the studs that match your eyes

for amanda, here's the design a new police car page of the vancouver police department. they've picked a new design already, but the solicitation of submissions from school across the city makes for some very interesting takes on the police, and what the most visible expression of the city's police force should be. crazy kids.

i've started reading atlas shrugged again; the first sequence on the train, where we first meet dagny taggart, is still incredible. the book is almost cartoonish in its scope and cardboard characterization, but there's a demented majesty to the prose that works for me. it's about railroads! i can't wait to meet hank rearden again. amanda, have you started it yet?

albums that i'm listening to, now that it's fall.
rem, up (1998)
the sundays, static and silence (1998)
belle and sebastian, dear catastrophe waitress (2003)

i've listened to up about six times this week, skipping the second song, lotus, everytime. there was a stylus 'playing god' article about it last week, which reminded me that i had a copy. to be honest, i think i've listened to it more times in the past week than in the two years plus that i've had it in my collection. it's a good album, esp. the pairing of you're in the air and walk unafraid, two wonderfully spooky songs. it's the only rem album i've ever heard.

albums i want to listen to, but haven't gotten around to.
weeping tile, cold snap (1995)
weeping tile, valentino (1997)
damon and naomi, the earth is blue (2005)
yo la tengo, and then nothing turned itself inside out (2001)
mojave 3, spoon and rafter (2003)

also a lot of random songs. like the one below, which you should listen to.
industry, state of the nation (198?)

the weekend immediately following the provincial election(which we won! jan and i have a lucky streak in the ndp at the moment; we've yet to work on a losing campaign), we went camping at sloquet hot springs with old, good friends of jan's. it wasn't great; we left early due to rain, and the hot springs gave me a headache after about 15 minutes. the trip there and back, however, was oddly remarkable. we had to go up to pemberton, around garibaldi park and lilooet lake down to the campsite at the top of harrison lake. between the campsite and pemberton was a long dirt road, which went past skookumchuk, a tiny first nations town with a number of trailer homes and a gorgeous old gothic church. it was the history of canada in one little town. just before pemberton, our cellular phones went 'out of service range', which was exciting. it's a cheesy line, 'out of service range', but it mattered. the riding was west vancouver-garibaldi. i'm very upset that the federal riding of dewdney-alouette has been changed to pitt meadows-maple ridge-mission. there's been a shift at the federal level from descriptive riding names to mere lists of towns that the riding encompasses. i don't like it. i'd also like to change the name of vancouver- kingsway to collingwood-riley park, or renfrew-cedar cottage, or even kingsway-cedar cottage.