Stupid little things

Its the little things. The camp provides the bedding and does some basic house keeping. Tradisionaly the bedding has been white sheets that have washed and bleached too many times. I am not a fan of white bedding and old thinning sheets evenless. I was surpised there for to find new pillow cases, in colours other then white. The addition of black pillow cases added a home like feeling. More accurately it reduced the instutional feeling that the old whites and hard matresses provide.

Its a stupid little thing but it matters. Camp is not home, but little things can help make it feel closer to that.

Northern Lites Entertainment Report II

What the Frack have I been doing to keem myself amused out here.
1: Watching canned TV. I have taken to buy DVD's of TV shows to watch in place of the sports on the common TV. The latest Crop is nerdy and all Sci Fi, Season 1 of Battlestar Galactia and season 2 of Babylon 5.

2: Audio entertainment. I have increasingly become a junkie for audio books and short stories. Of the newer additions is Escape Pod, a pod cast that reminds me of a science fiction anthology, but with perhapps a better sence of humour. Some what to my suprise I have developed a liking of horror and suspence. My current favourate is Phil Rossi's Crescent. I am also working my way through Scott Sigler's library. There are a few more I have listed to and more will be added no doubt as I work through the back episodes.

Night Clubbed

Nite club's don't work for me, but judging from the crowds of people inside them and sometimes outside them they work for many people. They work for the gaggles of girls that go with the intent of dancing for the fun of it, they work for the cocky men with the shinny tight T-shirts and gelled hair and they even seem to work for the has beens and barflies lacking in youth but still wishing to relive it. That they work for these types of people is not as interesting as why do they appear to fail for me.

I have almost always ended up at night clubs after a evening of friendly drinking at a friends house where some one would want to go some where and do something. I would have been content to remain at the time and place where the party had started but was not one to want to be left behind. So we head out.

At first the noise and flashy lights and other shiny things are exciting. Then It dawns on me what ever conversations were underway on trip over are now dead and any exchange of information requires yelling. The novelty wears off after the first half hour that leaves me stuck watching.

What I see is the same every where, a square room with bars encircling a loosely fenced off dance floor in the center, extra floors are optional. To the side of the dance floor is a booth filled with the dumbest cockiest man they could find and a computer with some other hardwares, this creature is the DJ. His job is to maintain a steady supply of noise. There are several species seen on the dance floor and a few seen off of it.

The first creatures to appear on the floor are often the girls that claim they are only there to dance. They will appear in groups of three to five and will instantly find the oversized speakers and start dancing on top of them. Following the dancing girls and with a few more drinks in there collective system is the rest of the ecology in no particular order. The girls who come there with the intent of leaving with some one they did not arrive with, who I can not clearly separate from those who are there to dance . The cocky men with the gelled hair and shinny shirts start to drift onto the floor around the same time. This species confounds me, firstly they appear to be able to dance, secondly they are able to communicate in a 120 decibel plus room and the most perplexing thing of all is the cockiness. I am just unable to figure out how they express their attitude through a twinkle in the eye and smile.

Some what later the drunk male friends of the girls that came to dance stagger on to the floor. Fooled by beer and tequila they have come to think two false and dangerous things. Firstly that in fact believe they can dance and secondly that they have a chance with any one of their gender of choice out on the floor.
On a few occasions I have been drunk enough be in this group but that has been rare, largely based on the fact that the amount of booze required for me to reach that point is only slightly less then the amount required to make me stop talking which is half a drink away from the point I fall flat on my face. Which brings me to the last group of people collectively they are wallflowers, those who do not venture out onto the dance floor. Most often wall flowers are there willingly, to watch or perhaps to relive youth.

So I have covered the nature of the people now for the nature of the place. The lay out described above is only the start and the DJ is only the start of the problems. Now I have to figure out why they fail on me. It is not the women, like other men I have no objections to young women in small amounts of tight clothing, this is clearly a night clubs virtu. And booze is not at fault either as I can enjoy a cold beer just like every one else. No the reason why night clubs fail for me is my brain.

Combine 120 decibel music with giant screens projecting random geometries in time with the music and you flip a switch in my skull. The music which is very clean computer generated or edited by passes my body, leaving me with no desire to dance, rather then my heart matching the speed of the bass drum, every thing goes strait to my brain. I will fined my self trying to deconstruct the tune, a near impossible task with my negative musical talent. Or I catch one lyric and it chain reacts with junk lying around in my head, and before you know it I have the start of this essay.

Though I am writing this at work miles from any night life it owes its roots to my visit to Penticton. Where I sat on a stool at the edge of a dance floor trying to compose an essay structure that would mirror the time of bass and treble in the music while trying to figure out if the image on the over head screen was in fact a Klein Bottle. The total volume of the place is part of the cause of my failure to get it, its so loud that conversation is impossible reducing communication to a base level of body language and grunts. Unable to communicate I fine my self trapped one the inside of my own head, where I am quickly distracted by flashing lights and shinny things.

A Rant

As always happens the posts I plan in my off time either do not get writen or get writen well into my next work cycle. So here I am at work again and writing about my last brake.

The story starts and ends in a bar. I had flown in to Kelowna latter then normal due to flying the last leg of the flight with West Jet, which cost me the time savings I get from the 3pm Air Canada out of Yellow Knife. After checking in to a hotel, I was too tired to even think of driving any where, ignoring the fact that I could not make it to Serenity until morning, I went to a bar. Its a basic place but it sells food that goes good with beer and beer tastes really good after six weeks without. I sat at the bar half watching the over head TV. I am not a huge fan of TVs in bars but it was a slow evening and the tv was there. My favourate network was on at that time, the Speed network. The show was a mix of porcine men, T&A eye candy and machine parts, par for the coarse on that channle. And I got anoyed, not at the eye candy, or even the porcine grease suckers working on the vehicals, no I got anoyed at the technology in our cars.

It pissed me off that the state of the art appeared to be a reciprocating piston engine with a purely mechanical drive train. Technology that has been around for more then a century. This lead me down a new track, Hack My Ride.

Hack my Ride, the TV show, its goal to add sex appeal to Hybrid and electric cars. Rather then have greasy red neck types play with wrenches we could have nerds working on 21st century cars with comuputers and soft where fixes to boost the performance of the cars. Of coarse there would still be the eye candy it is still a car show.

Its time new tech gets the spot light, bonous points for any team that can make a Prius look sexy.

Chills no Thrills

A Short Sharp ShockA Short Sharp Shock.

Summer is over. As of the start of August a cold windy and cloudy weather system has moved in. I am working on the screened porch and the wind has been cutting through me and chilling me. I don't know how much longer the porch will be a good working space but its a time measured in weeks.

Its the wind I hate wind. It blows around my papers causing a pissed off state in me. With the wind and cold weather its feeling like September. Of coarse I had to go shave my head when I was down south so now I am loosing even more heat to the wind.

This base level of frustration leads me to an old favourate quote. "Captain I must protest. I am not a merry man."

If you don't get I won't explain it.

Thats all for now
Alex

Smoke on the water

I am back at work. I have a handful of posts about or inspired by events during my brake, but I was too occupied to take the time to write them. This will be the shortest of the lot as I am tired from the long trip to work.

I left Nakusp at a good time. A good time for me that is, the power went out about 10am and stayed off. I had a pet theory that it was the neighbors fault as trees were heard being chewed by a chain saw and a bad fall could have hit the power lines. This was proven wrong by the simple fact that the power went out too later after I heard a tree fall. I did not investigate this any more until I had driven into town to get gas for my drive to Kelowna.

The gas station attached to the Nappa shop informed me that a forest fire had taken out a transformer and the power was out as far as Silverton, roughly 45Km to the East. So this was indeed a good time to leave town. I stopped in Cherryvill for gas it was the first place I was sure had power and for once the station was busy.

I did snap some photos taking the ferry to Needles. I have to add that I do not know if this is the fire that took out that transformer but it its dangerously close to the Watchan lake power house that does supply alot of power to the area. The concreat structure is just visible in high zoom in the photos.