Nobel Poet

I have no problem with Bob Dylan receiving the Nobel Prize for Poetry. He may not be able to sing for toffee, but few poets can. It’s the poetry that earns the recognition, and someone with a body of work as extensive and influential as Dylan’s deserves all the credit he can get.

Same goes for Leonard Cohen, by the way. It may be my maple leaf showing, but I’d sign a petition to have him awarded the same prize (regrettably posthumously) since I find his poetry/lyrics/sentiments more moving than Dylan’s.

I sort of digress.

I own no Dylan albums. I only know what songs I’ve heard on the radio. I love the impression of him done by Don Ferguson of the Royal Canadian Air Farce, mostly because it highlights the mumbled nasal twang that enables most folks to pick out no more than an occasional word. But Bob Dylan is responsible for one of the few bright sparks in my 2011 “Holiday From Hell”.

Up until 2015, when they stopped producing it, the annual Starbucks Christmas CD was anticipated with all the energy and excitement of a kid for, well, Christmas. I have all but one disc in the collection, my favourite being Let it Snow, released in 2011. Even the cover art is fabulous. It’s still among the first discs to hit rotation at the start of the festive season. Every song on it is a winner—including Dylan’s. In fact, his is one of my favourite tracks.

Not because he wrote it (he didn’t). Not because he recorded it (for a charitable cause). Not for any other reason than the cornball foot stompin’ headbangin’ country-fried tempo had my Ter dancing around the kitchen in a truly rare fit of present-moment glee. To this day, whenever I hear it, I am reminded of a sparkle in the snowstorm that became a whopping dump and nearly destroyed us.

The poet goofed, though. Another Dylan track was featured on the Bucky’s disc the following Christmas, and alas, it’s the one track I consistently skip.

Proof that even a Nobel Prize winner can make mistakes.

Rigged

The last thing I expected on vacation was to have to get used to a new computer. It almost figures that, at 10:15 a.m. on my first official day (weekends don’t count), I booted the writing rig ... and nothing happened.

Strangely, I did not freak out. I called to Ter:”My computer’s dead.”

From the living room: “What?”

“My computer’s dead. I just pushed the button and nothing happened.”

She appeared immediately in my doorway. “Nothing?”

“Nope.” I jabbed the button a couple more times, just to be sure. Still nothing.

“We’ll have to get you a new one,” she declared.

I agreed—but this did not stop us from sitting down at my desk (she in the chair, me on the floor) and staring at the old box for a few minutes as if waiting for it to resurrect itself.

A brand new writing box is unnecessary. A used one suits me fine. I only use it for writing, so no need for fancy software, a ton of memory, or an über-graphics capability. My first one was bought new in 1994. The second one was inherited after an office upgrade. The third and fourth were both bought used from a local place that refurbishes as well as builds new rigs, and supplies the parts if you want to build your own. It’s an odd place, populated by geeks who are awkward with people, especially girls, but the product is usually sound.

As we were going into town anyway, we left a little early and dropped by the shop. It doesn’t take long to pick a new writing computer. All I need is a desktop PC with some version of Windows and MS Office. Box No. 5 is a step up by running Windows 7; its predecessor ran XP, so I’m finally caught up to the twenty-first century. After a brief chat with the kid behind the counter, who ran a test boot to ensure that the box I bought was indeed working, I produced my plastic and set off with my prize.

We run Office 2010 on the big rig, but have neither a backup disk (we downloaded it from the internet) nor the rackinfrackin product code that would have enabled me to burn a copy. I had it once, but at this late date you must be kidding. So, back to the shop, where I’d noticed a copy of Office 2007 for home use under glass. Bought that, and another mouse since the one I had wasn’t USB slot-friendly, then returned home to finish the set up.

Starbucks is not the evil empire, my friends. Micro Soft is. Installation was a breeze, but the Activation Wizard appeared and refused to let me go further without verifying the software. Oh, I could do it later, but be forewarned: after 24 boots, “some features may not be available to you”. I couldn’t believe it (yet I could): my own computer was threatening to foil me if I didn’t comply! $%&%#&*%# Bill Gates!

Ter brought me my phone and wisely left the room. I dialled the 1-800 number and got Siri’s boyfriend, who walked me through the eight-part activation and confirmation sequence. You’d better believe I wrote it all down for future reference! There’s no point in stroking out over it, I know. What really matters is that I’m up and running. I spent the next hour or so configuring my defaults and setting up my files, then shut everything down—including myself—for the night.

I was up, however, at 6:30 this morning. Guess I needed some quiet time to wake up the newbie and see if my default Word settings stuck. (They didn’t.) I’ve reset them and hope they’ll stay around now that I’ve actually written something using the new template. I am also planning to write a completely new story while I get familiar with an unfamiliar system.

Only it’s not unfamiliar at all. Now my writing computer mirrors my work computer and the similarity is so unsettling that I chose to switch up the colours just to remind myself that this computer means fun!

Dollars and Sense

And in other news, Sweden plans to be entirely cashless by 2030. More people than not are using plastic to pay for goods and services, and I admit, I count myself among them—for big ticket items that require some time to pay off in full. (Remember, I live from paycheque to paycheque.) And though my Starbucks card is on automatic renewal, I prefer to use cash for my café habit. Small amounts call for a fiver, or coin of some kind … and what about the office water club? I manage that account, and I can’t see me going wireless to collect dues, even though most of the members must make a special trip to the bank when I send out the bi-monthly bills.

Is it good to abolish cash in favour of electronic transactions? If money makes the world go around—and it does—I hesitate to entrust all of mine to technology. Aside from the familiar glitches that occur when Mercury is in retrograde or the network crashes due to high volume usage, what happens when the power goes out? I saw Goldeneye. I know what an electromagnetic pulse is. We depend so heavily on electricity, and now we’re practically helpless without our computers. A systems hiccup recently sent all the folks in my office to an early lunch because we couldn’t do our jobs with dead rigs.

I, Robot indeed.

Years ago, during a treatment  with my voodoo medicine man, he told me of a town in Japan where they have no technology at all, where transactions are handwritten on paper and people actually speak to each other instead of texting or emailing or whatever. His point was the irony of such a backward community existing within the borders of a technological superpower, but I stumped him.

I said, “That’s brilliant. If I wanted to rule the world, I’d make sure my people could function without the technology I sold to everyone else, then I’d do the EMP thing and kill all access to, heck, everything.”

Money has not always come in the form as we know it, but there has always been a tangible way to pay for goods and services. Debit and credit cards do not deal in tangibles, so when global systems crash for whatever reason, be it terrorism or act of God, the world had better have stashed some cash in the vault or we won’t be able to buy our morning coffee.

And that will make us all very crabby.

Caroling, Caroling

part of the collection

“Holiday” is my favourite music genre, and not just because I know all the words. Ter and I have amassed so many Christmas albums that we used to start playing them on November first. We’d load up the CD player after work, break open the Christmas jigsaw puzzle, and thus would begin our festive celebration.

Every fall, I load up my Starbucks card to ensure I have funds for their annual holiday disc, the entire collection of which I have except the third year edition (the year of “Ru snooze, Ru lose”). One of my favourite gifts ever is the retro-Christmas disc Nicole sent some years back; it’s loaded with cheesy 60s Xmas Muzak and is absolutely wonderfully awful. Ter and I loved it so much that it was copied and mailed with our Christmas cards. And, of course, my online jazz station puts up a holiday channel each November—from the third week in the month until I leave on vacation, I stream it at work.

I confess, I’m a Christmas music ho ho ho.

The acquisition of holiday tuneage has slowed over the years. I still haunt Starbucks until I see their kitschy CD cover and I am still waiting for Def Leppard to record a Christmas album, but now I wait until after November 11 before I start plaguing my world with old chestnuts roasted in new ways. My wee sister alerted me to a potential addiction issue by helping us to move in 2012—she was boxing up my CDs and happened on the array of holiday titles. “How many Christmas discs do you have?” she asked in mild horror.

“I dunno,” I answered, absently. “Seventy-five or something.”

She was hilariously pinched between disgust and dismay. “I have three—and you gave me two of them!”

Hey, I thought, I can quit any time I want.

That was my first hint.

Breakthrough

Seriously No Sprinkles

As per usual, the breakthrough with the new story happened 12 days into my holiday. I’ve written two false starts, thirty pages of backstory and a bunch of notes (unheard of for me) and finally, finally, yesterday I got traction. I still don’t know how it will go or where it will end, but it’s going and at last I am in a space where I’m able to go with it.

Same thing happened last May, with Jake. This one in no way will be finished before I return to work, but now it has teeth.

Phew.

My third chai latte comes from Serious Coffee, two blocks down from the Cook Street Starbucks. The shop’s on a par with Moka House in that it is also locally owned and the chai is equally as good as yesterday’s … sans sprinkles. That’s the one (trivial) complaint about Serious Coffee, a chronic condition that has led to us code-naming the place “No Sprinkles”. If I was truly serious about coffee, doubtless sprinkles would be frowned upon anyway. Their chai is foamier than Moka House’s and it cost .50 cents less than yesterday’s, which cost less than Bucky’s, so Serious Coffee is the better deal for a comparable chai ... if you don't care about sprinkles.

I also noticed while awaiting my drink that they have poetry/prose readings and open mic on the third Monday of each month. I know what Nicole would say: “Ru, check it out!” I just may do – coincidentally, the next session is this Monday at 7:15. Come early, get a drink and hang out in the back corner to see what evolves. I’ve got the email address at least; I’ll get on their mailing list for sure.

In other news, a nearly-100 year old message in a bottle was found on the beach in Tofino this week. It took almost a century to bob its way up from the San Francisco/Seattle shipping route (it probably came by way of Australia). The year is 1906 as seen through the glass, and the ship’s name and location was named, so research is in progress by the fellow who found it. I mention it mostly because Ter glanced at me and wryly quoted her own message to be discovered in 2113:

“September 2013 – Roberto Luongo is still a Vancouver Canuck!”

Bwahahahahahaha! A little hockey humour to warm us up for the 2013/14 NHL season, the exhibition series of which begins on Monday.

It’s been a long summer.

Chai du Jour

3.5 of 5

Moka House this morning, strategically located across from the Starbucks in the village. They don’t do a chocolate chai, so I sprinkled chocolate powder on top of a regular chai and proceeded to sip and scribble. They brew it from Mighty Leaf tea but they foam it up thick and creamy, so compared to Bucky’s and Teavana, I give it a 3.5. Tomorrow I’ll see how Serious Coffeeʼs stacks up against the competition. 

While I was sipping, I made notes galore about the angelsʼ realm. I had a blazing revelation yesterday and, as usual, nothing is as I suspect. I had to handwrite it, though, before I forget anything important. This story has got me in a bit of a tizzy given that a) itʼs coming out of sequence, which wrecks my neatly ordered method of starting at the start and writing through to the end, and b) the realm with which I am dealing is wilder than I imagined it would be. Not that I had much to go on before I began; angels donʼt get a lot of air time in Sunday school. Aside from delivering the occasional heavenly message or dropping off a set of golden plates for translation, they were pretty much left unaddressed … which frees me to write what my characters describe. All my children are interesting, but I am developing a special fondness for Shade. He is literally caught between two worlds and has been a party to this one long enough to become fearful of an inevitable outcome, yet his heart drives him toward Cristal in spite of it. I donʼt yet know what the point of the story will be, but I found this scrawled in my notes and it seems to capture the essence of the piece: 

They cannot be together

but they must be together

because they are lovers

from the dawn

of time

Chai Me a River

2 out of 5 :(

It doesn’t matter that I don’t drink coffee. I love coffee houses. Back when Starbucks shops were a novelty rather than staked on every street corner, I tested everything on their menu that wasn’t coffee-based and discovered the joy of chai tea lattes. Black tea, warm spices, steamed milk and a shot of nutmeg sprinkled on top, and I’m in sweet creamy heaven. 

There are at least eight options for coffee/tea within a two block radius of my office (two of which are Starbucks outlets). I’ve dropped coin at most of them; where I go depends on what I want and how I want it. Generally, I restrict my enthusiasm to some form of tea – not a latte, but hot water infused with something green, white or herbal. Now that autumn is coming on, though, I find myself leaning toward those warm, spicy, foamy, milky, sweet drinks that simultaneously expand my waistline while thinning my wallet. I can make them at home (sort of), but the big guns have launched a new trend: the chocolate chai tea latte. 

Yesterday, while on a photographic flânerie with my new camera, I stopped at the village Starbucks to try one of theirs. The bar has already been set by their tea-based affiliate, Teavana (that’s another post); I had one there before my vacation started and holy heck, was it good! All it needed was a honkin’ huge gingersnap to go alongside and even then, the sugar buzz would have been overkill had I dared to indulge. But back to Bucky’s … it was only okay. I tasted the chocolate (they use syrup), and I tasted the chai blend (they use their own Tazo brand, which was my staple for years), and the sweetened whipped cream on top was yummy, but it was not as good as Teavana’s. On a scale of 1 to 5 ... I give it a paltry 2 and suggest they stick to flogging coffee.

There are two other coffee places in the village and I have five more vacation days in which to pursue my quest. Tomorrow: Moka House!