Blargh.

So I was sitting at a coffee shop this morning downtown. Grabbed a coffee and read some Vancouver paper. Not sure which one, but their was an article I found interesting.

It was all about East Hastings, and what is dubbed as "Mardi Gras" each month. The last Wednesday of the month to be exact.  On this day, all the people on social assistance get there money for the month deposited into their bank accounts. All the addicts apparently line up behind the ATM's at midnight to withdraw their cash. Along with this, all the dealers loiter outside of the businesses to provide all these people with what they are going to want.  It's a night full of violence, and overdoses and who knows what else. 

Now this fucking infuriated me, reading about this.  Those are my fucking tax dollars.  Being spit out to a bunch of god damn junkies once a month, so they can get fucking high and fight each other.  Now I have a very small amount of sympathy for a select amount of homeless people, situations as they are for some of them.

But not a fucking drug addict.  The only thing keeping anyone from getting addicted to ANYTHING, is a bit of self control.  Now I have my addictions. Warcraft, smoking. But those things, for the most part, are not a detriment to society.  Me personally, possibly. I've done my fair share of addictive substances, and it's not hard to just shrug of the desire to do it again.  Weak fucking people.  Fucking waste of flesh, in my opinion. Mind you, their are worse people in the world. Politicians, President's of large corporations. A lot of them are just plain evil.  Plus when one of these damn junkies overdoses and gets an ambulance to the nearest hospital, well shit, I pay that too.

Here I am, struggling to make an honest amount of cash working at a job I hate, and these bastards are living off what comes off my cheque each month. AND they are spending that money on drugs. Which EVENTUALLY gets back into the system from the head guys buying toys, but it also fuels drug wars, gang crime, and a whole other lot of violence.

Like I said, no fucking sympathy. Let these people die. Fuck giving them clean needles, in less that's for the safety of the rest of us, I haven't really looked into how that works.

Anyways, it made me fucking livid reading that article.  

And I've yet to go see Hastings. I plan to soon though.

Sad when Social Networking Sites Start to Breed Almost Nothing but Hate

Yes, I mean you Facebook!

But I'm not gonna talk about that because, frankly, I don't have the energy for it.

Things are going....badly. 

I'm working almost no hours. I go in for my shift, it's slow, they send me home after an hour. Get 5 days off, then the same thing. Bastards.

I have a job interview next week so hopefully that goes well, and I can get some more cash rolling in.

But as of right now, and I doubt this is going to change, paying rent is virtually impossible. I have no idea what the fuck I am gonna do. 

I keep going over the positives and negatives of my situation. Or rather, why I want to stay and why I would like to go back home. Reasons prompting me to go back home I've pretty much discussed already.  Being lonely, bored. Having nothing change except paying a lot more than I should for where I live, and making a whole lot less money than where I previously was employed.

Reasons prompting me to stay. Well, the first thing is, I do love this city.  I love the energy, and the people, and the culture. I love being close to all my old friends. I love having SOMETHING be different. Those are the positive reasons.  I also feel this obligation to myself that if I left I would see it as a personal failure. Something that I usually wouldn't consider on making a decision for anything. I don't find pride to be a very important thing.  But it would be that way, though I'm sure not too heavily.  Another is the fact of how much money my Father has supplied me with.  He just bailed me out of rent, again, for this month.  Add that to my car plus the money he gave me when I left, it's about 3500 dollars or more. Probably a lot more.  Now I know he wouldn't hesitate for a second given the idea of me coming back. Might even prefer it. But I can't escape the fact that it's a lot of money He or I could have used for something else, whatever that may have been (Is it bad to start a sentence with "but"?). 

The whole mind set every seems to think I should have is that "It'll get better". But really, it's not going to any time soon.  Almost every single job I see requires some type of experience or qualification.  I should have got my schooling done.  I could have been more prepared.  And all the jobs that are returning my e-mails/calls tell me it's pretty much for the Olympic rush and that's probably all.  We will see.

Oh, and another thing on my staying list. Angela is really fucking awesome to live with. It is very convenient that I've been able to get a room mate I get along with. 

But still, I feel like I want to go home. Maybe just homesick, maybe just stressing.  I can't even afford to get to work tomorrow. And my fucking car is dead again, though I may be almost out of gas anyways.

Wonder if Angela has jumper cables?

Fuck.

ON THE PLUS SIDE!

I'm  going to Microsoft's Vancouver studio next Thursday for an hour long play test session.  Get to play some unreleased/early build games, and give feedback on my experience so they can assure quality. I'll make a whole post on that experience when it happen though.

Blargh. I'm not enjoying this. 

2010

It's New Year's! And I'm alone in Vancouver! Which is, okay. I do wish I was at a party.

This post isn't relevant to anything I just wanted to quote something.

I've been watching an anime called Full Metal Alchemist  over the past few months. I believe it is one of the best television shows I have ever seen. Rather than rant on about why and how much I love it, I'm gonna keep this brief.

Set-up for the quote. 

The 2 hero's of the series are placed on an island and are told they are to live their for one month. They are given a knife and that is all. Two boys ages 8 and 10. Or somewhere around there.

Their teacher than says "All is one, one is all". She tells them to figure that out before the month is up or they would be sent home, rather than continue with their training.

Now I don't expect anyone to get this, or even care. This is just for my own personal note so I don't forget it. I also think the script for this show is damn brilliant, and could quote at least 200 words from each episode that I find are meaningful in some way.

This was prior to them trying to resurrect their dead mother through the process of alchemy, crippling both their bodies.

“If I died the world would continue to move along as if nothing had happened.”

“Because you’re just a small part of it.”

“When the small part, in this case me, dies, the body remains.”

“Water, Carbon, Ammonia, Lime, Phosphorous, Salt, Saltpeter, Sulfur, Magnesium, Fluorine, Iron, and Aluminum right?”

“Right. The bodies only a combination of those simple elements. Nothing more. We’re destined to be decomposed by bacteria, and become nutrients for plants, then you follow the process further, those plants nourish herbivores.”

“And those herbivores nourish carnivores. Even others like us. And even though we lose awareness our lives keep on moving through the system.”

“The great flow that maintains the universe, call it the cycle of life, the course of nature each one of us is just a small part of that part. One in the all. Yet without all the individual ones, the all can’t exist. This world flows by following grander laws that we can’t even imagine. To recognize that flow, to work in it. To decompose, and recreate, that is alchemy.”

The cycle of life only goes one direction, not even alchemy can change that.

~Edward Elric and Alphonse Elric~ Episode All is One, One is All from Full Metal Alchemist

Happy New Year's!!!

City Livin'

Once again, I've heavily been denying this blog. Their are a few contributing reasons for this.

First, is a lack of creative motivation, but I'll get into that.

Update on things so far. I totally love this city. It's beautiful, and the small bit I have experienced of it tells me that my love for it will continue to grow. That being said, I'm fucking stressed. And lonely. I never actually knew the what the plague of not having sufficient amounts of cash felt like. I'm feeling it now. I got a job dish washing at this Asian place on Granville and it is awesome. Besides washing dishes, which is fucking dreadful work and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone, everyone I work with are all very cool. And mostly Asian. I don't think I've touched on my fascination for Asian culture and how it intrigues me. Those of you who are frequent facebookers know enough, with my more than excessive linking of Korean and Japanese pop songs.

As for being lonely, well. I miss a few people. I think it's just the holidays. Everyone is back home with their families and it makes me miss being home, or what was home.

The immediate feelings I have with the money and the loneliness SEEMS to be worse than the stress I was dealing with back home with the girls and the drama, but when I deeply think about it, that is not the case. I am most definitely in a better state of mind here overall. Just gotta get my feet on solid ground, as it were, and things will become more comfortable.

I just noticed how scattered my thoughts seem here, but bear with me.

Onto my lack of creative motivation.

When I first conceived this whole idea of moving out of a small redneck town into a large city full of culture, I had a few ideas about how that would change me. Is assumptious a word? *EDIT When I did the spellcheck it said it's not. Rather than try to find some other joining term, I just deleted it. It should be a word. I thought that I would move down here, and start using my free time to tune my interests in more creative endeavors rather than simply enjoying them with my more than obsessive gaming addiction. I told myself I was going to, for lack of a better term, re-create who I was portraying myself as. Not to say I won't be exactly who I feel I should be, as I'm happy with myself as I am. I think I touch on this a few posts back.

ANYWAYS, that is simply not the case. I've finally realized what it means to say that where you come from doesn't make who you are. I still play games for about 8-10 hours a day. I still feebly attempt to write a song, learn to animate, write a creative piece, only to eventually give up and carry on gaming. Exactly how things were back in Invermere.

Which is another that seems to be bothering me as of late. I am doing almost EXACTLY THE SAME THING as I was doing before I moved, but making MUCH less money and being far more lonely. Notice how I'm using bolds and italics? THAT is the peak of my creative energy! So at times I'm feeling like this move wasn't something I wanted as much as I thought I did.

But then, there are the times when I know this is what I should have done. The first night me and Korri hung out. Ate strange Asian food and watched sailor moon. When me and Angela go downtown and end up drinking until 4 am and not remembering how we got home. When me and Shawny sipped wine and watched Love, Actually. These are things that I enjoyed back home but never really appreciated. Those moments that are so memorable, but if done too much too frequently become stale. And I feel like those moments here are always changing and always different. Burlesque in a lesbian bar one night. A night of pool in a sports bar the next. Moments such as these are why I love it here. I just need to promise myself that I won't over indulge too much. I need to learn how fleeting life can be. I think I need to go re-read Tom Wolfe's The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test and get things in perspective a little more.

Wow. This post took a whole different direction then when I attended on when I started it.

I feel like I have more to say, but it's all too cluttered.

Also, I wish at times I wasn't so socially inept. Anyone who is close to me probably thinks this is a ludicrous statement. Something I will work on.

Oh, and I want G-dragon's hair. Or Cloud Strife from FF7. I wish I was an anime character.

Merry Christmas. And Happy New Years.

P.S. RIP to The Reverend, and my heart is out to the Canadian journalist who was killed in Afghan. The first since we went in 8 years ago.

Rent is paid.

Holy shit. 

2 days and I'm gone from here for who knows how long. I've been feeling nervous about it, but now I'm excited. I mean, I'm roomies with Angela. That is so random and awesome. Exactly what I need. Money is really troubling me though. All my plans didn't work out so I had to borrow rent money from my Dad. Not to mention what I need to actually get down there and survive for a month. And then their is January's rent. Not sure if I'm gonna be able to get a pay cheque quick enough to make it. All you guys must worry about this constantly.  This is gonna be healthy for me.

Sadly, all my excitement and anticipation is drowned out by the fact that the rest of my life is a fucking disaster. I won't even get started on girls again. 2 more days and I'll be away from every single crazy bitch and every single beautiful girl I know and I won't have to ever deal with their nonsense. I can meet NEW ones and deal with THEIR nonsense. Awesome.

But really, my mom's in the hospital down in Oakland. I don't even know how I feel. She had a stroke, apparently can't speak and is not in very good condition. I'm worried, but at the same time maybe I'm in denial about the whole thing. Like I'm just assuming things will work out for the best. On top of that, if BC Medicare decides they don't want to help her, well, then she is really totally fucked. 

I don't know what to think anymore. The only thing I feel sure about is that this move is gonna be good. I have no idea if it is what I want right now, but it is gonna be good.

So I'm....happy?

I think so.

I am

going to toss myself into the city.

Here's to hoping all goes well.

Anticipation

Less than 2 weeks.

Holy god.

In a way, I can't be more excited. Getting out of here is the right thing to do, and whenever I question myself on this move I just remember that.  I need it.  I want it despite certain feelings I have about leaving. I'm really happy right now, which makes it a little tougher. I know I will be happy in Vancouver, but I also know their will be many lonely nights. Thankfully, I have a lot of friends down there and more seem to be going as the months roll on. I'm also find myself to be a fairly enjoyable person to be in the company of so meeting people won't be any sort of issue I'm sure.

Some stuff just bothers me. My grandparents are at an age where my time with them is running short. Having neglecting to spend time with them in the last few years is really hitting right now. What will I miss out on when I'm gone? What will everyone I know miss while I'm there? 

Besides all that though, this is gonna be fucking great. I'm made for the city. 

And Taylor tells me I'll be there just in time for Bass Hunter. Excited.

Fortunately, I am playing Warcraft again, which is my go to addiction when I'm upset or lonely. Some crazy shit has happened in the last few weeks, but hopping on vent and chatting with the guildies and all my old friends that are still going strong always alleviates the stress of my current problems. I can't begin to say how much I love that game. It is, in my opinion, the strongest representation of humanity. At it's finest. Even more than the "real world" because mostly everyone is themselves, depending on what you interpret that term as. It will get me through any rough times I have as it always does.

The city awaits...and I'm totally not ready. It will be grand.

P.S. 17january1956, who are you? Forgive me, but you commented on my California post and it's kept me curious ever since.