hey deity breaks the “i before e except after c” rule. anywho.

im back in beautiful canada, and it feels damn good to be home. sitting in the vancouver airpot watching the cbc and winning a roll up the rim on my tim hortons hot chocolate and everything was in its right place.* i cant believe ive been home for more than a week already, its been a bit of a haze… i didnt sleep on my way home so i had one day that involved a hiking and laying on the beach day in hawaii, 4 hour flight to vancouver, 2 hour layover, 4 hour flight to toronto, which meant i travelled back in time, so to speak, got back to london by about 4pm, then remained up till 3am that day, somehow being up for 36 hours strong. since then, lots of drinkin and rick mcghie and nhl 2005 and guitar with ian and other good things. people are in exams but it seems like i can always find at least a few people who wanna get drunk or do something. i think im on my seventh vacation in a row now? gold coast -> spring break -> sydney -> melbourne -> new zealand -> hawaii -> getting drunk with my best friends for like 20 straight days

* joe pointed out that associating our country with a coffee corporation isnt exactly a great thing, which is a good point. i dont like my country being associated with hockey either. though i was happy we picked a socialist as our greatest canadian. anywho.

jeffy is now referred to as jeffy b.a. we waited on the roof with a bag of pinecones, a supersoaker, and many a water filled condom to unleash on him when he got back from the final exam of his undergraduate career, but douchebag made a trip to his ladyfriends first and took like 4 hours to come home. so we were a tad tipsy by the time he finally showed up and our death from above didnt exactly turn out as planned**. but we got him good that fucker.

** plans involved a rear flank, camoflauge, and booby traps. none of which actually happened.

so the rest of hawaii was good, i continued to just bus and walk everywhere. i was gonna rent a surfboard for a day up on the north coast, where the best surfing is, but then reconsidered once i saw the size of the waves. instead i just walked for like hours. and watched a wicked sunset on the aptly-named ’sunset beach’

and i took a lot of pictures of flowers

and a crazy red pineapple

and then there’s this picture

i was doing this hike and thought i would take another self portrait, cause god knows i dont take enough of those. so i spent about 20 minutes trying to balance my camera in between a rock and ‘the unbearable lightness of being’ *** with my knapsack blocking the 200 mph wind that was coming in off the coast, then i hit the timer button and had 10 seconds to scramble up on to this rock. at the exact moment the picture was taken was the exact moment that i jumped up on the rock and realized that i nearly just fell 300 feet to my death. but its a pretty good picture eh?

*** is there anything that book cant do??

here at the glorious casa de winchester, we are throwing a big party on the 27th, and anybody who reads this blog is invited.

in completely unrelated news, the news can be extremely funny. like jon stewart. or bill maher. or kasparov getting attacked with a chessboard. for political reasons.

Garry Kasparov, the world’s former No. 1 chess player who quit the professional game last month to focus on politics, said Saturday he had been hit over the head with a chessboard in a politically motivated attack.

im on the bus. in hawaii. heading toward honololou. i ask this kindly old man sitting beside me when i should get off to see the downtown area. so he tells me. we get to talkin a bit. what a kindly old man. i get off. begin my drandom sightseeing. an hour later im wandering aimlessly thru chinatown, which has suddenly become crackton. and who is that yells to me across the street but kindly old man! let me buy you a drink he says. suspiciously i say yes. sooner rather than later, it all becomes suddenly clear. kindly old man is actually kindly old gay man. why am i increasingly the target of older gay men? and this guy was old. like old man river old. grandpa old. i think jerry seinfeld was on to something when he said people assume your gay when youre tall skinny and polite… it was a cool little bar though. kinda trees loungeish if youve seen that terrific little film. where the only customers are the regulars. kindly old gay man did suggest a nice vietnamese restaurant for me though, so i got that going for me. which is nice.

so hawaii is fun. ive been doing the extremely cheap version of hawaii, basically just walking around like 8 hours out of the day and taking the bus places. im in a decent little hostel in waikiki, which is like the tourist mecca, its kinda sickening but whatta ya gonna do. giant posh hotel at every corner. its interesting that hawaii is very much american (fuckin flags everywhere), but still like this island getaway paradise.

i almost walked into a washed up endangered seal but some lady yelled at me first. i walked up and thru a crater in flip flops and now my feet are messed. went snorkelling and got mad at all the people touching the coral. tomorrow im going to the beach where the world surf championships are held. and hopefully taking a bus tour around the island for a day. and maybe taking a big hike.

and then i’ll be home!
eeeeeee!

the internet is hilarious. im a big fan of complete irreverance (dead baby jokes? i love em. although maybe last week’s events have changed that. hmmm.) and you can find some stuff on the internet that has just a complete and utter disregard for even the tiniest of morals. i suppose anonymity (i cant pronounce that word, it always takes me three or even four tries) is the main reason for it. either way, i love it.

exhibit a: terri schiavo’s blog. the best part is the jerry springer like comment section (which is so huge it crashed my computer). many want her to just [insert expletive] die, some are selling ‘dont feed terri’ tshirts, some are making sex-with-an-invalid jokes, some are trying to have an actual debate over euthanasia, others are condemning the rest to hell, and one guy even thought it was her actual blog (it astounds me that he could operate something as complex as a computer yet not comprehend the fact that this was a joke, as if terri would actually write a blog composed of zombie-like “nggnugh” entries). hours of fun.

exhibit b: a great hypothetical question - “How many 5 year-olds could you take on at once?” there are some ground rules (in a large but confined space about the size of a gym, the kids are fearless, no weapons, etc) but pretty much anything goes. on the one hand,

at their height its probably pretty easy to kick them in the face, this might knock them unconscious right away

or

my primary kill tactic would be to knock them down and slam their heads against the ground

but

This isnt a chick norris movie. Its going to be a swarm of them. Thats ALOT of weight, and you are incapable of defending your entire body against their biting. It wouldnt be too hard for 15 5 year olds to swarm you and bring you to the ground.

i mean 5 year olds are pretty helpless, you could just keep running around and beating the bejesus out of them. i’d say it’s more of a stamina thing. i think i have the stamina to take out 30 kids. plus there would be too many innocent child corpses strewn about if you took on any more.

moving along, america is #1? a great little collection of facts showcasing just how good of a job america is doing. i particularly like

The U.S. and South Africa are the only two developed countries in the world that do not provide health care for all their citizens

keeping some good company there, and

U.S. childhood poverty now ranks 22nd, or second to last, among the developed nations

and

Twenty percent of Americans think the sun orbits the earth.

Why World War IV Can’t Sell - John Brown
its dubya dubya four! seriously though.

this just in, the environment (yes, all of it) is not doing well.
The state of the world? It is on the brink of disaster - The Independent

Planet Earth stands on the cusp of disaster and people should no longer take it for granted that their children and grandchildren will survive in the environmentally degraded world of the 21st century. This is not the doom-laden talk of green activists but the considered opinion of 1,300 leading scientists from 95 countries who will today publish a detailed assessment of the state of the world at the start of the new millennium.

in other news, banksy got away with putting 4 of his pieces into all 4 new york museums. here’s a closer look at the whole operation and the pieces he hung up.

They’re good enough to be in there, so I don’t see why I should wait

and finally, the great mitch hedberg has passed away. a hilarious comedian, you all should check out his comedy cds, ’strategic grill locations’ and ‘mitch all together’ or at least read over some quotes. i have fond memories of driving back from nimbin listening to him with my yank roomates. hard to pick a favourite, but i always liked

I opened-up a yogurt, underneath the lid it said, “Please try again.” because they were having a contest that I was unaware of. I thought maybe I opened the yogurt wrong. …Or maybe Yoplait was trying to inspire me… “Come on Mitchell, don’t give up!” An inspirational message from your friends at Yoplait, fruit on the bottom, hope on top.

this is thomas’ signature look: “platinum sapphire”

and here’s “aquamarine”, it has more of a catalogue feel

this is “bombay overdrive”, but i shouldn’t even be showing you this because it’s still in the research and development stage…