celebrity watch continues. a few months ago, i saw maggie gyllenhaal close by the office (which, incidentally, is having its entrances renovated, leaving it in an exposed brick and concrete state that looks both funky and oddly flimsy).

this recent week, i've been walking home as late, down lafayette towards city hall...

[carla: stop reading until you catch up on season 3 of 6 feet under.]

tonight, north america experiences one of those celestial wonders: a lunar eclipse.

the moon will turn red as it is completely hidden from the sun by the earth. unfortunately, the city of new york will be cloudy, so in all probability, i won't see it. i'll try, though; maybe the clouds will be thin enough to let in some ghostly infrared glow from the reflected umbra.

the only time i've seen a lunar eclipse was back in 1993 when i lived in thunder bay. it was winter and around 1 a.m. when i stepped outside into the backyard to see the moon turn from silver to black to red and back. kiefer might have been with me at the time, amazed that anyone other than him would do anything at night, although he'd be more interested if any animals were in the woods more so.

he did see a shooting star with me once, which stopped both of us in our tracks as it was large and lasted about ten seconds before disappearing over the horizon. there's nothing like looking at the night sky to put perspective on how busy the universe actually is. with all the light pollution, many people have grown up without seeing more than ten or twenty stars in the sky. it's something i struggle with as i hop from urban area to urban area.

sometimes i wonder if imagined the time i was west of shebandowan one january evening, spending the night at a camp. one hike in the woods at night and i saw ribbons of stars to the point where it looked like fine muslin drapery with faint lights surround the wilderness with a tent of lights. it seemed so unreal that i stood out in the cold for an unimagineably long time, looking at the field of stars that looked to be layers deep. i still have dreams where the skyscape appears out of nowhere and i can't help but continue to be amazed.

spoke with my mom last night right before i fell asleep and she found out earlier that day that hoover, the neighbours' dog, had died outside in his kennel back in january.

hoover was a small german shepherd who showed up a year or two before kiefer next door. he was the runt of a litter, but he was a sweet dog. he'd often visit our house, sneaking in through the door, sitting obediently and ate whatever everyone else happened to be eating.

when kiefer started to live with us, kiefer and hoover would always hang out with each other if one and/or the other was loose. kiefer made a habit of jumping into hoover's pen and eating some of his food and hoover would trot over to kiefer outside to playfight and occasionally sleep in his doghouse.

kiefer died three years ago today. only a few days before did we know that he was unwell, when my mom noticed him throwing up and urinating blood on a sunday. on monday, the vet said the x-rays showed one huge tumour that took over his intestines, stomach and liver.

my brother mark and i (in toronto) freaked when we found out. kiefer was our baby brother who remained in thunder bay, following mom around and waiting by the door occasionally in the hopes that either of us would come home. monday night, we arranged it so that my brother would fly up tuesday night and i'd aim for the weekend, since i had just started a new contract job.

kiefer went off his little diet and was spoiled with all the food he loved, but when mark arrived, kiefer worsened — he didn't recognize mark at the door at all and he didn't have much energy left. wednesday came and kiefer stopped eating and made what my dad called one last dash into the woods. that evening, mark made the difficult call to euthanize our old puppy buddy. he placed him on the phone for me to say goodbye, escorted him to the car to the vet, when he made a few final barks to the woods, where some deer were standing, laying down the law of the land one last time.

and at 9:50pm, march 15, 2000, kiefer left this mortal coil.

i cried for hours when i got the call afterwards, and i posted a short message on the internal sauna news service and unplugged from email for a week or so. work was rough for the next two days before i flew home to an empty house.

it was hard to walk around outside without the big black bear-like guy around, which made the march forest around seem much emptier. all i did for two days or so was sort through photos, which are kinda viewable here but i've been intending to better present online all this time. that along with some anecdotes of his life.

i better do it soon before everything gets hazier. i doubt i'll ever forget even the slightest detail, nor will the rest of my family, neighbours and friends. i have a lock of his fur, a pawprint and a short tape recording of his whimpering. but many a tale.

i still miss you.

and keep a seat on the sauna up there for me, okay?

woof!

graig's trying to get me in trouble again. after i mentioned our 3 hour messenger chat yesterday, graig's posted a brief excerpt and exposes another one of our wacky proposed plans.

not that it would have come to much, but the trade-off for losing the mystique is the possibility of pulling it off now that more people may know.

although this approaches blasphemy, i was approached by mr. kent to impersonate a priest for a staged wedding.

how to find out you lead a sheltered life, part XXVII: during lunchtime today, we went to the usual cheap food haunt and as two of us waited for the 3rd to pay for his food, a man walks by with a black smudge on his forehead:

co: oh! is today ash wednesday?
me: [obviously not listening] no, that wasn't a swastika...
co: what?
me: that smear on his forehead...like a chevrolet logo...
co: no — i didn't know it was ash wednesday?
me: [still not with it] yes, yes it is ash wednesday.
another person walks by with the same dark mark on their forehead.
me: hey! is this some kind of tradition?

so, today was the day i learned about the ash wednesday tradition of using ash to mark a cross on your forehead as a sign of humility. i didn't have quite the same reaction as kambri did, but after my quick awakening, about 10 other people along the walk back had the same cross, meaning i would have started questioning what was the haps.

of course, various scenarios quickly ran across my mind:

1. wow, a lot of people go to church.
2. wow, a lot of people went to church ...this morning, at least.
3. i wonder if this was the first time they went all year.
4. i wonder if they actually went to church.
5. i wonder if there's a place that does this only to make you look like you went to church this morning.
6. where's my marking?

nonetheless, i had never seen this before in toronto, denver, waterloo or thunder bay, so i will give the benefit of the doubt and embrace new york's faith as a positive sign. imagine entire business floors with all the employees wearing this embered crucifix...except you. you didn't get the memo about this and now you're scared everyone you suspected was approaching normal all this time belong to a cult.

ah well. kiss my ash wednesday. godspeed through our mortality. and how fitting for those of us about to age numerically.

i spoke a little while back about chow yun-fat in toronto filming movies, dissing the trailer to bulletproof monk, with obvious scenes from nathan philips square.

i know chow yun-fat's filmed in toronto before, because i disrupted the set of one of his other films.

1998: walking to work from college park to king/yonge. it's late morning (this was one of those internet boom jobs where no one showed up til noon, but stayed until 10pm or later) and i decided to see how much of the walk i could underground through toronto's PATH. i ended up doing this walk during rainy days, but i was still figuring out the right path to take.

after cutting through a strange sub-basement of the bay, i was completely mixed up on where i was. as opposed to backtracking, i took the first set of stairs i found to hopefully get out on the surfaceworld again.

i exit one urine-soaked stairwell through an unmarked door, into the sunlight.

20 people in black leather jackets turn to face me. i stop and quickly look around.

oh, let me never know what i do, for upon the realization of perfection brings on the potential for disaster. that is the ethic that drives me forward.

meanwhile, maybe i should stop drinking this tea.
[shudder]

author william gibson has his blog on, now which already looks to be faithful to both his style and ethos. his new book, pattern recognition, is now out on paperback, and even though his style has drifted away from his poetic cyberpunk sprawl series, i still like to read to see how our present may extend into a possible future. it just seems the future has already caught up.

one thing you may have noticed is that the book link didn't go to your typical amazon/barnes&nobles/chapters/indigo megasite. it is my express opinion that if a smaller bookstore has made a dilligent effort to present their catalogue online, i'll encourage them. the tattered cover was a bookstore i frequented when i lived in denver and it was marvy. it was an encouraging place to buy and read books, to the point where they invited many a people in, especially during the cold. it means something when the staff mourn the death of a regular homeless visitor.

".....whooo is this?" is just one of things i say a lot, but it's all based on a strange call i received over a year ago.

normally, before i'd answer the phone, i'd check the call display on the cordful unit to see whether i know the caller and whether i feel like looking at the voice mail light blink repeatedly (sometimes, it's really a choice between do i want to talk to you? or do i really want to have to check voice mail afterwards?, which makes me the most pleasantly social telephone participant this earth has ever faced (don't worry; the prospect of clearing the call history in order to see the time again on the display made every phone call an exasperating chore)). however, this whimsical weekend evening, early with the summer light, i just grabbed the cordless phone and blindly walked into this conversation:

and now, a simple crude self-interview...

so what happened thursday night?

well, i left work in time to go to the bike shop to pick up madeleine before the store closed and then go back to work to otherwise beat my brain up over a silly website.

wait a tick; who's madeleine?

it's my long-time faithful companion from when i left thunder bay. my source of sanity, exploration and fitness. my black nishiki bicycle, bought used from outside a police auction. whilst all the families were buying $300 canadian tire bikes, i spent $140 on a brilliant used roadie from a man who happened to be hanging around the crowd expecting a quick sale. she's been with me through waterloo and toronto.

but weren't you in colorado from 1997-1998? didn't you ride then?

i brought madeleine with me, but for some reason, i didn't have her re-assembled from her carrying box. perhaps i was suspicious of how she would be handled by the denver city bike shops, perhaps i was lazy from driving around all the time. all i know is i should have hit the open road with her, since the weather was always perfect and i gained about 30 pounds otherwise.

but you brought the bike with you to new york city, where you would figure the weather is worse, the roads are terrible and the traffic is nuts. why new york city over denver?