Daffodils
That come before the swallow dares, and take
The winds of March with beauty.

–“The Winter’s Tale” [1610–1611]; Act IV, sc iii, 118

I wonder what the people in the Canadian Maritimes are doing right now…?

Yes, we have fiddlers with wild tatto’oing and kids who can fly over fields of grain… but we have no snow, at least not here in Vancouver, which is why the Men’s Alpine Ski Competition has been postponed (they’re shipping snow from 150 miles away to several venues using dump trucks… no, honestly, they literally are doing that very thing).

Anyway, I may feel that building a transit corridor, re-building a highway, and constructing a convention centre collectively costing well over three billion dollars (for those of you in the UK, that’s $3,000 million, not $3 million million; the Canadian dollar hasn’t fallen that badly), yet the government responsible refusing to count the work required for the bid to be accepted as an Olympic Expense–all the while slashing arts, health, education, and community works funding, claiming “there’s no money” when asked for justification–is not only absurd but inhumane. I may resent the current PM, BC Premier, and a host of other politicians using the Olympic Games as photo opportunities for their ‘non-campaign’ for re-election (the party at both levels of power was different when the games were sought and awarded), and the fact that the PM has dissolved parliament at a time when it was politically wise to not be questioned in a public parliamentary forum about his every decision (and he refuses to engage in Q&A through press ‘scrums’). I resent a great deal of this nation’s attention, efforts, and volunteer labour being focused on a bunch of under-paid athletes doing something truly amazing that is held under the auspices of what amounts to a Multi-National Entertainment Corporation which claims to be altruistic about ‘the celebration of the pure sporting achievements’. Given the insane amount of cash that gets shovelled through the IOC from people like IBM, M^CDonalds, VISA, Omega, RBC-Dominion, NBC, Coca-Cola, and the rest, I’ve no idea how the IOC recently acquired an Observers Chair at the United Nations; especially given the UN’s stated policy that they do not engage with, represent the interests of, or liaise between corporations.

Anyway… beyond all that…

The Opening Ceremonies here in  town brought tears to my eyes more than once, and it was stunning (pity about only three of the legs for the cauldron working, though).

Meanwhile, outside…

Well, frankly, SmuttySteff covers the whole local protest issue far better than could be even imagined within my capabilities, frankly. For as start, I’d probably be more sweary. Read her take on the matter right here. Honesty do it: you’ll be glad you did.

No, honestly, none. All they get is money from the generous individuals who send it in on their own.

Needless to say, making books in the format of little bumps is a tad pricey.

Doing something decent today will only take about one minute. Go here: http://righttoread.cnib.ca/default.aspx

Thank you.

Good questions, all.

Well, let’s see… Over at Atomic Fez, I’ve been happily prepping four books for release at the end of March / beginning of April! Read about that here.

That’s… pretty much it, actually. Books are consuming all my daily life, really. Well, waking life, certainly.

Other things have occasionally taken place. Sleep, for instance. That seems to be a once-every-twenty-four-hours pass-time. Food, also, seems to be recurring, but with more frequency than sleep.

The bathroom has finally been completed–hooray!–thanks to the fact we “got a man in”. The final stumbling block to me doing the job was when I realized that today’s tiles are made slightly different a dimension than yesterday’s tiles were, so the new tiles wouldn’t fit perfectly in the space the old tiles were in. The result of that was that all of the tiles needed to come off the wall, with the probable need of repairing yet more wall-board, plus having to trim a big whack of tiles to weird shapes around the window in the wall [image, left], aaaaaand who knows how much else in the way of complications. Merely trimming the tiles to fit around the window was enough of a complication to make my head spin, so we called a guy for an estimate, accepted it, and he started last Monday.

By the time yesterday arrived, he’d re-built some of the wall at both ends of the tub, removed the inner sliding window in the wall and tiled the inside of that hole, replaced all the wall-board, removed the shower doors with a curved rod and shower curtain, replaced the shower head, and repaired some of the wall outside of the existing tile area as well as extending the tiles so they better cover the area which gets wet. End result: what feels like a brand new bathroom!

So that’s excellent.

One of the oddest things discovered during the process of readying the wall for the new tiles was the fact that cardboard was used as a construction material.

You see–and this is starting to sound like an episode of Holmes on Homes, isn’t it–the wall surface of the gypsum board was a bit different than the surface of the wallboard behind the tiles might have been, were the shower wall-board attached directly to the studs. So, behind the thinner shower wall board some 1/4″ cardboard was placed to fill the gap to maintain a flat wall surface.

No, really. That’s what someone did [see image, left]. Probably it was my (now late) Father-in-Law, as this was the sort of “good enough without spending any money” approach his work around the house took on from the mid-1980s or so.

Anyway, it’s all done properly now.

Preparations are nearly complete for attending World HorrorCon in Brighton at the end of March, and then onwards to the SF-based Odyssey 2010 (aka: “EasterCon) the next week-end.  How the hell we’re going to pay for it is something we’ve not solved, but it’s nearly impossible to make a go of it selling books without proving to people they actually exist by having them on a table at a convention somewhere, so there we are. There’s a few days I don’t have to stand in a Dealers’ Room selling books, so I’m planning to hit the British Museum and the National Gallery again, plus possibly a pub or two. Look to see daily summaries here again covering that in all its glory.

So… that’s about it for me, I suppose.

What’s new with you, then?

This is a high speed train built by the Alstom rail group in Belfort , France, which shares manufacturing facilities with the GE Energy Products Europe EPE Gas Turbine group. The video was provided by the GE EPE Chief Engineer in Belfort.

Here’s the video (sorry, I’ve not a good way of embedding it here, so click the link below if you’re not getting anything), with some statistical numbers beneath it for those who can absorb them in meaningful ways. Personally, it’s in the range past “really fast” in my mind.

World’s Fastest Rail Train (current)

The Chunnel Rail Link goes approx. 300 KMH
This train peaks at 574.8 KMH
which is 357.2 MPH
or, if you’re still not really impressed:
Mach 0.482, almost ½ the speed of sound!
…on the ground!
…without a jet engine behind you!
…and it’s a trolley!

This afternoon I went to an office on Granville Island where a book awaits being picked up by me. It’s about new business marketing models taking into account the New Economy, yet is based on good, old-fashioned common sense. Sadly, they’re closed until January 5. Damn. Entirely my fault that I drove all the way across town without calling them first to make sure they were open, as was the lack of parking in the area (odd, considering this ought to be the ‘slack time’ for shopping there…), so there we are. I didn’t get a parking ticket for the expired parking meter, so that’s something.

On the way home, I stop in to check my lottery ticket, with unsuccessful results. Typical; the odds are against me, after all.

BANG! Right into the Mother Corp’s brand-new building!

Arrive home to discover that a parcel was delivered! But, it was while I’m out, so it’s not there and I’ll have to get it at the local post office depot tomorrow, after 13:00. Damn.

I try to match the bathroom tile–as part of the on-going project–at _____ Plumbing & Drainage, which seems a reasonable conclusion, given its name. The response therein was surprisingly blunt: “We’re a plumbing outfit!” Yes, well, this is bathroom tile, so… “First I’ve heard of that. We sell toilets!” The tiles are from a bathroom wall, which is the same room, so… “Bah!” Sorry to have wasted my your time.

Off to ____ Tile at the other end of my little town of Burnaby. The reaction from the girl behind the counter (and, trust me, this was a 20-year-old girl): “Wow this seems really old… did you buy that more than two years ago?” Attempting to control my hysterical laughter at the idea tile more than two-years-old could be considered “really old”, I merely reply “yes,” and don’t further explain to her that the socks and shorts I’m wearing are more than two years old. The chances are good that this tile is actually so old that her parents were not yet in puberty at the time it was purchased. Turns out that there will be a replacement available in plain, un-patterned, glossy, tile roughly matching the colour of the tiles we have now. Good, although not ideal. Fine, really, and certainly far easier than cleaning all the grout and mortar off the existing tiles without breaking them.

Driving around accomplishing all these tasks, however, was a bit of a task itself: the roads all a mess of directionless confusion. Why; especially as it’s the Tuesday between Christmas & New Year’s? Not a bloody clue! Getting to the second place about tile was a bit of a pain if you missed it initially, as you can only get into their parking lot from the one direction; once you’ve passed it, you enter the land of ‘you can’t get there from here’ road design. Mostly the roads were empty, except when attempting to go north through Willingdon and Canada Way, which was just as backed up past BCIT as it usually is. “Why am I doing this?” was a frequent refrain in the vehicle through most of this.

The radio is on, providing some tidbits of insanity:

• yesterday’s mystery metal box, found in a residential refrigerator by the home-owner was blown-up by the  Vancouver Police yesterday and they haven’t yet announced what was inside it;
  • ADDED LATER: apparently it was a box containing explosive material because it’s traditional to leave stuff that blows up in your mother’s fridge at Holiday Time, and police are seeking the house owner’s son;
• this morning a street guy stole a BMW following a verbal altercation with the driver, two people are dragged hanging on to the vehicle’s doors, as he reverses up one of Vancouver’s busiest streets and smashes it into the side of the CBC building which is so new it hasn’t even had that corner studio used yet (more details here, and also some photos here);
• the traffic report includes word of a police incident in Port Coquitlam where a plane had to make an emergency landing in the middle of Reeves Street near Gate’s Park
  • ADDED LATER: the emergency landing was in a soccer field, it was caused by fuel line problems; no-one was hurt but someone did have to move out of his way; and
• anyone deciding to travel to the USA aren’t allowed to bring anything with them into the aircraft cabin other than the clothes they’re standing-up in, because we’re all presumed to be guilty of consorting with terrorists (and yesterday the entire computer system at the airport was down for most of the day)

So… “2009: the year of WTF?!?!” in microcosm. What shall 2010 bring?

I’m terrified at the prospect, frankly.

Let’s turn to the visual aids, shall we? Could someone get the lights so we can start the slide show? Ta…

PLEASE NOTE: this slide show represents all photos to date, beyond the date of this post

Because the captions on the photos don’t display, I’ll explain a few things you’re seeing. The tiles are coded so that they can go back on the wall in the same spots, as it’s possible–though unlikely–that some of them have been trimmed by varying amounts to fit the wall better. The seams have been sealed to varying degrees of success with packing tape for a few months, because I keep forgetting to get more Duct Tape® every time I go to the hardware store. The weird white stuff you keep seeing on the back of the tiles is the old mastic or mortar that the tiles were stuck on the wall with. The wall board to which they were adhered had absorbed moisture over time so the paper surface on the outside of the board then peeled away with the tile once the board’s core was no longer solid. The wall board might have been the right kind for a bathroom application, but obviously it’s no good anymore as the grey stuff was essentially mush and had to be chucked. It was made with asbestos, by the way; that’s the little hairs you can see on the edge-on shots of some of the tiles.

Yes, I said ‘asbestos’. No, handling only this amount isn’t going to kill anyone. Besides, the stuff is wet right now–which is why it is being replaced, after all–and asbestos-based material is only a problem when the fibres are air-borne, which requires the stuff to be dry as a bone. Again, obviously not our problem.

The puffy, yellow stuff behind the wall board is standard fibreglass insulation of the early-1970s, and has been removed from between the studs. For the past few days, the bathroom has been home to a constantly running space-heater–except for the time I caught my foot in the extension cord, pulled the plug out of the wall, then nearly fell through the entranceway’s window, slicing my head off, and scaring the bejeesus out of the cat–in an effort to remove as much moisture from the existing wood construction as possible before sealing it all up again, so it’s tighter than a chav on a August Bank Holiday Friday evening. The bathroom’s quite nice and warm, let me tell you, but the constant humming from the room is becoming tiresome. It’s a bit like having an old Kodak® Carousel™ projector being left on in there. It’s not annoying, but you do have an occasional urge to shout ‘enough already!’ at it once in a while. Which wouldn’t do any good, so you don’t bother.

Yesterday, I went to the local Home Supply Place© and spoke to a Customer Service Representative® and was pointed at some 1/2-inch HardiBackr™ 500 G2 which would be ideal for replacing the evil asbestos board. At 36”x60”, it’s a perfect fit for the hole; or will be when I remove one more tile and clean-up the edges of the remaining board. Huzzah!

I also got some PlastiSpan© 3”x2’x8’ Type 2 Styrofoam® insulation to replace the fibreglass stuff which was more like a sponge than insulation. According to my mental arithmetic, this is precisely the size of space that needs filling, were it in one long, solid blob. Hooray!

After spending some time in the parking lot making several attempts to discover a way to get both these items in the car, it was determined that the Styrofoam® was a bit too long and the board a bit too large in either direction to fit inside the vehicle, even after folding down the back seat to open-up the trunk into the main compartment. The closest I could get was to have the foam sticking more than 2 1/2 feet out of the trunk and angling the board into the back seat through the rear passenger door which would then have to be left open whilst driving. Deciding that no police officer might be convinced that “no, really; it’s all right; it’ll be fine”, I returned to the store’s interior and ordered both items delivered, for the sum of $60. A van rental from the store for 1 1/2 hours would have been $20, but that’s just the base rate; there’s also mileage, taxes, gasoline, insurance, and so on… so it seemed a dead even thing by that point. Had we got a day’s insurance on the pickup truck, it might have been less, but as the truck hadn’t been insured yesterday, it was a moot point.

Having already taken almost an hour to navigate a cart through the aisles of the place, the cart bearing a half-inch thick, fifty pound board (it’s essentially a very thin concrete sheet), plus an eight foot long, two foot wide, three inch thick, rectangular object weighing about three ounces, then trying to fit both into a car without breaking or dropping either of them (and it was a bit windy, so manoeuvring the insulation was a challenge at one point), I was frankly ready to pay any amount of money to rid myself of the problem.

So…

Later today two men will be shaking their heads as they deliver two relatively easy to move objects to a tiny man who clearly has never done an honest day’s work in his life, for a fee 50% more than the value of the products themselves.

Then I get to learn about cutting Styrofoam® and how one affixes fifty pounds of half-inch material to the wall without dropping it on one’s foot in the bathtub and then losing one’s balance, falling over, and slicing one’s head off on something and frightening the cat.

A couple of weeks ago, I installed Windows 7 in my computer, and it’s working fine. If it weren’t, you probably would not be reading this as the inter-net would be inaccessible by me, and I would have slashed my wrists by now due to withdrawal. Until last night, Jennifer’s computer wouldn’t connect to my printer, however, and her word processor seemed to be crapping out, when Windows XP wasn’t freezing up for no reason at all. Both of her problems have seemingly been resolved, however. Time will tell.

Right. So, that’s what is happening in our home at the moment. Offers of travel to somewhere warm–which must be both inexpensive and perfectly tiled–are welcomed. I know you’re out there, because the hits can’t all be caused by Russian SPAMers wanting to talk about grand pianos.

Or can they…? Maybe they could help with the re-tiling?

The following is the ‘mock-umentary’ about Canada’s secret plan to take-over the USA through our own Lebensraum programme turning America’s greatest weapon upon itself: the Entertainment Industry.

Some of the performances are inspired, some genius, and all with complete and enthusiastic co-operation. All those individuals identified as Canadians are, in fact, Canadians, no matter how easily you recognize them from American movies and TV. That’s just how successful ‘the Conspiracy’ was, you see.

The fact that the ‘news’ of this ‘conspiracy’ was disseminated on a day when most of the world was a bit hung-over, only leads to further PROOF of an attempt to COVER-UP ‘the TRUTH’!!

Profuse thanks to Sean for locating this on YouTube. You are a Rock Star, sir!

The rest of you: enjoy. The following may explain something of why I’m often seen sitting in corners of foreign rooms quietly listening to your conversations: a plot is being formed… Mwwaa-ha-ha!!