whats going on?

not that it really matters, since this is an über secret blog, but i am seeing that i haven’t really posted anything in a while. yeah it’s because i haven’t felt like it, so there. i hope you enjoyed the cartoon drawings, richard did most of them, i did a bit too.

on wednesday i went for coffee with jessica, who i have rarely ever hung out with, but have always found to be a very interesting person. she, like me, is busy busy busy and hasn’t updated her blog in forever. aww! when we met up in duncan it was in the midst of the ferry strikes and it really felt like we were on an island. i mean, we couldn’t really get off of the island if we wanted to, short of flying or going to the USA.

by some craZy miracle on friday i caught the 5 pm BC Ferries “sailing” to Vancouver without a hitch. i didn’t even go to my radio show, though i did end up on it as nick brought me in through the phone on the main board to do the intro and ending of resonance. the angry samoan played a wicked set.

on the ferry i ran into a bunch of other surprised travellers, including john luttman who i went to school with (he being the inventor of the infamous, and ticketed, bmw spider) and ken, whom i met last time i hung out with jessica. well really that was an islandkidz meeting but afterwards we went out for pizza and hung out. on the ferry ride we had some pretty interesting discussions with his coworker/boss warren about the health system and the regional authorities that are in effect now or coming into effect.
record shopping is a big disappointment nine times out of ten in vancouver so i only went to virgin megastore this time. their security system is wack. my cell phone set off their alarm when i walked in, when i went to use the washroom
i hung out with anand on friday night, my oldest brother who lives in north vancouver. he played me a bit of what he is producing — really neat complex stuff where he’s got a trip hop song going and then his own guitar playing and saxophone playing is integrated digitally into the track. neeeeeeeeeat!
he may or may not be remixing a new AFK track that i haven’t even finished yet — mind you that isn’t that strange. charles and justin started their remixes of magnetic before i had finished the original mix. most of it was there mind you..

saturday i drove to seattle. i had left my passport and birth certificate behind in victoria, which was a problem.
or was it? no, it was no problem at all! they let me into the states and that was that. i motored down in the green 1997 ford taurus and only got tailgated 20 times by this yappy bitch on a cell phone in a white toyota camry. normally i let people know that they’re too close with the bright red brake lights, but at 130 clicks, that’s just plain stupid when they’re 5 feet behind you. the yappy bitch eventually got caught in traffic far behind me, thank goodness. the I-5 is a bit nutty to be talking on a cell phone and tailgating. get off the phone and stop tailgating people. it wasn’t just me that she was tailgating — she was seriously an awful driver.
i stopped only once to get a burger at BK.
i had enough time to go record shopping so i did — i turned off of the I-5 and got onto Pike St. to go up Capital Hill to one of the best record shops in the North West – Platinum Records. found some great records and very knowlegable staff there. i went back out and drove down Pine St. and did the loop to get back on the I-5 in less than 2 minutes.. talk about convenient!
to get to the SeaTac International Airport, you go southbound on the I-5 ’til you get to exit 154b. then, follow the signs ’til you get there (5 mins later). their parking system is really neat and they’re even in the middle of a renovation. well done, whomever is in charge. i thought SeaTac would be way huger than say, Vancouver International but it’s quite a bit smaller and from parking I was standing in the right place within a couple minutes without getting lost. who’s good at reading signs?! i am!!

some people say eff the union and then enjoy the wages and salaries that living in a first world country affords them. a country is union-like with minimum wages, common rights and dollar value, so i see a bit of hypocrisy there. this is a messy situation though. the province privatized the essential service earlier this year, quietly. there is a lot of murky water surrounding that as the liberals want to tell the ferry workers what to do but no longer have the jurisdiction since they have privatized. i don’t know why binding arbitration didn’t happen earlier. so far as the issues go, there is a rather large fundamental problem with an employer asking for more work hours without paying more work wages. there is also a big fundamental problem with not being able to get off the freakin’ island!!!!