"Help, my Mr. Jingles is stuck in a tree... being digested"

the ol' 7 - - 10 split

Ready... Steady... BEARD!!!

NUCLEAR holocaust will leave behind only a small cross-section of cultural items. IN terms of posterial worth, very few of them will depict a very flattering portrayal of our humanity. AMONG these unfortunate remnants, I figure, will be:
- Volvo stationwagons
- Barbara Streisand LPs
- My upstairs NEIGHbour
- Steve Harper's hairplugs (made up, as they are, of the crushed and reconstituted carapaces of cockroaches and other like members of the Conservative party)
- A few of the dinosaurs/-Stanis who hang out at PI (their nuclear immunity granted by their total obliviousness to outside occurances, such as sunshine and women)
- Windsor, Ontario
- Celine Dion's chin (it will go on)
- The Olsen Twins (though they'll have fused together to form a new variant of diabetes)
- A few stains I've had on my shirts since around the time I conspicuously didn't have my Bar Mitzvah
- This damned head-cold. My actual head, however, would be facejerky, with a pair of ceramic teeth sticking out. I hope they give Gilles Duceppe's roving eyeballs, which'll be wriggling around and scavanging on various flavours of carbonized-carrion, indigestion.
- Werther's Originals

@ @ @

MY housemates, Amy and Justine, and I, paid our scheduled visit to our upstairs neighbour yesterday. BUT we didn't pay as much as we thought we would: considering the dread we approached it with, it was quite pleasant. I was perhaps a little more conversational than I would've liked, being both quickly disarmed by her two adorable p(i/u)nt-sized dogs and a vague sensation of gratitude that anyone would talk to me sensibly whilst wielding this moronic moustache. THE lady's quite the talker, and Amy and Justine, I thought approached her with equal smatterings of respect and self-affirmation. HER chief complaints were: hearing drug-deals next door, her upstairs neighbour thumping, us playing boardgames and closing doors and talking below her and how Chinese we weren't, her dogs and her separation anxieties when she left, our mutual landlord's apparently unreasonable hope to make a profit on her real-estate ventures, spoilt students, ettycettyrah. SHE was quite amiable though, and I did warm to her. I think, despite it not really presenting any outright solutions to our insulation/insultation problems, it demystified our lives and opened up the opportunity to hate each other more reasonably in the future.

@ @ @

POSTED WITH COPYRIGHT PERMISSION (PENDING)

Grae's Post-After-Isabel'n'Grae's-Birthday-Bowling-Afterparty-Email-Post

"Boa feathers litter the apartment as I emerge from my bedroom, Sunday morning. The omnipresence of their (green?) plumage is rivaled by bottles, naturally, loot bags, fries and gravel. Not gravy, but gravel, and street salt. There is a pound of wet paper towels very poorly hidden under the love seat. I don’t know what liquid they hold. There is a pair of dejected looking boots sitting on my door mat and a pair of nasty, wet socks draped over my art portfolio to dry. Neither pair belong to me. The bathroom is, inexplicably, immaculate. I don’t know how it’s possible. I even saw a KISS army soldier removing her face makeup in my sink yet somehow it’s spotless. The miracle however, ends there as the kitchen, two feet away, is entirely opposite. My stove had an obvious collision with baked goods and was, besides the banal bottles, bottle caps, feathers, loot bags, glasses and corks, sporting my tambourine and generous helpings of gravy. The sink looks foul. Before I even get near it I can see my dustpan sticking out. In it I find the aforementioned humdrum and a Tupperware, which previously contained the remains of a frozen, moldy chicken, now holding a pool of beer in which a few of my photographs are having a lazy swim. When I fish them out I see they’re also covered in gravel, street salt *and* gravy.

"There was also a lot of awe on Sunday morning and it was not at the prospect of cleaning. Maybe it was pride. Maybe it was knowing that hosting post-bowling, birthday, costume dance parties is a privilege few people have and an ephemeral one at that. Maybe it was the rotation of impromptu DJs or that I crammed more friends and friendly strangers (cumulatively) into my apartment than ever before. Maybe it was that none of my neighbors complained about the noise. Or maybe my head was so foggy I couldn’t see so far into the future as to envisage myself actually cleaning it and was therefore left to merely marvel at the carnage and revel in the memory of its glorious conception.

"Thank you all for making this possible.

"The high point of the night might have been when our costumed crew stormed the metro to get from the bowling alley to my apartment, drinking beer from the party’s loot bags in a way reminiscent of the public drinking practice known as “brown baggin’ it” and then quite naturally coining the phrase “loot baggin’ it” but it wasn’t. The icing on my birthday cake, which came just moments before, was suitably uttering, “Yee-Haw!” as we all marched through the metro turnstiles for free because the ticket booth attendant had gone to take a leak.

"The boots have been claimed (Their owner had walked home in his bowling shoes for you curious folk). The socks, I think, were abandoned (by the looks of them I would’ve done the same) but there is a woman’s shirt (honorably discarded) and a cell phone belt clip that are of no use to me and so their owners (or whoever, really) can claim them.

"To those of you who have photos I would be grateful if you would, as my birthday present, send them to me. I will post mine shortly.

"Thanks again, Grae

P.S. Please forward my thanks to anyone who deserves it who isn't on my email list."

eat it before it congeals... a primitive skill

Ok. I seem to be enslimed, like a corpuscle of my very own making, beneath a reticulum of my own goo. I'm quite sick. Or contaged, as Isabel'd enjoin. Went to Parking last night, where i actually witnessed a topic that'd recently came up in conversation: a guy who pings the gaydar like a game of Arkanoid, but then heteros out and defrauds the nearest girl. Amazing social versatility. I watched it intensely... guy's got the emblematic fauxhawk, the tight baby-blue shirt, milk maid's complexion... took his shirt off... how gay, you say? Perhaps too gay. He shimmied up to a striking young girl, whom he obviously didn't know (as could be deduced from her initial reticence (confusion?) to dance) and they ended up doing stuff to each other. What an incredible scheme. Present both orientation options, to the normative directed perception they cancel each other out neatly, and sweep in to collect the girl standing gormlessly amidst the ruins of her own preconceptions. Brilliant and as sleazy as Ben Mulroney with a hipflask of GHB.

@ @ @

Graham told me he clicked my profile's keyword, TREEHOUSE and got sent to other blogsites that shared that interest. The first profile to pop up is a dude who lists Primative Skills as an interest. Click on that, and you get sent to profiles sharing (whatever the fuck a PS is) his interest. He shares that particular hobby (?) with a 47 year old from Arkansas called Grizz and another guy who lists Beaded Moccasins (they're a sin, and mock themselves, though i would wear them) as one of his. All are from the States.

@ @ @

These here streets seem populated largely by a particular ethnic group, who, as a culture, seem endlessly fascinated by the charbroiled chicken. The women trawl the avenues like vigilante knifefighters looking for the cheapest deepfreezed cod. The men have a particular way of talking, not in a group, per se, but holloring across the street to each other while walking in the same direction. I think these two genders are from the same culture (they're all the same height, and every one looks like they're hoarding all their smiles for Easter) but i've never seen them talk directly to each other. Hmmmm.

JOVIAN MOONS

dance robots are the future. my friend, steve, and i talk about robots and dancing a lot. and so it wasn't long for our conversation to drift to robots that dance. we're pretty certain they'll exist. not like, 'you got served' style dancing, or the robo-waltz, but in that self-contained, but stimulated, state of gleedom you get when you really throw down. like, burst-a-blood-vessel-in-your-eye type dancing. where you're a split step ahead of the music, and almost feel like if you weren't to dance, the music would cease to exist. but dance robots? somehow, there's something sinister to it all, deep down.

if dancing is, if not liberating, then at least channeling, some form of liberty, AND robots are born into subjugation, where, under their very condition of being (or nomenclature), they are indentured to toil, then dancing robots is almost a cruel joke. there'd have to be some Asimovian robolution as a precursor. a 'Rob Marley' would have to croon about righteous freedom. robots would have to be freed, and the word 'robot' would be PCd to the brink of slander. because of their make-up, they could go anywhere they like. if i was an ex-robot, and wanted to dance, i'd head to Jupiter, for sure. not in it, because it's got a cloud structure so heavy it condenses hydrogen into metal. i think looking at it from above'd be better. some of the moons that circle it, like Ganymede or Callisto, probably have some killer views of the planet. that'd be great for everyone, as humans'd probably be afraid of their ex-slaves, and believe they were out to eat their children, or at least have a better relationship with them, and want them somewhere else altogether. so the robots'd have a toaster party at the halfway mark of the solarsystem. by invite only, i'm afraid. so if you find your vacuum cleaner or blender missing...

Melted Poo

My post subjects, unless kicked there by an 'assistant' of Grandmaster Iron Crotch, never really seem to make it above the belt. So much for contemplating my navel. Right now, there's a big melt on in fair Montreal. Historical evidence points to January as generally being a contrived effort by Ms. Nature to cryotorture us into staying indoors and be creative. I wonder if a mild January will make for a boringer, unstimulatinger summer (comparative to those years, when all creative endeavors seem a product of being boarded, and bored, up inside while Moontreal strips your fleshy existence of all joy and comfort). So now, the streets are smeared with thawed shit, the waterdrops-eye-view, dangling above a 3 storey plummet, is waiting for your upturned neck-lapel to walk beneath it and lycra-clad joggers are descending upon you right now. Citizens, stay inside!

Justine, Amy and I are looking for a roomate. So far, they've all been inappropriate matches. The last was a roly-poly Hungarian who freaked me out a bit. She didn't like us, or the room, or the fantastic house we live in. Glad she's gone. As Isabel asked, do we even want a roomate?

You know you're in Quebec when...

My thoughts are too jumbled right now to really warrent an entry, but it's 8.50 something on a Sunday morning and I have to ground some nervous energy here. So I'll dangle myself over the void for a while... Of all the things I could be thinking of, outward indicators of current residency in Québec has somehow jostled itself to the forefront. Yup, it's time for some stereotypes

You Know You're In Québec When...

• More experience is required to carve smoked-meat than to manage a bank (min. 3 years seems to be the posted norm).
• You have a signed head-shot of Burt Reynolds in the glove compartment of your mini-van.
• An ice-related accident seems reasonably certain to claim your life today.
• You know someone who keeps their TV on top of their microwave. The microwave might not have a door. The person probably uses the door as a dinner tray. This person is unaware that he is the saddest person you know.
• Your car was broken into for 3 cigarettes and a jar of pennies. Seperate incidents.
• Someone saying 'Hydro-Québec' uses the same amount of venom necessitated by the word 'Haliburton'.
• Your favourite Portuguese Rotisserie closes early to throw a disco-party.
• You've been solicited by a door-to-door meat salesman.
• Last year's phonebook is still in your stairwell.
• You think it's funny to start a list entitled You Know You're In Quebec When...

Please feel free to send me any you can think of, and I'll post them...

@ @ @

Isabel's Scarry Story:

When I was littler, I used to walk around biting my lower lip in quite a big way all the time. Now I have two little mini-bel tooth marks down there showing where the front ones clawed into my skin as I fell from a seesaw sometime long ago.While jumping on my parents' bed before nursery school, I also bit my tongue and bled for what seemed like hours but I don't see a scar from that. Not physical anyway. ;)

YOUTH IN ASIA

HAPPY New Year! and shit. Isabel and I fled to Vancouver Island for 2 weeks to stay with my mum and Becky. IT was fully immersed in constant drizzle, green and wondrous as it is. EL NINO, as Henry Rollins attests, is a stupid name for something that could drop California at a whim. KERPLUNKifornia. SOME sort of similar weather system took a few chunks out of the island this Christmas. THE little bay my mum lives on got frothy on New Year's Day: her neighbour watched half his dock drift away, LOUIS THE DOG ran away from the wind, and the power got ripped out from under us. IT made for a cozy couple of days, finding us draped around the living room like some sort of halfassed suicide pact. I saw a few good friends too, Ben and Kim and Joel and Dave and Sean, it was tough to stay so briefly, I don't want to be no friendship tourist. TO top that, I felt a bit too dopey to lavish them all appropriately. I still feel dopey. BUT ask me about Tofino!!!

@ @ !!! @ @

SCARS seem to be a major conversation focus for me again. I'VE seen one or two good ones in the last few days. KIM'S is the craziest: on the corner of her mouth is a burn scar from where she chewed a power cord when she was a teething toddler. IT seems nearly everyone has a scar around their mouth somewhere. I'VE got two vertical lines on my bottom lip from where a ferret bit me, but other than a few dents in my head, and gnarly old bike scars, i'm pretty cleanskinned. THE baddest scars of memory are on old friends Alex Beeston and Marc Guillet. ALEX showed me where he fell on a brick when he was a kid. HE 'D gotten up and realized he had a brick sticking out of his head. MARC has a big third eye from from where he pulled a flowerpot onto himself when he was a kid. HE'S always loved it. CAME up with wild stories about it for the ladies = knife fights or an arrow or getting his face caught in an escalator. I'VE always found it interesting that the roughest-looking scars come from bikes. 'WAS that where a crocodile pulled you into a swamp and death-rolled you until you kicked free?' 'NO, that's where my sock got caught in my bike-chain when I was 6.'

IF anyone is even reading this, post me a note about your favourite scar, and I'll copy it onto the next blogposting.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
MY mum goes in for an operation in the next few weeks, so please call her, she'd love to hear from you.