"Hello Wendy"

Today was sunny.
My alarm went off at 9:00. I still haven't figured out the snooze function and I woke up at 12:30. I had coffee for breakfast and skipped my shower.
I spent some time on the internet; I wrote my lawyer, wrote on mixtapesongs.com, and downloaded my friends' band Diamonds and a Woody Guthrie song called "I'll Eat You, I'll Drink You", which I'm assuming is about Jesus. Diamonds released their album through Creative Commons, which means it's totally free, and coincidentally, really good. I got it through popsheep.com
I walked to the park near my house and read a bunch of "Jazz". I'm not finished it yet and am 'supposed' to be.
Around 4 I biked to my old neighborhood to buy groceries. I have a pretty great idea about buying all my groceries from private markets in my neighborhood. Lately though, I have had little money and my new neighborhood is more expensive than my old one. So, while I was still supporting privately (generally family) owned stores and promoting neighborhood infrastructure, I supported and promoted a different neighborhood than my own.
I made pasta for dinner.
This is a picture of an old man promoting Christianity;

I.O.U.

Today was cloudy.
I had a kiwi, a banana and coffee for breakfast.
Melanie went to look at the Reichstag et al and Me and Jane went to the Guggenheim and a gallery called Hamburger Postbanhof.
I bought a Club Mate on the way there. The Guggenheim wasn't all that great and the premise of the exhibition wasn't very interesting or well accomplished.
The Hamburger Postbanhof gallery was great. There was a Wolfgang Tillmans exhibit and some Jeff Wall photography. There was also some Andy Warhol I had never seen and also some Jeff Koons, who I find really interesting. We had to rush a little at the end in order to be home with enough time to meet Melanie and so they could pack and catch their train to Amsterdam.
I played "Holland 1945" by Neutral Milk Hotel as they were packing and leaving my apartment.
Then I wrote a list of movies I liked from each year from 1965 until 2001.
Then I walked to work.
Work was work. I cut vegetables and made pizza dough. I served some customers but not really. I get to drink and eat as much as I want at work, which is awesome. I haven't (and won't) exploit the place for free pizza and pop and beer, but it's a great fringe benefit.
I listened to The Hold Steady when I got home and watched "Breaking Away" (1979) and downloaded some John Milton.

Vowel

Yesterday it rained.
I was out really late with Randi and Joe and some of their friends and was supposed to wake up at 8-ish because I had to meet two girls from Victoria at 8:30 but I woke up at 9 and ran to the subway station and they weren't there.
When I got home Melanie (one of the girls) called me and explained that their train from Poland was late and they got off at the wrong train station and that they were now at the subway station that we were originally supposed to meet at. I walked back to the subway and met them and then we all came back to my apartment.
I made a pot of coffee and we laughed about our friend Mack and figured out where we are all 'from' and what we are all 'doing' etc.
They had plans to go on the walking tour but Melanie suddenly was exhausted and needed to sleep and hallucinated seeing a dog in my kitchen (!).
While she slept Jane, the other girl, went to a gallery I suggested with DaDa Berlin artists and also contemporary stuff and I went and bought some produce from the Turkish market.
When we all met up again around 5-ish, we decided to go out for dinner.
We walked to the restaurant which was great because its near and also on this street called Grimm Strasse named after these two brothers who were German and wanted to find the original 'story' and collected all old fables, and folklores and fairy tales. The area has tons of kids in strollers but looks really great and lined with trees and is near the canal.
Dinner was great and I confided my pop-culture obsession and Melanie was going to pay but Jane did. Jane also offered me tobacco that you snort but I just licked my pinky finger and tasted it and she thought that was really funny.
We got ice cream and then they went to an erotic museum and I went home.
We met up again around 11:30 and talked and laughed and then all went to bed around 12:30.
This is a picture that I drew of my friends Matt and Dustin;

Hallowe'en

Let's pretend it is Sunday...
'Today' was sunny.
I woke up around 10:30 and didn't have breakfast and went to meet Joe and Randi for a big parade that was a block away from my house. It was for a Culture Carnival. I finished off a roll of film during the parade. Randi bought me and her mohitos and at one point she dropped a 20 euro bill but I found it and gave it back to her.
The portable toilets, which I had to use, were disgusting. Smell is tiny molecules of their source, in this case specifically; urine and feces and used feminine hygiene products. These portable toilets were fermenting in the hot sunlight all day.
Most of the floats in the parade were 'African' or 'Thai' or a bunch of under-dressed under-age girls dancing together. There was also one really lonely Christian Missionary float playing 'Christian Pop' and it kind of broke my heart.
After the parade finished me, and Randi went back to my house and ate avocados and drank water and I made milk shakes with kiwis and strawberries.
Then I went to the Volks Buehne (People's Stage) to see a music event put on by a booking agent (?) called Headquarters. It was pretty good with a lot of bands. No Kids, Why?, and Prefuse 73 were the reasons that I went.
I have been wanting to see No Kids for a while now and they were really great. If you ask me what they sound like I would say, "They sound like; Prince, Jens Lekman, Hot Chip and other stuff like Prince, and maybe also Stevie Wonder."
I got to talk to Nick from No Kids about Gigi, which was also great because I had some festering questions about that band.
I ending up staying until around 4 o'clock and did a few things on the way home; made friends with a (possibly gay) guy from Dresden and a girl from Leipzig, refused McDonald's and forgot Mother's Day.
This is a drawing I started of my friend Corbin;

Follower

Today was sunny.
Last night I had a dream where I was running down stairs. The stairs were wide and steep and made of concrete or marble. Close friends of mine were there and were all shouting, " Nasdrovia!" which is 'cheers' in Polish or Russian. I was running down the stairs with a glass of champagne and shouting, "Nosferatu!" which is maybe 'vampire' in German. I dropped my glass as I was trying to shut these huge doors. The doors were at the base of the stairs and made of royal mahogany and were very heavy. I couldn't close the doors in time and a Grizzly Bear that was larger than possible, maybe 20 feet tall, pushed open the doors and tore open my stomach and then I woke up.
My camera wasn't working so I took it to the place where I bought it and where I buy film. Apparently it was a problem with the teeth on the gears that adjust my shutter and it's speed. It works now though.
It was really hot today and I drank two iced teas. Man! I love iced tea.
I went to the Turkish market and bought avocados, strawberries, kiwis and lemons. I also bought some tea, I hope to make some iced tea and put lemons in it.
I tried faxing these university documents but they wouldn't 'go through' which sucks but was also rad because the fax cost 5.65 each page over seas which is a total rip-off.
I drew a picture of my friends Dustin and Matt.
I got home and made a 'smoothie' with kiwis, strawberries, milk and a bit of sugar.
Then I ate dinner, which was noodles with mushrooms and green pepper, and had a beer.
Some of Jana's friends came over and they went to the Kultur Karnival (Culture Carnival), which is right by our apartment.
I met Max and Elizabeth and Franz around 9 o'clock.
We wandered around the festival and bought some beer and ended up sitting outside of a bar far enough away from the festival just chatting.
I told them I would watch soccer with them tomorrow.

Allowed

Today was sunny.
I woke up at 8:30 because I had class at 10 then another at 12 and another at 2.
I didn't go to school though, I had breakfast and watched a VBS.TV series called "Toxic Alberta" about Fort McMurray. It was really good. It's about an hour long and as it suggests looks at different perspectives of the oil sand crisis/boom but also can't conclusively document an inexhaustible topic. At first I was thinking, "Great! Canada has 1000 times the amount of oil as Saudi Arabia! We're a great country!". But then I thought," We aren't doing it right. We are inappropriately destroying our country. We need to change."
(Fort McMurray contributes to 2/3 of Canada's green house gas output. Which is stunning because it's a town of 70,000 in a country of 30,000,00. So it's like a town of 70,000 acting as 20,000,000. I think...)
Then I went to Kreuzberg Victoria Park and read.
I went to the flea market on the way home and bought a pair of thin tan denim Levi's and a print of "Guernica" by Pablo Picasso for 5 euros. Which is awesome.
I've been listening to "Heretic Pride" by The Mountain Goats lately.
I went skateboarding after dinner. The park was super busy but I managed to land some solid noseslides which have been bugging me lately.
I had to go into university around 9:30 to print off a re-admission/campus change form for UBC. Tomorrow I have to fax it and a lost document form to the people who give me money vis student loans.
I wgoing to watch "400 Blows" (1959) by Truffaut but went to sleep instead.

Flower

Today was sunny.
I didn't have class and went to the park to read "A Hazard of New Fortunes".
Last night I watched "Fitzcarraldo" (1982) by Werner Herzog. It is really stunning. It's also the second movie I've seen with Klaus Kinski. It's funny that both films I've seen with the both Kinski and Herzog working together have taken place on and around the Amazon river. "Fitzcarraldo" is really great. It does seem to end while leaving me wanting 'more'. I've been finding that with so many 3 hour-ish movies that even if they are long, they rarely cover enough. "Fitzcarraldo" has some of the most memorable scenes in my film viewing experience. The steamship on land, and Kinski standing proudly on the to deck cruisin' down the Amazon listening to Italian opera on his gramaphone.

I also went to this Canadian pizza store called Ron Telesky Pizza and they gave me a training shift and more work if I want it, which is great because I won't have to stress out about money as much.

I made shorts out of a pair of jeans and had dinner with my room mate Jana. She had a salad and I had; potatoes, carrots, corn and zucchini.
I listened to Nathan Lawr some more. I was wondering how an artist like him could have gone unnoticed by myself. Turns out, he hadn't...he played in this band I really like, Royal City and he also played with Jim Guthrie, which explains why I like him. Great minds think alike.

Snowed

Today was sunny.
I went to the American Church of/in Berlin.
It was in a really big Lutheran church and it was hard to hear. There was a lame 'kids' thing during service and the sermon was pretty weak. The reading was from John but they also threw in some stuff from Acts, but we didn't talk about it - just read it and then kept going. I also screwed up communion, drinking from the dipping wine...I don't think I'll find a church as good as Calvary. I think I'll just wait until I get back to Canada.
When I got home I was still tired from last night so I napped until like 6 o'clock.
When I woke up I made a B.L.T. and watched "Sleeper" (1973) by Woody Allen and "McCabe & Mrs. Miller"(1971) by Robert Altman with Warren Beatty.
"Sleeper" was pretty good. I didn't know it was a science-fiction comedy. I laughed pretty hard at some points. I was thinking that I only watch Allen for the writing. There isn't the film making aspect of someone like Kubrick. I just mean that Woody Allen's stuff isn't visual although "Sleeper" definitely has visual achievements for Woody Allen's stuff. I guess he may spend time photographing New York in other movies though...
"McCabe & Mrs. Miller" was alright. A pretty good western. The ending was good except the special effects were really distracting. I guess they must have filmed the one scene over many days, because the snow is inconsistent. Maybe one day it snowed and then the next it didn't and to cover up, the filmmakers super-imposed snow over the scene - but not always. So it jumps from authentic snow, to this layered film effect of second unit snow laid on top of the scene...
I listened to the Constantines first album and the new CBC3 podcast. They are doing a 'covers' themed podcast and I sent an email requesting a Constantines cover of Neil Young. I hope they choose it.

Bowels

Today was sunny.
I walked to school and printed off the first half of "A Hazard of New Fortunes" by William Dean Howells.
I watched this documentary called "Toxic Garbage Island" on VBS.TV.
It was really cool and reminded me that there is more to Vice than Dos and Donts.
I made a mish-mash of dinner; spinach, carrots, rice, tomatoes, green onions, and an egg all in one pot.
I listened to the new CBC3 podcast.

(I've been watching a lot of movies lately; I watched "The Silence of The Lambs" (1991), "Magnolia" (1999) and "Network" (1976). They are all great movies for completely different reasons. However they are connected in the fact that I first watched "Magnolia" and then read that Paul Thomas Anderson admired both Demme and Lumet and "The Silence of the Lambs" and "Network".)

I went to meet Randi and Joe to see Mix Master Mike.
The club sucked. At first we couldn't find it. It had 3.50 small lame beer and 7.00 cranberry vodka without vodka ( if you did that trick you did when you were a kid, where you hold your finger over a straw and lift it out of a drink and then move your finger and the straw's contents fall out...that was how much vodka was in Randi's drinks). The club was also full of the lamest people!
Guys trying so hard to 'score', moms who are so old and read Star and think that Paris Hilton is sexy and think that young normal guys think Paris Hilton is sexy and these women are just shamelessly gyrating and oh yeah, the room was lined with the skeezy beds... beds! , I dunno. It was like the confused hormones of a middle school dance, what I remember of my prom and the cocaine rampant at my high school and when you are the youngest person at work and there's this awkward Christmas party dance with all the 'adults'.
- That being said, Mix Master Mike was pretty good. I was actually in to dancing. There was still idiots with those stupid hats though, you know...those stuuuupid hats.

Power

Yesterday was sunny.
It was the 1st of May and in Germany they celebrate Labor Day. It is somehow a celebration of worker's rights and slightly communist and even anti-capitalist. I was told it's mostly just punks and neo-nazis smashing stuff and burning cars. It's not even that though; It's just 12 or so streets blocked off and maybe 6 or 7 stages with music, cheap beer and street food everywhere. It's hard to be anti-capitalist when your selling "May Day" tee shirts and mohitos for 4 Euro.
I wandered around for a while and then Joe and Randi found me and then we sat on a curb for a while. There was a really old guy holding a box that read "Frage Mich Nach JESUS" which means "Ask Me About JESUS"... maybe not the best place to discuss theology but he still looked pretty interesting and I took some pictures of him.
We eventually ended up watching a band on a stage that were really good. We stood about 20 feet away and there was a constant river of people walking from left to right past us between us and the stage. Every once in a while about 20 riot police would flood the river and it would pour out everywhere. It was non-stop. Seriously. People walking no place in particular for the entire 1 hour or so that we were there.
We left around 12:30 and I didn't see a burning car but there were a lot of police and a lot of smashed bottles.