUT.

AIRBORNE DEBRIS WILL BE WIDESPREAD...AND MAY INCLUDE HEAVY ITEMS SUCH AS HOUSEHOLD APPLIANCES AND EVEN LIGHT VEHICLES. SPORT UTILITY VEHICLES AND LIGHT TRUCKS WILL BE MOVED. THE BLOWN DEBRIS WILL CREATE ADDITIONAL DESTRUCTION. PERSONS...PETS...AND LIVESTOCK EXPOSED TO THE WINDS WILL FACE CERTAIN DEATH IF STRUCK.

POWER OUTAGES WILL LAST FOR WEEKS...AS MOST POWER POLES WILL BE DOWN AND TRANSFORMERS DESTROYED. WATER SHORTAGES WILL MAKE HUMAN SUFFERING INCREDIBLE BY MODERN STANDARDS.

THE VAST MAJORITY OF NATIVE TREES WILL BE SNAPPED OR UPROOTED. ONLY THE HEARTIEST WILL REMAIN STANDING...BUT BE TOTALLY DEFOLIATED. FEW CROPS WILL REMAIN. LIVESTOCK LEFT EXPOSED TO THE WINDS WILL BE KILLED.

AN INLAND HURRICANE WIND WARNING IS ISSUED WHEN SUSTAINED WINDS NEAR HURRICANE FORCE...OR FREQUENT GUSTS AT OR ABOVE HURRICANE FORCE...ARE CERTAIN WITHIN THE NEXT 12 TO 24 HOURS.

ONCE TROPICAL STORM AND HURRICANE FORCE WINDS ONSET...DO NOT VENTURE OUTSIDE!

God have Mercy on them all.

Thirty-Six.

So, on the eve of my birthday, I find I own a car (thanks, family), have a fantastic gal, and generally am doing all right, all things considered. With that in mind, let's try this blogging thing again. Cause frankly, in 2005 it's hard enough for friends to stay in touch, when you're spread around the world like a thin layer of homemade strawberry-rhubarb jam over a particularly dry and pointy piece of dietary crispbread. Let's make that easier on the ol' extended family, eh?

Yeah, I find blogging and diaries hard. No, it's not that my writing is bad, it's more that it's my day job, and I've never had enough words to do the day job and have anything coherent left over. So here's to Wrytings, Mk.2.

So with that in mind, how far have we come at 36?

Hockey Enforcers rumbles to a dull roar

PRINCE GEORGE, BC-

...After all the hype and hand-wringing, Hockey Enforcers, a gladiator-styled event in which a group of burly hockey players are paid to thrash one another, finally got its world debut in this northern B.C. town.

In the end, the fights that erupted in the stands among highly stoked fans were as fearsome — and unpredictable — as the duels at centre ice. Police were summoned at one point to quell the rowdy fans.

...Some fans said event was a perfect fit for the hockey-mad northern B.C. town, where street brawls are commonplace on a Saturday night, "As soon as there's blood, this crowd will go nuts," said Taki Papadopoulous, 21, a student at the University of Northern British Columbia.

Mr. Papadopoulous and his friend Chris Hebert, 21, sat high in the nose-bleed section and admitted they were reluctant fans. Mr. Papadopoulous said he loves hockey and only bought tickets to Hockey Enforcers because he wanted to see what the fuss was about.

Besides, he added, there's not much else to do on a Saturday night in Prince George.

There never was, son, there never was. Read some Brian Fawcett, when he was growing up there in the 50's, a couple decades before me, a few blocks from our old house. Said the exact same thing. Some day my hometown will manage to stop shooting itself in the foot (and God knows, they tried to shut the event down, knowing that our days as national laughingstock were about to resume) and join the 21st--hell, even the later 20th--century, but not this decade. Though I wouldn't bet against the transformative power of UNBC in the long run.

So yeah, when I consider alternate-history versions of how it could have turned out, sure there are timelines out there where I overcame my scruples and am now pre-positioning myself for a prime Ministerial run in 2015; universes where I'm cheerfully working as an astronomer, an English Professor, or finishing my sixth year in Japan in my office at CLAIR, overlooking the Imperial Palace in Tokyo; but there's also a timeline where I never left the PiG, and I--and probably most of my now-scattered high school buddies--am sitting in those stands, drinking overpriced beer and getting ready to throw the first punch, hoping to feel something after another week in an endless succession of days spent tending the chemical farm or hosing down pulp sludge at Intercon, letting the pulse of the machines beat through me as my hearing dies the death of a billion impacts. And for that alternate Wrye, I promise; per ardua ad astra, pal. To the stars.