I think that Canada is a wonderful and logical holiday destination, but it's puzzling that someone would choose January to visit. It's not unlike planning your vacation to Malaysia in the middle on monsoon season, or to Providence for some fun in the beachy sun during its annual red crab migration. This random introduction does have a purpose.

Two nights ago, on my way home from a friend's house at approximately 1:30AM, I stopped at my favourite late-night pizza-by-the-slice place for a snack. Exiting my car, I was immediately accosted by an intoxicated older man who said something about "...[inaudible mumbling]...ten dollars...[inaudible mumbling]..."

"I'm sorry, I don't have ten dollars for you," I replied.
"NO!...[inaudible mumbling]...want to MAKE ten dollars!"
"Do I want to make ten dollars?"
"Yesth...my friends need a ride to their hotel, and the we've been waiting two hours...[inaudible mumbling]...for a cab."
"Ummm...I just wanted some pizza. I uhhh..."
"Please?" he asked.
"Si, por favor," his friend asked.
"Huh?"
"Yesthh, they're visiting from Mexico. I don't know them, but I found a hotel for them."
"Okay, well, I'm going inside to get my pizza."

When I came back out, they were waiting.

"Do you still want a ride?" I asked, relishing what I was sure would be my last few minutes on earth. I figured they were probably some desperate killers.
"Yesth...yesth...thank you."
"Si...si...gracias."

And so all four of them piled into my car, with no less than three grocery bags full of hard liquor. As we drove, and the intoxicated semi-friend of the alleged Mexicans gave me directions, I realized we were entering an industrial zone. I imagined my body, mutilated beyond recognition, floating in a vat of some industrial chemical, or buried in a shallow grave at the Calgary West Landfill.

As it turned out, obviously, I did not die. But hopefully three Mexicans can look past the dreary month they spent in my winterized and brown city, to the friendliness of some random guy with a car.

Oh, and I didn't charge them the ten bucks. I ain't no taxi.

Experience, culture,
and prior understanding render the scientific ideal of objectivity
impossible.

I got an XBOX with five games recently (Madden Football 2006, NHL 2006,
Need for Speed: Underground 2, Call of Duty and Halo 2), and I've been
playing it a lot. Especially Halo 2. And I'm finding one level very
frustrating....I try and I try, but to no avail. At this point the
enjoyment ceases. Should I find a "cheat" online for invincibility or
something? Would that compromise my integrity or violate some unwritten
gaming ethic? Hmmmm....

These are the hard questions in life, really.

I'm listening to an oldie, but a goodie: Ben Harper's Fight For Your Mind. It reminds me of days (or nights) spent in the newspaper room in college, working on my Feature section. Good friend Beth pushed this album upon me, and for good reason. His music also reminds me of Little Five Points
in Atlanta--a place I would visit from time to time while living in
Georgia--where the homeless, drum circles, hacky sacking,
fortune-tellers, the Junkman's Daughter, and cheap but good Italian pizza flowed like milk and honey. Milch und Honig. Yeah, baby.

This also makes me nostalgic for late-night runs to Taco Bell (with
Zeger, on a college budget), weekends spent in Athens (Georgia, not
Greece), Blue Sky Coffee, soccer games at Clemson (can I get a what-what, Will?), etc. Good times.

Then I came across this website.
Such a strange mixture of pleasure and pain when I saw that little logo
at the top! Ooooooh, there is SO MUCH I could say about this place. So
much. Hmmm. Moving on.

Okay, so my trip down memory lane is over for the time being.

Drew (-..-)

I reached into my engine, disgusted, feeling like part of an old Sex & The City
episode where an old woman searches in a trash can for food. "And I got
to thinking...when it comes to relationships, maybe we're all in glass
houses, and shouldn't throw stones..."

But I digress.

This sordid tale begins a week ago, and perhaps even far before that,
perhaps even back unto the beginning of time. God created the heavens
and everything else, and it was good. Eve ate the apple; Adam was a
fool, and his wife's slim lines coerced him into believing this apple
was tasty. Mankind was evicted from the Good Garden. Eventually, there
was a great flood, and scientists rumour that at that time, the world
broke apart, forming what we now know as continents. Some drifted east,
some west; some drifted northeasterly and some southwesterly. And so
on.

Skip forward to the late 1800s. The patronly Jens Jespersen sought a
better place to raise his family. Of Danish descent and highly noble
nature, he took the great risk that many others did and migrated to
North America. At the end of what I can only assume was great
misfortune or a series of poor choices, he and his own found themselves
in North
Dakota, and soon decided to follow the likely example given by the very
continent upon which he stood, and migrate northwesterly. To Canada. To
Alberta. To Calgary. To be exact.

December 28, 2005, one week ago. Snow falls often here in the
winter, and if you have lived in snowy climes, you know that the beauty
of the snowfall quickly diminishes into brown
slush, which eventually diminishes into gravel and dust, which
eventually is flung up into the air by traffic, settling on anything
and everything. Those of anal-retentive bent panic to see our cars
disparaged so wantonly by the city's inconsiderate annual budget, which
allows for such things as gravel and sand to be strewn about in the
winter. Peering obsessively under my hood a week ago, I noticed it
looked careworn, and sorely in need of a wash. It's a testament to the
non-clinical nature of my obsessive-compulsiveness that it took a whole
week to actually wash it. And so....

I reached into my engine, disgusted, feeling like part of an old Sex & The City
episode where an old woman searches in a trash can for food. And what did I find?

A piece of pizza. Pepperoni. In my engine.

Favourite Songs
1. Hear Me Out - Frou Frou
2. Drugs For Me - Jimmy Eat World
3. Cathedrals - Jump, Little Children
4. Not About Love - Fiona Apple
5. John Wayne Gacy, Jr. - Sufjan Stevens
6. Passenger Seat - Death Cab For Cutie
7. 100 Billion Stars - Lux
8. Cannonball - Damien Rice
9. Joni Mitchell - Court and Spark
10. All These Things That I've Done - The Killers

Favourite Albums
1. Alanis Morissette - So Called Chaos
2. Sufjan Stevens - Illinois
3. The Be Good Tanyas - Blue Horse
4. Sigur Ros - Takk
5. The Killers - Hot Fuss
6. Frou Frou - Details
7. Imogen Heap - Speak for Yourself
8. David Gray - Life in Slow Motion
9. Damien Rice - O
10. Coldplay - X&Y

Favourite Films Watched
1. Battle Royale
2. Adaptation
3. Wedding Crashers
4. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
5. Crash
6. Batman Begins
7. Brokeback Mountain
8. A History of Violence
9. Millions
10. The Family Stone

I'm sure there are many other favourites I could mention, such as my
favourite at-work quote ("It was then that I realized I was a MILF"),
and so on. However, I'm going to limit it to Music and Film, since I'm
pretty much addicted to both. The addiction is severe, people. I need
an intervention.

Happy New Year to everyone!  ~DREW~

I discovered this too late for Christmas....maybe I'll get it for my birthday:

I've always thought a sword would be the perfect "Love Gift" but I just
didn't know where I could find one. Now I find a sweet one, with a hilt
made out of the four horsemen no less. Sweeeet.  This will also go
perfectly with my "Official Buffy The Vampire Slayer Undead Killer Kit."

Once again we find ourselves enmeshed in the Holiday Season, that very
special time of year when we join with our loved ones in sharing
centuries-old traditions such as trying to find a parking space at the
mall.  We traditionally do this in my family by driving around the
parking lot until we see a shopper emerge from the mall, then we follow
her, in very much the same spirit as the Three Wise Men, who 2,000
years ago followed a star, week after week, until it led them to a
parking space.  ~Dave Barry

~DREW~

Belated Friday Haiku

Eighteen hour shift
Now half gone, and half to go
Me: low on totem.

I am feeling strangely unsettled. You know that feeling when you got in
trouble at school and were waiting to see the Principal? That
uneasy, what-does-the-near-future-hold feeling? A spanking on your
bottom or the disappointment of loved ones, etc? Yeah, that's the
feeling I have right now. The trouble is, I can't put a finger on it. I
don't know why I feel this way. Perhaps uncertainty for the near
future. Perhaps the fact that half of my left foot inexplicably went
numb a few days ago, and my paranoid alter-ego thinks it just might be
a brain tumour. Perhaps the spicy food I ate for dinner. Regardless,
it's unpleasant; I'd rather have sudden, uncontrolled diarrhea.

So this feeling of unease is strangely juxtapositional with the
merriment of the season. I find myself wanting to shirk personal
responsibility, common sense, the should-do's
of life, sell everything I own, and make up like a thousand shoeboxes
full of goodies for needy children or something. But...then that
unsettling feeling returns and I'm wondering once again whether or not
to seek the aid of an occupational counselor or just nurse a bottle of
Pepto.

Finally, however, I've settled with reading a few chapters in my book
and falling asleep. If you can't face or understand the mysteries of
the human mind and/or psyche, you might as well furnish yourself with an
escape (in my case, fiction).

Having said all of this, I'm really happy to see my brother again, and
I'm thankful for every blessing bestowed upon me. I'm also thankful for
the powerful words in this song, which we so often sing by rote memory,
but don't fully consider: