May 1, 2009
‘tis May, ahhh.
doortoriver
May 2, 2009
The old coffee maker died. The new one has a terrible off gassing of the plastic within that flavors the coffee with a distinct, malodorous offense that makes it virtually undrinkable. I know because I tried, even though it smelled of melted plastic, and will probably give me cancer, but it was morning, I was desperate to wake up, and man enough to give it a go.
May 3, 2009
I spin into town to do some errands, running into an acquaintance who tells me that another acquaintance and his awful wife have moved away, never to return, and boy don’t I feel good about that because I never liked the guy or his wife much anyway. Well all right, thanks for the dandy news, we part, I enter the grocery store - and who do I see? The supposedly moved, awful wife of the disliked acquaintance. Drat! I can’t help it, I go up to her, Hey, I thought you guys moved? The awful wife sneers, You wish. And all I’m thinking is, Rumors, the untrustworthy handmaidens of the devil!
May 5, 2009
It’s time to renew my driver’s license. It’s always like a 5 year slap in the face. Even though everyone takes a terrible driver’s license picture, the old ones always look better than what you look like now, you know, the current version of you that’s about to be enshrined in plastic in your wallet for the next 5 years, the one that won’t look that bad when you pull it out 5 years from now to renew it again because, of course, you’ll look that much older again. Really, it’s the gift that keeps on giving, eh?
May 6, 2009
stevepunter
No matter how big your flock, we are all born alone.
May 7, 2009
No Internet this morning. It was so...retro. A real live reenactment of the old days, when it was just you and your computer and your proprietary software. There were no networks, no e-mail, no peer to peers, no interactivity at all save passing floppy disks back and forth at the computer club. Haw! Can you imagine? Well, it was just like that today. For a little while. Until it came back.
May 8, 2009
Ok, about the Share chicklet: 
If you click it, you’ll see a bunch of social networking sites that you can submit this very KeithSpeak to, if you so desire, if that is something you are of a mind to do. Of course, this is lots of fun, so go ahead, click a site, see how it works. But sadly, as with any Beta, if no one’s interested, or I find it annoying or you find it distracting, it may disappear as suddenly as it arrived - poof! Gone. We’ll see, eh?
May 9, 2009
Barry was in a tight spot. This crowd was spooked by his elaborate facial hair and frenzied up by his tailored tunic with the fancy piping that they misconstrued as a mocking of their plain purple cloaks - like Barry was somehow better because his people had good seamstresses - but not good enough to shave that hairy pointy monstrosity! Funny, as a curious aside, Barry had never been threatened with candles before, and though he was wary of getting his face burned off, he found the dripping wax to be kind of a turn on. And actually, Cindy, the lead fearmonger, was getting pretty excited herself with the prospect of eliminating yet another over coiffed beard. It was a tense situation.
arbron
May 10, 2009
On occasion, I like to impart bits of my vast knowledge to help enlighten the human race. Today’s thought is such a pearl. Ahem. Food, my friends, is the dirty little secret of living a life here. Ingesting others, be they plant or animal, is necessary if one is to live in this reality. In other words, you have to end one’s existence (be it plant or animal), to extend your own. Yuck, huh?
May 11, 2009
I’m waiting for grass to grow. Literally. It’s painfully slow. I go out there every day to assess what’s happening. Not much is happening. Patience is required. So I wait. Still nothing happens. How long can I stand there? I yell at it, Grow damnit! You know? Some tough love? Nothing happens. Sigh.
May 12, 2009
It’s election day in the province of British Columbia. Out with the old, in with the new.
Or not. UPDATE:
Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
May 13, 2009
Our vet is making a house call today to do acupuncture on one of our dogs. How fantastic a statement is that?!
May 14, 2009
So this guy writes in and asks me, so how come if I’ve been doing this blog for 10 years now, how come I haven’t started repeating myself, or recycling from older posts? How could he tell if he was reading original material as advertised? And how come my life was still so damn fascinating! Ok, I added that last part. Anyway, I told him that I can remember every single thing I’ve ever written, as if that was even possible, and as a result I have never once repeated myself or recycled material, but now that he’s brought it up, maybe I will, because it’s not a bad idea. I think because I agreed with him, there at the end, it didn’t go much past that. I dunno, maybe we exhausted the subject.
May 15, 2009
Ooh, it’s the ides of May! (Is there such a thing?) ‘Cause if there is, ooh, spooooky.
l*u*z*a*returntonature
May 16, 2009
Oh lordy, we watched a terrifically bad movie last night that kind of nearly almost redeemed itself at the end by being a blatant ripoff of another highly successful movie that had a twist ending, only the bad movie upped the ante by being totally implausible all the way up to the twist - the kind where you’re so incredulous at the ridiculousness of what you’re watching that you’re yelling at the movie about how bad it is – oh, and then you’re just suppose to forget about those hours of tortured implausibility once they reveal the ripped off twist ending you’ve already seen before in a way better movie, like that’s supposed to make everything all right, like you didn’t mind being played. Listen, if we put these people in jail when they make movies like this, there will be a lot less crappy movies made. I’m just sayin’.
May 17, 2009
This webmaster gave me the password to an underground forum he administers and later asked me why I never visited, so I had to explain that I don’t use an online alias, don’t go to chatrooms, never comment in comment sections, and I don’t really visit social sites or forums. He was shocked. You don’t have an avatar?! I smiled, Nope, no avatar. Everybody is somebody else on the Internet, he chided, as if talking to a five year old, then eyed me suspiciously, as if talking to a terrorist, Why aren’t you? Maybe I just like who I am and don’t wish I were somebody else, I replied. Yeah right, he snorted. Good one.
May 18, 2009
I’ve always been ahead of my time. Sure, it’s a burden and all, and the jury’s still out on whether it’s a talent, but just knowing that sooner or later everyone will come around to my way of thinking, gives me succor. They’ll probably say something like, He sure knew what he was talking about. Something like that.
May 19, 2009
Jeez, my anti-virus software keeps losing .dll files and then can’t load the program properly. I have to go to the vendor’s site, find the missing .dlls and manually reenter them using a command prompt window. Then, and this is what cheeses me the most (because my computer takes like an hour and a half to reboot), I have to reboot to get the newly entered .dlls reinstalled in the anti-virus library. Five days later it loses them again. A week later it completes the trifecta. You don’t think I’m hopping mad?
May 20, 2009
Rooting through a pile of papers, I found this business card, and although I have no idea who Frankie is, or why he’s using a 555 phone number, I really like his card.
May 21, 2009
The road crews have been out widening, grading, steam rolling and beefing up the road base on our little dirt lane. They are preparing to pave it. The road is two blocks long and downhill, where it pretty quickly dead ends into a cross street below, at which point, if you can’t manage to make a 90 degree turn, your momentum will carry you and your out of control vehicle forward and down another 20 feet or so, off the road and into the neighbor’s house sitting peacefully below, now apparently, waiting for cars to drop in on it. Negotiating this newly paved deathtrap will be a real Canadian wintertime treat for all of us. Oh boy.
May 23, 2009
Here’s something to think about: When all your titles and awards and accolades are gone, when money is irrelevant, when the power you wielded is nonexistent and you are on the verge of exiting this life for another, will you be happy with the naked and unadorned you that lived your life beneath all the awards, money and power, the you that’s left minus the trappings? Seriously, will you be pleased with who you were and what you wrought? If so, good on you; if not, why not?
May 24, 2009
Don’t you think that grotto is an odd little word? Not to be confused with Gordo, grotty or goatse, grotto is somewhat Shangri-La sounding but with a definite overtone of medieval poverty. Yuck-o combo - Hey, the good news is your going to Shangri-La! The bad news is it’s during the Dark Ages. But listen, all is not lost if you have to live in a grotto. Why’s that, you ask? Because there are grotto nymphs! I’m serious - Hi, welcome to my cave, may I introduce you to Maria, Lucy and GiGi. Can you believe there are babes that dig damp caves that flood at high tide?! There’s your Bud Light commercial right there. Anyway, I think that’s enough for today, maybe forever, don’t you?
May 25, 2009
Little dude looks ready to kill.
freeparking
May 26, 2009
I can’t believe in this digital day and age that no one can get a legal movie downloaded to their TV set, and that instead, we all have to get in our gas guzzling, air polluting cars and drive to the video store twice for one stinkin’ movie (once to rent it, once to return it). Sure there’s Netflix, but we’re all already wired! The MPAA sucks.
May 27, 2009
Of course your place is worth something, but the real value of your home and property is not in dollars and cents. It is in the emotional connection you have with the place you live. That attachment (or lack thereof) defines its real worth to you. In other words, if your property is worth big bucks, but it is your home, your sacred place on Earth, the warm place you feel most comfortable and sheltered, then it doesn’t matter what the monetary value is this moment, this week, this Summer selling season, because you have measured its value in emotional terms, and you are richer for living there. Conversely, if you have no attachment to where you’re living, it will be seen as expendable and a commodity that will only have value in dollars and cents. Both are houses, only one is a home. Saaay, what’s the currency of your property?
May 28, 2009
We can’t leave our house or office. They’re paving our road and this guy won’t let us out. I had all these things to do today, I’m a busy man, people expect me, but nooooo, no one leaves. It’s just like being in prison, except for the bad food and the murderers and shivs and stuff. So who died and made the paving crew guy god? Dirty screws.
May 29, 2009
IE8 was pushed to our computers via Microsoft Automatic Update yesterday. I blocked it from installing. I dunno, I didn’t like being told to upgrade, and I definitely don’t like it being done automatically. According to reviews on the Internet, there have been a few problems with this fresh out of Beta browser edition, and to be honest, I have too many other precious things to do than have some software upgrade potentially break stuff that was working perfectly well and that I then have to spend my super valuable time fixing just to get it back to working the way it was already, thank you. I’ll upgrade when I’m ready, see, and in the meantime continue to use Google Chrome as my way of saying, Take that.
May 30, 2009
The dogs are getting me up at 5 in the morning. It’s light out, it’s quiet, it’s actually a nice time of the day at this time of the year. I’ve quite enjoyed it. The real problem is on the other end, that evening, when I feel like going to bed by 9 o’clock. I haven’t been called a hoot or a live wire in oh, ages now.
May 31, 2009
So where does it all come from? The wit, the clever phrasing with lack of punctuation, the philosophies and sensibilities and yes, even my folksy way? Haw! Look, most of that is just part of the toolbox of being a pret-ty darned good writer, the rest is living a swell life in a small town in the scenic interior of beautiful British Columbia, by design, on purpose, and frankly, because that’s worked out so really really really well (if I may say so without sounding, oh, I dunno, giddy), I figured that I had, you know, something to say about the process. That’s all. That’s what I’m talking about.
Return to KeithSpeak or go forward to next month
KeithSpeak June 2009
