Wake Me Up When September Ends

It occurs to me that I've dumped a lot of myself into this weblog. A fairly accurate recreation of my personality could be created, I think, if some AI researcher had enough time and fortitude to sort through and boil down the posts. For three and a half years I've been at this without skipping a day.

Three and a half years, I've come to realize, takes it out of you. While I was away in Ontario, it was such a relief to not have to dive into the cesspit that is the modern mediascape--to not have to trawl for a happening that pissed me off, that disturbed me, or was otherwise complaint-worthy. The original material that I create can't fill that entire every-other-day gap.

I didn't write a post today. I had an idea, but I couldn't muster the will to actually put it into words. Instead, I applied edits on a short story that's been sitting for a little while, and I was struck by how relaxing the whole thing was. This isn't the first time I've toyed with stepping away from this weblog, but in the end I wasn't willing to step away from it then.

Things are different now.

That being said, I'm putting this weblog in a suspended state for the rest of the month. I'll return on October 1st, possibly with a resumed daily schedule, possibly one that's less frequent but doesn't have to be padded with less-relevant fluff. There's plenty of stuff to still read in the archives, of course, if you feel like it; over three and a half years you build up a lot.

For the rest of the month, though... it's looking like a fine, clear month to me.

Photo: Birds in the Puddle

Here's something else I found at Niagara Falls, not necessarily off the beaten track but the sort of thing the average person wouldn't really stop to consider--a bunch of small birds clustering around one of the large puddles on the cliffside promenade leading up to the Falls themselves. I don't know what kind of birds they are; like I've said on similar occasions, I'm no birdguy.


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Photo: Captain John's in the Shadow of the Cranes

Even at the foot of Yonge Street, where the land meets the water, Toronto is changing. Captain John's Seafood, the floating restaurant housed in an old liner, has been a fixture of the area for decades but is now up for sale, and around it new condos rise on some of the last empty land in the downtown core. Every time I come here, it's like one frame of an animation--even after only two years.


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Photo: Ruler of the Ruin

During a recent expedition deep into the blasted wastelands of the St. Clair Disaster--an expedition which Randy McDonald and I barely survived, incidentally, as surrounded by streetcars as we were--I passed by a building that seemed to be frozen in mid-demolition, watched over by a solitary cat. I don't know if it's a neighborhood cat that likes the view, if it lives there, or what, but its presence was a welcome reminder that even in the face of the world-wrecking devastation wrought by streetcar right-of-way construction, life can still manage to hang on.


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Photo: Falls Climbers

I've never been to the American side of Niagara Falls, but it's easy to get a good view of what's going on in New York from the Canadian side. Sure, the American Falls may lack the gravitas of the Horseshoe Falls, but there are stairs and paths that practically bring visitors to within touching distance of the cascade. I took this shot with my camera's maximum zoom--all that mist must have made it a cool and pleasant day over there.


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Photo: Industry in Hamilton

Yes, it exists! It's not in the same category as the unicorn or the dodo--there are actually still factories in Hamilton, and they still make things. I took this shot looking over Hamilton Harbour from the Burlington Bay Skyway, and things look pretty active with all that smoke and fire. Probably has something to do with steel.


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Photo: I Don't Want to Set the Bus on Fire

There's a thin line dividing the 1950s from the apocalypse. As a decade, it was the first time when we actually had the capacity to deliver an apocalypse, and the retrofuturistic stylings of the Fallout series in particular dig deep into the possibilities there. Sometimes, you'll find those same stylings right in front of you. At the front entrance of the Halton County Radial Railway in the farmlands past Milton, you'll find a row of old, decomissioned city buses. #732, an ex-Hamilton Street Railway trolleybus awaiting restoration, has the look of something that scavengers might stumble across in the post-nuclear devastation.

The title is because the photo reminds me of the Fallout 3 intro.


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Photo: The Color of the Summer Skyway

Yes, I know that I posted up a photo yesterday as well--but the fact is that my being on vacation, as well as taking a general vacation from the news media, leaves me with less time to come up with posts worth putting up here. I don't think you're particularly interested in looking at worthless posts, either. So from now until next Thursday, I'm running a simple photopost week here.

For today, here's a photograph of the Garden City Skyway off towering above a Niagara field. It carries the Queen Elizabeth Way over the Welland Canal, and it's surprisingly big until you consider the scale of the ships that need to pass beneath it.


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Photo: There's A Place I Know in Ontario

Across the world, people know its name--Niagara Falls. That roaring cascade has been a magnet for tourists and honeymooners for more than a hundred years. If you've never been there and want to replicate the experience on a budget, here's what you can do. First, look at this picture. Second, set the temperature of your house to around 34 degrees Celsius. Third, stand in the shower with your clothes on for a few minutes. Fourth, buy some expensive and useless plastic tchotchkes.

Congratulations! You've just recreated the essential Niagara Falls experience on a budget that can't be beat. For an optional add-on to make it even more authentic, consider giving yourself a case of heat exhaustion.


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Taking a Break From All My Worries

Yinz may have noticed over the past few days that the posts on this weblog have been a bit more abstract than usual. At first it didn't start out as intentional--I was in Chicago to attend Worldcon, not to trawl through newspaper articles until I found something that pissed me off enough to fulminate about it, and even though it's over now I find it somewhat relaxing to not take the hobby back up quite yet.

Not because I have any particular interest in ignorance, mind you. At this point I see it more as a mental health issue. I've been in a pretty bad way in some respects over the last little while, time and again sinking into dark pits. It's easy to feel demoralized and powerless in a world like this, in a world where those we trust to lead us seem interested only in maximizing their own power and don't give a toss about what or who they have to push aside in order to get there. It's hard, sometimes, going through the day with a constant churning in the pit of my stomach, seeing all this bad news and coming away with the conviction that things won't get better.

It took a couple of days free of news before what was going on really started to sink in. The attitudes of the convention may have helped with that, of course, but regardless I started feeling more level--stopped dwelling on things I couldn't change, started feeling more at ease with the world. It's not the kind of feeling that will last forever, of course; it takes a lot of active work to not dwell on certain things, and I don't want to wallow in ignorance.

Still, it's a nice vacation of the mind. For anyone who's getting wound up by the news, I suggest that for a few days you stop looking at the papers and pretend that everything's going to be okay.