Old Guy Type Stuff

Hmm. I seem to be down to three posts a month. Does this mean my life is slowly winding down and I'll soon be ready for the scrap heap? I hope not.

I am definitely feeling like an old man at work lately. Pretty much everyone is a lot younger than me, and they're all constantly yammering about some stupid new TV show or how drunk they got at the Liquordome or how many facebooks they have on their cell phone or something. I try to just ignore them and do my work instead of pointing out the errors of their naïve and shallow motives, but sometimes it's hard. Especially if I haven't had a nap recently.

Luckily, I've got the old Rock 'n Roll to keep me somewhat youthful. (Does 'n,' meaning 'and,' take one apostrophe or two? Alison and I were arguing about this the other day. There are letters dropped on both sides of the 'n,' but if you use two apostrophes it ends up looking like quotation marks. Except that the first one would be upside down. But nobody knows that these days. They'd probably just think you're trying to be ironic. And anyway, look at "won't". Not only are there extra letters dropped that are not indicated by apostrophes, but there's an 'o' that's appeared out of nowhere! What's up with that? I'm sticking with my one apostrophe before. I have seen it, rarely, with just one AFTER the 'n', but, to me, that would be pronounced "nuh," rather than "uhn". Yeah, that one's just totally wrong.) The Lodge has a second show coming up this Saturday, and we haven't had a rehearsal since the last one, so there'll definitely be some practising going on this week. We don't really have anything recorded, except rehearsals using one microphone, but as there has been so much demand from the virtual fanbase to hear something, anything — well, here's a song. It's from our last rehearsal before the first show. The ending is messed up, but you get the gist of it. Hope I don't get in trouble for this.

Last Sunday was International Pinhole Camera Day. Don't know if anyone was aware of that. Alison and Meg and our friend Chris and I all made scrappy little cameras out of Altoid mint tins. There was a bit of a long process to it, but it was fun. Then I went to see Johanna's choir perform in a church while the rest of them wandered around taking pictures. I got some shots of the choir and audience by setting the tin on a ledge and leaving it for three to four minutes. Indoor lighting = super long exposures. I wish I had some of the results to show you, but unfortunately we haven't been able to scan the negatives yet. The photo place was unable to make prints because the images take up too much length on the film, and the scanning has been problematic for the same reason. But I can see that there's definitely some good stuff on there. Verrrry panoramic and spooky looking. Here's some photos taken by other Canadian pinhole enthusiasts, to tide you over till I can get this sorted out. I kind of think the B&W stuff looks best.

Ali and I had a brainstorming session with our friend Matt last night, regarding this really great comic book idea we have. The three of us will all be working on it together. I don't really want to give away any details yet, but we managed to get quite a lot of the story hashed out. It was a lot of fun and I think the finished product will be quite impressive. Assuming I live that long.

We watched a movie the other night about a once famous novelist approaching death; maybe that's part of why I'm into this old man persona right now. It was called Starting Out in the Evening and was very very good. The old guy, Frank Langella, was especially watchable.

Now we're into the Cosmos box set. I can't believe it's been thirty years since that show aired. Man, was it ever great. I haven't seen it since then, and I'd forgotten how inspirational it was to me at the time. I remember now that my friends Blaine and Darren and I in grade six would come to school the day after an episode had been on and pretty much talk about it all day. I also remember giving an in-class presentation whose theme was "You're Crazy If You Think There's Not Other Life Somewhere Out There in the Universe," which seems to be one of the two major themes of the show. The other one is "You're Crazy If You Think You Need Religion or Superstition or Really Anything Beyond Science to Be Totally Awestruck by How Incredibly, Mind-Blowingly Vast and Complex and Beautiful Life and the Universe Are — I Mean, Just Look at Carl Sagan's Eyes Popping Out of His Turtlenecked Head As He Gets All Excited and Quasimystical Telling Us About This Wonderful Stuff. He Is INTO It, Man." I hope he's still admiring it all in some dimension out there.

- Andrew