Monthly Archives: July 2005

Rooftop

Leave a comment | Posted by Patrick Calder on in intangibles

IMG_2995.jpgI’ve been watching them as they put an addition on the top floor of the building across the street. They’re about ten stories up, and roughly horizontally parallel to my front windows. And God how I would love to be up there with them.
Can you imagine the feeling of standing up there on top of the world with nothing around you? None of the safety nets and railings. None of the warnings and notices. In this town, were everything must be made new again on a regular basis, the rooftops are ignored. You can still see aberrations from the 50s, 60s, and seventies. Up there, there’s still glass-walled cooling towers and rooftop basketball courts, straight out of a Baretta episode.
I’ve been up there once before, myself. Not across the street, but down in Puerto Rico. We’d built the forms and watched them poor a concrete rooftop. I can distinctly remember sitting on the tarred portion of the roof, watching the cement dry. Looking out over the valley in the middle of the rainforest, knowing that no one else but the few of us up there had this amazing view.
It’s not a particularly sweet or pleasant job. It’s dangerous, dirty, and tiring. My father worked as a roofer many times while I was growing up. Most of my memories involve him coming home sunburned, with new scratches and scrapes, and tar melted to his boots. A couple times I worked cleanup, shoveling broken tiles from around the house into a dumpster. There’s some family bonding time you don’t see on the Pax channel.
There are times where’d I’d love to be up there, without politics, coming home tired from work and not stress. Knowing I’d just built something on top of the city, and never the exact same thing twice.

Please keep in mind that this post is more than 6 years old. Who the hell knows what I was thinking back then?! Damn kids... get off my lawn!

I feel a tune coming on

Leave a comment | Posted by Patrick Calder on in friends, home, music, photo

I ran into the prostitute in the laundry room today, talking on her phone. Someone mentioned that her and her roommate do laundry every day. That had never really occurred to me, but it makes sense. Especially this time of year, with the sweat and the juices, and the whatnot.
In addition to some johnny cash, marilyn manson, and patsy cline, I picked up Miranda Lambert‘s album yesterday, on the iTunes music store. (Gift certificates are our friends). My uncle had bought the CD–which is a pretty strong recommendation in its own right, as previously, the last album he’d bought was only available on vinyl and 8-track–and played it repeatedly while I was down there. She’s pretty good. Country, but not to the point of parody. She has a little bit of folk singer in her voice. And always a good sign: not all of her songs are about love. Looking over her website, it’s some pretty sickeningly blatant marketing by a record label. That journal sounds like it was written by an ad exec trying to sound like a 13 year old girl, not a 22 year old professional musician. But so long as the marketing doesn’t affect the music… we’re good.
Okay… political question: Do you ever wonder how a US President who lied multiple times to invade 3 countries resulting in over a hundred thousand deaths, can keep a straight face when acting outraged that the Iranian President may have been involved in taking hostages 25 years ago?
Food for argument.
I maybe shoulda gone out tonight. Kier tried to drag me out to Dollhouse, at the Black Cat. At the very least, I would have like a chance to see Kelowna, (smart, interesting, attractive). But after 2 seperate cover charges, the fact I almost never dance, and that it’s being held in the dungeon known as Backstage, I decided to stay home. I think God is on my side though. Ju7st as Kier stepped out of the subway, he got nailed by the biggest rainfall we’ve had in weeks. Told him that a storm which comes on so fast will dissipate just as fast. He didn’t believe me, and made a run for it. Within 5 minutes, it had pretty much stopped raining.
I was so very tempted to go buy an Airport Express today. So often when I’m working with my laptop on the couch, I want to listen to some music that I have on my machine, but I either don’t have it on disk or don’t feel like burning one. The Express would let me wirelessly stream the music to my stereo. Not to mention print wirelessly. But after spending 8 bucks at Radio Shack for a couple of AV splitters, I now have what I need to plug in my laptop from anywhere in the apartment. Compared to the $120 Express… not a bad compromise. Not to worried about the printing. If I’m printing, I’m gonna have to get off my ass soon anyway to mail, fax, or assemble something. Oh… the store? Crap. No less than 4 employees sitting around on top of the boxes talking, waiting 10 minutes before asking me if I needed assistance. (I couldn’t have cared one way or the other… but, you know… common courtesy…)
Today? Massive laundry day. Tomorrow? Massive kitty litter day. My life is so glamorous.

Please keep in mind that this post is more than 6 years old. Who the hell knows what I was thinking back then?! Damn kids... get off my lawn!

Rachel. That is all.

Leave a comment | Posted by Patrick Calder on in music

rachel.jpg How could I not love this woman? That’s Rachel, from Visqueen. The unwitting love of my life for the last year an a half. She just doesn’t know yet that she’s really in love with me. *shrug* In the mean time, they have a flickr account now, with much goodness. More than a few shots I recognize from their live shows here.
Yes. I’m back. Survived 4 and a half days without wifi. Somehow. (Okay… so the 400 k/s ethernet wasn’t bad). Survived my family, which is a bigger feat. Sadly there were no fights or embarrassing acts of a physical nature to record for posterity’s sake this years. As Michele said, “it all seemed to go by so fast”. I had even gone up a day and a half early, so that I might have some time to myself, to think deep thoughts (and download porn). Being my one year anniversary of the self-employment thing (*knock on wood*), I want to find time to go over everything I’ve done, and figure out what’s next. But all that damn meaningful family crap got in the way in Texas.
I’m trying to think of how to describe the good things about seeing family. It isn’t coming to me. It’s not the wild and crazy shit your friends and you do. It’s the people who won’t kick you out because they disturbingly understand and sympathize with the stupid shit you’ve done and the dumb-ass you’ve acted like. You share some common history of trauma, and aren’t disturbed when the other couple’s baby looks a bit like you.
A former co-worker with a obvious Australian accent made a comment once about his cross country commute, to the effect that he never unlocked his car doors while driving through Texas. “Yall’s not from ’round here, is y’all?”. Of course he was overly paranoid. It’s not like he was in the back woods of Mississippi or something. But even so, some shit down there disturbs even me. You can be guaranteed of a couple half-hushed racist comments or discussions, involving Blacks or Hispanics. I don’t get too worked up about this one. Racism, at it’s core is about opinion and attitude. And even if I happen to think its an opinion best left to inbreeding mental defectives, no matter which direction it’s coming from, it’s still their opinion, and they’re free to speak of it. I just excuse myself from the conversation or room.
The level of ignorance was a bit disturbing though. Particularly about the government and wars. It was like they were reading right from the White House press releases. Freedom. War on Terror. Those people. The monsters in that region that just wanna kill everyone. Iraq is gone… we’re safe from them now. Iraq equals 9/11. Even heard how Bush is a wimp and we need a more aggressive president. (Both Bush Jr and Clinton launched more military actions than the previous administrations for two decades back).
SO… you know… patriotism scares me. Patriotism has become loving your country no matter what. Love it or leave it. Growing up I loved this country because I believe it when they told me how free and caring we were. How we stood up and protected oppressed people, and fought back against the bullies who picked on us. If we lived up to just half of our marketing slogans…
Yeah… I don’t know what I’m saying. I’m gonna go back to looking at that picture of Rachel.

Please keep in mind that this post is more than 6 years old. Who the hell knows what I was thinking back then?! Damn kids... get off my lawn!