Bricks

Chapter 4: Genesis: ch2 v5 “ and Homer was bound and gagged.” Homer got home that night and threw himself around his plush suite like Audrey Hepburn having a conniption fit. He took a moment to grin at his spectacularly feminine actions (which weren’t really his style being a hardware store CEO) then continued his weepy ballet until he was exhausted and flopped on his queen-sized bed. After lying with his arm over his face and tears streaming from the corners of his eyes for fifteen minutes he hit the mini bar. Hard. In an hour he had it emptied and he sat, stomach churning, staring at 36 tiny bottles of assorted alcohols. He looked at his hands, the hands that had typed the proposal for the hamster maze that had helped Bros.’ get back on ... read more

I didn't take me this long to write it, but travel blog has been down. So here's it... Chapter 3: The Maddening Process ' I have mentioned earlier that my sanity maybe in question. I don’t really think I’m going crazy, but putting up with the propaganda and the associate rebuilding process tries one’s sanity. Remaining employed with this company tries it further. My group training was a grueling sixteen-hour introduction into the cult of Homer’s. Perhaps cult is a strong word, so I will attempt to use it whenever possible, as it is the perfect description of this place. In my desperate situation (unemployment and the search for employment) I had taken to the drink as a method of calming myself and to assist with coping with the fact that I would be shortly out ... read more

2. Genesis : ch1 v.3 and Homer Created Homer’s Hardware Homer’s Hardware store is my place of employment. It is not gainful. It is maddening. I have been an employee at Homer’s Goddamn Hardware store for 1 year, 8 months and 12 days. It feels like a fucking prison sentence that I don’t know when will end. At least the suckers in prison have a sentence. For me it’s partly a matter of motivation, and partly a matter of firmness of mind. I hate it enough to get out, but I don’t know what I’m going to do. I take comfort in my discomfort, however, as it ensures that I’m not like the rest of the sheep who want to make a career at a fucking hardware store. Two days in this place was too fucking ... read more

Hello out there folks. As I have promised some of you I've decided to publish the story I'm writing on this site as it is easy to access. If you think anyone would be interested in it, or enjoy it, pass it along. I will release the story in serials as I write it, so your feed back is much appericiated... It may just keep me writing ;). This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to real life events, blah, blah'blah. So, with out further ado... adieu...adu... ad... whatever, I'll just get on with it. Homer’s Hardware A Novel in parts By Brendan Smith 1. Every Fucking Day Waking is always painful. The alarm blares its piercing racket through the static filled radio station it is set to. The time reads 3:51 am; this ... read more

Well... it seems that we're at the end of this particular journey, I must say with mixed feelings. Now that we are in Bangkok and the end is near we are trying to conserve the cash we have left (more difficult that it sounds) and looking forward to getting on the plane and seeing our families that we've been away from for over a year (well... looking forward to the 28hr flight being over...). Today when we arrived in bangkok, after a seriously delayed and uncomfortable 12hr train ride, we found the closes guesthouse on Khao san rode and crashed. After lazying about we took a walk and visited the black Buddha (not black at all), a 45ft standing Buddha and the golden mount which provides a breath taking view of the city. After dinner we ... read more

So... After shopping in Luang Prabang, a beautiful city with french colonial style buildings, we left early on a two day boat trip down the Mekong to the thailand border. The first day was slow and uncomfortable, but I imagine that it was better that the speed boats. We occasionally saw them bombong by like missles skipping over the water. The passenger faces were screwed with looks of terror behind their googles and helmets. The first night we stopped in Pak BAng, a one street village with a few shops and guesthouses. We ate a terrible dinner and spoke with the owner, who causually informed us before we ate that he had a baby but it had passed away four days before. Needless to say this put a damper on an already chewy meal. We wandered ... read more

How many times has anyone changed a tire over a 300km Journey? I'd bet the average is close to 1 or zero. A flat tire is a peice of misfourtune that, I thought, occured once in a while. On our journey from Vang Vieng we followed winding roads up through the mountains and got not one but, count them, four flat tires. Three hundred km in Canada is a breeze... 3 hours. We left at 10am and arrived in Luang Prabang at 7:30 pm. Not even the anticipated five hour journey. It was dark when we arrived so have have no idea what this city looks like... Loas in not like other Asian countries that are best seen by night (Korea, China etc...). It is dark and poorley lit so it's impossible to know what this ... read more

So we've been in Loas for about a week and, as the title indicates, I don't really know what to say. We visted Don Det where we had our dogey border crossing and a full day of cycling. Vientiane was small, quiet and beautiful. THere we visited the great stupa (where supposedly a peice of buddha's breast bone is buriedlegend has it) and L'arc du Triumphe (hope my french spelling is okay) which was constructed from a concrete donation from the United States ( the concrete was meant to finish the Veintiane airport) and we learned about the perils of James Sunday. In Vang Vieng we went tubing. I drank lots of beer (and and still feeling the affects of this afternoon), jumped of a cliff, a zip line and a trapeze (but not in that ... read more

I wrote a blog yesterday and all I did today was shop so's I've got nothing to write about except the Perils of JAmes Sunday. JAmes Is the Nigerian fellow who we met at our dodgy border crossing bedtween Cambodia and Laos. JAmes was almost charged ten dollars because he had a Nigerian passport. We travelled with him to Veintiane and shared some meals, over which he related the details of his current trip. JAmes has had it rough indeed. The first thing that happened to him was that hes was robbed in Veit Nam. He is a business man a travels frequently, but this is the first time he's had something like this happen. He went to into a coffee shop with a Veitnamese lady (a new friend he assured us) and drank some coffee. ... read more

Well... We left Phnom Penh (the second time) on a bus bound for stung treng, a city in Cambodia from which we could reach the border crossing to Laos. Our Guesthouse owner assured us that the bus ride was five hours, but it turned out to be ten. As we neared stung treng we resigned ourselves to spending the night there and hitting the border the next day. When we got off the bus we were given an offer and assurance that we could make it to the border so we said " fuck it! Lets do it!" and hoped in to a mini van with seven other forgeiners. This unoffical border closes at 6pm. We arrived at 6:30. We were invited into a bamboo hut by some very unoffical, topless, border officals who offered us ... read more