Installment #4

9:27 PM, Sunday 13 February 2005

Well this past week has been one busy week. My brother Rob arrived from Germany on Sunday and stayed with me all week. Having someone live with you is a bit stressful, plus consuming, not to say I don’t enjoy having my brother who I never see stay with me, I do, it is just tiring is all. Plus work just keeps on getting busier and busier. We have so much on the go it is crazy. I am slowly getting through my 2 page to do list of stuff I have to do, without adding too much more to it. To make things more crazy this week the other programmer came down with bacterial pneumonia, meaning I had to pick up some more slack. If I wasn’t busy enough with everything else going on I decided this week that I would also build a website for a bed and breakfast out on salt spring for someone who wants his site up quick. Well at least our new programmer starts work Monday so that will hopefully start to ease the load a bit.

So Kyle is now 24, welcome to the club. How do you feel, older, wiser, more sprite, ready for a girlfriend? Happy Birthday regardless. On my 24th birthday I bought $20 worth of sushi/Japanese food, a lemon meringue pie from Safeway and went home and mopped. I have since gotten over the fact we are all getting older and there is nothing you can do about except take advantage of the time you have. Granted that is often easier said then done.

Kyle were do you envision yourself in 10 years, what do you see yourself doing, where do you see yourself living? When I try to think of that I get nothing, other than the overly optimistic “laying on a tropical beach with two chicks and a margarita”.

Well I got nothing else to say, I am still tired, going to go to bed now, and hopefully the dentist will tell me something nice tomorrow.

Stefan

9:55 PM, Sunday 13 February 2005

Living with people is fine, just as long as you can give the other person space and that person gives you the same. I’ve noticed that I’m rapidly falling into the ’single guy hanging out at his married friends’ place’. As almost all of my friends here are in some sort of relationship, it’s very weird sometimes. I keep thinking that they’re just going to get sick of me at some point (couples need time alone, damn it!) but, fuck, I even got asked over to one of my coupled friends’ house tomorrow night. Fucking Valentine’s Day! Well, hey, if they’re silly enough to waste their time hanging out with me, then I’m silly enough to accept the invite!

Are you going to kick out the jams on this B&B site? Are there any sites not linked to Kloppmagic/OK Auto/SchoolNet you’ve designed that we should know about?

I don’t really feel older right now if only because in grad school the ‘peeps’ (I’m still hip!) you hang out with are usually older than you anyway (I’ve got a fair number of friends here who are 30-plus). In relation to them, I’ms still way young. Yeah, a girlfriend would be great (especially with most of my friends being in some sort of relationship already) but I don’t know what I’d have to offer at this point just because I’m so caught up in schoolwork and don’t hae a set future plan. Once this master’s thing works itself out and I start to get a real grip on what I’ll be doing for the next ten years then maybe the time would be right. But if any girl out there didn’t mind that and went for it anyway, then, hey!

As for where I see myself ten years from now (you must have been feeling very philosophical this weekend), I’ve got to say it would probably something academic. Assuming I can actually pull this Master’s degree out of my ass, I would imagine I would start my doctorate soon after that, assuming my financial situation cleans up alright. Maybe start out as a research assistant, pay off the loan, get some background info and head into another thesis. Teaching post-secondary somewhere is an option; I don’t think I could handle a regular 9-5 shift in some office somewhere.

Until next time, keep it in your pants, you sick freak.

Kyle

P.S. I Have no idea what I meant by that last line.

9:09 PM, Monday 14 February 2005

Yeah I have nothing against living with other people, it sure makes things less boring that is for sure. Plus when you have nothing to do you have someone to go do shit with. Yeah a lot of my friends are all hooked up as well. I get invites to peoples houses all the time, but often it isn’t just me but a lot of people over at the persons house, which makes it a little less awkward I suppose. How was your valentines date, did you have fun? ha

Yeah I am going to kick out the jams on this BB site. The clients are really easy to work with, they are clear about what they want which makes it easy for me to do. I have done sites for people who don’t know what they want, but they do know what they don’t like, so they keep on saying something doesn’t look good but never give you any info on the way they want it to look, I hate that the most. Anyway most of the sites I have ever done should be on my portfolio at: http://portfolio.kloppmagic.ca. The last couple sites I have churned out were Serenity Natural Foods and Boutique Boo.

I know what you mean about not having a plan, and having everything kind of up in the air. It is how my life has been for the past 3 or 4 years now. I guess I am not much of a settler. I suppose I kinda am now, but still, somewhere in the back of my mind I don’t see anything as permanent you know? i see life as constantly changing for me, and on the verge of change all the time making it difficult for me to commit to anything!

I do a regular 9-5 shift in a office somewhere, HA but I actually don’t mind it. Actually being in the High-Tech industry and not having to do MAJOR unpaid overtime (like 3 or 4 hours a day) is kind of nice. I like my job and the people I work with, which makes working in an office (one with dogs woof woof in it) a lot easier. What would you like to teach if you had the choice? I take it something related to geography. BTW how is your thesis coming along, what interesting tidbits do you have to share?

Stefan

1:19 PM, Tuesday 15 February 2005

The Valentine’s thing actually didn’t happen. I stayed out all night instead- at the laundromat. Yay. Laundry. Wooooo. It’s a 45-minute walk with two loads in a duffel bag. You can imagine the joy.

Boutique Boo. That’s a brilliant name. How do you hook up with these people to do the site? How long does it take to build? And did you laugh out loud when you first heard ‘Boutique Boo’ or were you simply enthralled by the idea of working with pictures of scantily-clad women?

It’s never good to tie yourself down because anything can happen. When life starts getting to good, that just means it’s going to go downhill that much faster. My advice is when you finally acheive your dream in life, get some hookers and a giant mountain of coke and just snort and fuck until you have a heart attack and die because it’s all down hill from there.

Yeah, I’d be teaching some sort of geography, whether social, human or GIS. Anything with maps and people. As for my thesis, my proposal draft is due Friday. Basically I’ll be looking at patterns of chain migration in the Upper Fraser in an effort to look at how ethnicity and religion played a role in the development of that region. Field work will start in April. Hey, now I’ll get to present at pretentious conferences and make demonstration posters!

A last-minute deal between the NHL and its players? Could it happen? With everything that’s gone on today, you never know, but I don’t want to get my hopes up, either.

Kyle

9:31 PM, Tuesday 15 February 2005

You serious spent the entire night at a laundry mat? like not go home after your laundry was done? yikes… What did I do? I spent my valentines working on the new website, equally as exciting as your night.

Boutique Boo. Yeah the dude who’s site it is is a friend of Tracy Marcheschucks, who I had beers with one night in August with Amanda her sister and a bunch of other folks. Anyway she told me of the guy wanting to do a website, he called me up and we went from there. Personally I could care less about the scantily clad women on the site. Anyway I think the site turned out somewhat nice… despite it’s lack of content.

Tying oneself down is not a good idea, just makes a person less likely and able to change. Also makes a person less likely to take or accept new opportunities. Thinking like that is likely the reason I am single… No the reason I am single is because I hardly meet new people (let alone court-able females). Life is how you live it however, and I am not about to go slutting it up in clubs so I can tell my friends I have a ‘girlfriend’. Not that I would meet any date-able girl in a club anyway, but that is a whole different issue. Now how did I get started on this issue? Man I guess valentines really did get to me…

Well the two sides are still a world apart. I mean it seems like 6.5 million, but really it is 6.5*30 = 200 million. Unless the players accept something like 43-44 million this season is dead. Not that it would really be an exciting season anyway, I mean wow a whole 20 games followed by 3 rounds of playoffs. I suppose it would be hockey non the less.

So I talked to the dentist yesterday after having a full scan of my wisdom teeth. It looks like the nerve is on the inside of my jaw but still close to the root. However this is a pretty good result in that what the dentist will do is cut out a bit of the bone on the outside then slide the tooth over so it doesn’t touch the nerve, then pull it out. Sounds like fun hey? At least I will be high as a kite on a general anesthetic. I asked the dentist how I would feel after the operation, he told me “I am not going to lie to you Stefan” (he says this before a lot of sentences actually) “You’re going to feel like crap for the next 5 days. I mean your having surgery on jaw for god sack.”. At least he keeps things honest.

“Little Man. He lived in a caravan. Dum dum.”

Stefan

9:14 AM, Wednesday 16 February 2005

Not the whole night, you moron. It’s a fucking laundromat (BTW, I love you called it a ‘laundry mat’ like a six-year old). But two hours there plus 90 minutes of walking is more than enough. And how could you not care about scanitly clad women? Ha, ha, ha. That just reminds me of that Simpsons episode where Moe is hooked up to the lie detector and eventually is forced to admit he’s going home to beat off to the Sears catalogue.

Just admit it, Stef, you’re a big softie like the rest of us. Awwwwwww…. No. It’s just that we’re single guys living in a married world where everyone wants to shove their ‘happiness’ down our throats. Remember, the only goal of life is to procreate and multiply so find someone quick before you become an old maid. How else will we maintain population growth to fuel the glorious, benevolent machine that is capitalism?

Well, I still think that one hour from now, Bettman will announce the season is cancelled. I beg to differ on the excitement issue, however. A 28-game season means every game is drastically important and anyone has a chance to make the playoffs. And it’s FOUR rounds of playoffs, moron! It’s been four rounds for 25 years! It would be way more exciting than a typical season. It’s just that no one will be watching it. Whenever they do go back to a full sched, I really don’t want them to alter the length of a season. 82 games is fine. You certainly do NOT want anymore. But it also gives each team three games a week, minimum, for six months. That’s great for fans. With so many games on TV nowadays, you don’t have to feel guilty about not buying tickets. So much to choose from. Plus, teams need gate revenue to feed those salaries, even ‘reduced’ salaries. if the players say that they’re tired, tell them they’re avraging $1.8 million and shut up. As if they’re going to be less tired after 70 games than 80. After a point, you’re just tired. More games keeps fans interested.

I am not going to lie to you, Stefan. That’s hilarious! Oh, well, at least you can get addicted to DayQuil and keep yourself nice and numb for a few days. Or just don’t open your mouth during that week! Breathe through your nose and communicate with a combination of messengers and hand signals.

‘Mongoloid, he was a mongoloid, happier than you and me. Mongoloid, he was a mongoloid, and it determined what he could see. And he wore a hat, and he had a job, and he brought home the bacon, so that no one knew. Mongoloid, he was a mongoloid, his friends were unaware. Mongoloid, he was a mongoloid, nobody even cared.’

Kyle

10:56 PM, Thursday 17 February 2005

Yeah lets all procreate and overpopulate this world even more. Lets see what happens when we reach the limits of this earth, should be a fun ride down, oh wait we have been falling all this time, I guess that means it is going to be one hell of a splat.

The season is canceled, people are saying, “Man 6 million is what they arguing over?” well actually it is 200 million. Yeah I suppose it would be exciting, but not the same, it would seem like such a farce, bunch of greedy players being paid by greedy owners and no one gave a fuck about the fans. All they cared about was making a buck or two this year. Yes Kyle a regular season has 4 rounds of playoffs, but if you did any reading on how this shortened season was going to play out you would have known that the plan was to have 3 rounds instead of 4. They were also considering other options too, like round robin.

I am not going to lie to you Kyle, I might just have to invite Bernie and Amanda over and purchase some herbs to get me through the pain. Actually I think the T3’s with codien should be sufficient enough to take the pain off. I just can’t wait to see my chipmunk face. I always laughed at poor fuckers who had their wisdom teeth out and looked like Alvin or Theodor. To tell you the truth though I could care less about the pain or how I look, I just don’t want to lose the feeling in my gum or lips. That is my #1 goal.

Anyway looks like my internet is back, check out my blog for the story on that. Man calling support is such a pain in the ass. So are these stupid promos. This is the last time I take a free month, something stupid like this always seems to happen afterwards when you go to cancel the service. BAH.

Man we have been having some awesome weather lately. Sun sun and more sun. Not that I get to enjoy this sun, I suppose the few rays I catch from my office window will have to do, plus it is nice not to walk home in the dark rain. All this sun though makes me think of a Who song Blue, Red, and Grey. “Some people go for those sultry evenings, cocktails in the blue, red and grey, but I like every minute of today…”

What the hell is that Mongoloid quote from? Yikes!

Stefan

7:55 AM, Friday 18 February 2005

9 billion of us by 2025, think about that! It’s going to be a fucking gong show! We are so incredbily, edibly, fucked. and it’s really too late to do anything about it. What we need to start doing now is preparing ourselves for the big splat’s aftermath. Kyoto is really about one-thousandth of a percent of what we need to be doing, but as long as Reverend McDumbass keeps running things into the ground down south there won’t be much we can do. Barach Obama in ‘08!

Well, none of the posturing and hypothesizing over a season matters at this point, ’cause it’s all over. Blame has been done to death so let’s just look at the bright side of the lockout. We’re weeding out all the fairweather American fans! Amercians (if they didn’t already) won’t give two shits about hockey once this is all played out. Crappy teams like Phoenix and Florida and Carolina will fold. The game will die outside of the North and Colorado. Hockey will mean nothing to America, and that just means less competition for Canada. That’s right, Stef! I’m actually counting on this lockout to significantly diminish or kill hockey in the US so that places who actually care about the game can exert proper influence over it. won’t it be fun ten years from now to see the US get destroyed 11-2 in every World Championship game and battle for relegation against the likes of Austria and Italy? Well, it won’t get that bad, of course, but maybe it can relegate them down to the level of, say, Slovakia. If you get rid of the American influence in hockey, you get rid of the desire to have salries comparable to those of the NFL or NBA. You get rid of the desire to expand to money-losing market where hockey is foreign. You open up the possibility of expanding to Europe. Ideally, there would be an NHL with a North American League and a European League (kind of like the CHL with its three leagues). Except for the All-Star Game and a couple of weeks of interleague games, they wouldn’t see each other until the playoffs, making the Stanley Cup final that much better. The North American League could have Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary, San Jose, Colorado, Minnesota, Winnipeg, Chicago, Detroit, Philadephia, Toronto, Hamilton, Montreal, Buffalo, New York, Boston, St. Louis, Pittsburgh, Hartford and Quebec. The Euro League would have CSKA, Kazan, Dynamo, Davos, HC Bern, Frankfurt, Sparta, HC Slovak, Jokerit, MODO, Linkoping and whatever other strong club teams would support at least a 13,000 seat arena. You could even introduce relegation rounds where bad North American teams get sent to the AHL and bad Euro teams get sent back to their national club leagues. Fuck me, I’m brilliant! Of course, this would only work if salaries plummet by about one-third in order to get smaller hockey markets like Quebec, Pittsburgh and Hartford back in.

In this case, who cares what you have to do to relieve the pain? If you feel pain, at least you still know you have actual feeling in your gums and lips!

You mean a massive monolithic corporation like Shaw didn’t pay attention to your needs? Well, I, for one, am shocked. Next you’ll be telling me Telus has bad customer service or there were lineups at the CIBS this morning! BTW, really liked your Kyoto column. When you brought up the high school debate it made me flashback to the last BC election and Chris Delaney of the Unity Party. Someone asked him about women being paid less then men to do the same work and he inexplicably replied with, “Well, they had pay equity in the Soviet Union and look what happened to them.” I thought uninformed fringe parties weren’t invited to televised debates! I laughed really hard at that comment and then felt really sick. Speaking of elections, Campbell was just here at UNBC yesterday plugging his government throwing $32 million for a new teaching lab and library renovations here at the school. The renovations will coincidentally be finished right before the election! What a maroon. We’ll all enjoy our 9 ft x 9 ft, 4-to-a-room grad offices as TA wages are frozen for the thirteenth year in a row. Just for that I triple-dipped the pastry buffet at the press conference.

‘Mongoloid’ is an old Devo song. It’s a pretty good but menacing tune. Remeber, ‘Devo’ is short for ‘devolution’, so to write a song about a retarded guy who blends into society perfectly because the rest of society is becoming retarded is pretty good social satire. ‘Beautiful World’ (covered by RATM on the ‘Renegades’ album) is another satirical Devo song that’s pretty good.

Kyle

10:53 PM, Saturday 19 February 2005

Kyoto is like you said, just a drop in the ocean. I was actually discussing the population problem with Lorne just the other day. He had finally read Daniel Quinn’s book “The Story of B”, but had some reservations about Quinn’s views on our way out of the population mess, and how we got into it to begin with. Regardless Quinn has an excellent parable regarding the whole population overload that goes like this:

The ship was sinking—and sinking fast. The captain told the passengers and crew, “We’ve got to get the lifeboats in the water right away.”
But the crew said, “First we have to end capitalist oppression of the working class. Then we’ll take care of the lifeboats.”
Then the women said, “First we want equal pay for equal work. The lifeboats can wait.”
The racial minorities said, “First we need to end racial discrimination. Then seating in the lifeboats will be allotted fairly.”
The captain said, “These are all important issues, but they won’t matter a damn if we don’t survive. We’ve got to lower the lifeboats right away!”
But the religionists said, “First we need to bring prayer back into the classroom. This is more important than lifeboats.”
Then the pro-life contingent said, “First we must outlaw abortion. Fetuses have just as much right to be in those lifeboats as anyone else.”
The right-to-choose contingent said, “First acknowledge our right to abortion, then we’ll help with the lifeboats.”
The socialists said, “First we must redistribute the wealth. Once that’s done everyone will work equally hard at lowering the lifeboats.”
The animal-rights activists said, “First we must end the use of animals in medical experiments. We can’t let this be subordinated to lowering the lifeboats.”
Finally the ship sank, and because none of the lifeboats had been lowered, everyone drowned.
The last thought of more than one of them was, “I never dreamed that solving humanity’s problems would take so long—or that the ship would sink so SUDDENLY.”

Anyway I think that parable is somewhat fitting. Shows we are focusing on the tiny problems when the global problem which is threatning our humanity is not being dealt.

So talks are back on with the NHL and NHLPA. Who better than Gretzky (the greatest English hockey player of my time) and Lemieux (the greatest French hockey player of my time) to bridge the gap. A lot of people might say that they have vested interests being owners or players. I don’t think that is it though, I think these guys seriously love the game of hockey and don’t want to see it die. While Gretz maybe the biggest sellout lately (commercials wise) and a strong conservative (supports bush and harper) I can’t take away the fact he loves this game and will do anything to save it. Looks like they are still talking right now, but hopefully by tonight we can all rejoince in the fact hockey is back!

I think you should change your thesis to deal with the geography of the NHL. Then write up a thesis on how to further the game, and project it into new markets that WILL take to the game. Would be an interesting topic to do it on.

Anyway poker and tennis on the agendy for this sunny day.

Stefan

3:05 PM, Saturday 19 February 2005

It’s hilariously coincident that the two things we’re talking about, namely the population problem and the NHL lockout, will both be solved by the same terrible solution: ‘Blow it up and start all over again.’ For a relatively miniscule problem as organized sporting entertainment, fine, whatever. But the fact that the whole WORLD is headed toward that same outcome is fucking terrifying. I’d suggest saving up now for a 160-acre stake in the middle of the Stikine and builiding a little tiny cabin away from the rest of society because when shit starts getting blown up everywhere else then the absolute fucking middle of nowhere is the only place you’re going to be able to get away from anything. At the very least, you won’t have to see endless coverage of Paris Hilton’s latest shopping spree/drinking binge.

Much kudos to Monsieurs Great and Magnificent for their attempts at saving the season, but it fell through just as expected. Even though the majority of both owners and players wanted a deal done, the vocal minority was large enough (remember, it only takes EIGHT owners to reject a deal) to say ‘No, thanks’ (or was it ‘Fuck you, too?’). As much as I wanted it to happen today, I knew there was no way. deep down, we all knew it, I think. Again, let’s look at the positives: Gretz and Mario back for the Worlds in May, the end of hockey in America, the incredibly exciting clusterfuck of a new season with younger players and failing American franchises.

I actually would like to do some sort of social geographical look at hockey in Canada one day. But that would be years away, and what I’m doing now is perhaps even more important and quite interesting (although, let’s face it, all geography and social research, especially hockey-related, is important and interesting!). Let’s wait until I’ve finished my doctorate before I get to the point where I candetermine my own research; I’m not even a quarter of the way through my Master’s yet!

Well, it will be my turn to start it off next week. But, before I go, that Daniel Quinn parable was spot on, really. I wonder if Tom Waits was reading that same passage:
“I’d sell your heart to the drunkard, baby, for a buck. For a buck! If you’re lookin’ for someone to pull you out of that ditch, you’re out of luck. You’re out of luck! The ship is sinkin’. The ship is sinkin.’ The ship is sinkin.’ And there’s a leak, there’s a leak in the boiler room; the poor, the lame, the blind! who are the ones that we left in charge? Killers, thieves and lawyers! God’s away, God’s away, God’s away on business.”

Kyle