Conspiracy or a Jeff Goldblum Flick?

The Facts:

Friday, July 24th -- 12:19 a.m.
Federal government announces that the Alexandra Bridge over the Ottawa River will be closed to all traffic for supposed repair work between 9 pm and 6 am, starting Sunday evening through to Thursday, July 30th

Friday, July 24th -- 12:33 a.m.
Only 14 minutes after the previous announcement, Public Works adds a second bridge to the list of closures. This time it's the Macdonald-Cartier bridge that will be closed to cyclists and pedestrians heading north starting the morning of Tuesday, July 28th at 9 am.

Friday, July 24th -- Late afternoon
West Ottawa experiences a flood that some describe as a "one-hundred year" event.

Monday, July 27th -- 2:55 pm
Ottawa Police issue a press release requesting the public's assistance in identifying two female suspects involved in a robbery of an Ottawa taxi driver. Both young co-eds were unarmed and were not too uneasy on the eyes from what can be gained by the photos. The driver took them from the Byward Market (only a stones throw from either of the above bridges) and drove them to Baseline and Woodroffe where the robbery took place. The two were last seen traveling east on Baseline road.

Monday, July 27th -- ~ 9 pm.
Local media report that the verdict in Larry O'Brien trial to be delivered one-week sooner than planned.

Monday, July 27th -- 10 p.m.
Britannia residents report some suspicious activity involving lights and loud noises over the Deschenes rapids followed by what appears to be an aircraft crashing into the river. Ottawa Police take the reports seriously and issue its own press release at 3 a.m. in the morning the next day. Story is odd enough that Boing-Boing, the source of everything worth knowing, picks it up.

Tuesday, July 28th -- 11:15 am
Police report a kidnapping and theft of an LCBO tractor trailer near Walkley and Bank St. (best accessed via Baseline Rd. east to Heron and south on Bank St.). The incident happened shortly after midnight. The driver is eventually found almost 200 km. east of Ottawa in Vaudreuil, Quebec.

Tuesday, July 28th -- 4 pm
Police issue a press release claiming that the search of the Ottawa River has turned up nothing despite the observations of witnesses. They halt any further search.

Tuesday, July 28th -- 5:15 pm
Police issue a media release that they have completed a two-day prostitution and "John" sweep in Lowertown (not far from either bridges) and Vanier (east of Ottawa) and have made a few arrests. No names are released.

Next Show: 2010

Another Weekend in Outer Space

Jupiter Ray Project

The Jupiter Ray project is a band. They played at Irene's on Sunday night. They have a cute lead singer named Shannon. She is married to the guy who sings beside her. He has a good steady government job. The band has enough material for one set, so for upcoming performances, we can expect opening acts. (Like Casey Comeau and the Centretown Wilderness Club who are worth seeing on their own.) Their name came from a TV show with a cult following, maybe the Simpsons. They fired one of their first drummers because he was too heavy (with the drumming, this wasn't a weight prejudice thing) and there are no hard feelings.

[How do I know all this? I ask questions. I was really smooth with the marital status: "Is that tall, attractive, blonde woman the lead singer for the Jupiter Ray Project?" I asked one of my informants. Upon being informed that she was, "What does her husband do?" See... That's the smooth way to find out if she's single.]

Here are some of the ways their music has been described by others:

• Folk rock;
• Country rock;
• Canadian roots;
• Melodic, rythm-centered, moody, often trippy, usually acoustic, roots-based music;
• Roots-rock-reggae with a touch of ska and soul; and
  
• Soulful country.

These are all fine with me. If the band is called something like "the Cowboy Junkies"...

But when they're called "The Jupiter Ray Project", I want laser beams, lyrics about robots and DNA and a theremin instead of a fiddle. (Even if it is that incredible Michael Ball fellow playing the fiddle.)

Plan 99

Given the disappointment at Irene's on Friday, I was pessimistic about the Plan 99 reading on Saturday. It was in this bar on Elgin Street called the Manx. Still, Plan 99 is from Outer Space, so perhaps I'd be in luck.

And I was! Being completely unfamiliar with this Manx place, I had no idea that it is the closest thing Ottawa has to the Mos Eisley Cantina.

This fellow Steven Ross Smith began reading what we'd been told was "poetry", but I quickly realized it was something entirely different: viral software intended to shatter a human brain into a Tralfamadorian time warp where all of a life's moments happen simultaneously.

I innoculated myself from this by jotting lines down as I was able to catch them:

the contest poem is an unfettered dog...

recombinant dna alphabet drives me...

maze, a white-tipped sea...

five and a half decades slipping away...

Then Shane Rhodes read his viral programming. His work had more of a narrative flow and would have been less effective at creating time rifts, but most of the audience had been weakened by Ross Smith.

"The only way I've found to kill cockroaches is to tell them tales of depravity."

I was excited that he would be reading about the Birth of Venus until he mentioned it was a pretentious poem about a Botticelli painting, not an ode to the creation of a planet.

"How pretentious can you be when it's printed on napkins?"

But he ended the poem with the words:

"...uranium collapses on a deuterium core."

So it wasn't a total loss.

Oddly enough, he described his concluding piece as a country/western poem. In my experience, the old west and outer space often do not mix well (every cowboy plot episode of Star Trek, new or old, sucks.) But it's been suggested I should be more open-minded (i.e. FireFly).

Before leaving the Manx, I should point out that the art on the wall by an artist named Jenn Farr made me nostalgic for a number of alien planets I've visited.

Exploring Outer Space without a Spaceship

With the serious shortage of positions for trained space pirates, I've been forced to find creative ways to explore strange new worlds. This weekend, Coyote joined me on an inner solar system tour of Ottawa.

Lounging on Mercury

We started Friday evening with a voyage to the Mercury Lounge.

We arrived as the inhabitants were engaged in what is apparently a regular celebration they call World Beats and Eats.

Formalities at the entry port were easy, we simply exchanged currency and received a stamp. As we had no passports, they stamped our wrists.

Coyote and I pondered why the females were generally dressed much better than the males. Coyote said he'd heard that females dress for each other. I observed that I had no proof of this, but suspected it might be true of the males as well. Maybe the males deliberately dress like slobs so that other males will not assume they are gay and beat them up.

The Coffee Planet

Our next stop was Planet Coffee. All the natives were consuming a tasty warm beverage and we did our best to blend in. Coyote also ordered a lemon square (apparently sometimes a canine is not in the mood for biscotti). I ordered a Nanaimo bar. It turned out they don't have Nanaimo bars and the young woman taking our orders thought I also ordered a lemon square. This meant that I got a cheesecake square for the lower price of a lemon square.

While Coyote and I enjoyed our beverages, I teased him about his cousin Adrian in Chicago. Bad enough he was discovered and captured, but in a Quiznos!

Planet Ink and Universal Tattoo

Our orbital path home took us past both Planet Ink and Universal Tattoo, but we decided to save our explorations there for another day. Coyote seems to be particularly concerned that every part of his anatomy is heading towards flabby sag and therefore unsuitable for permanent markings.

Breakfast on Venus

Saturday morning the Research Director joined us at the Café Venus for a morning repast. We all enjoyed our breakfasts. I had to ask Coyote what type of meat he'd been given because I didn't recognize it. "Sausage," he told me. As a space explorer, you have to be prepared for this sort of thing: sausage that is flat and rectangular.

We had a wide-ranging discussion. The others were intrigued by my discovery of the PlentyofFish dating service where they make the users do a Meyers-Briggs personality test before they let them search for potential mates. As an ENTJ, this makes excellent sense to me. God forbid I should wind up with and E or I SFP.

Another feature of the PlentyofFish that we all found amusing is that people can specify criteria that others must meet in order to send them messages and one that women seem to often choose is "Must not have messaged users looking for intimate encounters or sex."

Apparently, these women live on a planet where they have a chance of finding a man who has never been interested in casual sex.

[The Ottawa Solar System Map]