“I'm not crazy about reality, but it's still the only place to get a decent meal.” - Groucho Marx

If indeed there's anyone out there reading this, well you may have noticed subtle changes in my beloved blogs appearance. This is not some long needed overhaul, simply I accidentally messed up the template. In short - I suck. What you see is the best approximation of the old places former appearance that a couple of hours of me hopelessly messing about could produce.

I've been almost crippled today with a stinking headache and more worryingly a wave of melancholy so intense, well it almost physically incapacitated me.
But I have to go to work tomorrow, so I'll have to shake it off, or at least push it to one side for a few days. I'm just so darned lonely!

Speaking of which. My errant Daughter did finally make some fleeting contact from her temporary Floridian abode last night. However, she once again vanished mid-conversation with any hint of leaving. I'm reading to much into it of course. 
Let me just say that until last Thursday she seemed quite lonely and appeared to be having a less than stellar time - consequently she wanted to chat with me all the time. Then she made some teenage friends in her hotel, and coincidentally, and nothing more I'm sure, she is suddenly unavailable for comment. She's having a good time, that's really all I care about.
I'll come in useful one day I imagine!

When I'm this miserable I usually watch a lot of TV. This week I've been working my way through "Mr Show" and Season 3 of The Twilight Zone.
I'm also really enjoying "Continuum" the Vancouver made and set Sci-Fi show currently airing in Canada only. 
Next week two things to look forward to, a dental appointment (that darn root canal has started hurting - again!) and slightly more entertaining (I Imagine) seeing The Dark Knight Rises in IMAX, (not the really big screen alas, just the multiplex version of IMAX sadly, but still...). A lunch time showing (of Course), but it was already (nearly) fully booked. I don't get to the cinema often, but It's been years since I was in a full one... 

(did you know IMAX is a Canadian invention and has been around since the late 60s? well neither did I until about 20 seconds ago - what did we do before the internet? Oh libraries, remember them?) 

“I worked my way up from nothing to a state of extreme poverty.”   - Groucho Marx

“Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary...” - Edgar Allan Poe

   Shameless self promotion.

Regrets? I've had a few... from yakkowarner on 8tracks.

Todays big decision -  Stay in dressing gown and not leave the house all day.

I'll probably regret it later.
With any luck, I might hear from my globetrotting progeny at some point today?

“She generally gave herself very good advice, (though she very seldom followed it)” - Lewis Carroll

I'm a terrible person really. Selfish, lazy, opinionated, and these are my better qualities.

Time once again to relish in self indulgent self pity...

You can tell from the amount of recent posts how dull this week has been, and how little I've had to fill my time. It's like talking to myself, but without the accompanying mental health stigma (which actually doesn't bother me much at all, sometimes I seem to almost relish my mental health problems, don't you think?).
I'm almost, almost, looking forward to going back to work, at least it occupies my waking thoughts with, well something.
Billie being away is just incredibly bad timing too.  I've mostly spent the week thinking about all the things I could be doing, and then not doing them. I am of course the architect of my own destruction, after all if I even had any friends, I would surely sabotage the relationship, either consciously or unconsciously (but probably a schizophrenic mix of the two, gollum style).

Speaking of Billie, thanks to my ipod and her iphone, I thought we would have daily face time chats, or at least lots of free messaging. Sadly, and of course understandably, this hasn't come to pass. Whilst I don't mind in theory, in practise the way she has simply stopped mid conversation, only to reappear eight or nine hours later as if nothing happened, well it's irked me a little. As I say brevity I don't mind, but leaving a conversation mid topic, without a 'goodbye' or 'I have to go now', well that's just bad manners, something I dearly wish her to have, not for me, I simply want her to be a good person.
Of course, deep down I know it's just normal teenage behaviour, (their brains undergo an actual physical rewiring, they cannot, at least temporarily, relate to adults -  google it, that isn't a joke) but since I don't have anyone around to verbalise these obvious facts to me, or to tell me to stop being so stupid, well it continues to annoy me.
Rant over.
I love her more than anything, as long as she is safe, that's all I actually insist upon.

Well it's Saturday Night - what does it hold in store for our hero? I suspect fermented grapes might be involved...

“Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal; nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude.” - Thomas Jefferson

 

“I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity.” - Edgar Allan Poe

Holiday eh?
It barely stopped raining all week, and it's still so cold and grey. I've hardly left the house and I'm so very bored and broke. Of course about 20 seconds after arriving back at work next week, I'll be craving to be back on "holiday"
Billie is also on holiday, and getting lots of rain too there in Florida, and she too seems bored. She doesn't seem to be having a good time, and she's got another two weeks to go too!

Driving along at 70mph in the rain the other day, some wood fell of a truck in front of me, it hit the car and then I drove/bumped over it. Don't you dread that feeling as you get out to check for damage... amazingly not even a scratch, how lucky!

It's very late/early. Perhaps tonight's (last nights?) Twilight Zone marathon wasn't the best idea....

Here's something new - an embedded 8tracks playlist. I finally hit 100 "followers" yesterday, nothing by Internet standards, but by my own, huge!

Burt... from yakkowarner on 8tracks.

“One dog barks at something and a hundred bark at his sound”- Chinese Proverb

“I don't even know what street Canada is on.” - Al Capone

I discovered I had around 20 or so "unpublished" blog posts. Most are drunken ramblings, and deserve to stay forgotten, a few are sort of interesting.

One, from 2008, was simply this song lyric, which today seems strangely relevant...


"And as I watch the drops of rain
Weave their weary paths and die
I know that I am like the rain
There but for the grace of you go I."

“He makes a July's day short as December” - William Shakespeare

"Well, you can tell me now. I'm reasonably sober." 


Apparently it's July.
I only bring this up because the only evidence for that statement is what my classic movies calender is "telling" me (July is "The Birds" by the way, I love that film).
It has rained in almost biblical volumes, for what seems like forever, it is hovering on the edge of freezing (but I absolutely refuse to put the central heating on!) and the sky is perpetually grey. In fact grey pretty much sums up everything these days - neither light nor dark, happy nor sad.

Speaking of all things miserable, I was very much looking forward to the new series of "Wallander" last night. When I say "looking forward" I of course mean "anticipating wallowing in Scandinavian melancholy".
At first I was worried that Kurt had ruined everything by finding some degree of happiness. What a relief as the bodies started piling up and the existential angst began to drown proceedings.
Now I can once again fall asleep in a wine induced stupor, and claim I'm simply aping one of our most beloved knights of the realm.

I'm on holiday this week. I've already had the much anticipated blood test - woo hoo!
Now the next highlight is fixing the squeaky floorboards in my dining room. Y
ou may be reading this at some future point, relishing the knowledge that your author drowned/was electrocuted in a drilling through a pipe/cable incident.
Remember me fondly...

"Pa's selling weapons to the Red Army Faction,
I burn myself in public just to get a reaction" 

“To a father growing old nothing is dearer than a daughter.” - Euripides

Billie's gone off to Florida for three, count 'em, three weeks. So human contact will be zero.
I'm on holiday next week too, and as I'm as broke as a 30 year old VHS player, the highlight of my week will probably be a blood test to check for an enlarged prostate. What fun...

“Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all others because you were born in it.” - George Bernard Shaw

It's the fourth of July.

That wine was headachily strong.

That is all.

“If I had a rose for every time I thought of you, I'd be picking roses for a lifetime.” - Swedish Proverb

Somehow, somehow ( although I suspect a bottle of 14.5 % wine may have helped somewhat) I ended tonight reading through pages and pages and pages of early messages from my beloved Barbara on last.fm.

After about an hour I stopped, mainly due to the tears.

She was (is?) so funny, caring, beautiful and well, bloody perfect.
My biggest regret? Not having the courage to do what in hindsight was so blazingly obvious...



I probably don't have prostate cancer then. After a week or so of symptoms, my GP assures me it is nothing to worry about. I mostly believed her.



Billie is off to Florida for three weeks tomorrow. Sadly I am not.

Life is about as empty as an homoeopathic remedy.

Being rich would be some comfort at least.

Time passes....

“The one who loves you will make you weep.” - Argentine proverb