days off squandered
Another rare day off, squandered, as it were, in the pursuit of trivial errands.
It's hard, impossible, even, to go out in this, in part the weather, cold and practically winter but without the snow, in part the NE neighborhood that's so bleak it forbids all reasonable exploration, eventually, after much internal wrangling and bargaining I set out.
Now they're trivial, small errands, thrift shops, deposit cheques in bank, dollar store, print off 150 pages of notes to be seriously edited and reorganized, reshaped, I'm not in the mood.
Things get done, and I'm surprised that I scratch any number of things off of my list. And, in addition, I find a fine pair of Georgian Candlesticks (antique, Brass, similar, but not exactly, to a hundred other pairs I have in boxes in the basement), some gaudy "Jesus" ties for a collegue at work - baby Jesus and Joseph, Jesus and John the Baptist, Various scenes from the crucifixion, an excellent gift, a pair of spare work shoes, razor blades, other trifles.
Then home, a much anticipated nap interrupted by an automated call from telus to ensure that I've received my yellow pages in good order. I answer, only because I don't want them calling back. Received and recycled, thank you very much, who uses these anyways?
Now it's late, and I'm starving having neglected to go forage for food in the afternoon, the fridge (predictably) is either a) Empty or b) filled with rotting vegetables.
I don't want to check.
Too lazy to shave and take a shower I abandon plans for a healthy dinner and head up to the neighborhood pub.
It's so bleak. This is a heavy price for laziness, too heavy, I really should have showered, gone further afield, there are much better places to grab a bite to eat....
Home, it's dark, early, the cats rubbing my leg, I've done the recycling, garbage, now time for a movie, "Hobo with a Shotgun", as recommended to me by the Nephew at work. Exactly as I would have imagined, somehow not the inspiration I needed (and where did he get all those shotgun shells? Did he have to buy them? The movie doesn't explain...), some surfing online, there's the printed pages to be gone through and edited, reshaped, this I will do in the office, take my writing off the computer and see if it doesn't somehow improve or make better progress.
Now to work.
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- Category: Miscellany
Penny Plain - Ronnie Burkett
Sunday with the boy and we're going to try and get rush tickets to see Ronnie Burkett's "Penny Plain" - a new production, commissioned by the Citadel Theatre in Edmonton.
Now I'm a pretty big fan of Ronnie Burkett, and I've seen most of his productions going back 25 odd years.
He's a genius.
But this time I'd kind of reconciled myself to the thought that I'd have to miss it - schedule, finance didn't particularly fit.
Until I found out about the Sunday Matinees.
Which fit perfectly, and so I'm at the theatre hoping against hope to get rush tickets.
It's this or we'll end up at Weibo's War at the Plaza.
And we get them.
Now the play, it's everything I've come to expect from Ronnie Burkett, Brilliant, entirely off the wall (and it seems he's getting more and more off the wall as he gets older), a dazzling array of puppets and great work doing the voices. This noted, his vocal range is going, and many of the puppets are starting to sound an awful lot alike....
As quirky and offbeat as it is it's par for the course, and there is the feeling that I should be challenging myself with slightly more - ?? - how to put it? More surprising theatre. It's a little like seeing 12 Angry Men, or Shakespeare, you know exactly what you're getting.
But I look at the boy, catch his reaction, and it is gold. He is impressed, he's never seen anything like this, and for me it's become a bit routine, for him it's all fresh and new, and that's why we go to the theatre. If you've only seen a couple of his, go and see it. If you've seen a dozen or so by him, take a friend and try and see it through their eyes.
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- Category: Theatre
The New Waiter
He's unusually merry for the morning, flushed cheeks and a contented smile upon his face, the Owner suspects that he's again taken to drinking.
He's not going to last.
The staff tells me that he stinks of booze, I can't tell, I give all the male staff a fairly wide berth out of caution, there are the not infrequent belches and farts that must be navigated around. They watch the security cameras, but they can't see any trace of his drinking, the owner looks around and can find nothing on the bar, suspects him of quick swigs from the bottle, I'm suspecting there might be a hip flask concealed in his slightly capacious trousers.
He's short, bald, looks easily 10 years older than he is, that is what the waiter's lifestyle will do to you. But he seems happy enough. A gold chain flashes from beneath a rolled up cuff, a couple of large and gaudy rings, he's old school, where you tried to look at least as rich as the people you served.
Pouring drinks, carrying a tray or plate, he's got the shakes and has to set things down, sobriety, perhaps, or the long years of drinking catching up to him.
Not even 10 years older than me he's a career waiter, everyone in Calgary knows him, have been served by him somewhere throughout the city. Knowing him is not a good thing, it's an excuse for him to stop and chat and catch up with our customers, he's not so quick as it is and now he's doing less.....
And he talks shit. Waiter shit, in 4 languages, fixing the house, his wife, his trips to the bar where he only drinks soda pop and coffee (being a recovering alcoholic and all), his operations and general health, the importance of having doilies to line the plates with....
We all know he's not long for the course, as soon as someone better walks through the door, it's tough to be too friendly knowing, he knows this as well, brings in sandwiches to share, somewhere in the back of his mind there must be the realization that he's not carrying his weight, that this is just another short stop on the way to unemployment...
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- Category: People
The Demon Outhouse
There was, not so long ago, maybe only a year or two, a big spate of missing children in this area.
Little kids that would go camping with their parents and just disappear, and their faces would be on posters and milk cartons everywhere, yet no one ever found them. You remember? Little Johnny Horner from your old kindergarten class? No, he didn't move away, he was one of the kids that disappeared, yes, and Sally Harper from Miss. Fairchild's grade 3 class as well. But let me finish.
So these children were going on camping trips with their parents, and sometimes they'd be off playing or sometimes it would happen in the middle of the night - they would just vanish.
And their parents would look for them, sometimes for a full day after they disappeared, yet they never found them again. And the police would come to help, yes, and sometimes firefighters and people from nearby towns, yet they never found them...
...until....
Well, I shouldn't really tell you the rest.
Are you sure? I don't want you having any bad dreams!
OK. Well, nobody knew what was happening to all these children, only that they were disappearing without a trace, like in that vampire movie :"The Lost Boys", only it wasn't vampires. No, nothing so pleasant. You see, one day there was a little boy - Jacob I think his name was, who went off to the bathroom and his parents said "Be careful" because they knew about all the missing children in the area and they didn't want him to go missing, and so he propped the door of the outhouse just a little bit open while he sat down....
Now as he was sitting there in the dark his eyes began to adjust and he looked up and thought he saw something move in the rafters, it was hard to tell it was so dark and there were so many spider webs, but it looked like...
That's right - a long hairy leg, two of them, three, and they were creeping down the side of the outhouse towards him....
Anyways, little Jacob fell screaming out of the outhouse and hopped towards his parents...
I think it was just a pee, I don't know why he sat down. Maybe he just wanted to be tidy.
SO he was hopping towards his parents screaming at the top of his lungs, and they could see through the door, well, something moving and so they called the police and they found....
His mom probably had another pair of pants for him. Yes, it probably did make a mess, or maybe he hadn't started yet. Can I finish?
....they found, up in all the spider webs at the top of the outhouse, 3 children all wrapped up in spiders silk, big cocoons, well, no, not the children but their bones. They never caught the spider, it might have crept off into the woods or disappeared down the toilet hole, yeah, it's gross, but spiders like that sort of stuff. Anyways, they checked the other outhouses in the area, found a couple of other kids, their skeletons I mean, and they cleaned out all the outhouses and removed the spiderwebs from the top so you can see the rafters, and that's the tale of the demon outhouse.
It's getting late, did you need to go to the bathroom before we tuck in?
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- Category: Uncategorized
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