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A physical root for mental illness
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Link of the day
- Hits: 716
This was an interesting article. I've long thought it was - no pun intended - "all in the head" - but now I have to reconsider...
And the business drives off a cliff...
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
- Hits: 1345
Labour Day weekend is the end. Holiday Monday Afternoon, busy busy busy, by the evening we're dead. Summer is over. It's that sudden, as if you drove off a cliff at 60 Miles per hour, and that evening we begin to see a few of the local regulars, they know when it's safe to come out. The rest of the week, not bad for 1 server, but a far cry from the craziness that required 3 servers to barely keep up. It's the end.
I've 7 weeks to go, and I need a vehicle real bad...
Arrowheads
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Found
- Hits: 756
The lack of vehicle - 3 weeks now while ICBC sits on their asses twiddling their thumbs - means that my prospecting interests are confined a lot closer to home.
A lot closer. Specifically, walking the beach along Kootenay Lake looking for arrowheads.
I've never found an arrowhead, it's long been a delayed childhood ambition. I've found better - the hammer/maul, other artifacts, flints, but never for some reason, an arrowhead.
And so I begin again walking the beaches of the lake, eyes peeled, scanning the gravel...there sure is a lot of gravel...
Days go by. I'm acquiring the eye.
Finally, digging in the sand I come across this. Entirely by chance.
thin, flat, could be, turning it over and over, clearly broken, but when finally I spot the line of symmetry I have it. My first arrowhead, out of Kootenay Argillite. Walking back up the beach I spy a couple of other flints, out of place in the gravel, clearly napped/worked, discards perhaps or remains of other tools.
I'm not sure about the arrowhead, I was expecting something a bit more - well, complete, and obvious, but shining a light through it reveals the tiny pressure points where it was napped, the edges are serrated from multiple tiny flakes pushed off, it's an arrowhead, sure enough.
Not a bad find, but not perfect, there are better. And so in the morning before week I get up and comb the beach. It's a big beach. I find a few flakes and a sinker, which I discard (later research shows me an image of the same, I should have kept, I had a hunch and disregarded, not good...).
Then the next day, more flakes, and then:
Another broken arrowhead, top, and a few flints/flakes on the bottom.
I'm getting an eye for this, although they're still bloody hard to find, it reassures me that I'm not entirely incompetent and maybe soon I'll be finding complete ones...
Back in Time to an Old Hotel
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Dreams
- Hits: 840
I've traveled back in time to a big, old hotel, it's a servers nightmare, the kitchen is on one floor, the bar is on another, and everywhere there are flights of stairs and unattended tables, I can't keep up, can't begin to keep up...people keep arriving, looking at me expectantly, where do I find the water? This place is a labyrinth, I'm lost...
...a couple at one table, they seem to be enjoying themselves, younger man, twenties, 80's hair, older woman, they tell me that it's time, and they push a remote control and blow up their car, it's somewhere in the hotel, I'm horrified that people will be hurt, I have a bad feeling about this, but they seem pretty confident everything will work out fine...
...the hotel is evacuating, everything is now under control, I can see outside a big blast in the side of a parkade, smoke, people are walking underneath the dangling wreckage of an automobile and I'm getting angry and shooing them away, I'm convinced this bomb thing will end badly...
...in a guests room, he's talking to me familiar like, I've served him before, he's barrel chested and has no torso, lower limbs, just his arms that he uses to carry himself about, and his wife, I don't recognize him at all, but I turn around and by the time I look back he's pulled his torso and legs out from his abdomen or wherever he had them tucked, he's standing up like Burt Reynolds, all normal, laughing at me, he was just joking, I recognize him now, don't I?
...at the back entry there's a stack of old bottles the hotel is throwing away, they're shaped like figurines for exotic and expensive liquers, novelty bottles, one a gilt and porcelaine pig, another is Wile-E-Coyote, there are others, and I'm collecting them, wondering where to store them, someone tells me I have a locker...
...down in the basement of the parkade, I don't recognize this place, I don't have a locker here, friend assures me I do, I find my key, it's a small locker, like a half-sized one at the gym (not the locker I was thinking of), no room for these figurines, inside are a bunch of papers I'd written for university, it's been a long time since I've seen them, makes sense, I'm way back in time, my twenties, I scan the papers, gently scathing criticism from professors, comments...that's all, ...
Now I'm thinking, there's got to be a few people to look up, people I met when I was older and wouldn't it be curious to meet them when they were younger only there's no internet in the 80's or email and how would I get hold of them?
(Strange.)
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