The walk home.

This is for Lorra because she liked the walk to work.

Granville Bridge

This is just the last part of my walk home, the walk over this bridge. I've checked on a map and from beginning to end the bridge is about 1.3 Km while my total walk is about 3.2 Km. When the buses aren't on strike it is unusual to see more than one or two people walking across, but lately there are always douzens of people walking across the bridge.

False Creek

This is the view of the marinas along the south shore of False Creek, which is the body of water the bridge spans. False Creek is so named because one of the early explorers (either Vancouver or Cook, I don't remember which) mistook it for a river mouth. In the early days of Vancouver the city planners wanted to fill it in completely since they saw it as an impediment to the growth of downtown. They did fill a lot in. If you know Vancouver you might be surprised to know that Main Street used to be a bridge about half way along the original inlet. Clark Street is where the head of the inlet was originally. Granville Island is artificial, a land fill, and not "clean fill" either - it's a garbage pile. A few years ago a pocket of methane from the decomposed garbage exploded and ripped one street apart and damaged some of the expensive condos. The people who lived there were all offended that they were living on an old garbage pile. Erm... hello? Granville Island was built in the 19th century for heavy industrial purposes. Basically it's a layer of "clean" dirt over a layer of toxic sludge built up on a pile of garbage. But it's pretty.

Burrard Bridge

This is looking at all the boats coming and going under the Burrard Bridge . The Burrard Bridge is the oldest of the three standing bridges over False Creek. There have been bridges where the Cambie Bridge and Granville Bridge are for over a century but both of them were rebuilt, the Granville bridge in the 1950's and the Cambie Bridge in the 1980's. The Burrard Bridge was built in 1935. The other bridges are fully modern and functional, the Burrard Bridge is art-deco and is much prettier than the others.

The "Sesame Street" park

Almost home. Here's my building in the evening light as seen across the "Sesame Street" park. You can see the "100" sculpture in the middle of the trees. It's edge on so from here it just looks like a concrete block.

Pedestrian Underpass

I'm off the bridge and this is the pedestrian underpass at the south end of the bridge. From my apartment I can see people not using this all the time and running stupidly across the off-ramp. Eventually someone is going to get squished because this thing is not well marked and people just don't know it is there.

Langman House

The is from the exit of the underpass, looking up at Langman House Antiques. These are my neighbours.

My building's courtyard

This is courtyard of my building. I love this building. There are galleries and hair salons, a dress designer, web and graphic design shops, photographers as well as people just living here. I hate living in ordinary apartments. They shoot movies and TV shows here a lot. The evening I shot these pictures (last Thursday) there was an opening in the gallery visible in this shot (behind the asymmetrical steam vent) with live music in the courtyard.

Tharsis

And finally I am home, greeted at the door by my monkey Siamese cat, Tharsis. Who, incidentally, is sleeping on the monitor right now as I type this.

Blah.

I just don't feel like going to Sanctuary tonight. I was planning to go, I even washed my club clothes and started getting ready. Now I've changed my mind. Trish won't be there. Mike's decided not to go. I can't get drunk because of work tomorrow and the annoying fact that I have limited funds. I think I'm better off to save what little I have for when Lorra is in town next week. Why do I feel obligated to go to Sanctuary every single bloody Sunday?

What a freaking pathetic life. Tomorrow my big thrill will be writing an agent to convert personal contact lists from the old mail system to the new one. I can feel this wave of anger and revulsion sweeping over me. Bitterness, would be the right word. Suddenly I don't feel like being the cheery, level-headed one. I feel like ranting and bitching. For fuck's sake I'm going to be 34 in two months, I'm divorced from a dyke, I sit in a cubicle and waste my days on the most boring shit imaginable, my crapbox car is older than some of my friends, my life revolves around going to nightclubs. My last "relationship" was falling for a girl who is completely messed up over a custody battle (note to Sylkweb - if you are going to go it alone, really go it alone, cut the father out of it completely). The one before that was a lunatic whore, literally - ad in the back of the West Ender and everything - $100 for a massage and a hand job and four different pills just to make it through the day, who lied to me from beginning to end, and I let myself be lied to because I am a pathetic, lonely shit.

There are things I can do about it, I know. And I'll do them. But right now I just want to scream FUCK FUCK FUCK FUUUUUUUCK!!! Trish always runs away when I'm not feeling cheery, Ivana has big enough problems without mine (which is part of the problem), Lorra sure as hell doesn't need me whining at her, so here it is. I'll hang my dirty laundry out on LiveJournal and tell Tharsis about it as I type (he is named Tharsis for a reason - he is my cat Tharsis). If anyone tells me I should see a therapist I'll punch them in the head. I mean it. I've learned enough about psychoanalysis on my own and in school to know that it is a bunch of untestable wanking bullshit. It's all inductive and doesn't stand up to Falsification (per Karl Popper). If I'm going to listen to unscientific speculation about what's going on in my head from someone else I'll talk to a good astrologer - at least that pseudoscience has ten millennia of refinement behind it.

But look at me, I can't even bitch about how I feel without going off on some obscure tangent. I'm a fucking joke. In fact I am such a joke I am a character in a sitcom. I'm Ross from "Friends".

You know what I pictured at this point? I was going to have a café gallery that I ran with my wife. My kid would be tearing around annoying the customers. My art would be hanging on the walls and there would be plush chairs and booths that I made with my dad and I'd be sending money home to my mom. And where am I? My [ex]wife is a dyke, no kid (thankfully... God! If I had had a kid with her...!), my father is dead, my art if piled in the corner of my apartment and I haven't had a show in two years, and I'm into my mom for $2500 and I sit in cubicle looking forward to the Friday doughnut cart to come around. This fucking well defies the laws of physics by sucking and blowing at the same time.

I'm just annoyed. I've let myself get fucked over by greedy, selfish women. I've let my life careen down the slope of least resistance and ended up in a rut because of it. I've let people who would be confused by a simple syllogism influence my decisions. The only reason I've ended up with a fucking computer "career" is I know how to think and solve problems. But these are someone else's problems. I don't give a shit anymore. Time for it to be about me.

So there.