4 : 09 A.M.
just barely post tentious

Is there a word like afternoon for the hours following midnight? The members of the food server caste are trained to say "good morning" after midnight, but this has never sounded right to me. Morning means light and chirping birds and the garbage truck dumping 5 tons of broken glass into a reverberating metal bin. Three and 4 A.M.s are empty times, with space instead of light and sound. Afternight? No, it hasn't ended. Soon it will have to be named, since so many caffeine dusted productivity organisms are active in it. I'll just call it "now". Now is the most abject of vacuums in which to talk. That's why I write now. I really have no other means of amusing myself. During the day I talk to the phone, or the friends. Speech, now, turns into a stream of windex hitting the monitor. My words dissipate in the hot air, the only impact is that of flecks of spit on an eighteen inch square of curved glass. (ew.)

I've got my music machines screaming into my ears, of course. I don't talk to them, mostly. I tell a machine how to tell a machine how to tell a machine how to talk to them. The ear fatigue from all the fans, the ungated electronic hiss, and the actual voices of the aluminum cadre is scorching. I have a slight sunburn from walking in the Vancouver sun, which turns a soft touch prickly. That's what ear fatigue does, but aurally.

Um

.

Ah yes, Vancouver. I went up there with Helen, and we stayed at the Sylvia Hotel, recommended by hipster and psychologist alike. Treetop level room lets us listen to conversations on the street outside as if we were suspended upside down in the midst of them. Something about the Window design bounces the sound right in. We went outside to see what was going on at the beach. I was very surprised to see the entire city of Vancouver sitting on picnic blankets or milling around wearing blinking lights. (blinking light accessories included the red devil horns, fuzzy bunny ears, epilespy earrings, lightrope-cum-lightsaber toys, and the ubiquitous non-blinking chemical glow necklace. I guess the fiber optic wand has fallen out of favor.) What was going on, announced a faraway public address system, was the biggest fireworks show in the world - 3 fireworks exhibitiors competing to see who was the explosioniest. The news would later report that 400,000 people had turned out to watch. Vancouver, I am told, has a residency of around 500,000. So I guess you could say I got to see most of them. Many of them were asian. A surprising number looked like they had just stepped out of the trailer park. A woman standing about 15 in front of me (which meant there were 30 people sitting between her and me) was oblivious to the growing unrest behind her fireworks-show blocking silhouette. "Lady sidown!" said the middle-aged Korean-ish guy sitting on my left foot. "Down in front!" screeched an unseen woman off to the rear. Other people threw little wadded up bits of paper. The highlight of the evening was when the obstructing woman half turned around to adjust something beside her. This set off a wave of activity in the people suffering a partial eclipse of the show, as they glimpsed a faint hope of attracting her attention. "Sidown sidown sidown!!!" was the Koreanish man's contribution to this surge of complaints. She eventually sat down, more likely from leg fatigue than any sort of information transfer.

The fireworks show? It was okay. I mostly wondered if the skyrockets ever hit each other on the way up. I found the post-show stampede a more unique experience. Wow. 3 streets removed from the main flow of people, the density dropped enough that I could stop and take a picture.

pretty busy for 11 pm

On the way out of the city the next day we ran into the longest wait to cross the border I'd ever had. Probably around 100 minutes, estimating conservatively. This picture is of one of the three guys we passed who were selling ice cream out of little carts. Also in the picture: the world's first all wheel drive tent, aka spongecar squarebutt, with room for even the least restrained bumper sticker enthusiast. Note also that it is daytime in the picture, and we have already been in line for a little while, whereas by the time we crossed into the US, it was very night.