Lazy Andrew Harvey

Yes,
it has been forever since I put up a post, but I have been busy, working the new job, MacDougall being down to visit and being awesome have been taking up most of my time.

This is cheap, but I am putting up an assignment for my creative writing class, where we have to create a character for a story, and we were supposed to just write things as we thought them, so it is as close to being able to read my thoughts as you could probably get.

Name, need a name, Jon, no, Mike, no, Luke, no, stop thinking of names of people I know. Randy, that’s a bit much, an old name Titus, Carlyle, that might be a last name, something like that though. Mortimer, nah, again, too much, not believable. For some reason I am only thinking of guy names, lets go for a girl character. Belinda, like Belinda Stronach, that’s good, an old fashionish name. I like it.

Belinda.

She is 35, in that awakard age where she no longer feels young, but doesn’t feel old. She is unmarried, and wonders if she will find a man, because that’s what people do right? She was in a relationship for four years and it got broken off. Did she get abused? Why did she break it off. He did, she thought they were in love, but he had an affair with another woman. No, a man, this weighs on her, making her think she turned him gay.

Her job… something mid-range, not shitty like a call center, but not a good well paying job like a CEO, like the Real Belinda Stronach. Works at a bank. A personal Financial planner. Perfect. Is coming to loathe her job. Same type of people come in every day, either rich bastards who she has to invest money for to make them richer, or poor people who she turns down for mortgages because they have bad credit because their ex-husband is a deadbeat. She’s glad her and Randy didn’t get married. Yes, Randy works for her now-gay ex-boy friend. A name for someone you can resent.

She fancies trying to screw the bank out of a pile of money, she is pretty sure she could do it, and toys with the idea late at night sometimes, sitting up in her computer room in her now-hollow feeling two bedroom apartment. She hasn’t moved out of the place her and Randy had. She is somehow attached to it. There are things of his that she still has, and she fantasizes he will someday come back for them. Not that they will get back together, just that he will come. She want’s that for some reason.

Mannerisms, she needs good ones, something that will make the story funny. It is seeming kind of heavy. Or something funny has to happen to her.

A client comes in to try and get a loan of $50,000 because he wants to take a cross-Canada road trip. He has no income and no collateral or investments. He is a modern day hippie, deadbeat. Name, Mark, probably too normal. Marty, yes, I like it, a perfectly easy-going name, like Marty McFly.

So she ends up approving some ridiculous loan for him and her to go on this road trip, they buy a shitty old camper van. It breaks down the first day. Scratch any funny mannerisms for her, she is normal, straight-edge. She has embarked on this crazy journey, and doesn’t know what she is doing, she has to be to work on Monday. The story is about her learning to relax a bit, and to love again, kinda sappy, but could be funny, much opportunity for ridiculous scenes along the way in the road trip. Picking up hitch hikers, hearing stories from Marty.

Ends with Belinda bunjee jumping off a bridge, or skydiving, as a perfect act of giving up her old, up-tight life, and starting a glorious new one with Marty, they could even be doing a tandem jump in the end.

Yes, he will have told her he was a certified skydiving instructor, then, as they are about to jump out of the plane, he says “Are you excited to be skydiving for the first time?” she says “yes” and he says “Me too”

I should get some more posts up regularly once stupid Mike MacDougall is gone, I really hate that guy.

Too bad I can't grow a beard...

This is a quote from the book I am reading now, Moscow 2042 by Vladimir Volinovich.
It is a great little passage, and hopefully you will enjoy.
I might put something else up tonight if I feel like it, I am starting my Creative Writing class tonight though, so i don't know if I will.

"I have done massive research on beards which anyone who so desires can do in pratically any library in the world. But, for those too lazy to go to the library, I will say briefly that I am deeply convinced that beards play a very important role in the dissemination of advanced ideas and doctrines, and in winning minds. I think that Marxism would never have been able to win over the masses if Marx had shaved at some point, even if he'd been forced to do so. Lenin, Castro, and Khomeini could not have produced revolutions if they'd been clean shaven. of course, power has sometimes been seized in one country or another, and territory has been subdued by people with just moustaches and sometimes even without. But no beardless man has ever yet been known as a prophet."

J'aime ca

Sloth shouldn't be a cardinal sin

I am tired and lazy, and don't feel like writing anything, because I was up at 6am to go over to one of my old clients to help them get ready for an early appointment for 7:30 am. By the way, I am probably the best person you know. I am so tired now though, 10pm bedtime for me.

I am going to give selections from my story "The Wonderful Captain McGinty"

This is kind of the middle section of this story, e-mail me for the whole thing.

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Richard McGinty had been in Afghanistan for six months during the height of the violence, and this was only his third time on a foot patrol; He also had yet to discharge his firearm. They were patrolling a street in Kabul when McGinty heard shots being fired several streets over. He quickly ordered his squad to fall back and return to base. Doing this, he inadvertently may have saved his entire squad, as at the same moment, a roadside bomb was detonated where they would have been, had they continued marching forward. Despite the fact that McGinty purely acted on cowardice, he was seen as a hero who by some magical sixth sense had anticipated the bomb, acting quickly to save his squad. There were even reports that McGinty had thrown himself in front of the blast to shield his squad, though these were largely due to the fact that it was very dusty, and hard to see much of anything. This was due to the simple fact that McGinty was crossing in front of his squad when the bomb exploded, to run back to base. In the blast only McGinty and one other member of his squad were injured. The lack of further casualties was directly attributed to McGinty’s skill as a commander.

Initially, McGinty was ecstatic with this turn of events. He was in a hospital, far away from any shooting, he wasn’t hurt too badly, and they had presented him with a medal for bravery and given him some sort of promotion. He also assumed that he would be able to return home to Canada because of his injury. Unfortunately, the doctor assured him that he was “very lucky”, and that his injury could have easily been more serious. He was returned to active service three weeks after the incident, with the undying respect of his entire squad.

When he returned things were very different: Because of his promotion, and the loss of several other officers due to injury, McGinty was now in charge of an entire infantry division, consisting of ten squads of soldiers. This new role pleased him immensely, as it required him to be in the field even less than he had managed as squad commander. McGinty gained the respect of his fellow officers under his command almost solely due to the fact that he really knew very little of military strategy, and thus continually deferred to junior officers in every possible case. Their own common sense was attributed to McGinty’s “excellence” and “wisdom” as a commanding officer. One of McGinty’s only actual orders was the withdrawing all troops in the field back to the base on a particular day, because it was “so dangerous” out there. This resulted in Taliban forces killing and wounding several of their own men in blasts intended for Canadian troops. This manoeuvre became known as the “McGinty Feint” in military circles, and is generally considered one of the greatest military manoeuvres ever executed.

The second event in which he gained great renown occurred in one of the only times Richard McGinty had ventured into the field as Division Commander. It was purely by necessity that he was out at all: A major action was underway involving all of McGinty’s squads, so there was really no other place for him. He had insisted that he be in an armoured vehicle for the outing, and was naturally given one. It was on his way down a deserted street, following two of his squads closely, when a group of Taliban soldiers opened fire on them from the end of the street, scattering his squad for cover. Despite the fact that he was inside an armoured vehicle and at no risk from the small arms being fired at them, McGinty quickly lost control of himself. Screaming, he grabbed the controls from the driver of the vehicle, and attempted to steer the vehicle away from the fighting toward a side road, that would lead back to base.

As soon as he had seized the controls from the confused man, in the middle of sharply veering the vehicle right, a road mine detonated underneath the armoured vehicle. The explosive had little effect, causing some damage to the underneath of the vehicle and temporarily disabling it. More importantly was what it didn’t do. This was a particularly powerful anti-personnel mine, which would have killed and injured a great deal of the Canadian troops who were in a close proximity of the bomb. However, due to the fact that McGinty had inadvertently driven the armoured vehicle over the bomb and absorbed the lethal explosion, the troops remained unharmed. Fittingly, Richard McGinty was actually the only one injured in this attack.

The events of that day would go down in history as legend, no one being exactly sure of what had happened; the only thing anyone was sure of was that Richard McGinty was a hero. After the fact, Division Commander McGinty was personally attributed as having saved the lives of no fewer than fifty men, despite the fact that there were slightly more than thirty men on the scene. On many international news channels afterward, any soldier who was there (and many who weren’t) would personally claim that the heroic actions of Richard McGinty had saved them, and that for that they owed him their lives. At a time when the conflict in Afghanistan was rapidly losing popular support, Richard McGinty was hailed for single-handedly regaining the Canadian people’s support for the controversial war. All across the country, people could unite over the heroics of this one man, the proud native of their nation’s capital. Shortly after the event, the driver of the armoured vehicle stated that he had “frozen up” at the controls, and Richard McGinty was the only thing that saved them. One of the other crew members present also stated that Richard McGinty had yelled, “Look out, an improvised explosive device!” before taking control of the vehicle. This statement has yet to be confirmed by anyone else present. The whole aftermath of this was very confusing to Richard, who received a great deal of attention in the forms of medals, promotions, declarations, press interviews and letters from grateful relatives, calling him their “saviour” and a “true hero”. The injuries that Richard sustained were relatively minor, including small pieces of shrapnel in the stomach and his leg, although there were unofficial reports that Richard was paralyzed and had by sheer force of will regained the use of his legs.

Upon his return to Canada, Richard was greeted with a true hero’s welcome. In Ottawa, a national holiday was declared. A ceremony was held at the Parliament buildings, with over two million people attending as the Prime minister welcomed Richard home and thanked him on behalf of the country. The Governor-General welcomed McGinty into the order of Canada, and in a now-famous picture spontaneously kneeled in front of Richard McGinty and kissed his hand.

A bed is a luxury and a priveledge taken for granted by Westerners

Hey all,

Big today for Andrew again today, found out that I got into a creative writing course I applied for, the same one i applied for back in September and didn't get into. I imagine it's a lot easier to get in during the summer, as there is way less people here, but I also have done a lot of writing since then, and the story I submitted as my portfolio was probably a hundred times better than the one I used in Sept. Also the twenty dollar bill I attached to my vaguely threatening cover letter for my story probably helped. We'll never know I guess. Either way, I advise you all to try and get autographs from me now, before I get famous. They are $5 now, and the price goes up after my first work gets published.

ENOUGH!

Lets get to it. I am making up the subject for todays blog as I am writing this right, now, and still have no idea what to write about, So I will keep writing for a bit more, see if that works. OK, I guess this will have to do.

I am just going to talk a little about the funniest places I have ever slept.



Where: An 8ft. Camper trailer in Cape George, NS
When: Summer After grad
How long: Two and a half months
Why?: Why not? It was free, I was fishing lobster for Keith Adams (he is another whole story, I have to write about him some time) It was great though, I loved it, the trailer was old, but not rundown, besides the conspicuous apparent electrical burn scorch marks in the top corner, but didn't leak, and stayed decently cool in the summer. I loved it though, that was a great time in my life, working hard and long hours, but enjoying it. There is nothing like waking up every morning at 4am and peeing off the little porch built onto your trailer you are living in. Oh, to make it funnier, it was in a yard, which had 6 Highland cows grazing in it, which would brush up against the side of the trailer sometimes. I will try and put up pics of this place, if I can.

Where: A 5'6" by 2' section of slate floor, covered by 2 sleeping bags. City Road, Cardiff, Wales.
When: February-May 2006
How long: Almost 4 months
Why: In a tiny room me and Josh shared, he wanted the bed, I'm cheap, and we agreed I would pay 1/3 the rent to sleep on the floor. This is funny actually, because when we were looking for places, we would go around, and when we went to this place, they said they had two rooms, and we said, "We're OK, we only want one room" and took the smaller room. They must have thought we were so Gay. Almost as bad as me and Josh in Ikea looking at bed covers together.



Where: The Dublin Airport
When: June 2006
How Long: two seperate nights
Why?: Both times it was waiting for flights, and we slept on the floor by our gate, waiting for it to open. The first time it was with Ben and Josh, waiting to go back to Wales for a weekend. The second time I was by myself, and I had like 10 hours to wait by myself, because I had to catch the last bud at 11pm, and my flight left at like 9am. When I was by myself, I actually opened a can of beans and had cold beans on cold bread, because I had no money to buy food from restaurants. This was at the end of my European escapade, and I was flat broke. I also read the entire book Donnie Brasco that night. I was annoyed when I finished it, because I still had a long time to wait, and didn't have enough room to pack a second book. That night I also wrote a not that said "Please wake me up for Ryan Air flight 289 to London Gatwick 8:50am, thank you :)" Good times.

Anyways, that took a lot longer than I thought, so I'm stopping now. If I am ever stuck for an idea, I will continue this list.

Also sometime in the near future, I am going to post an excerpt from one of my stories for you all to read, kind of like tricking you into reading something, and I can send anyone who wants it the whole story I post part of.

Speak of the Devil and he shall appear

Not five minutes after I said what a glorious day it was out St. John's decided to show me why it is the city with the most rain, wind, cloudy days, and fewest sunny days in Canada. Today must count as a half-day for sun I guess.

The two types of people in this world are those who like apples and those who like oranges, there is no middle ground

Hey Oh people,
Today is a glorious day here in Canada's youngest province, and third largest island. I am really loving my new job, it is amazing. The tech guys down the hallway talked to my boss and said they need to take me for some "off-site training" on Thursday, off-site being a local rink, and training being shinny hockey. I loves it.

Right, enough of me, lets hear about you. Well, actually I am just going to talk more, I don't care about you.

There are a lot of Assholes out there, and here are a few quick ways to tell if your one of them:

You might be an asshole if…

You have ever started a sentence “There are two types of people in this world…”

You have ever said “If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a thousand times”

You have ever said “No, You listen to me”

You have ever worn a collared shirt with the collar flipped up intentionally.

You drive a Hummer

You yell at waitresses when your food isn’t cooked properly.

Your name is John Best

I'm an idiot

Turns out i got the quote wrong, this is the real one.

In the land of the blind,the one-eyed man is king. [In regione caecorum rex est luscus.] -Erasmus

Like I say, I'm an idiot.

Andrew