Social Function Part 2

Last Wednesday. Comic book day. Lately I've been getting my brother to go pick up my books for me, but since his security licence came in and he's been working pretty much non-stop for the past week, that wasn't going to work.

New plan. I like running. The weather is decent if chilly. Gonna run to the comic store. Hitch one: I forgot my backpack at work that morning, so no carrying books in backpack for the return trip. Solution one: Comics aren't that heavy, and I'm given a plastic bag anyways. Hitch two: I can't find my comfy brown touque. I tear through that messy chair that carries my various sweaters and supposedly my touque to no avail, but I certainly destroy my room and will have to fix that later. Solution two: Wear that tight little bright blue touque from Ontario Place I was given some years ago, the one that isn't particularly comfortable, and is why I bought myself a new touque this past winter. Obviously this isn't an ideal solution.

But it'll do, and I'm running, and I'm feeling great, and I quickly warm up against the outside chill. I take special notice of my left knee which gave me trouble at the end of my last big run, but it's ALSO feeling great. I've found a good pace, chugging away, I could go on forever at that pace (cardiovascularly speaking), but then ten minutes or so off from the comic book store (aka the half way point) I feel a slight twinge in my left knee.

Okay, okay, slight twinge, it's still good, it's still good, maybe don't think about it.

I arrive at the store, and my knee is now really unhappy with me. That was fast.

I get my books, walk on out, and start to jogOKAY nope, I'm walking for a while.

A while later: alright, let's try that run againNOPE still no good.

It's weird that it didn't hurt at all walking, right? Enh, maybe it was just my lucky day, otherwise I'd have been stranded (unless I wanted to shell out for a cab- no way!).

However, my body temperature was certainly dropping now, despite my attempt to powerwalk my way to inner heating. I was mighty cold by the time I got home. Just outside the door I got a call from Cool Geoff asking where I was. That was funny, on account of how in twenty seconds he'd have seen me, phone call or no.

Home at last, but I'd have to keep that tight touque on- I'd look too weird if I take it off, what with the crazy hair and pressure lines from the hat itself all across my forehead. We zipped off for some take out chinese (japanese?) buffet. It was a close call, I ALMOST had too many pieces of sweet and sour pork. I almost crossed that threshold between wanting more more MORE and getting totally sick of them. Boy, I sure do live dangerously!

I had a quick shower, leaving us with just enough time to discover that I had the time wrong and we had plenty of time to travel out to the panel comedy show "Problem Solved!" out at the Comedy Bar. That meant I had time to give my teeth a brush! Yay!

Uh, hold on, I'm running out of time, so I guess there'll be a part three to finish this up.

Social Function Part 1

On the social function front, I went out to a friends "house cooling" last week. The renters were getting kicked out so renovations could happen. Good for the owners I guess, inconvenient for the rest. Well, that's what happens when they're just a bunch of kids renting. No respect.

Of course by kids, I mean dudes my exact age, so replace "kid" with "big lugs trying to figure out what to do in this world". Same thing really.

I forget why I left so late to go to the party... unless it was the night I was waiting for Cool Geoff and certain of my brothers to get home with the pizza I ordered, and then of course I had to eat that pizza while watching episodes of Community. Yeah, I'm pretty sure that's what happened. It's actually amazing I made it out of the house at all that night!

On my way to the party I texted my friend that lived in the house (who else am I going to text?) about whether or not I was too late to come down, but he said to head on over in a very encouraging manner. Okay, the way I'm describing this, it sounds like the big twist reveal here is that I completely misinterpreted him and wasn't supposed to go. Not so! I'm just telling it like it is. Or was.

As I climb up the stairs out of the subway onto, what is it, Davenport? It's the OTHER street exit for Ossington station- I just barely climb up in time to catch my buddy Jimmy's eye.

No, Jimmy is not the guy whose party I was headed to, and no, I had not made plans to meet up with this particular friend. It was just a lucky coincidence.

He asked if I was going to a mutual friends house (where he was headed). Nope, I'm going to a non mutual friends house- a dude in Toronto that Jimmy doesn't know! (That's actually pretty rare... it's his city, we all just live in it.) We made plans to hit the subway home together after our mutually exclusive stuff was done.

Onwards to the house cooling! It's the first time I've made it to this place, as the house warming was cancelled on me (the house warming really wasn't that long ago...) and some guy I didn't know was gracious enough to open the door for me. That's swell!

When I finally made it to the room with all the people I did know... I had fun! Turns out, lot of Doctor Who fans in the house. I was even in a halfway decent picture I guess, it's my current facebook profile image. I thought maybe my arms looked a little funky, but I got a compliment sort of on my triceps, so I guess I've got all my parts in order. And I wasn't even flexing for the picture or nothing!

I got the call from Jimmy to head out, so I left on a high note, which i think is a good call.

In the subway, Jimmy notices my brand new shoes- I got them at Wal-Mart for $12.50. He's distateful of both the corporate tyrrany that is Wal-Mart, and also the fact that his shoes cost $60. "You could buy a new pair every week!"

Remember the shoes, this'll come up again in part 2!

Oh, that's right! After enjoying my time with Jimmy, I'm subway riding again, homeward bound, when I run into another old class mate from the high school days just outside the station. It was pretty neat/also coincidental.

I suppose it's possible that that night was a pilot episode for my own version of the Truman Show. In which case I should have been more interesting, maybe use soap to draw on a mirror (camera?).

The Good, The Bad, The Weird

I saw this movie at walmart, this "The Good, The Bad, The Weird", for $9.98.

Wow that looks cool.

Nope, Isaac, come on, you aren't made of $9.98's.

But it's some kinda korean western.

Be responsible.

It looks CRAZY AWESOME!

I'm walking away now.

Aaaand I bought it. How'd that happen??

Full disclosure, despite my recent Eastwood kick over on the Dirty Harry movies, I have NOT seen pretty much any of Eastwoods westerns (Unforgiven being the exception), including "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly", a movie title (if nothing else) very obviously being referenced in "The Good, The Bad, The Weird".

It actually took me some time to realize the movie wasn't called "The Good, The Bad, AND The Weird".

Set in 1930's Manchuria, which is apparently in China- I would have guessed that myself if the characters hadn't all made reference to the fact that they were korean and wouldn't believe when a character could only understand chinese- and they were right to do so: every character that spoke chinese was indeed trying to trick someone, and was in fact korean. Of course I'd be convinced the story took place in Korea!

I got side tracked. Anyways, the story for the most part follows a thief (perhaps the titular "Weird") who has stolen a treasure map during a train heist, a treasure map that just so happens to have been what the most accomplished assassin (perhaps the "Bad") in Manchuria had his little heart set on grabbing. The assassin is a pretty scary dude, so tough luck for the hapless thief that now has to make a run for it.

Also in play is the bounty hunter (definitely the "Good") on the trail of the assassin, whose capture would net a nice financial reward and get rid of the notorious "Finger Chopper" I think was the nick-name for the guy... or anyways, the Bounty Hunter THINKS the Finger Chopper and the assassin are one and the same buuuut...

And huge spoiler for the end of the movie: so the three are at the X of the treasure map, finding nothing (I guess it was revealed to be an oil well, not exactly something you can just pick up and take away with you) and the assassin demands a three way duel. This looks massively unfair for the bumbling thief, who's been comedy relief the whole movie. However, the assassin reveals that he wants to kill the thief, not just because the assassin wants the treasure map, but as revenge for CHOPPING OFF HIS FINGER!!!

That's right- the thief, the character we spend the most time with, turns out to be the Finger Chopper that the bounty hunter really wanted to get for the sake of eradicating evil.

Oh ho! So this final battle is more fair than we thought!

The three exchange their shots, and it really looks like everyone is dead. Fade to black, credits- WHAAAT? I wasn't expecting this to be such a nihilistic picture! and then there was an additional scene, where a wanted poster for the assassin is marked as "Dead" while the Thief's poster is changed to reflect a MUCH higher bounty, and the Bounty Hunter is sitting there, set to track him down.

Whew, okay, I can deal with that ending better, thanks.

Wonder Woman #7 and Wonder Woman more generally

Have some posting to do, so below is a comment I wrote in regards to the ever insightful writings at "Too Busy Thinking About My Comics". Most likely it will be published after approval, and even have a reply, assuming the author isn't too busy.

For the sake of context for yourself, check out this link: http://toobusythinkingboutcomics.blogspot.ca/2012/03/on-wonder-woman-7.html

Hi Colin, you're probably tired of responding to not dissimilar messages about this post, but I'll add my voice to the din.

The most important thing to say is that I really do appreciate your take on this Wonder Woman issue, you've made me more than a little embarrassed for myself for not seeing the sexism on display (though to my credit, I have also been put off by Wonder Woman's all male entourage- excepting the new Hermes who I think is really cool), and now that you mention it, a Wonder Woman comic SHOULD be a place for women and girls to pick up an issue and feel a charge of inspiration!

(Though I do feel Wonder Woman has grown into that role over the years, as opposed to the idea that Wonder Woman inherently deserved that role since her creation- not that that's necessarily what you think, Colin, and not that it's all THAT big of a distinction to us in the here and now, but to me there were an awful lot of worrying Wonder Woman covers back in the day with her inexplicably chained up...)

So even though you've opened my eyes some- I still think this was a decent comic! Yes, even as a stand alone issue! Our heroine could have easily left well enough alone, she was getting weapons from Hephaestus, and she certainly doesn't need to make any more enemies amongst the gods, but she percieved an injustice and could do no less than try to help them! Having read the other issues of the series there's the added weight Wonder Woman is under, feeling that she has failed her family on Paradise Island, here's something of a chance to redeem herself in her own eyes... only to discover that she presumed too much in thinking the male Amazons wanted to be freed.

It's the sort of humbling experience I've read dozens of times from Spider-Man, from Superman, from all sorts of characters, so why not Wonder Woman?

And I'll tell you "Why not Wonder Woman?" (ah, don't worry Colin, I've been paying attention to what you've written) it's because there are no other books to show her winning out, being strong and positive and whatnot. For every dozen times a story is told where Spider-Man is humbled there are a hundred others where he stands triumphant (or, lest I forget, even if every Spider-Man story ended with the protagonist humbled, well sir, the young lad about town could turn to Superman, Batman, Iron Man, any of various Captains, etc etc to get their hero fix.). What's the ratio on Wonder Woman stories? Not NEARLY as good- especially not since ye olde Infinite Crisis. It's been a dark time for Wonder Woman.

I guess what I'm saying is I intellectually agree with you, without being inclined to feel as strongly about it as you do. Sorry! I did say I was embarrassed about it...

All that said, I do want to point out that with all the comics I've dropped since the advent of this new 52, I added Wonder Woman to my pull list because it was given a creative team I respected, that told me DC was finally trying (however misguidedly, depending on your opinion of the current book) to push the character to the forefront, and I haven't been let down by the quality of the story telling (excepting the two issues not drawn by Chiang, but hey, the guy probably needed a breather).

I will be dropping Batman from my pull list, hopefully before the next issue comes out. Wonder Woman isn't even close to being on the chopping block. As a Batman fan and not really a Wonder Woman fan, that's pretty huge, I think.

(As an aside: as far as Wonder Woman goes, I liked the stuff where she was an ambassador for Themyscira, and had the Minotaur friend. I've bought "The Heketaia" by Greg Rucka for any female friends of mine that'd like Wonder Woman stuff, because I really like that interpretation of the character/I love that story)

***

And that was my comment. I'm pretty sure I misspelled "Heketaia" but I was too lazy to look it up on google.

Machine Man (Not the good Marvel character, it's a novel)

The sort of crazy rabbit lady at my work asked me to watch the rabbits outside, to make sure no one attacked them. I said sure, because no ones going around attacking rabbits (not wabbit season).

"Thank you. Is there a charge for this service?"

"Uh. No."

Could you imagine if I said yes? What a horrible person I'd be!

Moving on, so after "It's Superman!" (which, having finally mentioned on the ol' blog, I can FINALLY return to the buildings little library. Lightens my load. Decreases my clutter.) I read "Machine Man" by Max Barry. It's the story of an engineer who loses a leg in a lab accident and then, unsatisfied with the prosthetics he's given, builds himself a great leg... way better than his remaining human leg.

Well that's a problem he can surely solve! Off with his other leg!

It's, uh, a pretty slippery slope that the guy jumps off of (wait, I thought it was slippery? He jumped?! He's got no legs!). It's actually a pretty disturbing book, with its phantom limb pain, Doc Ock style hearing voices from the mechanical legs, a prosthetician with something of an amputee fetish (gotta love what you do, right?)...

The book is notable to me for a couple of reasons. The protagonist is amazingly incapable of empathy. The story is told in first person narration, so we're right inside this guys head, and because he cares so little for the thoughts of others there's almost zero speculation about those other peoples feelings. I'm so used to the first person narrator being a writer (say, Dr. Watson, or a better example being any Hemingway protagonist) that it's very jarring to have a narrator so very removed from other peoples perception. And it's not just that the guy has a warped perception of the inner lives of others, which would in turn reflect on his own inner life- but he just doesn't care. He rarely considers other people at all. Man was that weird.

The other thing of note has to do with the process the novel was written with. Daily updates to a web site with the content of the various chapters, often as short as a couple of hundred words, telling the story of this Charles Neumann (blargh that last name is obvious- and that's a criticism from a guy that always gives names that are way too obvious! This is just too much!) with a constant back and forth of critiquing chatter with the sites various visiting commentators. In effect the novel is a collaborative effort. I mean, more so than usual.

Not a whole lot on this planet that isn't a collaborative effort.

All the time while reading this book, whenever the main character was wearing the prosthetic legs he designed, I couldn't help but imagine the guy to be walking around like he was 7 or 8 feet tall. If he walked near a door I'd have to duck in my chair while reading, emulating how he MUST have been going through doors and such. See? I've got empathy coming out the yinyang. Wow, uh, when I actually write that, "yinyang", but does it look and sound inappropriate.

That's probably all I need to say about that. The cover has a drawing of a dude with an awesome moustache. Then the title takes its place in the middle, then scary giant robot legs. Pretty cool cover. Also creepy.

Finally, the Superman novel

I have been watching WAY too much Community lately. And I'm not even sick of it!! I'm just getting more and more drawn in by this brilliant show!

It's like I'm eating a giant delicious cookie that makes me sick even as I want more of it and continue to eat it! THAT WAS A SEASON 1 COMMUNITY REFFERENCE!!!!

Ugh, okay, step away, cool down.

The Mondo comics site has been non-functional for a few days now, I need to give it another check to see whether it's back and last weeks work can get published. All the while this weeks reviews still need to be written. But that would have been the case anyways.

I've been wanting to at least mention this for some time now: "It's Superman!" written by Tom De Haven in 2005 was read by yours truly, yeesh, a while ago now. It's set during the latter years of the Great Depression, making it a retelling of Superman's origin during the same time he had been first created by old Siegel and Shuster.

There were many characters and character quirks added for the sake of the novel. Lex Luthor had a penchant for humming, Superman had a job as a stunt man out of Hollywood and a short romance with a husky voiced costume creator (so THAT'S where the suit came from!) and an unscrupulous best friend/outlaw, Willie.

The Clark Kent of this novel isn't that great a guy. He's too busy worrying about his powers to really pay attention to anything outside of himself- and when he finally does shift into caring for others it happens all at once. It didn't feel authentic. But it was always going to be hard to illustrate someone growing to be that good. It's the same reason why it's so hard to show Anakin Skywalkers descent into Darth Vader-hood.

One bit I remember I wanted to talk about, there's a section late into the novel where Willie is, I don't know, depressed or something, and Clark decides he'll take the guys mind off his troubles by distracting him with a show of awesome super powers. Clark jokes that they should race (Willie is well aware of the things Clark can do) and so Clark zips around, appearing everywhere; it's half comical, half terrifying.

That perspective on those super powers, I thought was a fresh one. I found it very interesting, and wished more of the novel covered that ground.

I was surprised and disappointed when heat vision eventual showed up in the story- as a snobby purist I was expecting Superman to be stuck with the same abilities he had when his comic first appeared... so pretty much the "faster than a speeding bullet/more powerful than a locomotive/ able to leap tall buildings in a single BOUND/ It's SUPERMAN! (oh, THAT'S where the books title came from, he said, as if he hadn't already known).

But whatever, with heat vision and his travelling MUCH faster than a speeding bullet, and the full on flying, yeah, this is a much later version of the Man of Tomorrow.

Overall, it was a pretty good novel, I dug it.

Movie reviews on the Subway

I was on the subway headed to work when this mother and two little kids come by. The son is 6-8 years old, and the daughter is 5-7. Or something like that. The little boy sits beside me. The lot of them are talking about what movie they want to see, and the boy says John Carter.

The mother makes a face. "I don't know, the reviews say it's really bad.."

I turn to the boy and say, "It's really good. I had a blast."

I half expected a rebuke of a "mind your own business" variety from the mother, but surprisingly, she actually was grateful for the feedback.

When we arrived at my stop I got up, and the little girl asked my name.

"My name is Isaac."

"Okay, bye Izee!"

Izee (pronounced "eye-zee") is now my most adorable nickname.

Old Man Logan

I've been really good lately, by the way. High spirits. Most likely because of the sunlight. I'm okay with that as a reason. It's 1am, and yet I'm feeling strong and alert.

Which, by the way, has nothing to do with the can of coke I was given a couple hours ago.

Hold up, wait, usually when I punctuate whatever I'm saying with a sentence like that, it could be indicative of "irony" on my part. So, to be clear, I'm being serious, discount that can of coke in regards to the list of things that are making me feel good. I'm actually kinda grossed out by it, with all its sugar and caffeine and carbonated water- but it was kindly offered to me, so I kindly recieved it. My teeth feel yucky. But at least it is tasty.

And seriously, the font/logo for Coca Cola? Pretty sinister with that third stylized "C" piercing through that "L". Ah well.

This nice guy in my building that I've hardly spoken to, besides once complimenting his... possibly Green Lantern shirt (hard to remember, it was definitely some cool shirt), and the other day I complimented his hair cut (he smiled and said thanks, so I assume I was bang on on that one... but maybe he was just being nice, I realized that it's been a while since I've seen him sans hat- because of winter you see). The next time I ran into him he asked me if I was into comics.

Yes yes, we're all aware this is a silly question.

So I said yes, and he loaned me the Wolverine story "Old Man Logan", by Mark Millar and Steve McNiven.

I've reada good chunk of Old Man Logan before, but mostly at Chapters and I definitely missed the ending. Well, that's whatI thought anyways, but it turned out I'd read less than I'd previously thought, but that's all the better for me now. I'm also glad that I'd read this after learning more about Millar's work on his creator owned series "Wanted" (Now a major motion picture!) and a story, I think, he'd done for a special issue of JLA (the GOOD Justice League book). Keep in mind that I've now learned about these two stories, but I still haven't read either of them, so I can easily have important details wrong.

The earliest bit of work was the JLA story about the super villains deciding to mass together to take down the super heroes, relying on their superior numbers to win the day, despite any heavy losses. In the end it turned out the shape-shifting Martian Manhunter was among the super villains number, thus revealing the fact that the plan to take out the heroes was a trap by those same heroes. The villains are generally portrayed sympathetically, the story being from their perspective. There's a panel I've seen from the book with Batman ready to tear into the villains that suggests a tyranny justly rebelled against.

In "Wanted", the characters live in a world that appears mundane, but is actually controlled by a cabal of super villains after they massed their kind together to destroy all the heroes- and I literally mean destroy them; they weren't simply killed, all memory of them having ever existed is wiped away, relegated to comic books for the sake of making the thought of their existence ridiculous. The protagonist is a young man, the son of a super villain, who learns the truth and goes on to become a villain himself. You know, a happy ending!

The premise of "Old Man Logan" is this: the super villains of the Marvel universe have massed together to get rid of all the heroes/take over the world, and they succeeded. Fifty years later and the world is a desolate place, a world where Logan, the man once known as Wolverine, only wants to live in peace with his family and forget his terrible mistake the night the villains began their offensive.

So, uh, there's a pattern, yes? I'm actually okay with the pattern itself, the man likes to work with the theme, that's fine. I've said that was a strength of 100 Bullets, so I can't exactly denounce it here. But it is still weird how overwhelmingly sad these worlds are.

PLUS (I just remembered), my mind repels the premise of super villains working together on that scale. Some egomaniac will demand to be top dog, infighting will happen, and any alliance will be short lived and disasterous. If most of these guys could function in a society, they WOULDN'T be villains. The heroes can put aside their differences for the greater good, but Millar seems to assert that any number of villains would be willing to put aside their well being for the greater bad. They'd lay down their life for the chance to be one of the few that get to take over the world? Not likely.

Interestingly, Old Man Logan ends the most hopefully of the lot. The JLA tale ends with the all powerful JLA remaining in charge of the world. Wanted ends with the birth of a new terrible villain in an already hopeless world. Old Man Logan ends with Wolverine resuming his heroic mantle to go on a quest to assemble a group to make the world better (if not out and out save the world). He doesn't want power- he'd have been happy on his farm if he was just left alone, but that didn't happen.

I can see the objection that by going out to oppose the super villains Wolverine is perpetuating the cycle of comic book adventure i.e. violence for one, but more importantly the creation of new pro- and an-tagonists. It seems to be suggested that if one side ever definitively quashed the other, then both sides would die off. It's a good thing this isn't ACTUALLY an essay on the subject (with marks and red pen and late penalties and everything) otherwise I'd have to back that statement up. I'm not sure why I think that thing I said. What did I even say? No, I sort of get myself, but at 2:40am- okay, NOW I'm losing steam.

I need to check out Wanted so I can more strictly compare it to Kick-Ass, a mundane world where one kid decides he's going to be a super hero (if only a lame one). There's certainly a lot of crossover between the two. I wonder if Kick-Ass could possibly be set in the Wanted universe. Or perhaps the Kick-Ass universe grows and grows, eventually becoming as full of heroes and villains and powers and the surreal that it could be a universe that becomes like Wanted.

Ugh, I'm cold and it's very foggy out. I look at the fog and wonder if this is some awful attack, a haze to conceal an alien conspiracy or something. It looks like the end of the world. I'll keep you posted, if the world ends I owe you a Coca Cola.

John Carter, Haircut, Tea Shop chocolates- that backwards order

So over on rottentomatoes.com John Carter has a 50% rating.

Pro tip: that's crazy. I went to see it yesterday and had an absolute blast. It's Adam Strange and Superman and Conan all mixed together... which makes sense when you consider what those stories owe to the original John Carter books.

I was a little unsure about the narrative framing device, even though yes I imagine that's how the book originally does it- I feel like I've seen it used too often lately. But then they added a particular twist that justified the framing device in-story.

I saw the film with my buddy Mike, and afterwards we wondered in a great big circle, ending up just north of the downtown AMC theatre we started from. We ate at Fran's (where it's clear I'm making some progress with my chop stick skills) but once payment time came 'round, guess who had lost their debit card? Me!

Fortunately I had my credit card on me, AND that we were once again so close to the theatre. We went back to enjoy the last few minutes of another screening of John Carter (a nice treat if nothing else) and then Mike, with his smart phone flashlight application and an exclamation of "You're gonna love me." Found my debit card!

That's really lucky... well, I mean, not so much luck as "we looked in the only place it could be that we could concievably spot it, at the last place I knew I had it"

What WAS lucky was how when I called Mike to see what he was up to he was just about to buy his John Carter ticket- and he didn't have any company, AND I was just a few blocks away after getting a sweet hair cut and AAAND I really wanted to see John Carter.

So my hair cut. That was at Queen Salon & Barber Spa (I'm just reading off the business card now... I personally wouldn't have gone with the Sweeney Todd picture, but okay) 316 Queen Street East, Ralph was the guys name, and not only was the guy super nice, but he really did do a great job. You know I coulda gotten a free espresso/cappucino if I wanted? (remember I don't tend to do caffeine, I took a water instead). I got a ton of value from that trip, and it wasn't that much more expensive than my trips to first choice haircutters. I may have to stick with this guy.

And to continue my backwards talk about my Sunday, before my hair cut I visited Adornments on Queen (I was, uh, trying to find someone..) where I got a sample of some kinda almond honey tea business- this place has a tea bar- and, to thank the uh, host? server? sales person? I bought a package of chocolate covered cranberries.

It's definitely easier on the old cheque book to window shop from outside! But it's okay, so I had a day where I spoiled myself a bit- it was a beautiful day, things seemed to go my way, and I had fun!

Mostly just dream time

For the past, what? Week? I keep running into things I'd like to blog about, but then not getting the moment to do so. This inevitably leads to me forgetting a bunch of stuff, and having it all run together, and that just generally sucks.

Mostly because of the forgetting stuff part. Ah, well most of that stuff is probably in response to various Toronto Star articles, so there are worse things to forget.

It's early on this no, not leap day... day light savings day. I had a nightmare about my brother dying from I think it was a blast of heat vision, and so I got upset and woke up. At least I don't have to be particularly paranoid of real beams of heat vision.

But backtrack two nights before and I dreamed about two things: one was this father accussing me of perfidy by going out with both of his daughters.

(I knew I wanted to use "perfidy" there, but I dictionary.com'd it just to be sure)

I gave a heartfelt speech about needing to get to know people so I could know who I would want to spend time with. I said more than that, but you know, dream logic from two nights ago, I can't really remember. I know the father guy ended up pitying me, which is an unusual response that maybe I should be offended by? I don't know- it was MY dream!

Note: I first tried that last sentence without the allcaps on "my" but felt that left too much room for a casual reader to alter the reading via their own personal emphasis.

Note2: "their own personal emphasis"- redundant? Their personal emphasis. Their own emphasis.

Immediately after that bit I dreamed I was running- no, sprinting. My arms reached out impossibly far in front of me, smoothly cutting through the air at my side as my legs effortlessly tapped at the ground to propel me forward. It's the kind of feeling that I have only rarely achieved in real life, on a small length of track, magically limbered up and without feeling any kind of knee or ankle strain or anything. It's a great sublime moment, and this dream reminding me of it was nice.

So naturally I went for a run yesterday to capitalize on my excitement. It was relatively short, and obviously not as great as that dream bit, but not bad at all. I pushed my speed a bit more than usual, even while knowing that it wasn't a speed I could maintain for the entire trip. I had fun. Oh, until my ears got too cold, that was sore making.

Mayhap it shall be warmer out soon.

Speaking of soon, I'll have to return here soon to talk about a couple books I read, and therefore make myself feel like a smarty pants.

I woulda been up yesterday but I took an arrow to the knee. (Yes, I'm a poser, I've never played any Skyrim)

Man, I'm a slacker right now. I've once again spent the whole of a day in bed. It's really taking far too much time to recover from my work days. And could I please find the energy to go to the gym?

Actually, on the gym note, I did go for a significant run after my shift Saturday (so, it was Sunday morning). I missed the bus heading east on Lawrence, and not wanting to wait, I ran over to Yonge. I made it with a good, what? 5-8 minutes before the next bus would've come along to ferry me across.

But as I was approaching Yonge- VROOM!- I missed the north bound bus. Ookay. So I decided to run some more, taking the adventurous, bus-less route further east along Lawrence, to then travel up Bayview to York Mills.

I made it to Bayview (was there any doubt?) but my left knee was starting to kill. I ended up walking the remainder of the trip up to York Mills. Just north of the Glendon campus of York University I could smell that one of the schools in the area was cooking bacon... man I'm not normally a bacon guy, but I really wanted it at that moment.

At a half a block from York Mills, my destination in sight- VROOM!- are you kidding me?!? I missed another bus?!?!?

It was either 7:13 or 7:15 when I arrived at York Mills and Bayview (I guess the bus was supposed to be there for 7:10 or something like that) and I started running from my building about a block east of Lawrence West station at 6:05am. It's no real wonder that my knee was killing me- an hour and ten minute trip, at least 40 minutes of which was spent running, after a 12 hour shift, no real warm up (spur of the moment and all that), carrying my laptop, and wearing my steel toed boots.

You know what? If I'm only as strong as my weakest link, and my weakest link is that knee- bravo, sir! (Two days later and my knee is okay now, I'm left with a slight soreness in the muscles, I guess my quadriceps, which is what I was expecting the whole time, so I'm very good with that.) Uh, still, I'd rather not have my knee hurt like that again... that definitely sucked.

Not that this is necessarily worthy of recording, but during the walking portion of my trip, soon after smelling the bacon, I was thinking about how cool time is, how it's sort of nice that it just keeps moving forward without anyone needing to turn a crank or anything. I thought of time as "the fire that is always going out" which I thought sounded rather poetic. Anyways.

At that Bayview and York Mills corner there wasn't much around. A Second Cup and a Metro was open. Don't drink coffee, not sure I've ever been in a Second Cup... but the Metro opened at 7am and I was thankful. Didn't see any obvious breakfast sandwiches that I could dive into right there, so I bought a bag of salt and vinegar chips. I toddled back to the bus stop, plunked down next to some guy who just wants a normal day at work I reckon, we exchange a good morning, I remove one glove, and spend the next 15-20 minutes eating chips.

They were plenty delicious by the way, but no longer moving around, sweat cooling, I started to freeze. My hand approached frost bitten as it moved from the bag to my mouth. Righty dove deeper into the bags recesses, the make-shiftiest of make shift gloves. It was pretty stupid. But before I cooled down quite so much I was having a ball. Just a guy with his chips.

It was slow going once the bus finally came and dropped me off at Victoria Park, I limped home and collapsed into bed, hurt knee and sore back.

Maybe I got six hours sleep before I had to go back to work- is it any wonder my knee still hurt and I limped for most of the next day?

And I suppose I still needed to recover from that, plus that nights 12 hour shift. Okay, you've convinced me, I won't hold it against myself that I stayed in bed all yesterday! But I will rage against the world, because why not.