Grafitti

I saw this statement and rebuttal in the cab of a locomotive that had obviously been to the states.

ALL CANADIANS ARE COCK SUCKERS (done very messily)

(in very nice cursive) At least we're useful

Well that degraded quickly

Me (texting Mike about a previous conversation regarding something called back pressure in his motorcycle engine): Taking the baffles out of your muffler effectively shortened your exhaust system and changed the fill pattern in the chamber. What your engine likes is a longer pipe. Small engines are easily affected by changes in air wave patterns.

Mike: Fuck your hat

me: Ha

Mike: No one talks to me like that and gets away with it

Me: So I shouldn't send that pic of my asshole then?

The Trouble Clef

One Unhappy Grapefruit

These pictures are the first tattoos that I have done. The grapefruit in question was really an innocent bystander in all of this. It was just sitting at the grocery store minding its own business when I came by, purchased it, and started filling it with ink without any real plan.

"Oooops!" I said after drawing a particularly awkward line attempting the eye ball.

"The grapefruit seriously does not want to hear that!" Said my friend who is guiding me in the techniques of tattoos.

"Yeah, well, this fruit is seriously going to be looking for a cover up!"

Untitled

or "It's not me that is crazy. It is I that am MAD!!!" (borrowed from Ren & Stimpy: Space Madness)

Alien Fossil

Captain Picard and The Green Eyed Monster

Alien Fossil: Hominoid

So I'm gonna start just posting my raw drawings instead of waiting to get them all gussied up and what not. Hey If there's actually anyone reading this I wouldn't mind some kind of feed back. This is one of the many skulls I've drawn (though there are only a couple actually on the blog) and I was thinking of putting them on t-shirts or posters or something. I was going to make a subdivision of my online store John Henry and call it Alien Fossil. But I think I might just change it to Skully, which was a term the jocks at my high school used for fellatio. Using that particular word for drawings of skulls amuses me on some deep level that I can't quite explain. Is that irony? Feels like it somehow, but I'm not so sure.

Dinner Conversation (antother true story)

Sitting at a table in the lunch room with F. and J.

Me: So have either of you seen the new "Star Trek" movie?

F. & J. together: No (F. starts to say he wants to but J. talks over him) I hate Star Trek! It's so stupid.

Me: Well actually you don't really have to be a fan of the other movies to enjoy..

J.: Oh it's just so dumb! (makes a face)

Me: Easy Captain Negative!

F.: (snickering) My sensors are picking up some hostility!

Me: Yeah! Set your phasers to "Sorry"!

untitled

Persavereance

Upside down, flying through the air,

The world dangling below him.

On his face an expression of concentration,

Like he thought he could still pull this off.

Impressive

What Mr. Spock was really thinking

Poppa

The General

Of course!

"Immy? Why do you need to be naked to go pee?"

"Because I want to be a princess!"

Pain and comfort

So there is a couple in T.O. whose daughter is in pretty rough shape. She has some kind of rare disorder that won't allow her brain to communicate with her body. She's been on life support and earlier this week the decision was made to stop the machine that was breathing for her. She then began breathing on her own and, seeing as there are only 500 known people in the world living with this disorder, it's pretty amazing.

The thing is the parents of this little girl have been taking all kinds of flak because they stated publicly that they want their daughter's organs to be used to help save another child (this was before she had started breathing on her own when it was assumed she would die without the life support). They've been told by various people that they should just keep their mouths shut and let their daughter die with dignity. Ethics professors are questioning their motives without actually questioning the parents directly. Insinuating, to a degree, that these parents are using their daughter's plight to gain public notoriety.

Here's the position I take on it. ( I'm just as qualified as any other person to comment on this because: a) I have kids and b) I've never been in that situation like probably 90% of the people telling them they aren't dealing with it properly.) How these people choose or need to deal with the pain of having a child in this condition is their business. If they take comfort in telling their story, let them. Maybe they need to get this out because the pain is just so great they need to tell as many people as possible to divide the pain by the number of people being told. Maybe they want people to know about organ donation. Maybe they want everyone to know that their daughter exists and, though she's likely going to die, she matters. I don't know. I have chosen not to pay too much attention because I have difficulty dealing with the idea of a child dying. They HAVE to deal with the idea.

I think they need to be cut some fuckin' slack!

Alien Fossil: Cave Drawing

Iron Monkey

"Your gonna do WHAT?"

So that's the main reaction I get when I tell people the following news: My wife and I are thinking about becoming foster parents. Right now we're starting to do some research to see how it all works or how one gets qualified to be a foster parent.

People tend to think we're crazy. "You've got three already" or "you gotta be careful" or "why would you take care of someone else's kid?" (I'm serious about that last one too! That's not exactly what he said but that's the jist of the conversation!) The bottom line is my wife and I want to help and we think we could give a solid foundation to a kid who needs it. And the government PAYS foster parents, so it's not "detracting" anything from my biological children. It's like homecare in the healthcare system. It's way cheaper to pay to have someone stay in their home (when appropriate) than to keep them in an institution. The government actually saves money paying foster parents to care for wards of the state, and the kids have, I would argue, a much better chance at something approaching a normal childhood.

Oh and we are still planning to have a fourth biological child too.

"You have how many kids? You want more? You need to pull out!!"

"Three. Yes. I do pull out...I'm here aren't I?"

I guess I just need to stop sharing information with the knuckle draggers at work!

Alien Fossil: The Mouse

Justification

fuck

A true story

The tears came quickly. Streams running down my face.
I tried to suck them back before;
Dad could see
"Are you crying?"
"No" wiping tears from my eyes
"Then what's that?"
"I hit
Myself
In the face
With
The steering wheel!"

Joy Boy

Right...and poems HAVE to rhyme!

So I was listneing to the CBC's "Canada Reads". This is a contest where they take 5 works of Canadian literature and debate on which of the five all of Canada should read, with five famous and not so famous Canadians defending one of the titles. I was only half listening really, while I did the dishes. That is until the woman who was defending a book that had just been removed from the competition made one of the oddest comments I think I've ever heard. She said "I don't think literature should be enjoyable"........I'm sorry, what? Did I miss something? Are people at local bookstores telling their customer's "you need to read this book. It's tedious and long with no redeeming qualities to speak of!"

News flash: People don't read things they don't find enjoyable! People read "literature" for the challenge, to explore the human experience, learn, escape, understand and so on for as many different reasons as there are people, or books to be read. All of that comes under the heading of enjoyment. How can she expect the average Canadian to read this book while also telling them literature isn't enjoyable? What a sales pitch! Sign me up! I missed the trudgery of high school and now I think I'll spend my precious free time not enjoying a book! Just like the good ol' days!

It took me a long time to find my way into books and topics that kept me reading. It didn't come as easily to me as it did for my sisters. If my parents had taken the kind of attitude that I feel is prevalent at least on the surface of that statement, maybe I'd end up a functional illiterate like so many of the jocks I went to high school with. Maybe she didn't mean that exactly how it sounded. I don't know. I do know, however, if my kids have trouble reading, that is not a tactic I'll be taking to encourage them to carry on.

Whose an adorable two year old?

My son is who! The boy's got cute to spare! Turned two yesterday.

No Time

I guess this will be a short post due to the fact that I seriously don't have very much time to do this. I was going to talk about being in a union but it took so long to get into my blog and my typing skills being what they are I don't really want to get into it right now. Sufficed to say I'm not all that impressed with what is going on. At least I'm under-worked and over paid!

Watch that first step....

So I saw the title of my blog listed on my oldest sister's blog Radial Symmetry and figured, what the hell!

Good lord so much has happened since my last post oh so many months ago. My wife gave birth to our third child, his name is Maxwell Dimitri. I have to say that is pretty well the over riding event of all others that have happened in the past 6 months or so. So now my wife and I have three kids, Imogen is the oldest, then we've got Declan, and now we have Maxwell. One more girl and we'll have a complete set. And yes we are going to have a fourth. I'm the third of three and someone is always the odd one out, which always felt like me. Also with all these people spending untold sums of money to do what my wife and I can just DO, it would be a shame, in our minds not to have more, when in fact, we want more.

We've been through an election and the good guys won. I mean in all the ridings the people voted for who they thought were good. I like having a minority government in power. I think it tends to keep the ruling party more honest and open to input than might otherwise happen.


You know I'll rant and rave about things to myself, while I'm driving the hour and a half to work one way, but as soon as i sit down to actually pound something out on my blog I'm completely bereft of ideas. Also, when I start to write I feel like my ideas are getting lost in my words. Probably has something to do with my sub-standard typing skills and not having written much in the past oh ten years or so since I've been out of school. So once I start down a path of thought, if I feel like the Idea needs more than a few sentences or a paragraph at most, I'll probably scrap it and start on something else. Something easier.

Though I suppose that's the best way to start something new. Go with the easy topics first, get used to putting ideas down on paper again, then go to the more complex thoughts that take time to fully convey. Though i have to say I'm really more of the type of person who gets frustrated when complex tasks don't come easily to me. It's part of a deep inferiority/superiority complex I've developed. I never feel like I measure up to others standards, knowledge or whatever but if someone doesn't understand a concept that I do I tend to think "what the hell is wrong with you? If I understand it, it can't be that difficult! Dipshit!" Harsh? Yes. The truth often is, right? Wait, I mean the truth about me being harsh, not the truth of people who know less than I do on a certain topic being dipshits. Okay, some are dipshits;....see what I mean about my ideas getting lost in my words?

Well, I'm working on it.