Journal

Where I post about the things that happened in my life. Sometimes they’re diary entries, sometimes works of non-fiction, sometime just random photographs.

In which I offer to become your dancing monkey, metaphorically speaking

PETERMBALL Journal

I’m going to be travelling a lot over the next three weeks. Mostly, this travelling takes place on the weekends. The weekends when I usually write my blog posts for the coming week.  I’m sure you can see the conundrum that’s coming along, any moment now, to serve as the point for this blog post.

The good news is that it doesn’t actually take all that long to prep posts and set them up while I’m away. What usually takes me the better part of the weekend is figuring out what to blog about (you know, when I’m *not* blathering on about the new writing routine and the joy of getting stuff done). To this end, I’m going to turn to you, the readers of this blog, to help me out a little:

Give me topics.

Ask me questions.

Set me challenges.

Basically, fire stuff my way that you think would make for an interesting blog, even if it’s just one word, and I’ll take the list with me to help fill in those lonely hours spent in airport departure lounges waiting for planes to take me places. For the next few weeks I’m happy to be your dancing monkey, all you gotta do is hum the first few bars of the tune.

I pitched a similar kind of question at twitter last week, and got the suggestion of Where/how to find ideas to write about? from Nathan Russel, so that’s going to be kicking things off on Friday. After that, I’m trusting in you folks to serve as a crowd-sourced muse to supplement the subconscious one that’s going to burnt out by five AM flights and day-job seminars.

What d’ya say, can you help me out?

Haircut

PETERMBALL Journal , ,

I would be showing you a picture of my freshly-shorn scalp right now, but for the fact that instagram is being uncooperative. Instead I’ll have to link that shit and leave it up to you to be pro-active if you want to mock my new hair-do. Don’t be shy about that shit either – it’s quite a mockable haircut once you get started.

The short version, for those who aren’t inclined to follow the link, is that I recently went from my long-haired grunge-kid do back to the “seriously, just pull out the clippers and shave my damn head” look that seems to bother the hell out of hairdressers when you walk in with hair longer than six inches.

It’s a process I go through ever two years or so, whereupon I start growing my hair out again. Mostly I do it because my hair only works in these two states – in-between it’s a mess of kinks and spit-curls that are impossible to deal with – and because I never really got the hang of talking to hairdressers and getting the kind of haircut I actually wanted.

This time around, though, holy shit, it was a new experience. I kinda did everything on the spur of the moment after work, which meant I walked into one of those male barber places where you sit on a bench with a bunch of other dudes until someone calls your name. No appointments, just sit your ass and wait your turn.

I picked it because it was close to the train station and Pulp Fiction books. And, seriously, holy shit this place was good.

First up, they didn’t engage in the standard hair-dresser rhetoric when I asked them to shave my head, they just nodded and pulled out the clipper.

Secondly, well, no-one’s ever taken that much care when they’ve shaved my head before. It’s usually clippers, a little clean up, and you’re done. These guys fucking hunted for stray hairs, went at the back of my neck with a straight-razor, and took a little extra time to even out my fringe-line where the cowlicks usually fuck things up a few days after the cut.

I’m telling you, that shit was impressive, and totally worth the wait with a bunch of dudes who were, well, dude-like in their appreciation for the car mags and old copies of Zoo on offer while we were waiting. I may have found the first hairdresser I’ll willing go back to, and it only took me twenty-five years of haircuts to get there.

And with that, I leave you with an oddly in-theme favourite film-clip:

UPS is making me crazy

PETERMBALL Journal

Has anyone attempted to send something to my post office via UPS in the last couple of months? I got a notification in the mail today saying they couldn’t deliver, and after phone calls we establish that  they now wouldn’t deliver the package because it’d been over a week since they dropped off the notification and it’s gone into some kind of lost property dead zone. “Please get the original sender to contact us with your correct address,” they said.

Right. I have no fucking idea who the original sender is, or what they’re trying to send me. The only clue they can give me is the initials MPS. This doesn’t clear things up any.

Putting this on the blog because, quite honestly, the mystery is driving me crazy and the alternative is finding my local UPS office and punching someone in the nose.