What have I been up to, anyway?

I just walked outside to take the recycling out, and you know what hit me? The beautiful scent of the weird trees in our front yard. They bloomed, and I have no idea what type they are, but it smells so nice out. I guess spring is really here… Finally. :)

… Now just two weeks of bliss until the summer humidity shows up.

I was looking at this photoset when I had the idea to look up places right here at home.

I found an interesting site, mostly telling me that a lot of really cool places are out there! Or… Were, lots of demolition going on. I asked a friend about some places downtown, and was led to the King Edward hotel. Apparently there are a few abandoned sections in there? Including a ballroom. I found a couple of these signs, and I got scared off. Next time I’m bringing somebody with more balls. (”I suggest a male.”)

Unsure of where to go next, I decided to walk in the general direction of the CN tower, trying to stay off the main streets. While I was there I was surprised at how many tourists will face rain to take an expensive elevator to the top of the tower. What else surprised me was paying $2 for the worst ice cream cone I’ve ever had.

Decided to wander towards the lake shore. It was raining just a bit, but the walking was keeping me warm. Walked around on the harbor, and wanted to get on the other piers, but it seemed to be protected? I didn’t investigate further, maybe next time I will, pretend one of those boats is mine. Just had my little photo shoot with this big sailboat I found.

Walked over to what seems to be the abandoned Canada Malts Co. building. Completely covered in fencing, barbed wire, and motion sensing lights. This would be a dream to sneak into though. After walking all the way around, and taking tons of pictures, I continued down the harbor. I wanted to walk farther down, all the way to Harbor front. But then it started coming down like crazy. I was completely soaked very quickly and there was no shelter around, just the new house built. I decided to get away from the lake as fast as possible.

What followed was a lot of walking. The good thing is I noted a lot of places for future exploring, as my will to sneak around buildings was diminishing. I decided to cut through an alley, and found a short ladder onto a roof, which I decided to check out. What I found was some really cute graffiti, lots of connecting roofs, and essentially a giant puddle. My shoes were already completely soaked through, so I didn’t care anymore. I climbed up to a bit of a higher roof, and found some cool skylights. I’m not a complete weakling after all! Wanted to search around more, but the buildings around were actually being used. Actually, what would they have done? Next time I’ll search around longer.

I was tired, and walked back towards the subway station I came from. Took lots of side trips down alleys to take pictures of future spots to explore, and eventually gave up and grabbed a bus. (With a very wet bus ticket, I add.) Soaking wet, I went home. It was a great day though, and I look forward to exploring more on a nicer day.

All links lead to my flickr photostream. :)

One flew west, and one flew over the cuckoo’s nest.

I decided to faithfully work for the school show this year. Frankly, it was tiring, long hours, lots of sitting around doing nothing… And yet I still want to do it all over again next year. I worked on the audio crew, just the 3 of us. We were told we had to make sound effects. One early Saturday morning we walked around the neighbourhood around the school collecting noises. Something about 3 teenagers walking around, we’re just asking to be hassled. One guy swore at us as we were collecting the noises from this downright creepy revolving door. My favourite though was just this lovely hummer owner. We needed to get sound effects of cars driving by, and we needed them to honk. I suggested making a “honk for the earth” sign. There we stood in the middle of a busy street, when a Hummer sped up, into the lane right next to us and stuck his middle finger out the sunroof. Typical, right?

So we finished our sound effects, only to find out: Almost none of them were being used, and our actual job, which we were told a week before the show, was to buy and set up all the microphones for the show. We later find out almost none of those are actually used either.

So for 2 weeks I was stuck at the school till around 10, weekends included. Force to go on food runs for people to Wendy’s, working with a crazy sound “expert”, running from the booth to the stage, tapping mics, taping mics, re-taping mics, crawling under scary stage extensions… Only to find out I didn’t have to at all. Our expert was annoying, he talked a lot about nothing, and mostly just made the school buy lots of useless stuff. That and everything he did for us, we actually switched back before the show. The most annoying thing he did was dump extra cables on us. Un-labelled cable lying around? That we have to return? It was difficult, and I’m not even sure how that turned out…

It wasn’t all hell though… The cast was great, and the show turned out amazing. Hanging out in the booth with our slightly weird stage manager was great. The audio crew had a lot of fun in that booth. Oh the booth, 2 couches, 1 TV with cable, and so many talks of heroin.

Should I even mention our director? I fear for my life, so I think I’ll leave that out…. And by that I mean she really is a lovely person. Lovely.

Lastly, and I need to get a picture this. Our school has giant glass windows for the hall outside the theatre, we spelt out “Cuckoo’s are Coming.” Of course when they were taking them down they took the time to write out “COCK” and of course I find that amusing. :3

Photos can be found on my Flickr account.

Things change, and I have to recognise that. So here are a few edits to my previous blog posts.

Starting with the TTC rant:

I haven’t been taking the bus for about a week, so I just found this wonderful new design on the buses. It’s not completely new, but they made the seats in the back of the bus, on the raised section much, much better. I was simply… Happy, when I saw them. More leg room, and they moved the seats around so now people CAN stand back there. It’s delicious, thank you TTC. I’m a happy rider. :)

Spoonifur.com blocked:

Now, I don’t know why… But spoonifur.com is no longer blocked at my school. Maybe somebody finally decided to check up on that? I had an email prepared to send out and everything, but I guess they got to it first. My pornographic deeds will once more be spread across my school network. Very, very nice.

A look into the future:

The last two weeks, and this current week have been increasingly taken up by the school show. When I’m not dead from all day rehearsals, and this week of actual shows, and the saturday giant clean up… I’ll write a post to remember the hor- amazing time I’ve been having.

Lastly, just enjoy the photoshop sketches. Any comic ideas I’ve had dissapear too quickly. Man, I hope this posts this time. Spoonifur.com has been acting weird.

Yep. That is a Toronto District School Board computer screenshot. It’s strange that this wasn’t brought to my attention earlier, I went onto my site at school to check things out and it was working fine all year. I guess they finally caught up to my antics! Though I’m not suprised, the key words for my site seem to be “Bra Man and Panty Girl” and that’s just a recipe for disaster.
What I am suprised by is how my site became the top spot on a google search, for such an interesting phrase.

The internet really IS for porn!

The Toronto Transit Commission has done nothing to me personally, but their stupid decisions weigh down on me daily. Introducing, the brand new Toronto Hybrid-electric public bus. When I first saw it I thought it was quite stunning. And it is! The old buses needed some cleaning, and needed some redesigning. Of course there are many versions floating around of the new and old buses. (Some weird half-breeds, which are actually my favourite, but that is a different story.)

Already this “rant” is sounding too nice. Let me get real here, I hate these buses. If you look at my helpful diagram, you can see that those are stairs in the back of the bus. There are odly placed seats on these stairs. These seats have NO leg room. Especially the second last row. They must have used the smallest people in all of Toronto to build these. Do you know who takes the bus? Students. We take it a lot. We all have backpacks. Big, stupid, homework filled backpacks. So you sit on the bus with your bag, right? Do you put it on your lap, squishing yourself because of these stupid seats? Or maybe just sit with it on, that will work…No, no it won’t. Your knees will be pushed into hard molded plastic, or if you’re lucky the metal air conditioning vent. So the only way to sit properly is to lounge sideways, it’s very comfortable.

Until the ever lovely TTC promises you more buses! More drivers! More routes! And then they steal your bus. They stole my bus. It’s not a very long route to my house, we have 2 buses that come every 15 minutes. Sitting 15 minutes in the freezing cold bus depot can be annoying, but since it comes so often, you are guaranteed a double seat to lounge on. When they steal one of your buses, you have to wait half an hour in the cold, have your knees squished into the molded plastic, while the creepiest guy on the entire bus decides to sit beside you. All while the bus driver yells “MOVE BACK!”

Dear Bus Driver,

Standing on steps while a bus moves is very dangerous. There is a time and place for crowd surfing. A bus isn’t it. Though that would be really cool, it will probably never happen, in reality you will have a pile of angry bus riders in the back of your bus.

Suck it,

Bus Rider.

As a closing note, I would like to say something about etiquette.

If there is a huge line of people waiting half an hour for the bus, and you think you can walk to the front of the line as the bus is boarding and walk right on ahead of the rest of us, you are a douchebag.

If the subway is crowded, and you leave your bag on the seat while we stand, you are a douchebag. (Unless you’re that little old lady with a lot of groceries, you’re forgiven and I’m sorry.)

If that little old lady with groceries wants to sit, she gets to sit. It’s the rules, douchebag.

When the train stops, and the doors open, the people on the outside will part, letting the people inside out. If you and your 3 friends barge right in, you’re all douchebags.

So TTC, I hate you. (sometimes) (Especially those new metal benches. Canada is a cold place, metal benches mean a cold ass.)

Last night, I said “bye” to the IRC channel that housed me for a year and a half now. I don’t know how many are aware at this point that I’m not coming back. It’s not that I don’t love you guys, quite the contrary; rather I’m scared how attached I’ve become. There’s probably not much you know about my real life, channel dwellers. The fact is I’m not really social, at all. I’m shy, self conscious, basically a regular teenager. A channel full of people of the same nature that are willing to put up with me means a lot. I could show off my doodles, and be praised. (Because you think I’m cute? Not all of them were good.) I could pop in, whine, and talk about my day and hear others do the same. Or I could sit back and watch the adults discuss something, eventually turning into an argument. Occasionally we would even discuss Megatokyo! Our deeply internet driven lives un-covered. It scares me how far gone I am. I’m more social with a bunch of usernames than real people. High school is tough, but I’m not even trying. Thinking back now, I probably know more about the relationships in your lives than most of my friends at this point. Which is horrible, I’m treating real friends as I should you internet people, a non-caring attitude. I cared about your drama, your angst, and your good times too. But I haven’t taken the time for real friends here. In fact, this revelation is much too late to get back with the people who matter, I’m holding on to the people who will still have me.

To tell the truth, a part of me does miss you, the other hates you and is glad you’re gone. You’re bad for me, and I’m cutting you off. Spoon is gone, #mt-talk.

So it’s almost been a month since I updated. (I sense many posts starting with these lines in the future.) So that means either I’ve been really busy having super fun time that I haven’t written anything, or that nothing of interest has happened at all. Or somewhere in between, so what has happened in the last month?

Well, Christmas happened! It was an enjoyable time for the friends and family, and winter break was the best thing ever. 2 weeks off from school is awesome. All wrapped up by a stay-at-home new years. Talked to some people online, played video games in my office, ate some cookies. Not exactly my posted doodle, but one day! Which brings me to my next point, I have also purchased an XBOX 360. Along with it Assassins Creed, and Dead Rising. (Which I currently swapped for Bioshock, and it’s awesome.) It’s a pretty cool system, and as a friend in science pointed out, “ever since I got my XBOX, I haven’t been depressed anymore!” Though, he is a boy, and does not have feelings to begin with. </angry female> Moving on…

In the past month I’ve done almost no work, no art, no nothing! I have a serious case of LAZY. Argh. This will not be useful, as next week is exam week! I have an english, photography, and math exam. Some serious studying must be done for that last one. I hereby challenge myself to fix the lazy…Eventually…

Maybe updating my cute little blag will help more. Quick! Inspire me to draw moar comics! I want a meaty archive by the end of this year! Spoon out, goodnight folks.

I kind of wish I had taken a screenshot of the old site, just for archiving purposes. But then again, it wasn’t much!  I decided to start using ComicPress, a webcomic theme for Wordpress. Kind of scary, the change over seems like a giant leap. But after a bit of confusion you start to figure things out. (That is, archiving your pages, naming files, fixing blog/comic archives, etc.)  In the end it works much better than the old theme if I want to post comics or drawings. And it’s still a neat system for my blog down below.

Followed all the instructions for an inital setup and eventually I want to customize it even more. (While the default colors are nice…) The header font was blah, so I made a nice one up in Flash. And one for my blag. They’re kind of cool, right?
It is a large step for me, there’s more care for this type of setup. I bet the archive looks funny now since Bra Man and Panty Girl were drawn weeks apart. Though I guess this means I’ll have to start drawing more comics to fill the archive up. The cool part is you can use the category system to seperate different comics. Right now I have “Bra Man and Panty Girl” and  “Life of Spoon.” (Which I might rename, hmm…)

But ComicPress is fun! And if I browse the forums they have set up, even more flexible than I thought.  This is a new age for spoonifur! :)

Let me start off by saying that Stars are possibly in my top 5 bands. (My Last.Fm page can attest.) I wanted to go see them at the end of the summer, at the Virgin Music Festival, but it was a steep price to pay!

Anyway, I found 2 friends to go with. Rather amusing, one had only started listening to Stars a couple weeks back, the other had no clue who they were. So I picked up my guys and took them downtown, we were in luck, a snowstorm had hit the city causing black outs in certain places, but not the theatre! We stood freezing in the line, among the artsy and young adults of downtown. We were handed free rolling papers! That was…interesting.

So doors open and we get our cold asses in, walk through a long hallway past the people getting coat check. (We decided to hold our coats, which was gross and tiring when you’re standing for so long.) The place was really nice, we set ourselves up in front of the middle of the stage, a bit back. Opening band was pretty bad, though the girl in it was quite pretty. By the looks of it, we were all just waiting for them to finish. Did I mention that the audience was mostly girls, and girls with boyfriends? Got a chance to look around at least. :)

Okay, so they finish, and what happens? Everybody pushes forward of course! Unaware of this phenomenon we got pushed back a bit, but mostly held our spots alright. I mean, hey, it looked as if we were the youngest people there. Fred went to get us drinks, he had a pretty hard time getting back. He noted that the sign at the bar for non-alcoholic drinks was: “Sorry! No beer!” and in small print “Yo seriously! I’m sorry!” So finally, they had taken down all the opening band stuff, and the lights dim. The Beginning After the End started playing, they walked out slowly, in this blue haze. That’s when I realized I had never actually seen a picture of the group. Some pretty cool people it seems.

The show was beautiful. The stage was covered in flowers, which they threw into the crowd. Made it smell so nice, such a nice contrast to the cold outside. The girls in front of me caught some, and the girl to my left caught some too. Later she gave me one, and while holding it and feeling pretty, I realized I wasn’t going to do anything with it at home. So I passed it on to the girl on my right, who was totally dancing by the end of the night. Stars are from Toronto! So they loved us, and we loved them. Their encore was The Night Starts Here, a favorite of mine, it was awesome. Then their encore launched into a couple more songs….So they DO love us!

I don’t much about writing about shows…Because I don’t know much about shows! This is the first band I’ve seen live, and it gave me such a rush. I was dancing, I was singing, it was amazing. I can see them on stage when I listen to them now. I’m craving another show, though maybe I’ll take somebody who will enjoy it this time.

One last thing: The lights! The amazing lights!

Click for pictures, be transported to the magical land of Flickr.

Read the comments for more details~ This entry is very late, show was exactly a week ago.