Bloggin...

A few people have asked me to do a blog, mostly to keep track of my travels. Honestly, I wasn't sure if it was a good idea, since I might not have enough stories to tell to keep this thing interesting, or for that matter, the time to tell them. Although I find these trips amazing, I'm not sure how the stories will be when they're sprawled out on a blog. And another big problem is that I don't have a digital camera with me (or a camera at all, for that matter), so there won't be any pictures to go with them.

With that out of the way, I'd like to say one more thing before I cut to the bloggin'. I'm not planning on making this into a travel log. This is going to be more of my brain poured out onto, well, whatever this is. Though this might mean that the blog will end up rambling on about nothing, I'll do my best to keep it interesting.

That said, let's begin.

I'm in Ottawa till the beginning of next week, staying with my cousin. She's a few years older than me, and already in the middle of raising of a family. Her oldest son is 3, and although it's been almost 6 months since I saw him, I'm told he was very excited that I was coming. I was surprised that I had made such an impression on him, not only because my last trip here wasn't very long, but also because he was so young. Kids are really surprising, and the reason that this is weighing so heavily is that so many of my friends are either in serious relations, married, or already having children. It's hard not to think that before I know it, I'll find myself in a similar situation. When the hell did we grow up, anyway?

I should probably be making some sort of plan as to where to go next, seeing as I'll be leaving here in a few days. I've been trying to get ahold of my uncle in Kitchener, but he's either extremely busy or not wanting to be found. The only phone number that I know of brings up a woman's voice that sounds (to my imagination?) confused that I called, and tells me that I should call back at a certain time. When I call back at said time, no answer but the voice mail, and when I leave messages, no return call. Since I haven't seen him in 5 years, my plan was to go to Kitchener after I leave here. But now it's looking less and less likely that that plan is going to pan out. If not, I should probably try to cross Ontario, but that's not such an easy thing to do. I'll end up breaking it into a few mini-trips, making three or four stops in northern Ontario, as well as Thunder Bay. I've been told that Ontario is quite boring, but seeing as how I don't have much of plan for this trip to start with, it seems silly to be in a rush to get nowhere...

As I'm sure that most of you have heard by now, Marlon Brando died on Thursday. It made me think of the insanity that his life had been for the last 20 years (living in pretty much total seclusion, his son is in jail for the murder of his daughter's finance, said daughter committed suicide shortly after the murder, not to mention how weird Brando had become even before the shooting of apocalypse Now). Something that I've been wondering for a long time is if it's really necessary to be completely fucking nuts to be any sort of an artist. Though I'm sure that I can come up with a few exceptions, the norm seems to be the crack pots. Slightly related is that after watching a TV special on the Red Hot Chilly Peppers (Television! It's been a while!), and after hearing them say in very soft and mushy voices how much they love each other, the music, having the chance to do what they love, having good karma, how much they love each other, being able to perform for the fans, how much they love the fans, how much they love each other, and last but not least, how much they love each other, my questions about insanity and art are running through my head more than ever. And it's not just the new interviews that are like that, either. Granted, they did alot of drugs, but they're saying that they've been clean for a few years now. Hearing them reminded me of talking to people tweaked out on e.

Something that broke my heart yesterday was reading how John Kerry was quoted saying that he would support Sharon's 'wall' in Israel as being necessary, and would not negociate with the Palestinians until after Arafat was either removed or imprisoned. A Kerry policy being farther to the right then Bush's stance scares the hell out of me. One can only hope that he was misquoted, or at the very least, that it was taken out of context. At this rate, all of those cynical blowhards that keep saying Bush and Kerry, and for that matter, Republicans and Democrats, are exactly the same will sound less and less like the jaded, angry little pessimists that they probably are. On a quick sub-rant, for all of those who say Bush and Gore were the same, economics, similar, but environment and international policy were miles apart. I'd make a comparison between Kerry and Bush, but it's true that Kerry doesn't seem to have many set policies...

While I'm on politics, after being bombarded with the goodness of Reagan for the last month, I found a very nice listing of the many times Reagan shoved his foot straight down his throat last night, but unfortunately, I can't find it now. The closest I could come was this... http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/r/ronald_reagan.html

If I can find the other, which is much better, I'll post it later.

Keep in mind that this blog is probably longer than what the rest are likely to be, mostly due to my cousin having taken her family to a friend's place for the night, leaving me alone in her house for the day.

ian.