watchin wind blow out my window

sittin on a saturday wonderin what to do while Moe sleeps wrapped and swaddled like a banana. MF Doom rocks the computer speakers and outside the tree tops blow with the gusty south west wind -still naked . waves should be building. buoy is up to three meters at eight seconds. there should be a hamster wheel at a point a I know. walk to the top and get in. paddle, paddle, paddle against the current. snag one and milk it around the sections. get out. do over.  meanwhile Doom sings bada boom bada bing. the rats scurry under the sewer traps and the seaguls wait for summer for lotsa tourist scraps. some people do and some don't. the watchers are sitting at their screens right now.

just

like  me.

Doom and Sade move the next track through a double. why you've come this far I wonder? so I keep it going. remember that time when we went drinkin and ridin? you T -I'm talkin to you. don't remember what time it was. we were no-handin it down in china town and your front wheel turned and you went down like me on ice skates on winter ponds. then there was that other time -you ran into the back of that parked car and split your lip laughin through bloody teeth before we hit the next bar, bikes hung and locked on the fence to keep 'em off the sidewalk.

we used to drink heaps. "I'll get the next one" I'd say time and time again. and we'd talk about a whole heap of rubbish like some 20 somethins goin nowhere's fast. remember them days there? remember ten years earlier takin the door off your white vdub van so we could stick your motor bike part way in. power band kicked in 2nd gear and I'd almost get snatched right off the back. you'd be blastin the jumps with sneakers and shorts -no shirt no helmet. I was throwin down frontside slappys on the long yellow curb at the bank drive-through in downtown Bartow. the town was dead and dying. I was ready to exit but it would be a while still before I saw somthin new.

random shit

the other day chillin at the shop with JB he says to me "man how come you never reply when I comment on your shit?"

I says to him "I dunno."

then he says "your shit is so serious on the blog but when you come in here it's nothin but jokes."

an I says, "I'm really happy for you, 'n Imma let you finish.. but breakin down the absurd is some serious business -most serious of all time. all TIME!"

so then I get to thinking about other shit that has nothin to do with the above shit and I remember this dude I surfed with a few times in Oregon. I'll call him X -si me entiendes. X was from Puerto Vallarta and surfed better standing than me and you combined. prolly the reason we clicked was speaking spanish. X was punk, an I don't mean mall punk. straight edge too.

X chose to ride a body board cause he thought stand up surf culture was whack. and in many ways I agree. I lost track of the elusive X but a quick search found him shredding Rockaway barrells upon his prone time travel vehicle. I reckon there's no better place for someone like mister X than Gotham city.

and thanks to Pete for sendin me a link the best record I've had inna while. download it for free. just go to your favourite search engine and type Mos Dub.

if you are in Canada -the new SBC Surf magazine should be hitting news stands soon. check for an editorial by your serious business blogger man. seen.

oil and water: Canada's conundrum

it's hard to think about life without the energy sources we currently use. just last night I drove 25 minutes alone in my car to a remote point break to surf powerful overhead waves at sunset. I love surfing and would not be able to do it without a car.

I ride my bike to work everyday. the reasons for it have more to do with pleasure and convenience than wanting to avoid using fossil fuels. riding my bike is not enough.

when will  shit hit the fan? how much longer will our ecosystem sustain us before it starts to sputter in fits of exhaustion?

the video below highlights how Canada is managing its oil sands and water resources. the management style is that old one where maximizing profit trumps any other considerations -as opposed to valuing profit, people and environment equally.

I've said this before and I reckon most of you who come here would agree, that we as people are not separate from environment. we must come to terms with this fact and act accordingly.

the environmental movement has been painted with a green brush and many people see that colour and disassociate themselves, thinking that they are not green, that their values are red or blue.

but the environment is where we live.

it is our food, shelter and comforter. without it we won't survive, nor will our children. my son included.

what are we going to do?


H2oil animated sequences from Dale Hayward on Vimeo.

whacked

fuck Karl Rove
fuck Open Carry
fuck the American war on Iraq
fuck American economic policy

we have to be able to see that our leaders are some crazy fucking ego maniacs who could give two shits about "The American People"

dancing killer whales

most of us would not go to see a dancing bear -we would think of this 'circus' act as unethical and barbaric. yet we gladly support Sea World and other similar water parks who train their aquatic mammals to dance for spectators. why are these dancing mammals any different than the ones with fur?

reparations in Halifax: the Africville Legacy

the Halifax Regional Municipality will be making a public apology to the descendants of those removed from the community known as Africville for the purposes of constructing a new bridge.


the clip is quite telling. it shows how a community is marginalized over the years, the decades, and the leaders although stammering their words, explain how its OK.

this seems to be a time of apologizing. seems like it's a far enough gap that leaders are moved to make public and political amends. but is it just posturing?

I think so.

the people who were moved from Africville are still marginalized by HRM. and it's not unlikely that some strife comes from within the community. but self loathing is a characteristic present in all communities with generational poverty.

meanwhile in the suburbs someone burned a cross on the lawn of a bi-racial couples home. this is some KKK type shit way up here in Halifax.

it's not to say that Halifax is some maniacally racist place -on the contrary, for the most part, like the rest of Canada, Halifax is very tolerant. but beneath the beauty there is always a little filth.

Halifax Fixie Freestyle?

found this while browsing a local bike forum. weird.

"The first ever fixie freestyle event has been announced for Halifax. Hardcore fixie riders are joyously celebrating the triumph of being recognized as real sportsmen and women. The event has gained some steam complete with sponsors and documentary film offers. American Apparel, Gus’s Pub and Frenchies have all pledged their support of the event.

In an effort to keep the level of sportsmanship sporty, the organizers have stated that experienced BMX riders will not be allowed to participate in the freestyle part of the event, however they are welcome to compete in the longest track stand and skid competition. The BMX community could not be contacted for comment –err actually when contacted they yawned and went on about their business, uninterested in continuing any further with the conversation.

Unbeknownst to the BMX and skateboard community the fixers are lobbying city officials for their own bike park, claiming that the streets will be overrun with fixies by next summer if immediate action is not taken. City officials refused to comment about fund allocations for the park. However, one official was overheard remarking that he’d never seen such an undernourished community group and wondered if perhaps the city should instead provide free meals to the fixers.

The organizers of the Fixie Freestyle event are also planning to start a bike polo league this coming summer. At the moment they are in talks with the NYC bike polo association to establish some grounds rules for the league, especially relating to appropriate handlebar width and whether team members are allowed to use different colour Oury grips. The excitement continues to build and riders can be seen all over the city practicing six inch wallies and long skids down Citadel Hill during snow flurries."

Hector Bustin Fixie Tricks @ Freestyle Toozdays from Dunamis Media on Vimeo.

uh huh

"well, well, well mister. you find yerself sittin behind a new desk, a bigger screen, a window. and a wha? a who?"

uh huh.

swells are marchin into the headland that I like best. I know it.

haven’t seen it.

bike rides in blowing snow. late to work on the first week. looks of surprise on co-workers faces. different culture.

I’m older than most and yet younger. less conservative perhaps? more active? more immature? all of the above?

dubcasts keep me sane and in the right riddim ‘n vibes.

got a a vampire story brewin in my head. but not bat vampires. more like blood drinkers –like the old time boys in Papua New Guinea who’d drink the blood of their enemies for strength. got the story marinatin in my head –post no-pocalypse type shit if you get my drift.

what else?
being a dad is rad.

need to start running again. next week on lunch breaks will do fine.

I need to feel these bones and muscles and tendons of mine movin and flexin or otherwise just give up and join the zombie crowds in zombie land.

we do live in our dreams you know. but dreams need not have concrete physical boundaries. we can live and play and dream in sleep and awake states. just ignore the rubbish, the sounds of zombies telling you how it is and should be and just do a thing.

i’m out.

Vice guide to Liberia

one of my favourite Canadian bloggers (by way of Monrovia, Liberia)has just completed a project with Vice's VBS TV on traveling in Liberia. Liberia has an odd and often turbulent history and is now coming into its own after years of bloody civil war. The Esteyonage blog written by Myles Estey is one of my favourite places on the web. Mr. Estey gives us a view into another world. his ability to find humour in every day life in Monrovia is often a sense of inspiration for me. and once inna while Mr. Estey will post some surfy news.

Halifax police love cyclists

I hate cops. yes it's true. just about every single interaction I've ever had with police has been negative -and no, I've never been arrested. as a teenager in Florida my friends and I were constantlyharassed by the police for skateboarding. it's one thing to tell a kid to stop skating at a spot, it's another to put them in the back of the police cruiser without reading them their rights only to drive them around for a scare. there was another incident where my friend Beau and I were picked up blocks away from my house for allegedly trespassing onto the church roof directly across the street from my house. my Dad was pissed. we hadn't been anywhere near that damned roof.

I gotta say that cops in Canada are whole lot nicer than in the US. at least here I don't feel like I'm the prey and the pigs are the hunters. but generally I think, people who choose to be cops (and those who get the jobs) are generally dumb (a necessary quality for the job) and like to bully.

yesterday I was slogging against a way-below-freezing head wind on my way home from work. the street is a one way and that part of town is known for hookers, drug dealers and several unsolved violent crimes and murders over the past couple of years. so I'm going the right way up the one way, blinking tail light on, and parka hood over my helmet to cut the wind. this cop cruiser pulls up next to me. there's three cops in the car -one in the back. driver cop rolls down his window and asks me to stop.

"are you knew around here?" he asks

"nope"

"you know we have a helmet law?"

"yup" I say and pull off the parka hood so he can see that I am dutifully wearing a helmet. before I have a chance to finish pulling off the parka hood he says,

"that helmet is not approved."

I can tell he's feeling a little dumb for his initial approach.

"whadaya mean" I say knowing good and well that my ProTec skate helmet fits the CPSC regulations just fine.

"that helmet is not approved. it' supposed to have a stamp or sticker on it" he says to me again as I start taking the helmet off to prove him wrong.

"I'm just letting you know" he says as he and his two silent partners pull away leaving me there standing in the middle of a one way, just a block away from the site of the most recent unsolved murder of a First Nations girl, steps from the home of a guy who's always slingin some kinda dope, and they drive off having performed their all important civic duty.

so you see, I hate cops. they have strange priorities.

more love for Halifax cycling and cops here

winter surf

the greatest aspect of surfing in winter in Nova Scotia is that it's never crowded. in fact, there's hardly ever anyone out come November.





images stolen from MSW from last Sunday's north swell

blind faith: part 1

science

beware of scientists who use the phrase:
"we used to believe that ____,
but now we now for certain that_____"
next generation's scientist
will likely use
the same phrase again
with new
cockamamie
discoveries.
why don't we
listen
to our own
intuition?
why don't we understand,
that the same breath
we breathe,
is the same wind
blowing
through trees?
beware of
blind faith

mongrel dog

I was caught by self doubt. like a mongrel dog tryin to cross the road after a beating. it is an absurd world that we live in. and the self aware notice the absurdities more often than the self involved. but we are all ego one way or another. some manifest it less and some more.

what is courage?

what is determination?

what is gritt?

some like Chinaski did what they did out of a sense of duty to their own constitution –he, praising and cursing his muses depending on the severity of his hangover.

some do nothing at all. they go through motions like so much flotsam and jetsam at mid-tide on a Jamaican beach.

and where do you see yourself?

how are you living?

how am i living? with trepidation.

that is no way to live a life is it?

fear is not a hoax but it also isn’t concrete. it can be malleable like Gumby. it can be used to one’s advantage or can be crippling like ms. it is the ability to move beyond failure that is a measure of one’s success. this is the paradox of our human condition and perhaps the crux of our western belief in good vs. bad. there is no good. there is no bad. there simply just is. everything is everything. absurdities arise when we negate this basic principle.

Himes wrote of the prison preacher preachin about pork chops and mashed potatoes in paradise.

do mongrels get pork chops in the afterlife?

the reach around

been commuting to work by bike now since 2004. I wouldn't trade my ride to work for anything. although that's not to say it's not without its shitty moments. below is a diagram of perhaps the most sketchy and common situation I face riding my bike in Halifax. it's not only drivers speeding around you to make a right turn but also just to get around to make it to the red light before you do.




I tend to have different reactions to shitty driving especially when I feel like the pulse passing through my veins at an increased pace could have been my last. sometimes I just ignore it. other times the middle finger makes me feel better. gave a lady one this morning -she slammed on her brakes and zipped into the bike lane to park giving me less than a moments notice to correct.

sometimes I totally loose it. a few weeks ago I almost got licked by a young woman driving a purple Ford Ranger extended cab. I caught up with her at the next light and pulled up to her window which was halfway down. she was still texting away on her phone. I gave her a few choice words that my Mama would not be proud of. she wasn't expecting me and that's the point.

sometimes loosing it has its negative side. one time in Portland, Oregon I was cruising home from work on my fix when an oncoming car swerved way into my lane to get around a car parked in his lane on a residential street in a NE neighborhood. I gave him the finger and loud "fuck off.!!!" homeboy slammed on the brakes, u-turned and came after me. lucky for my I dipped down a dead-end, one-way that I could sneak across the grass and make my way down to MLK. I lost the guy. he may have kicked my ass.

more recently a guy on a sport bike got pissed cause I dipped around him at the light. I'm on a bike man. he caught me at the next light and offered to kick my ass the next time I did that to him. in a moment of adrenaline filled bravado I told him "lets go." the light turned and he twisted his throttle like it was something I should admire and was off.

I love how the power of the gas pedal and the combustion engine gives people a sense of power, no matter how meek and weak they are when they are just flesh and bone, sans machine.

lots of people that I've met over the years who were regular bike commuters got licked down by a car at one point or another. my friend Drew from DC took two massive beatings. luckily he still rode his bike and wasn't too jaded.

hard for me not to be a little uppity about riding my bike to work. it takes effort and I have to endure some shitty weather sometimes. but it is also amazing to feel the blood pumping through my veins halfway through my morning commute, sleep still heavy on my eyelids. and it's great to speed home and bank turns after work.

and no I don't have a DUI. I choose to ride my bike.

if you cut me off and I give you the finger or worse it's because I take it personal.

remember: the halifax explosion

bombs have no positive attributes







these photos are of my neighborhood. it was completely flattened during the explosion.

"The Halifax Explosion occurred on Thursday, December 6, 1917, when the city of Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, was devastated by the huge detonation of the SS Mont-Blanc, a French cargo ship, fully loaded with wartime explosives, which accidentally collided with the Norwegian SS Imo in "The Narrows" section of the Halifax Harbour. About 2,000 people were killed by debris, fires, or collapsed buildings and it is estimated that over 9,000 people were injured. This is still the world's largest man-made accidental explosion.

At 8:40 in the morning, the SS Mont-Blanc, chartered by the French government to carry munitions to Europe, collided with the unloaded Norwegian ship Imo, chartered by the Commission for Relief in Belgium to carry relief supplies. Mont-Blanc caught fire ten minutes after the collision and exploded about twenty-five minutes later (at 9:04:35 AM).All buildings and structures covering nearly 2 square kilometres (500 acres) along the adjacent shore were obliterated, including those in the neighbouring communities of Richmond and Dartmouth. The explosion caused a tsunami in the harbour and a pressure wave of air that snapped trees, bent iron rails, demolished buildings, grounded vessels, and carried fragments of the Mont-Blanc for kilometres."

One and the watchers

it's mid afternoon on an October friday. the wind is howling its howl from cold northeast waters. waters cooling now as the leaves drift in the streets where just days ago they swayed freely from limbs on trees. the buoy reads ten feet at seven seconds this afternoon. it will continue to build as the first nor'easter of the year makes its way across the land. meanwhile I sit at my desk and bite my nails. one moment I raise my seat using the hydraulic lever. the next minute I lower the seat again and curl me right leg under me trying hard to find a comfortable position that won't be found. B's at home, belly like a homage to perfect roundness and beauty. the One inside is coming soon. we know it's soon but not sure when. so little and already a mind of her/his own. good. I obsess on sneaking another surf session in before my duties shift from self fulfillment to caretaker. surely self fulfillment of a different form will manifest itself across the face of the little One as it looks up at us wondering where the liquid darkness disappeared to.

a shift...

plenty of opinions out there these days. seems like everyone has negative opinions to freely offer like the air coming from lungs. few people offer positive opinions. human condition? perhaps. since my teen years so many 'mentors' I've had at work and school have warned against devoting so much passion and time into non-commercial ways. "you'll grow out of it." or my favourite and perhaps most cliched one - "soon you'll realize that it's time to grow up and stop playing games. that's what real life is all about." naysayers are often not exactly people to be admired for their own personal successes and charisma. they are the watchers. they are the one's whose frontal lobes lost all risk taking proclivities after their adolescence. they are the ones who are satisfied with mediocrity. they are the ones who never get drunk and dance and sing. the ones who don't shed a joyful tear for fear of shame. they are the watchers. they are the critics and the judges and rarely the players. they are the ones who cannot see the beauty of the lessons learned in failure. or the sense of fulfillment found in reaching the summit. they are the ones who don't ride their bikes for fear of cars. the ones who don't know what direction is north and where the wind blows. they are the watchers. they are not the players. they abhor suffering and are afraid of true joy. they know not their limits for fear of testing themselves. they are the opnion givers. the watchers. watch on watchers. I'm going outside to play.

someone asked me "who is Bukowski?"

in case you didn't know

brion and bill...

...dreamed a machine to transcend the threshold where their drug addled analytics end and something else all together begins. today these two would be considered terrorists to be profiled and watched. bill talked often of his recipes for homemade botulism and other weapons of mass terror. and why? who knows. bill was a trust fund kid. perhaps they had too much. bill didn't only outlive his peers, he hurried them to their deaths with debauched pleasure, his own Constitution superhuman in its ability to stay high for nine decades. dream machine is all that's left. and iggy pop.

strange commonalities

what do horror, fitness, and glen danzig have in common?