On Thursday March 4th 2010, I married Shalome Hill.
I’ll always remember this date. After all, it was the same day that Roy Halladay made his first spring training start in a Phillies uniform, pitching two hitless innings against the hated New York Yankees. It was an important day.
Especially for new contracts.
Just to explain how this flipbook works — Using the cursor and a left click, you flip the pages like a book. Or you can use the little arrows at the bottom of a the screen. You can also zoom in on any photo by double clicking. Enjoy.
I promised you some pics of me playing ping pong and here you go.
I’m turning into a five year old. These days, when someone invites me over, my first question is: “What games do you have?” If they don’t have any games, fuck ‘em. I’m done with sitting around and talking like a bunch of grown ups. I was right when I was a kid: Adults are boring.
I’ve said and heard enough. So have you. These days, if I want to know what you think, I’ll read your Facebook. If I’m actually going to see you, I actually want to do something. Sitting in a dark room, watching you drink, just doesn’t cut it.
There’s only two things to do in life: Play games or talk about games. It’s more fun to play them.
But it was never really here in the first place. What a lot of rain and chill we had!
Anyway, just a picture of me in the backyard on one of the few nice days. With me is a good friend (the dog) and a sworn enemy (the cat).
I know many of you might have thought I was exaggerating when I compared that cat to Hitler. Well, these days, when not throwing other animals off fire escapes, this evil son of a bitch is breaking into people’s homes at 3am to fight their cats beneath their beds. He does have balls.
Or he used to.
I can’t even imagine how he behaved before the operation.
And another one from earlier that same day.
I’m laying on the grass at The Ex. I have no idea what I’m sneering at. It was a cheerful day. I’d bought a peacock fan from a Filipino.
First things first: To those of you that followed me to this new location – thank you. To those of you who bother to change their links to this site – thank you.
Here’s what’s going on . . .
A few weeks ago Wordpress spooked me. They mentioned a problem with the content on my site and locked me out. Though it turned out to be a mistake, it lit a fire beneath my ass and made me do something I’ve long intended to do:
Get my own domain.
Welcome to my own domain.
And though this might be my own place, I could not have done all this shit by myself. Danielle Meder and Anita Clarke were both a great help. Danielle was the driving force here and Anita’s computer knowledge proved invaluable.
I just did the monkey work.
Not so helpful was wordpress. On their free blogs they do not allow access to their code. In order to get an actual redirect from that site to this –another Wordpress blog– a little chunk of html would have been helpful. For that tiny string of code that I already know –for the ability to put it into my template and keep it there– they want fifteen bucks a year.
It’s bullshit. Not even evil. Simply cunty. For a free blog, I recommend blogger. Or anything you can access the code in. Live and learn. Sometimes you live long enough to learn the things you already know. Again.
And one thing I know about me is that I’m not paying that fifteen bucks a year. I’ll just start all over again. No search engine status and no links leading here. Just you kind folks. You’re more than enough.
I’ve done all this before. Back then, it scared me to give all that shit up. These days, I don’t really care. I look forward to it. Every time I’ve given up everything, I’ve been improved by it; always coming back stronger, better and even much more popular than before. I can do it again.
I’m doing it now.
Yesterday, on my way to TCAF, I bumped into my new neighbour Anita. Or Geekigirl. I don’t know what I’m supposed to call my real-life peeps online.
You know, I never considered “The Grumpy Owl” to be my title until people started calling me that. My name is Ryan Oakley. I only accepted “The Grumpy Owl” as a personal designation when I realized how pointless the fight was. Like “dandy”, it’s just what people wanted to call me. I couldn’t stop them. So I just accepted it then incorporated it into my life. I’ve been called worse things by better people.
Anyway, I met Anita in the street and, having different destinations, we quickly parted ways. Met again on the subway where she snapped this pic of my shirt and tie with some telephone thingamajig.
I like the picture. Mainly because it doesn’t contain the distraction of my head.
A picture of Grandfather Oakley taken shortly before his death:
A picture of Ryan Oakley, taken last week:
As Granddad would say, I come by it honestly.
Believing a man is as much defined by saying “no” as saying “yes”, I usually refuse interviews. But I made an exception for Coilhouse. You can read it here. And if you’ve come here after reading it, welcome to “The Grumpy Owl.”
The primary reason for my agreement to this profile is my respect and affection for the blog/magazine. It’s just well done.
Coilhouse represents the next step in publishing. Good online content and a high-quality print edition that’s an interesting object. It’s a bit like downloading MP3s for free and, if you feel like spending money, procuring the vinyl with the nice cover. Books will go the same way soon enough.
I’ve also met Ms. Zoetica Ebb, who interviewed me, and I have much harder time saying no to people I’ve actually met. While finding it quite easy to hate anything and anyone in the abstract, I usually like the people I meet. She’s a talented artist, whose work I’ve actually purchased, and quite pleasent.
She also asked some decent questions. Usually, when the media people want to do these style profiles of me, they just want a shopping list, so that people can discover where you buy your Ryan Oakley attitude and outfit.
Well, I’m not a commodity. You can’t just go buy me.
Aside from all this, it’s just a bit absurd. For a waiter, who doesn’t really do much of anything, a lot of people sure want to talk to me. While I can understand why I care about what I wear, do and say, I’ve never been able to understand why other people care about what I wear, do and say.
Unless it hurts me, is done with my money or in my name, I barely notice what other people do. I suppose their thoughts interest me, insofar as I can steal and make use of them to form my own, but their tie? I have my own to worry about.
Anyway, go to Coilhouse for the interview, stay for the content.
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Although Ryan Oakley began his career as a simple rake (drunk) he has since become Toronto’s most renowned flaneur (no car) and notorious dandy (overdresses). A misanthropic composer of psycho-geographical fictions (bad science fiction), he is also a server of food, a tender of bar and a washer of dishes. While performing all these functions with efficiency and elegance (disdain and malice), he somehow finds the time to publicly criticize friends, strangers and cultural crap. He's a bit of a dick.
The Grumpy Owl Podcast
The Grumpy Owl Movies
