Patio Ranters

Feb. 16/07 - 2:10pm - The Ooze - Innisfail AB

Sittin at the Ooze.
Just sat down on the patio with Bob Dylan and a smoke in the middle of a hail storm.
Wow.
Pretty cool.

For as bummed out as I should be, I'm actually pretty happy. A little pensive and introspective, but still light in step.
You can definitely tell I've been DRINKING.
Not much, but enough.

What a strange life. Right when things begin to pick up, something happens. You batting average is straight as an arrow and then zing, you get a curve ball.

FUCK.

Another round please Kim...

I sure hope the old man's ok. I'd sure like to talk to him
but...
There's no sense in getting upset over things I have no control over. I have to be strong for my family.

My poor mother.

My poor sisters.

Focus

Precise clear vision, even through the alcohol induced haze and the swirling cigarette smoke. Through to the next step, one after the other. It's good to think of life as an open book again. A fantasy novel rather than an instruction manual. Open to anything, the good and the bad. Good to be inspired.

Despite all the shit, don't cheat yourself.

Love your life

Love your family

Love your friends

Never compromise that love, zest and bravado for any bad situation.

Stay on the rollercoaster until the end, through the ups, downs, twists, turns, calm those with you who scream and close their eyes in fear. Help them open their eyes, remove their hands from the safety bar and convince them to raise those hands and yell and laugh and laugh and yell with all the joy in the universe.

Feb. 24/07 - 2:30 pm - The Ooze - Innisfail AB

Back on the Ooze patio.
No hail storms this time, just a light cool breeze, sunshine and melting snow everywhere.

Pilsner #2

Right when I thought I was gone, not even 24 hours later I'm back. Not for long mind you, but still......it's ridiculous.
I suppose it's nice to finally have a vehicle and work close enough to the Fail that if the boss has a shit fit and sends you home, your only a short drive to the Ooze.
Nice, but I almost wish I was further away so the compulsion to hurry back to this swill trough wouldn't be so easy.

BUT!

By the same token, I'm glad I'm here, at the Ooze. My bar. Sure beats sitting in some shitty motel room in Carstairs watching daytime TV for the next 10 hours, or worse, going to the Carstairs equivalent of the Ooze. I'm not too fond of strange people in my bar, or rather I'm not used to it and I find it slightly unnerving, as I'm sure would the Carstairs locals at the sight of some skinheaded youth with combat boots and a leather jacket, headphones blaring, writing by himself in their bar.

I suppose the reason for it isn't so much that we're elitist, but that strangers have a tendency to disrespect this place and/or cause trouble because odds are, they'll never be back. Regulars on the other hand, we love this bar and treat it like a second home and.....

Wait a minute, that's all wrong.

Maybe that logic, and it is a logical train of thought, would work with alot of bars, but on second thought I don't think it really applies to the Ooze.

It's the strangers who behave because they don't know if most of the regulars are going to buy them a shot of bucca or punch them in the mouth, which is probably also why alot of them don't come back. Steady ooze crewers are always causing shit, getting kicked out, painting up the washrooms, knocking over chairs etc. etc. Some nights it seems the more boisterous and rowdy we get, the more free booze seems to get sent our way.

Oh yeah, and we actually are elitists too, that also was wrong.

Pilsner #3

Anxious for change. For almost any degree of change.
Fuck Innisfail and fuck the oil patch.
These words hold no water.

What a day.

D&R Drive-through is open again. Like an Innisfailian ground hog, we know when D&R opens that spring is just around the corner.

I love these characters, the mid-day bar flies attracted to this place. I'm sure that’s mostly because I'm one of them, even though sometimes I have enough of an ego to consider myself and them of a different species entirely. I'm not as dependant on the drink as them, I'm young and that makes these habits ok because I'll grow out of them....

"I'm not an alcoholic!" as I can so often be heard saying to my parents.

hahahahaha

That’s not really true, and I know it, I just try to convince myself otherwise. If I can justify it to myself, that makes it moral and good and righteous to be drinking here in the middle of the day.

We are the cast of Cheers.

Mar. 13/07 - 2:30pm - The Ooze patio- Innisfail AB

hmmmmmm

I should be able to say it's nice out, but in light of recent weather, I can't.

It's not miserable out, the sun is shining and the snow is melting, but there's a pretty stiff breeze you've still got to dress for.

Definitely long-john weather....
..that is if you plan to sit around drinking beer and writing outdoors.

I could always go inside, but it wouldn't seem right. This seems to have become my writing spot.

It's the solitude.

I can't go sit at the bar inside with everyone else and try to do this, it's too damn weird.

Making an obvious attempt at being a loner in a very public place usually used for rowdy social interaction.

How strange.

Why here? It makes no sense.

I'm sure it'd be easier to write at home where I could be totally alone and warm. I think I need the change of setting though, the unpredictability of this place.

That and my house is too distracting. I'd never do something constructive like this when the opiates of TV and the internet are so conveniently at hand.

That's pretty sad.

I'm listening to Galapagos by the Smashing Pumpkins right now.

This used to be my all-time (yes I see the contradiction in that statement. so what? I know what i mean) favourite love song in the world........when I was in grade 5 and had absolutely ZERO concept of love.

The song is about a couple making a suicide pact and I used to romanticize that notion as the ultimate pledge of love.

When I was fucking 10 years old!

Pretty creepy.

I still romanticize death though, not suicide so much anymore since the few losses from my earlier years.

Things like compiling the soundtrack to your own funeral, getting a tattoo of a foetal skeleton....pretty morbid, but for some reason uplifting in it's own way. I'm not sure, but I don't think I've really feared death since the tragedies of my school years.

I suppose it’s the sense of having closure. Like reaching the end of a long road trip, stepping out of the car, making a long overdue stretch, looking around and finally feeling the comfort of arrival.

"And I knew the silence of the world" - Billy Corgan

Smoke time.

Oct. 2/08 - 8:56 pm - The Ooze Patio

A nice place to start.

Or start again.

Let's say resume.

Resume from another of what I'm sure will be many hiatuses.

The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan is strumming away in my ears as I watch the evenings traffic pass by.

Hmmmmm, deja vu.

This outing is almost exactly the same as my other solo ventures to the patio, headphones playing the same album, drinking the same thing, sitting in the same spot in the same chilling elements with a pen and pad, except it's the first time I've done this in the evening.

I suppose I have been a bit of a vampire lately.

If this were a normal day, I would have arrived here at 2:30pm, during my afternoon lull when I can no longer remain in my house without going utterly insane. Daytime TV does that to some people.

But seeing as I didn't wake up until 3:00pm and didn't get dressed for afew hours after that, arriving here on time would have been impossible. Same routine, just substantially delayed.

Not just because I'm late today, but also because it's been so long since I've done this. Somewhere along the line the ink in my pen just seemed to dry up.

Ah well, it seems I've finally discovered another well. I wonder how long it will be before this one dries up too.

So, now my average day has flip-flopped into a mediocre night. I either sleep all day or simply hideout indoors and begin my day during the night when all there is to do is shut down the local boozer or watch crap films or go totally bat-shit-gary-busey crazy. Usually various combinations of all three.

It's one of those ridiculous routines one simply cannot explain. Without any rhyme or reason, it just is. I don't know how I get stuck doing it. It just evolves through unemployment and boredom.

I don't particularly miss being allowed to smoke inside, but by fuck do I ever miss being able to smoke on this patio.

Stupid fucking law.

I'm the only asshole out here.

Lately I've been drinking in public, almost on purpose. In the middle of the day, there I am, walking down main-street Innisfail, tipping a tin of cider or a brown bagged bottle of wine, making zero effort to conceal my actions and seemingly oblivious to how illegal they are.

I am absolutely aware of how illegal it is and I decided I don't give a shit.

It's not like I'm trying to perform some sort of protest. I realize that if laws against drinking in public didn't exist people would constantly be partying in the streets, in parks, in front of businesses, outside of schools and leaving a stinking trail of empties behind themselves wherever they went. We're humans. Give us an inch and we'll take a mile or ten. I get it and I wouldn't dream of trying to get it legalized.
...Although it is legal in most of Europe, and without major incident. Maybe it's not a symptom of humanity, perhaps I should have said, "We're North Americans..."
Either way.

I do it because I want to and I don't see why I shouldn't.

Me, personally having a drink while I casually stroll from point A to point B, or while i sit on a bench somewhere or lounge in a patch of grass, carefully stowing the refuse in my backpack to be disposed of at a later time, harms absolutely no one.
If I were seriously intoxicated, belligerent or obscene I could understand, but that is just never the case.
I'm simply a man, enjoying a drink.
It's not as if I smash bottles in cross walks or pound 40's on the cop-shop lawn.
I wish people could just mind their own business.

The day will come when some good samaritan or some hero cop will bust me, dump my liquor or give me a fine, just as they've done in the past. You'd think people would have better things to do. I don't care either way. They're not going to teach me anything, I've heard their lectures, it's old news.

I worry too much.

I feel sometimes the walls closing in, that my life is corroding my brain.
That boredom, alcohol, work, lack of work, the sky, the earth, colors, shades, songs, words, all of this will one day and without warning drive me insane and I will explode in a way neither myself or anyone I know can possibly conceive.
Which of course is complete balderdash.
I just worry too much.

I suffer from over-thinking, which I think (haha) is common among most people, maybe the difference is that I'm aware of it. I don't know if that makes it better or worse. Probably better because then one can consciously ignore it. I suppose it's one of the reasons I drink as much as I do. I need distractions, things to make me forget my mind.
I guess it may be true that ignorance is bliss, but it is surprisingly difficult to achieve that mind set of one's own will. Like a Pandora’s box.
All enlightenment seems to do is make the world smaller and smaller and smaller until nothing matters, so what's the difference? May as well not ask questions regarding existence because the end result is the same.

"Existentialism is often described as a philosophy of despair, when really it's just the opposite."

hmmmm
I'm not sure about that.
If that statement is true, then you really have to work at it.

I'm losing it.

My concentration is fading.