Thursday, May 26, 2011

Le Butcherettes & Facebook's Scarier Points

Some musical goodness brought to you by the fancy-schmancy Blog This! button hanging out on by my browser bar. This is it's first official run at helping me to remember to post more often, and I almost didn't do it. Instead I was about to post it to Facebook; a place I'm going to post less to since it is becoming more like a sanctioned stalker than a handy way of staying connected. Besides weeding out certain feeds from friends of it's own accord FB has become uber creepy in the last few months. It is constantly scanning the text of all posts and updates made in order to better predict which pages, ads, groups etc will appeal to the user. It even goes so far as to use colour matching as an attempt at suggestive selling. When Derby Baby showed up in my feed multiple times a day celebrating the impending release of what is to be an epic derby documentary. . . their pretty pink promo pic prompted FB's algorithm creator to determine that pink must be the colour for me! All the pages and ads suggested for me we're hot pink! I reloaded my page a minimum of ten times before it ran outta hot pink things to throw at me. Of course anyone who knows me for real is well aware that me and pink do not mix. Pink does not reside within my wardrobe. . . with the exception of a hot pink outline of Angus Young. Similarly when a friend underwent brain surgery recently, posting up progress pics of herself in the usual sick green hospital gown, FB noted my interest in her photo's and colour matched some beautiful ads for bridesmaid gowns. . . . . . in hospital green. Really FB? Puke green and hot pink? I can accept the fact that creating a status update about Alien nation causes me to have things like the Star Wars, and Alien fan pages suggested to me. . . . but seriously! Just because I view hospital recovery pics of my friends does not mean I wish to purchase sickly party gowns. You've gone too far. Anyway enjoy some music :)

Sunday, May 22, 2011

The Rapture . . . . That Did Not Occur and My Hometown

It's the end of the world as we know it . . . and I'm bored as hell. May long weekend, nothing doing, just an over whelming sense of boredom. Got up & cleaned house today, did the shopping, and made some potato salad for dinner earlier this evening with the man-thing's father. Obviously this is not a normal occurrence as the man-thing's parents live back in Trenton; but being a truck driver sometimes lands his father out west. This time he was travelling from Maryland to Calgary. Which technically puts us as an outta the way unpaid detour, but I guess maybe he just wanted to see his son and hang out with some family this long weekend. (Even though I'm sure man-thing would argue otherwise) So we had some barbecue, and the men had some beer. I watched some live east coast derby action on Canuck Derby TV (I adore what these guys are trying to do for derby) and then the man-thing called it a night. So here I am . . bored, blogging.

Awhile back I was going to post one of those super cheesy 'hometown' posts for the Saskatoon peoples to ogle my roots. . . but then I started scouring the web for awesome pics and realized that most of the places I wanted to share. . . had darker images attached to them within my mind and catalogued on Google. Images of violence, and murder that seem to have proliferated in the last decade. The post never happened, much like the rapture that was set to occur today. (Nice work people who quit your jobs to fund billboards LOL) So, in lieu of earthquakes, floods, ultimate pain and suffering . . I give you sinners the bleakly nostalgic hometown post!


A little viewing music to set the mood

As it happens I actually don't have any of my own photo's here. They were one of the 'luxury' items we left packed in my mother's basement to be retrieved at a later date. So you'll have to make do with images procured through Google ;)


Downtown core at night. . looking particularly nice (more photo's and video's from owner's site here ) You can see 'Smoker's World' just on the other side of the crosswalk here. . a mainstay of Trenton retailers. . the place to procure magazines, cigarettes, and the occasional lotto ticket.


Another shot looking downtown from on the 'doughnut bridge'. We have two bridges. . the doughnut bridge, named for it's former proximity to the old Timmies location just left of this photo, and the 'chicken bridge' named for it's proximity to the KFC. (of course they have actual names but what fun is that?)

Some links to some very artsy pretty photo's . . . the old Coke sign . . .right around the corner from Jonzie's tattoo. . in case you wanna get inked by a guy you went to high school with. Night shot of the rear of the 'new' library/ city hall building (it will always be new to me) including the one thing you never go a day without seeing in Trenton, much less an hour. . . airplanes. Shot of the corner where the 'Hollywood North' sign is located. . also known as one block from my parents house.

Will S. . . has gone to the trouble of compiling an awesome Flickriver  of  Quinte West at large, complete with photo's of the Skyline Diner & Blue Room, and even the pallet yard where Tony used to build every day on Aikins Rd. Images from atop Mt. Pelion and even of Domtar. The only photo's I couldn't seem to locate to share here were ones of the 'doughnut bridge's' remarkable predecessor. As a child one of the thing's that stands out most in my memories of my hometown is the multispan swing bridge that originally sat at the mouth of the bay. With it's open grating and single arm to tell you not to enter; the bridge was going to swing and allow large vessels access into the Trent-Severn Waterway and it's many locks. Eventually traffic demands forced the city to do the unthinkable and replace the old swing bridge with a new higher arched bridge. One which was built adjacent to the old swinging bridge and 'slid' into place after the old one had been demolished. We all got to 'skip' school for awhile that day and watch this historic event with our class mates. I really would have thought someone would have a well documented series of photo's of this unique circumstance posted up somewhere on the net, but all I could find were citations in engineering documents. I'll keep looking though. . they're out there somewhere.

Anyway, this post could go on forever while I add any & everything about CFB Trenton. . but you can find a million pics or youtube videos online without any help from me regarding that subject. Though admittedly you'll also be dredging up the dark side of our sleepy little town's recent history as well.

Friday, May 20, 2011

The Remorseful Blogger Redux

Ok, so we've been here before; and although I'd like to promise you that it'll never happen again. . . I won't. The truth is it will happen again, many, many times. Sometimes life just sucks all the time and energy away from me, and though I may be vegetating with laptop at the ready. . . blogging is often just one more thing I wish I cared enough about to keep up with. I mean maybe that sounds a touch harsh, or as though I feel it's a chore. So why bother having a blog at all then?  The simple answer is because I can. I want to blog when I'm feeling the persuasion to write and I want to ignore it when life is just too damn hard to deal with as it is. Sometimes it seems the more I have to say the less I post at all.

Since I last posted I could have told you a million things. Posts that never happened could include, my new laptop, craft swapping, craft projects for friends and family, a million derby bout posts, the frikkin Reidell Vixens I recently purchased, the usual work craziness, some silly photo adventures, or even the anxiety that currently consumes . . man-thing's upcoming interview. Which could potentially lead to a better career for him. . . . a move to another city, and of course that would mean I have to start all over again. Find a new job. . . again. I could tell you about my own indecisive struggles, my total inability to decipher the correct path for me at this stage of things. The pervasive feeling that any decision I would make would amount to no better than simply flipping a coin and running with the outcome. Sadly I won't go into details here about most of those things.

I guess a good part of the reasoning behind this is that while my blog is fairly random and largely ignored (unless I have made a recent Craftster post)  I know that there is at least one person who is something of a secret voyeur of these posts. Never commenting here or in real life, but nevertheless reading anyway. Following my online doings in a shadowy fringe way. This doesn't upset me or make me angry at all. It simply prevents me from giving full disclosure of my life and the events that are transpiring. It shouldn't . . . and I know that best of all; but the fact remains that it does.

Anyway, I installed the Blog This! button tonight and I'm planning on making use of it in the coming weeks. It's my goal to get back in the habit and maybe even a new template is in order. For now I leave you with this:


There’s a reason I said I’d be happy alone.
It wasn’t cause I thought I’d be happy alone. It was because I thought if I loved someone and then it fell apart, I might not make it.
It’s easier to be alone. Because what if you learn you need love and then you don’t have it? What if you like it and lean on it?
What if you shape your life around it, and then it falls apart?
Can we even survive that kind of pain?
Losing love is like organ damage.
It’s like dying.
The only difference is death ends.
This?
It could go on forever.
Grey’s Anatomy – S 7 E 22 – “Unaccompanied Minor”