the last volunteer

+ tonight we watched frantic, a 1987 movie about simple americans mistakenly caught in a paris crime scene. the climax is 3/4 through, when the american embassy guys suggest that several other characters, earlier seen to be as outwardly bad as the other bad guys, are on "our side". harrison ford reacts badly - our side? i'm not on anyone's side. americans in paris being chased by arabs. we're not on anyone's side, you bastards. globalism = no more sides any more, or no more relevant sides. harrison ford is the anti-citizen: he doesn't care about the arabs. he cares about his wife, and his friend. ok, so all politics are local. i do think there is stuff here about globalism and why should we care. rephrase: why should we care? in the terminator the cops are useless, just in the way, hapless, sidelined by a war between good and evil that they don't understand. this is a common theme. in frantic, the cops are the game, the war, and harrison ford is on the sidelines because it's simply irrelevant.

the good spy books are the ones that are honest about sides. the blurring. the kinship.

i do think that the lovely remote forests of the sunshine coast are a magnificent metaphor for queeruption 10. unless i am misinterpreting queeruption 10 as more significant than it is. as a cipher for radical, well, yes. of COURSE it's in the forest.

+ it's all a plus, still, but not really. everything is different now. or, everything was different in may. as if we are missing a centre? i had beer with ben tonight, which was nice. today is the day that i scored 16/21 on the burnout quiz.

+ i want to keep talking about globalism, and cities, and what it's all about, and what dubai means. i want to do this after i graduate. i have no doubt that i will get to talk a lot about rezoning.

+ i just finished john le carre's tinker tailor soldier spy and am now labouring through heinlein's the day after tomorrow, which is bad. i already gave up on it in may, and may yet again. i will next read fantasy government: vander zalm and the future of social credit. it is a polemic of sorts, but will probably make me feel the same as tinker tailor soldier spy did. kinda how harrison ford felt? i do want to read it, but i think it will strain my belief.

all the great state roads

+ tomorrow i'll probably finish reading former sen. tom daschle's (D-SD) memoir of the eventful 2000-2002 years in the US senate. i love personal memoirs of time spent in politics, esp. those written by people farther from the action. daschle was obviously notable, serving as the senate's majority leader from '01-'02, but being in the senate means that he has far more to say about the daily grind of politics than, say, a president would. one of my favourite political books is the self-published a professor in parliament, by herb grubel, the one term(1993-1997) reform MP for capilano-howe sound. there's no rhetoric, posturing, or ego - just an account of the daily grind as as accidental MP.

in 2004, daschle lost his senate seat to john thune, an undistinguished republican who has been little but a white house puppet since his election. thune had narrowly lost to tim johnson in the 2002 senate race, by a mere 500+ votes, largely due to daschle's forceful campaign on behalf of his colleague. thune's win was then seen as both personal vindication and a national symbol for republicans. reading the commentary comeing out of that 2004 result, the assumption was that democrats would be on the defensive in 2006, fighting to hold on to west virginia, minnesota, new mexico, and north dakota. ultimately, republicans only put up a fight in minnesota and still lost there by 20 points. the only trouble spots pegged for the republicans in 2004 were rhode island and maybe pennsylvania. ohio, missouri, virginia, and montana weren't even on the map, and wins in all of those gave the democrats the senate. in 2004, it was supposedly all over for the democrats. red states were red states, and nothing could ever change that. cultural differences. unavoidable demographic shifts. just call the rest of history done. well, no. wrong. i can't foresee a scenario right now that sees a republican wining the white house next year.

the 2008 presidential election will feature the first open race since 1968, in which neither party will nominate a sitting president or sitting vice president. 1968 is iffy too, because nixon had been eisenhower's VP from 1952-1960.

+ can i do my job? i'm good at a lot of it, but i feel as though i'm blowing some key stuff lately. the important thing is to just not sweat it.

+ this december i'll be done with school. next april i'll be done with SFU, at least in this capacity.

always right

+ we went to tofino in early june. late may? for a wedding. i was humming poppy family songs all weekend. then in europe i spent the first four days wanting to listen to joni mitchell. sitting and reading ice station zebra beside the pool in gargnano. i know who i am by where i am. when i don't know where i am, i lose my sense of myself. simply walking into town was crazy. the streets and signs are different.

+ beer this afternoon at the pub after a day in which i felt down and blue. i told people that i just wanted to go home and read sci-fi novels, which was true. is true. although, i'm at home now and i'm not reading anything, sci-fi or not.

+ saw a film last week in class called megadream, about the socreds and northeast coal development. bill bennett and bc place. it makes me think of wood paneling and scotch in tumblers. office windows overlooking burrard inlet.

a life of small horizons

+ i have not been reading as much as i'd like to. further, i have a number of books (semi)actively on the go. right now, john le carre - tinker tailor soldier spy. also, a book about how franchises took over america, a book about hockey in canadian popular culture, a book about bill vander zalm's gov't, a robert heinlein book, don delillo's the names (my favourite book). i'm not more than 50 pages into any of them, with the exception of the names, which i am nearly finished.

+ a life of small horizons. a conscious choice. lillooet vs. everything else. at the same time, i live in a place now that i used to see every weekend from the skytrain window. i know where i live now because of where i grew up. i know how to site myself.

+ i love paris, and would love to return. rather, i plan to return. train stations and metro lines. i read the names on vacation because i wanted to wallow in it, and i did. i kept a paper journal, recording facts and details. timelines. i know how i felt, and who i am and was, but i don't know the timelines, the triggers. so, i kept those recorded.

+ in may 1999 i started to work at purdy's downtown. things changed. mostly my memory. that's when i date smells and sounds to. previously, i can only recall senses. as in vague senses. but i can date the smell of fucking crushed almonds to that summer, and four years following. eating in the food court. ms vanellis. flaming wok - i'd eat rice, sesame chicken, and vegetables. or, i'd eat a side of bourbon chicken on its own. or, i'd eat a side of vegetables. i knew how far i could get and what i could eat in a 15 minute break vs. a 30 minute break. i drank so much coffee. from yogen fruz across the hall, even though it was awful coffee, because they were nice and we got it cheap and sometimes free, at the end of the day. or blenz, also in the mall.

+ further, i'm not sure what year we stopped going down to eugene, oregon as a family each summer. at some point i brought a discman down and started listening to joni mitchell in the car. i wish i could index my itunes to when i'd bought records, as opposed to when i imported them. since 2001 i have been recording the month and year that i read a book on the title page. i wish i'd done the same with CDs. for a time i could recall where i'd bought albums and what other albums i'd bought at the same time. i don't know that anymore.

+ bike riding all day. downtown, then to breakfast, then to spanish banks and back.

+ camping last weekend, to cottonwood again, outside lillooet. powerful stuff.

+ almost done school. maybe. 4 or 5 more papers total. ever? maybe ever.

+ i just want to read some novels again. short stories. vacation without the pressure. i can do this, with concentration and focus. prioritisation.