the most interesting neighbour in the world

Granted, I've only been on speaking terms with him for the past month or so, but I'm starting to think my neighbour in the apartment here might just be the world's most interesting man.

I first got to know him one Saturday afternoon this spring, when Fitz, Tamoobs and myself stopped in at my place to grab a thing or two before heading out to (or was it back from?) the park. We were a beer or two in and Collective Soul-voice (which is the precursor to the Creed voice, which in turn spawned the Nickelback voice. Did the Metallica voice start all of this?) singing a few of their mid-1990s classics. We'd seen my neighbour on our way in and we did the perfunctory head nod. He lives above the street on the main floor and spends a lot of his time on his balcony.

On our way out of my place, Fitz is singing "...hu-what's the hu-world I-hi hu-know..." and my neighbour pokes his head out his door. We get outside and I'm talking about my stationary non-stationary bike and my myriad problems keeping the tire filled (yes, I've changed the tube multiple times and ground down the rim edges where the hole was.) My neighbour starts asking me about the bike and gives me his bike pump and tools and doo-hickeys galore, suggesting likely problems, and pointing out other issues on my bike, like he's inspected it multiple times. I should say, my neighbour is, I'd venture, in his late-50s or early 60s, and he speaks French with a thick Eastern European accent. He lends me all sorts of gear and I tell him, well, I'm kind of busy now, but I'll give it a fix tomorrow. He says he'll give me a hand and then he tells me, in French, "you know, I grew up 30 minutes from Dracula."

I laugh, but he's one of those guys that doesn't know when he says something funny - or else, he doesn't dispense with the laughs very easily. I tell him that's interesting, but we have to go. And we go and I thank Fitzy for singing.

I forget to get home to get a new tire for the next day and I don't see him for a while. When I do, we talk about my bike. He doesn't understand why I haven't fixed it yet. I can't give him a legitimate answer other than, I work, I play baseball, I hang out with my girlfriend and friends and... He shrugs and gives me more advice. He says he needs his bike to get to his girlfriend's place. "Ma blonde," he calls her in his accent. It sounds more like "moh blond." He says there is a guy - likely some enemy who has a crush on his girlfriend - who he knows has punctured his tires twice with a pin when he stays over at her place for the night. He is sympathizing with my plight. I appreciate that.

The next time I see him, he tosses me a new brake line for my back tire and gives me more advice. It's a Sunday afternoon and it's hot as hell and I go out equipped with a cold Corona, but inadequate tools to replace the brake line and it's humid and it's not happening. The tube in the tire is shot to hell again. Here I thought I'd remedied the problem after discovering two brand new tires lying on Sherbrooke the night before. My neighbour is watching me from his balcony the whole time. I can feel his eyes on me, but for some reason, I can't ask him for help. Once I find out that he's gone inside, I slink back in with my tire in my hand and drop it on the floor. My apartment now looks like the Yellowknife dump - ripe for scavenging. There is junk everywhere. Coolers, tents, bike parts, bed shrapnel, Christmas lights and a Christmas tree...

I go to my computer to watch a video on bike repair and my buzzer rings. I answer it and go to my door and there is my neighbour, dressed in his biker shorts and jogger's t-shirt, with a bike skeleton in his hand.

"Where did you get this?"

He was on his way to visit his 'blonde' when he saw a bike - minus its front tire - in an alley. He brought it back and was offering it to me. I laughed and grabbed it and added it to the collection. He said I could use his bike pump whenever. His son would be up.

I didn't fix the damn bike, though. I went to sleep, sprawled on top of my blanket in my undies with my fan billowing warm air onto me. The next night, I got home late and ran to the supermarket to get a frozen pizza and I walked by his apartment and could hear lively accordion coming from inside. I walked to where he wouldn't be able to see me - partly ashamed at still not having fixed my tire - and listened for a while. It sounded really good.

Tonight, I got home with some more takeout food and I saw him on his balcony, as usual. I asked him about the accordion and he said it had been him playing. He said his father was very good and that he had been taught the instrument when he was young. He plays now for fun. Of course, my French isn't the greatest, and his accent is one that I'm not used to, so I'm not entirely sure of all that he said, but the guy seems like he is full of stories.

His father died five years ago in Romania and left him a lot, including that accordion. Now this is where I can't tell you exactly what he was saying, but apparently, his home country wouldn't send him the accordion for some official reason. But he has a friend who is a judge and he got a special exemption from this rule and received the accordion.

He said he used to work in aerospace before he got sick. He said he's been in Montreal for 19 years and has never left the region - he has stayed within the area from "St. Hubert to Mirabel." He said he feels like an exile. He's only been home once since he left. Yet he has family here and different visitors all the time. He speaks a bunch of languages with these visitors. (Allegedly) he's got a more robust sex life than most of my friends, despite being old enough to be their grandfather in some cases.

I've talked to him a half dozen times and he's told me he comes from Dracula's land, he plays an accordion in the dark, he feels my bike pain and his tiny apartment is seemingly a storage space for bicycle-related gadgets and gizmos.

I told him we should have a beer on his balcony sometime. I want to confirm my suspicion that he might be the most interesting man in the world. He's definitely the most interesting person in this apartment.

productivity burps

Judging by where I woke up Sunday morning, it didn't figure to be a productive day.

After a Friday evening, where I imbibed a tad too liberally, I woke up in full-hermit mode Saturday afternoon and shunned invitations to pick up beds and watch fireworks, in favor of trudging down Papineau to Ontario to find some kind of nourishment before visiting my girlfriend's cat, which I said I'd do last week.

I found a delicious Portuguese bakery and, with corned beef sandwich, cheesecake and Coca-Cola in tow, I marched toward my destination, to visit a cat that had been meowing at passerbys at her window since being left to herself Thursday evening. When I arrived, the grey-black enigma, which has so far treated me in a very hot-and-cold fashion, followed me around like my shadow as I dumped some kitty chow into her bowl and blew my allergies into a kleenex in the bathroom and then turned the lights on. I laid down and started into my sammy, sharing pieces of beef with the culinarily curious kitty. I opened a book, stared at the words for five minutes, before opting for some Planet Earth. After the Future disc, I went to Great Plains and, after that, the Pole to Pole one and then Caves. I could hear the fireworks, but I didn't want to think about them or anything. I wanted to marvel at the world's greatest and most inspiring creations, while simultaneously retreating from them inside a small, black apartment with a cat that just wanted to lay next to something. (It's debatable whether I did more for the cat than it did for me.)

Nine hours of Planet Earth later: I woke up crusty-eyed (no allergy pills) and hacking, nearly fully-clothed (always too hot to wear a t-shirt inside here in the summer) sometime around dawn, on an improvised duvet, not meant for sleeping on. I laid there, reluctantly coming to terms with the upcoming day, debating whether I should turn off the Planet Earth menu, which ended up playing on a 15-second loop for probably about three hours. (At one point, I had each of the 18 shots memorized in sequence. These are things I probably shouldn't be telling anyone.)

After a day where I literally laid on a couch with a cat, I couldn't fathom how I'd be able to muster the energy to do all the things I had to do - ie. haul a bed frame home at noon, fix my bike tire... and that's it. That's the state I was in.

When the menu had driven me to my breaking point, I got up, turned it off, gave the cat one last pet and one last treat, threw on my shirt and hoofed it home. From there, I received a call from the Fitz, asking when I'd be by to pick up the bed frame. I called my buddy Jones and he said he'd be there at noon. I started off. I got there. We taped up the bed. Jones arrived and we hauled it painstakingly from West of St. Laurent, down Sherbrooke, to my place East of Park Lafontaine, to the amusement of nearly everyone we passed. That's how I roll. Stubbornly.

I was tired, but I felt good, knocking something so important off my list of ever-expanding things to do. Hey, it only took me 8 months to acquire a bed!

We called up Heee-Ren and went up to a Vegan spot to eat some lunch. (Who does this Herbiberous think he is? Don't worry, it gets better.) On our way up there, I spy a garage sale of sorts and say, hey boys, we should go check out what they've got.

Good call.

Turns out these kids are selling a record player. "How much?"

"Oh everything's cheap. Five bucks?"

"It works?" I asked, shocked.

"Yeah, I think it just needs a new needle."

Sold. I look over and beside the turntable, they've got a stack of records. Sgt. Peppers, Dark Side of the Moon, James Bond themes....

"How much for the records?"

"Cheap. 50 cents each," the chick says.

I look at the boys and we start to laugh. Score.

We throw her $15 and now I own a record player with a burgeoning record collection.

(Aside: If you're keeping track at home, this now means that I'm a fixed-speed bike and smoking habit away from becoming a fully functioning Hipster. Actually, I also need an ironic moustache, since part of my hermitude on Saturday morning had me shaving off my faux-handlebar nose-neighbour in disgust. I'm clean-shaven for the first time since before St. Patricks day. A girl at work called me "little boy" today.)

So, how's that for productive? We have a healthy lunch (for a change.) I had a vegan BLT, with the bacon substituted for bacon-smoked coconut chips. If you're through Montreal, check this place out - Aux Vivres. You eat these huge wraps and the food just floats inside you. You don't feel heavy at all.

With the boys heading off to baseball, I decide to try for a trifecta of sorts: let's get this damned bike fixed.

So I walk all the way from Mont Royal and St. Laurent to the Canadian Tire in Hochelaga. By this time, the chafe has set in. My inner thighs are like two slightly moist pieces of rubber rubbing against each other. My balls are sandpaper. I'm in pain. But I press on. I've been walking all day. I get to Canadian Tire finally at five after 5 p.m. and, somehow, on a Sunday, the store is closed. Shake of the head. Wag of the finger. Tears for the ballsack.

Oh well. I get home and have a rest and wait for Fitz to call, as he's got some more stuff for me. Eventually, he rings back at around 10 p.m. and I set out again and, after a glass of vino and a semi-goodbye, I'm back out the door with a electrical fan in my right hand, a plant in my left and a bookbag packed with various knick-knacks that I may never need.

I got home last night and dropped the new apartment accoutrement on the floor and I barely recognized my place. It reminded me of that skit in the Simpsons were Homer takes advantage of Flanders' financial troubles and buys all his furniture from him at a bargain-basement price and then he's sitting around outside, watching TV, drinking beers and BBQ-ing with Flanders' stuff. I'm living in the Casa del Fitzy, right now.

This whole episode taught me that life is all about balance. Well, balance for normal people. And for me too, in a way, in that I'll probably always wind up at some median level of ambition, energy, etc., but that I ride the peaks and valleys hard... and with a vengeance.

Sadly though, this story also illustrates that Montreal has lost another hero in the gradual, but seemingly endless exodus of great folks from the city. Fitzy and Tameens, I'll see you guys in July, but I've had a grand old time getting to know you guys over the last year or so. I'll tell you that in a much more intimate and slurred way this time next month.

there are things that happen...

You think I'm going to get on here to start huffing and puffing about my temporary disillusionment with the Vancouver Canucks and how it's turning a poor young-middle-aged biberous into a jittery, nervous, bipolarized crack pot, don't you?

Well, if I had any energy after last night's 8 - 1 fisting, I probably would have, but cooler (read: sweatier and better fed) heads did prevail and even though my emotional journey this last month would have made for must-read drama, I am far too friggin superstitious to get into any of it right now.

(Brief tangent: The old man and I speak carefully like polished politicians when discussing the Canucks' chances these days. Whenever I've been away from Yellowknife for any length of time, the Nucks have dominated our phone call conversations to the point where we'll argue for 30 minutes about whether we think Cody Hodgson is a defensive liability or not. (For the record: I say he isn't.) In recent calls home though, talk of the team is limited to a scant sentence or two: "We're in the Finals." "Yes, it certainly is exciting..." "Ah... (one of us will say before the other gets too worked up) but Boston has a good team, let us not forget." "Indeed." We both twirl the corners of our moustaches.)

So I'm left to shrug it off and hope for the best tomorrow night. I will say that I didn't do my part by getting obliterated at the Sports Station, like I did before/during/after games one and two, so I'll be pulling up a seat to one of their beer tap tables tomorrow night to muck it up for the boys. (Yes, beer tap tables. The taps are built into the table and you pay by fluid ounce or something.)

All I'm going to give you right now is my immediate reaction to Game 3:

"Shea Weber did have a beard."

And don't think I don't remember that Happy Gilmore, one of my childhood heroes, is a Bruins fan. Happy? We're on hiatus, brotha.

Don't take it personal. I had to boycott Neil Young during our San Jose Sharks series. And we're cool, right?

Note: The herbiberous beard is at shaggy, patchiness never before seen and, as a result, I've gained a new respect for bearded folk. Unless you've dealt with one of these things before, you have no idea how often you get sauce or crumbs or boogers caught in there and there's no way to tell they're there unless you get all Howard Hughes about it.

Rant time:

There are things that happen to you as you get older: you find yourself only thinking about sex around 4,000 times a day; your back is sore, but when you crack it, it's still not fixed; you can get boogers stuck in your beard; and, unfortunately, you start becoming a little too serious about your life and what you're doing with it.

Now, my hiatus with this blog has nothing to do with Happy Gilmore superstitions or excuses. It has more to do with my inability to process the past month or two into any relatable narrative, since I still feel weird about everything.

Here's an attempt:

Long story short: I went up to Fort Simpson, NT to work for my old newspaper company for two weeks and then went home for three days and it was there that I realized how much things had changed... or more accurately, how much life had gone on.

I felt like an obsolete data processor trying to deal with all the information I was being fed: houses, weddings, babies, projects. It was overload, but in a fucking awesome way really, in that I saw all my best and closest friends in the world - my brothers - becoming adults or, I should say, men.

I was so proud looking at Slader, with his baby girl (a future Canucks fan! kidding) splayed out on his stomach, while we watched hockey. Brook was barely six weeks old at the time and Slader looked like he'd been a dad for time eternal. We had two dinners at Mindy and Mindy's new house, which is a perfect spot and I was so impressed - even when Mindy showed off the entertainment centre he made in Charlie's woodshop. Patch made us a gigantic, improvised fish dinner from scratch that 10 of us couldn't polish off. Feltch was talking new house and relationship and dog and bringing over home brews. I seriously sat in awe at all of these guys, whom I inexcusably hadn't seen in more than a year, and how they'd grown and matured into these people.

I was only back for three days and I tried to have a good time and connect with everyone like the old days, but I felt really distant, in that I knew I would soon be leaving again with return unknown, without a suitable explanation as to why I was heading back to Montreal. I felt like it was the elephant in the room and I felt insincere, not being able to say why I was leaving all these people that I care about and who care about me, when I don't really have a career or something keeping me down here.

The thing is, I love Montreal. This city is what all organized conglomerations of people should aspire to become and I invite anyone to come visit me here. On a summer day, the parks are full of people picnicking, drinking beers and wine, the streets are closed for festivals, there are free shows and festivals everywhere and things are cheap. I've seen a ton of shows, ate some scrumptious food, met a lot of new people with wild interests from around the globe, including some like-minded writerly-comedy types.

Montreal hasn't lost its luster yet.

Since I've been back, I've wanted to start getting something going for myself down here, mostly fueled by my own dissatisfaction with my current work situation, but also, pathetically, in a small way in order to partially justify my move here. (A girl, who I had only met for one night, boiled me down to two words: "sensitive and restless." Yep and yep.)

Where this blog rant fits in? Because I've wanted to start freelancing stories or articles or whatever, I've viewed the blog as a roadblock, as a venue where I was writing goofy things for free that I could maybe pitch to a magazine or paper or website for some $$$ or at least publication. And that's what happened, really.

And you want to know what happened, really? I stopped writing altogether. This isn't to say that the last month has been a complete loss or anything. Quite the opposite, actually. I've met a girl who I'm really getting on with (and who I may be guilty of doing the 'don't talk about it' superstition stuff with) and it feels like I'm busy doing something every night/day.

But that writing stuff has dried up like a turd in the sun and that has got to stop.

And I know I shouldn't have to explain myself for what I want to do and I know all my buddies are happy for me, but because I am who I am and because I over think everything, I wanted to get this off of my chest. We'll always be brothers, brothers.

(And you have to put up with these crazy rants every once in a while on here. You should know that by now.)

random thoughts

My brother Slader just became a father yesterday, giving birth figuratively to baby Brooklyn. I say figuratively because Steph was the one to actually birth Brooklyn. Good work, Steph and I can't wait to see the little bundle o' joy.

One thing though, Slader: I think Brooklyn may be trying to tell you something. She decided to pick March 15, 2011 as her day of birth. Now, on the surface, that's an amazing day: the sun is starting to make real inroads into the day again, the Snow King Festival is in full force and, hell, the playoffs are almost at our feet. But, I have a feeling that Brooklyn is trying to tell you something by having picked March 15, 2011.

She's gonna be a Canucks fan, dogg. It's right there to see-din....

Brooklyn was born during the afternoon of March 15, 2011, when the Edmonton Oilers were dead last - DEAD LAST - in the NHL with 55 points and the Vancouver Canucks - for the first time in franchise history, this late in the season, I might add for gravitas - were 1st in the league with 101 points. If that isn't a message, I don't know what is?

Now when I told DA the news, his immediate reaction was that you were bringing Brooklyn into the world at the lowest point in franchise history so that she wouldn't remember these times and she'd only start to really get into things as guys like Eberle, Hall and Paajarvi were nearing their primes and Hemsky was in his, but I don't know if I buy it.

I think she might just be a Canucklehead. Don't take it too hard, Slader. It could be worse. She could be a Flames fan.

I'm kidding guys. Can't wait to see y'all.

With this in mind, here's a little random time capsule of March 15, 2011 - one day late...

GOOD: The seagulls are back. I always love the sound of seagulls in March. It means this shat we call winter is almost over. All that snow that murdered my shoes five nights ago has basically been eroded away to sad little outcrops of greyish-ice by two and a half days of WARM rain. Still, the City of Montreal managed to wake me up at 3 a.m. yesterday by clearing my street with alarms, loaders, snow-blowers, dump-trucks and flashing lights, even though it was raining and the snow was trickling into the storm drains.

BAD: St. Patrick's Day is approaching and one unfortunate symptom of this yearly pissfest in Montreal is how the McGill/downtown area is invaded by douchebag American 18 to 20-year-olds here on Spring Break. I've been here for less than two years and noticed that the young drunks are louder and more abrasive during this week/weekend than other times of the year. While I find it annoying to have to walk to work through the crowds of shade-wearing guys and girls -talking about even more inane things than I talk about - who hang outside the Hilton on Sherbrooke because they all have money and can afford to drop hundreds per night to get shit-tanked in a foreign city while they are in school, I can't fault them because, if I was 18 and could get drunk legally in an awesome student city three years before I could at home, I'd be there as often as possible.

Still doesn't excuse the douchiness.

GOOD: Nothing funnier than watching a down-and-out white gangster complain about his lot in life. Extra points if he's a ginger.

BAD: Nate Dogg died. He died of lung cancer, right? Yeah? Okay, so as a legacy project, his family should go back through his entire catalogue and edit every song he's ever done to try to persuade kids from smoking.

"Hey Hey Hey Hey......... Smoke-free every day."

No?

GOOD: McGill girls. Seriously, I wish I'd come here for school. Like I said about girls at Columbia so many years ago (okay, 18 months) McGill girls have their own look: They are like between 5'2" and 5'5", with black hair and slightly tanned. I feel like I could point out a McGill girl from a suspect line just based on this stereotype. Yep, I'm officially a weird, old guy.

BAD: Losing that hour this weekend. Didn't this feel like the shortest weekend ever? Really, it was 5 p.m. Saturday before I'd even taken a breath. And that was before Spring Back.

GOOD: As a result of that lost hour, the days are ending later and I've actually walked home from work with the sun at my back a couple times this week. It's mad how amazing it makes me feel. It's bringing this weird kind of depth back to things, like I looked at an apartment complex that I walk by on Berri every day and it just looked different... like maybe it was the fact that I actually looked at it, instead of rushing past it in a cold hurry. Anyways, I'm about a month away from hanging out in parks again. I can't be happier.

BAD: CBC Montreal. I check out their website at least ten times a day at the coal mine and, lately, it's just been sad. They've had stories about the city going on a pothole blitz and it was one of laziest, most useless things I've ever read. It was like they rewrote a press release. And I've been applying there for every opening they have and can't even get a response and it just makes me sulk. Come on, guys. Give me a shot!

But today takes the cake: They had a BREAKING NEWS story about an earthquake striking the Montreal-area. We all know that earthquake stories are big business right now, but come on, this thing registered a 4.3. That's like a fart in a bathtub. We really are pussies here in Canada.

What's happening in Japan is horrifying. It really hits home, I find, because this disaster occurred in probably the most prepared and well-organized society on the planet and all the planning and precaution still couldn't forecast something of this magnitude.

When I saw the videos of the tsunami slowly but relentlessly invading the towns and cities in Japan, I couldn't help but think how small and trivial humans are in the grand scheme of the universe. A tremor in the earth just overwhelms land with water, carelessly and without reason, like a kid splashing around in a puddle and regardless of what we do, the wave can't be stopped and houses, cars and lives just get swept up in the ceaseless wave. It's just all so bizarre.

I've worked with a bunch of great people from Japan and I'm hoping that the situation quickly becomes controllable again and life starts to get back to some sort of normalcy again.

good/bad

Unless you're Charlie Sheen, I've come to realize that life always seems to find a way to level you out. If you're feeling too great, something will knock you down a peg and vice versa. I come to look at this as a universal law.

Minor example:

A friend had asked me to check the Smith Westerns show with her last night, but I felt I really needed to get some things done after a hectic two weeks. I came home feeling particularly zombie-ish, after another 8 hours at the coal mine, knowing that there was work to do. For instance, there were two years of income taxes to be submitted, some medical forms for prescription rebates that needed to be sent, an apartment that required tidying for a pending dinner guest (ooh la la) job boards that had to be searched, a bunch of story ideas that were asking to be hashed out, an even bigger pile of stories that begged to be completed, a few travel plans for upcoming events that required some coordination, and a future that probably necessitated a second look, if not a complete overhaul.

So like I said, there was work to do.

I made some dinner quickly and then set to filling out the tax forms until I realized that I didn't have my 2010 info printed off and - more importantly - I didn't have the tax forms. They'll have to wait. I then got out my prescription receipts - for the old foe, rosacea - only to discover I'd completely filled out the form I had to send in six months ago and forgot to send it. Since then, I had collected an additional $32 receipt and - again, more importantly - changed addresses. I'll need to get a new form so... that one will have to wait.

I then went onto the job boards and found the same old, rehashed, phony recruiter, analyst, marketing specialists jobs posted at each site and gave up.

I did find this beauty though:

Uncle Sam wants you... and your clarinet

Since I was on the computer, I thought, why not jot down some of the story ideas that were popping around in my head. Easy enough. I opened an old Word document called 'story ideas' and then added a few to the ever-growing list. These things are like seeds buried in a pot in a dark, dry attic. After seeing all these ideas, I lost hope and lost any energy I had to flesh out some of the partially-watered plants.

So what was I left with? My dishes? Meh... Make future plans? I think about those enough, so because I hadn't slept well the night before and since wanted to tire myself out, I grabbed my hockey skates and stick and set outside for Parc Lafontaine.

Now initially when I moved into this apartment, I was giddy in anticipation of a winter spent on the park's two rinks, as I would only be five minutes away. But with an upswing in general activity (and my hockey homey, Freduardo, also becoming increasingly busy and leaving me with no one to head out there with) I've only found the time to get out maybe a half dozen times. Due to this, every hockey outing has left me doubled over on the ice, sucking wind through burning lungs after only 15 minutes, while dudes twice my age skate circles around me. It hasn't been very enjoyable.

But last night, I walked over slowly, taking in the blue-nearly-black sky and the stars shining. It's sad how little I look up at the sky here in Montreal. The snow was hard from weeks of melting and freezing and melting again and dogs ran on top of it and then fell into it, as their owners stood laughing, smoking and chatting. It felt like I was seeing the park for the first time almost.

I put on my skates standing up and then joined a game. The first time the puck was passed to me, I gave it away immediately, because it had been a few weeks since I'd played. This went on for a while until finally I started to catch up mentally and then I started threading some passes and deking some guys and I got so into the game that I forgot to be tired and forgot to be winded and I forgot my job and my worries and I just played.

We went from four-on-four, to three-on-three, to two-on-two and eventually, taber-knackered (as the Lazer would say) we decided to leave. I was sweating buckets and was completely bagged, but I felt like I'd just had a full-body and mind massage. I felt the cold air on my throbbing face and it was like awaking completely into the moment. I wondered why I hadn't done this every night.

To tie this back to my original point, I got home, threw my skates and sticks on the floor and started at the dishes. Right away though, I felt that something was up. As I dipped my hands into the dishwater, I noticed that I couldn't see them if I kept my gaze at the tap. This temporary blind spot is the first warning I get of an oncoming migraine headache.

I hadn't had one in about a year and four months and I was surprised that my body would choose now of all times to give me one, but when I look back at my history, it makes sense. Whenever I'm stressed out and then I go and have a euphoric workout, my body completely de-stresses and that changes something about my blood pressure or blood flow or something, and that leaves me prone to these headaches.

Seeing as I had a really bad one about three years ago, where I lost feeling slowly from my left foot to leg to chest to arms to hands to face to tongue and had trouble forming a simple sentence, I took care to notice if any of those symptoms were reoccurring. My left foot felt a little funny, but I figured it was just from the hockey. I took a shower and that's when my auras (think of a blind spot that takes a weird shape and becomes like a greyish, twitching and pulsing puddle or blotch over your line of sight) went into full-blown mode. It was like I had the Northern Lights going off between my eyes and the world and I had to try to look through them. It's typically this part of the migraine experience that scares me most because I don't know what causes this to happen and the experience is completely debilitating since I really can't see. These auras were probably the worst I've ever had and so I made my way to bed and turned off the lights and tried to sleep before the pain hit. Didn't happen, when the auras started to subside 20 to 30 minutes later, the stabbing feeling had kicked in right behind my right eye, which is where it always happens. Last night, it was worse than most. It felt like someone was coring into my brain and then injecting something into it that was expanding that core. It felt awful and then I started getting nauseous. I started to recite easy to remember quotes or lyrics to make sure I wasn't having any of the speech difficulties. I was sweating and rolling around in bed and I couldn't take my mind off of the pain. I then decided to get an old movie - Donnie Brasco - that I can nearly remember word for word, and I put it on while turning my laptop screen off, so I would just listen to the movie.

I think I probably fell asleep at 3 a.m.

Anyhow, that's a long-winded way of saying that life always finds a way to sprinkle some bad into the good or give you some good when you're feasting on bad. This might be the only thing I am sure of in life. That's almost how I would define life. ie. When I start to get back into some kind of fiscal comfort and I start planning a short trip or a small purchase I need, a long-lost bill always arrives in the mail. "That's life," I think to myself.

Also, I probably wrote this whole thing because I might have felt guilty for missing work today seeing as I wasn't 'sick' in the traditional sense. I mean, I didn't get any sleep and my head still hurts, but I probably could have gone in if I needed to. Yet, I was sort of suffering from a 'migraine hangover,' where I wasn't really thinking clearly most of the day, evidenced by my foray out for some groceries, where I tried speaking to a grocery clerk in French and I found myself stuttering on a word for a good three seconds.

d.p.a., baby

Back when I was still just getting comfortable in my pubes, a few years before the Y2K Bug changed our lives forever, I found myself manning the grill in a McDonalds kitchen, flipping burgers, snacking on nuggets and pickles (try it) and working, unknowingly, as an WWF proselytizer.

I wore a Stone Cold t-shirt (later replaced by an eyebrow-raised The Rock.) I had a WWF hat. I even, embarrassingly, taped as many WWF Raws and Smackdowns (and eventually, WCW Monday Nitros even) as I could and I even went so far as labeling them. Oooh, this smarts.

Anyhow, back then it was all about catch phrases, and one of the best came from Mr. "Stone Cold" Steve Austin. The Texas Rattlesnake (what a name!?!? Shit, am I proselytizing again?) was a paranoid dude and he taught his minions to watch their backs by wearing his patented "D.T.A.: Don't Trust Anyone" shirt.

I loved that slogan and I probably would have purchased that shirt for myself if our Wal-Mart sold it. (And I probably would have ended up on some pre-9/11 version of a no-fly list too.)

I bring this up now because I recently witnessed something in the underground mall beside the metro near work that made me recall that motto.

I'd say I buy lunch about 90 percent of my workdays, usually because I'm too lazy or, more often, too late in the morning to make myself a sandwich to take with me. So me and my rag-tag group of coal miners head down to either the Promenade or the EC (Eaton's Centre) where we try to get in a sufficient amount of commissary in our alloted 30-minute break period (minus the five to eight minutes we burn waiting for the elevator and walking to the food courts.)

This daily walk takes us past the entrance to the McGill Metro station and down a corridor that I affectionately call the "Hallway of Broken Dreams." There are people huddled along the walls in various states of disrepair. There is the guy with the super red face, who is dressed nicely enough that you think he might be a genius, serial killer. (I have actually seen him cash his change in at one of our Promenade food joints, too. He asked for a five like he was going to deposit it in a bank account. For this reason, it has never even crossed my mind to give him any money.) There is the fat, white, balding, bearded guy with face tattoos who I never try to make eye contact with because he's always smiling and he doesn't look like he should legally be allowed to smile because a smile doesn't look right on his face. There is the tall black dude who comes up to you with his empty fast food cup but doesn't ask for money... he just puts out the cup. I'm not really sure why he does it though, because he is typically dressed better than I am and I have to be done up all business casual (BiziCajji.) And then there's the guy right outside the Promenade turnoff who looks somewhat like the professor from Tintin, but sits in his wheelchair, shrinking away, and on occasion, he will summon within me a bit of pity and I'll throw a few coins into his collection cup.

On Monday, Fitzy and I went down to the EC, where we walked past the regulars, right up to the guy in glasses who is always parked at that spot right where the doors open and where thousands of people rush past him every day. He sits in one of those mechanized wheelchairs and just looks out at you sadly. I think he has Cystic Fibrosis or Multiple Sclerosis: I can't tell the difference. (I'm not trying to be insensitive here. It's all ignorance.)

On Monday though, something happened that made me completely reevaluate the Hallway of Broken Dreams and the entire "help me, I'm hungry" racket. Now I'm not the most sensitive guy when it comes to this kind of charity, as you probably know if you have spent any time around this here blog. I've devoted a lot of meta-ink towards the people asking for money and I think I find it offensive for some reason now, since I was so taken in by them and their persuasiveness when I first arrived here as a naive, small-town guy. Maybe I look at this new hard stance as the first trait that I've genuinely adapted from city living.

Either way, what I saw Monday shocked me. This meek guy in the wheelchair, curled up almost in a ball all of the time because his joints are tangled together, starts yelling something that is barely intelligible with the echo in the hall and because of his difficulties speaking. "Gooooooooo oonnnnnnnn...," it sounds like he's saying. "Goooo oooonnnnnn."

Fitzy and I stop. We see the man looking over to his left, towards a slightly-older-than-middle aged Eastern European woman with a cane, quietly and emotionally pleading for money. "Gooooo onnnnnn..." the little man continues. The lady doesn't seem to notice.

Then, the little man starts to move and he's yelling louder. "GOOOO OONNNNNN!!!" His chair is buzzing as he zips off. There are about twenty people watching now as this little man in the mechanized-wheelchair burns over to the lady and, wouldn't you know it, rams right into her. "GOOOoooOOO!" he continues to yell as he bashes her again. The lady is looking around at us all, horrified. She doesn't know what to say.

Fuck the heck? I debate stepping in between them, but fuck the heck again? What would I do? I can't berate a little man in a wheelchair, can I?

The little man bashes her again and then turns back as the woman starts crying and scurries off the other way. Damn, the little man ran her off the corner like she was some West Side kid selling crack on an East Side street corner in Baltimore, MD. That little man was straight gangsta!

Fitzy and I have lunch. He isn't even fazed. I say, "snap out of it, man! Didn't you see what just happened?" He says, "I once had a guy come up to me on the train in Toronto. He had nuts in his mouth and he just walked up to me and started spitting them in my face and he started saying 'No one is doing anything. Can you believe it?' and he kept spitting the nuts. I just walked away.'" He says he can't be bothered by anything he sees after that.

We ate lunch and then we left and we walked past the little man, looking as sad and pathetic as always. We continued walking back to the coal mine and we saw the bewildered lady, still crying, still with the cane, still frazzled, still asking for money.

And it dawned on me that Stone Cold's motto could be altered just a little bit to encapsulate that experience.

So that's why I say D.P.A: Don't Pity Anyone.

potent potables or hip hop quotables

If we are to believe cliches, then us humans only use 10 percent of our brains. (And also, apparently, a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, although I've never held a bird in my hand or tried to sell bush birds. Wait, was that a cliche or an aphorism?)

Frankly, I'm sick and tired of cliches and I know I just used a cliche to say how fed up I am with them. I don't like them because they're just not true all the time. For instance, the 10 percent brain usage proverb is obviously false.

Proof?

Well you can call it a breaking down of awareness -- something akin to a ball of cheese melting in the sun -- from the mundanity of my everyday that culminates, at certain points of the day, in my slipping into at subconscious mental state where I subliminally take every single word I hear and find an example of that word inside some long-lost hip-hop lyric, packed away somewhere deep within the sports stats and Simpsons quote recess of my brain.

Example:

Conversation: ".... Jersey Shore...."

My brain: "my shit is raw/straight from the Panama Shores/if the feds can't catch me then they'll make up a law"

-- Fat Joe on Lord Tariq and Peter Gunz's Cross Bronx Expressway (I MIGHT BE THE ONLY PERSON WHO EVEN REMEMBERS LORD TARIQ AND PETER GUNZ FOR CHRISSAKES! This secretly impresses/scares the hell out of me.)

Conversation: "... I tried calling the reference on his home phone..."

My brain: "I tap into my own zone like it's my home phone/turn the cell off to let my dome roam"

-- Common on Heat from Like Water for Chocolate

And a million other examples...

I'm the kind of guy that can't help but whistle or hum or sing something if my brain isn't being challenged. And so while I type away like a monkey all day at the coal mine, and it may appear as if I'm only using 10 percent of my between-ear-cheese, I am, in fact, working in many realms of consciousness on multiple levels and within various stages of cultural reference, whether I like it or not.

10 percent of my brain? Get outta here!

This experience has provided my with some insight (uh oh... insight just triggered something... My brain: "soaring to a new height of flight/and then fight the night/ with a light to insight/make the competition say aight" -- No I.D. on Common's Check the Method) into brain disorders or abnormalities. I feel for kids who have autism and keep referencing stats and memorizing lyrics or facts that have no relevance at all in the practical, real world...

Like seriously, why would anyone ever need to have a Lord Tariq & Peter Gunz lyric stored away in their head for 12 years? Where will that come in handy? I'm turning into a mental hoarder.

For y'all that don't know?!?!? (youtube won't let me embed) Lord Tariq & Peter Gunz - Cross Bronx Expressway ft. Big Pun and Fat Joe

biggest super bowl story

It wasn't Troy Polamalu auditioning for an inevitable Invisible Man remake (they're making Thor and Captain America flicks? What's next? Aqualad), or that 400-some ticket holders had their seats taken away upon arriving at the stadium in Dallas, or Aaron Rodgers making millions of Packer fans forget about Brett Favre, or Fergie's terrible karaoke performance or even that this was probably the last NFL game anyone will be watching for the next 16 months.

Nope, the biggest story from this Super Bowl was Christina Aguilera's rendition of the Star Spangled Banner. And I'm sure you're expecting me to comment on how she flubbed the lyrics and that she should be burned at the stake for that or something. But to be honest, I didn't even notice the mistake because I was timing how long she'd been singing the anthem and I was waiting eagerly for her final lyric: "Brave."

This is because several off-shore bookmakers had put odds on Aguilera's pre-game performance. It was one of the more intriguing prop bets out there this year. If you don't know, proposition betting on the Super Bowl is on its way to becoming more popular than gambling on the actual game.

If proposition betting is new to you, I'll explain. Prop bets allow the public to bet on individual - and often trivial - aspects of the game. For instance, you can bet on the coin flip - and this is something I do every year. Believe it or not, the odds were actually on heads, so if you bet tails on Sunday and won, you'd get a better pay out. I bet tails every year. Guess what won this year? Heads. Friggen oddsmakers know everything...

Anyways, prop bets allow you to put money on things like who will score the first touchdown, which player will win the game's MVP award and even goofier things like 'which will be higher: the amount of catches by wide receiver 'X' or the amount of inches of snow that will call in city 'Y'?' There was even one about what colour the Gatorade dumped on the winning coach would be. Yes, this is all true.

American casinos can only put odds on things that happen on the field, but off-shore casinos put odds down for anything remotely game-related. This means that yes, people could in fact wager on the length of time Aguilera would spend singing the anthem and how long she'd belt out the final word of the last line... "and the home... of the... BRAAAAA-AAA-AAVVVEE"

Intriguing, right?

Bookmakers had Aguilera's over-under for the song at one minute and 54 seconds. They also put the length of time she'd sing "brave" at six seconds.

If you watched the game, you noticed that she sang "brave" for like 10 seconds and that one really should have come as no surprise. Of course she would take that long with the last word. That's where these female singers get to show off their pipes. That one should have been a no-brainer. Over.

But the song time is where the controversy arises. According to some, she was right on the 1:54 mark. One site, Bodog, had her timed out at 1:53.20. Making things more difficult, there were a set of jets that flew by the stadium at the end of the song and the camera panned away to shoot them, so you can't actually know when she stopped singing. According to Chad Millman from Bill Simmons' B.S. Report podcast today, Sportsbook.com is paying out both the over and under because they couldn't get the actual time down.

Despite all this, I'm find it absolutely amazing that these oddsmakers can put the line down at 1:54 a week before and they can pretty much hit it on the nose.

Real story: I want to somehow get tied into a prop bet where I have some ability to influence what's going to happen. That why, I'll get in there early and put everything I have on that bet. Imagine if I'm Christina Aguilera's down-and-out brother and I come across this prop. I'm telling older sister that she's singing brave until she passes out.

underrated gross thing of the moment

I come across a lot of names every day. That's part of the territory when you work in a coal mine (read: call centre.)

The names you see defy logic sometimes. You really wonder if you are actually awake when you see job candidates like Soon See Kok or Debbie Downar, but with the volumes of names we go through on a daily basis, it happens.

This name I'm going to drop on you isn't something that shows up in some one-in-a-million random file, though. This is a name you have all seen before and I hope the next time you see it, you will stop and remember this.

Without disparaging the famous poet, I have to say that Dickinson is the most underrated grossest thing of the moment.

Just break that down and you'll see what I mean.

Dick-in-son.

Think about it: When they were first giving out names, they looked around and said, "Hey, metal-maker, we're going to call you John Blacksmith for tax purposes. Hey, garment-maker, we're going to call you John Taylor for legal purposes. Hey, chap with his penis inside his son's butthole, we're going to call you John Dickinson for the rest of time."

How do you get called Dickinson? Explain that to me. Seriously, Dickinsons, let me know... To me, it's just weird.

Department of Homeland Security is not cool (THEY KILLED ATDHE.NET!!!!)

Enough is enough...

You know, I haven't been on side with any of these wars in Iraq or Afghanistan and I definitely shook my head in disgust when they decided to bail out the greedy bank execs who brought the world economy to their knees, but the U.S. government has finally gone and done it. They crossed a line by taking something that I cherish dearly.

I just don't know whether I can take it anymore and I know I'm not the only one. Hell, even the Jersey Shore crew is getting out of dodge and moving to Italy.

Who put me over the edge? Well, the Department of Homeland Security did.

The Vancouver Canucks (haven't written about them - or demigod Kesler - during their monumental run these past two months because I'm afraid to jinx them) have called up star prospect Cody Hodgson and he is expected to play tonight. This is a big deal in Canucks-land, because we haven't had a prospect with this much hype and potential since the Sedins were beardless, rosy-cheeked lads.

I'm more than excited to see this kid play and, since I don't have cable, I punched in the web address to my go-to streaming sports site - atdhe.net - to see when the game started. Instead of the turquoise screen that typically loads up, I saw a white screen punctuated by three crests, which all contained eagles in various forms, colours and moods. I thought I'd typed in the incorrect address, as I do about three or four times a day. (Check out this site: http://slinginlingo.blogpot.com. Definitely not what you're looking for.) So I rechecked it and, no, I definitely had it right.

It turns out the Department of Homeland Security has seized the site because it "is unlawful to reproduce or distribute copyrighted material... without authorization."

Well, fuck you DHS! Seriously!

Aren't there bigger fish to fry than a website that provides streaming sports games to people who can't afford cable? Like, wouldn't resources be better spent trying to curtail your country's spiraling debt? Couldn't you wire-tap some swindling CEO? Really, you feel you have to crack down on people watching sports? People who need to watch sports these days to distract themselves from all the problems you are causing? We're still watching the commercials, you idiots. It's not like we're missing the ads that keep these stations on air. The network's ads are actually reaching a larger audience now that they are streaming internationally. Shouldn't this please them?

I don't know what your angle is, Department of Homeland Security. Are you trying to piss off the very people who bury their heads in the sand by getting carried away with their sports teams and,by doing so, are doing everything they can to avoid being pissed off at you?

Are you trying to create terrorists? You take away a man's Vancouver Canucks hockey and what does he have left?

thought of the day

I have a feeling that when a future generation looks back at us in a few hundred years, names like Bush and Obama and bin Ladin will have long faded into history, along with the prolonged and pathetic conflicts that marked their lives, but the people in our future will see Carl Sagan as a prophet from our time.

how to make it in montreal

In this city, you get a chance to observe a strange person making money in a stranger way each day.

Hopefully this doesn't antagonize my Northern friends, but today was probably the first 'cold' day we've had in Montreal this winter. I had a 'shortage of coal to mine' mandatory day off from work and was planning on getting up early to get myself to a walk-in clinic by 7:30 a.m. so I could score some direly needed face drugs sometime before sun down, but the cold had infiltrated my shoddily-protected room and I couldn't get myself out of bed despite using every one of my tricks (10 more minutes, one more song, count down from 100 and... we'll stop there.)

Finally I felt brave enough to leave the cocoon four hours later and I thought the wall below my shitty, thin window felt a little colder than usual. I checked the Weather Channel site and it was -22C - and that's about ten degrees chillier than I remember it being here so far.

Anyways, I did some grocery shopping today and I was waiting for a light at Papineau and Rachel during the after-work, rush hour and this lanky, tall, bearded guy sort of pops up from beside a bus stop and walks towards me. He looks at me and tilts his head, while also appearing to stuff what look like three perfectly spherical tiny oranges into his jacket. I avert my eyes because I figured this dude was just typical Montreal crazy.

(You really do see something that makes you stop and scratch your head every single day here, whether it's someone stuffing a tree into a telephone booth, or a dude loudly claiming he's Malcolm X at at Metro stop or bizarre aerobic moms pushing their strollers through Parc Lafontaine while shooting an arm in the air and then a leg and then jogging on the spot, while a lady in a parka three sizes too big,runs up and down the line chanting encouragement. I got stuck in that line on my way to work last Friday and walked inside this throng of moms for about 10 minutes, sipping coffee from a travel cup and trying too hard to look comfortable.)

Where were we? Oh yeah, crazy bearded guy with the oranges. Anyways, the light changes and I start crossing the street. It's a piercing -22C (it really does feel colder than the dry Arctic -22 version. It's the humidity. For real.) and I see the guy out of the corner of my eye (using my peripherals) and it looks like he's running up to drop kick me in the back. Huh? I turn around to realize that, no, he's actually just running out into the intersection and jumping up comedically to greet his helpless, commuter customers (commustomers?) before going into a juggling routine.

I stop at the other end of the street to watch out of curiosity. Juggling? In this weather? Really? Is this how you make it in Montreal, bra?

I've always had a little rant about jugglers, about how expert and skilled they are at hurling these balls different ways and keeping them from hitting the ground and why they chose to spend all that time being so good at it. They unquestionably spent countless hours honing their talents, learning how to throw the objects behind their backs and how to incorporate different and dangerous instruments and elements. And that's fine. But when a juggler is out there asking for money, I always ask why this person didn't spend the time they used flipping around these balls to read a book or learn a craft like carpentry, that could eventually pay the bills. I get it, juggling is fun and they probably smoked a lot of weed, but no one sees me running around Montreal, challenging people to games of EA Sports NHL-series (except that was a gainful venture that one winter in Cow-Town... YEAH!!!) or to quoting the Simpsons for coins, even though these were the useless abilities I spent countless hours perfecting during my youth-adolescence-extended adolescence-this morning.

But to each his own, I suppose. This is, admittedly, a hard fucking place to find work and I guess if someone is willing to shell out a few cents to watch some poor schmuck juggle balls in the dead of winter while waiting for a red light, who am I to argue.

(TERRIBLE SEGUE ALERT!!!)

And here's a guy who made a shit-ton of money but walked away from a HOLY SHIT-ton of money because he would have had to sell out himself and his values in order to sign his name to the cheques.

He's been outspoken against the subtle - and not-so-subtle - ways that Hollywood and the powers that be tried to change him and his act and he's been called crazy and dismissed as a nut because of it, but we are - and certainly he is - better for what he did.

Here are some recently released bits from Chappelle's show that I stumbled upon last night. Glad to see that Dave Chappelle is still doing stand-up and is still funny as ever.

speak for me, youtube

Youtube is really starting to consume me. Well, maybe not consume, because it's more slo-mo, Spice Girls, 2 Become 1 shit. It's integrating into me.

Not only does it entertain me while I'm at home (example: two hours completely disappeared last night as I jumped from wrestling link to wrestling link to wrestling link) or liven up an evening when conversations get dull with friends, but this year - since I'm still working hard to string together some pennies - I actually sent some friends my favourite clips from 2010 as a Christmas gift. It's the thought that counts, right?

I know I'm definitely not alone in my appreciation for this site, but without realizing it until just now, I think I've started to take this love to a new level: youtube is speaking for me.

A little history (and don't worry, this will soon make sense): My old man is as renown for his clever gift card messages, as he is notorious for the amount of time it takes him to sign said card. He puts a lot of pressure on himself and he feels he has a reputation to uphold each and every time a loved one's birthday or wedding or new bambino comes around. It's a gift and a curse, in his mind. He sits down at the table and stares at the card, looking through the thing, searching and straining for the perfect combination of words. He'll then look skyward and scratch his head. Everyone knows not to talk to him during this time. He'll get up and go dry some dishes and then, suddenly, he'll start back to the card and sit back down with a pen and almost have something, before getting up again to burn off the nervous energy.

I feel somewhat stricken with this handicap: it's not that I am noted for having hilarious notes in cards, but I always strive to come up with something clever whenever the occasion arises. (Note: Look at that, I just backed my way into an excuse for the lack of recent blog posts. When you don't got it, you just don't got it, folks.)

So thank the Spaghetti Monster that my pops doesn't have facebook. You see, the constant barrage of wall posts and messages and photos creates an endless and insatiable demand for clever quips. I'm sure if my dad was ever presented with this possibility, it would drive him crazy(er?).

And that's where I've likely wound up. Call it laziness or craziness, but instead of racking my feeble brain for some funny, tight and succinct one-liners, I've leaned upon my burgeoning catalogue of youtube clips and allowed them to start talking for me. Someone posts a beautiful picture? I'll fire off a link with Keanu Reeves' saying 'WHOA!' The boys won a hockey tournament in Hay River? Well, why not paste in a clip of Canadian fans going apeshit after Crosby scored in Vancouver to show my appreciation?

You see how this works, right?

I can see how this might be viewed as lazy and I can see how some would say that this is further evidence that technology is becoming more embedded in our everyday and that, as it becomes more expressive and complex, we - the users - become less verbose and simpler. I can also see how this kind of linked response could get very tired, very quickly.

But for delusion's sake, I'd argue that I'm just demonstrating the fruits of all my youtube labour. I've put in hours and hours of work watching videos and now I'm just showing off my encyclopedic knowledge of banality. I think I've put in the effort, now I'm watching it pay off.

Do you think I'm full of ess-aich-eye-tee? Do you agree? Let me know... but do it using a youtube clip.

cold feet reality

It kind of all hit me for real while I was having a beer at a show at Cagibi. It wasn't anything sung in a song that made me take notice and it certainly wasn't an alcoholic epiphany that opened up this suppressed railway of thought either. Funny enough, it was a set of cold feet that made me realize that I've come back to the worries of yore: the anxiety and restlessness that possessed me on my move out of Yellowknife and down here.

Cold feet.

I'd kind of slept-walked through the day: got up late, saw a flick, ate a burger. My buddy Chocolate T told me I didn't seem myself - I'd heard that from a handful of people the past month or so. I was tired and feeling reclusive. I went off to the show, even though I wasn't really up for it. I kind of wished that I had a giant beard, like Pacino did at the end of Serpico, so my eyes could poke out of the fur like a periscope and I could watch what was happening without being detected. I would have fit right in at the Ground Zero of Montreal Hipsterdom too.

Before this starts to sound like an emo song, it's not that I didn't want to talk to anybody, it's just that I didn't feel like I had anything to say. I moved into my own place about a month and a half ago and that means a lot of time by one's self. A friend wrote me and said you are confronted by your demons in a live-alone state because it means you have a lot of time to think. That's really the last thing I need.

I have had a lot of time to think about what has gone wrong in the past few months. For one, my two best friends in Montreal - my two former roommates - had a spat and the house was disbanded as a result. Being who I am and trying, in my own way, to do right by both of them - or maybe to avoid conflict - I played Switzerland and kept my distance. I went home to sleep that last month and that was pretty much it.

Now, I don't really see much of either of them and when I do, some resentments seem to crop up or linger behind the scenes. That's mostly my fault because I find that I don't want to deal with any of this and that's maybe because Montreal has really been a fantasyland since I arrived just over a year ago, with only a backpack full of clothes and books and a sleeping bag purchased in Iceland.

I hit the ground running and saw and did something new every day. Everything in the city was new too and so close and fascinating. Saw a ton of shows. Ate amazing food. Went to some great - and some ridiculous - parties. Hung out in parks and on rooftops and skating rinks. And met new people all the time. I had the same story: just moved here on a whim, looking for work, etc. I fell into a great group in nearly the exact apartment I'd dreamt about living in, while pondering life pessimistically in Yellowknife.

Life was grand. It was new and challenging. It was starting from scratch.

But like the Roots best album, Things fall Apart. People started to leave. I found a job. Money got tight, as I started to live on my income and not my Visa. Free time shrunk. Energy got zapped. Fought with friends. Stress. Got sick of my job. Wanted something else. Got static. Had weekend rut - and hangover gut rut. Lost creativity. Pay Check. Broke. Pay Check. Broke.

Cold Feet.

Back to the cold feet. Like I said I realized, for the first time at that show, that my feet were cold and that they shouldn't be cold. I'm wearing some black Pumas that aren't equipped for winter. (I'm sure they'll somehow rust, with the amount of salt the city unloads on the sidewalks and streets.)

But the point is, I was discomforted by my cold feet. A year earlier, I wouldn't have noticed them - or if I did, I would have shrugged and sucked it up, because I was in no position to do anything about ameliorating the situation. "I need a job! Feet, you're going to have to wait until later."

Is it possible to feel worse knowing that you can better your condition? I'm less happy the more comfortable I am. Is that weird? I enjoyed living unsustainably, trying to pull myself up onto the ledge. It was exhilarating. Everything I worried about was legit. There was no time or room for idle anxiety. Now I'm on that ledge and I'm twiddling my thumbs about what ledge I should move on to. I've found a job, I've got a roof over my head, I've made friends, but now I hate my job and I'm living by myself and I have had some friend drama and so as much as I tried to fight it, it looks like real life - REAL life - has finally infiltrated Montreal. I'm back to stressing about a satisfying job, finding a spark and I'm spinning my tires about how to go about doing all that.

I want to be dependent and I'm getting there, but it doesn't feel like I'm gaining maturity. Is maturity really about knuckling down, planning, getting real and doing something about something? Am I confusing it with something? Why should deciding on a future be accompanied by so much negativity?

Or am I just thinking too much?

Note: I wrote this at a Second Cup beside a chick who was griping about THE EXACT SAME SHIT with her friend. I found her totally annoying and self-obsessed and enthralled with the sound of her own voice. Heh heh heh.... errr... self-FAIL!

doll-gs days of summer

You fucking disgust me... No, not you... just that thing on your hip... No, you're good... Real good...

I'm a little worried about what you are becoming, best friend of man.

Before I get started here, and because it might get a little heated and I don't want you to think I'm shitting all over you, I want to tell you that I am saying this because I truly do care about you. You are man's best friend. And I mean, if you're friend is turning into a totally pussy, you have to tell him, right? That's what best friends do, isn't it?

Dogs, you and I have shared some intimate and also not-so-fond times. I've been greeted countless times, when walking into a home, with your nose in my crotch. Have I scolded you or shamed you? No, I've laughed it off and even encouraged you to sniff others. I have had my leg defiled and treated like a new rubber sex doll in Davecat's home by some of you. Did I blow my whistle, kick you off and call the cops? No, I washed my pants. I've scrubbed your shit out of the floor, while you watched me with a puzzled and almost satisfied look on your face. Did I freak out at you? Yeah, I did. But those were the bad times and I've moved on.

What I need to tell you is important. Very important. Rexy, the time has come. Go grab some kibbles, drag your ass across the floor a few times and then come over here. We've got something serious to discuss.

You see, there are a number of your 'brothers and sisters' out there who are behaving in a very non-dog fashion. They are divas and pansies and it's getting downright embarrassing.

In case you have also become wussified, here is a brief history lesson. Your forefathers were wolves and foxes. They were hunters. Cunning survivors in the harshest of landscapes. They stayed alive through sheer intelligence and skill. Your more recent ancestors like huskies were some of the hardest-working, determined and noblest creatures to ever walk the Earth. St. Bernard's command respect in the Alps for saving people after avalanches, so cartoons tell me. Sniffhounds risk life and limb to put fugitives back behind bars. Speedy greyhounds give it their all to entertain our alcoholics, gamblers and degenerates at the races. Even coyotes and jackals are sly and resourceful creatures that have to hustle to put food in their mouths.

How far you have fallen...

Last week, on a walk home from work, I twice witnessed 'dogs' being pampered and treated in such a fashion that it would have made Old Yeller preempt his master and himself ask to be put down with the shotgun behind the barn. In one instance, a very unhealthy - read: through-the-floor-morbidly obese - lady was pushing her tiny dog in a homemade, customized dog stroller. This dog has a rich kid smirk on his face as he watched other dogs walk by. Just a few seconds later, another woman came cruising by on a motorized scooters, with one of those stupid, brainless fluffy white poodles in her lap. I haven't seen entitlement like I saw in that pooch's eyes since we drove through Malibu three years ago.

It made me think back to when I was in Baie St. Paul a few weeks ago and I saw this tiny little wiener dog shivering in this young chick's arms. I walked over to her and asked her what was wrong with the pooch.

"He doesn't like being outside."

He doesn't like being outside? You're talking about a dog, lady. How long has there even been such a thing as 'inside'? Shouldn't a dog's intrinsic essence predate the notion of 'inside'?

What would a Husky say to this dog? (Probably what a normal human would say to Davecat, I suppose.) He'd probably call it a brat, if he didn't eat it first. (I'm hoping no normal person would eat Davecat, lest you choke on his ponytail.)

And that's it. These dogs have degraded the term dog. When people think dog now, they don't think hard-working, regal, noble. They think cute, fragile, primp.

This is the reality of the situation, dogs. You have to share your namesake with these do-nothings that don't like being outside.

The dog is being besmirched. I blame it on the Taco Bell Dog. Ever since that little wiener started popping up on the TV slingin tacos, people have started to find these tiny dogs adorable. Nowadays, you turn on the television and you don't find a Lassie, you find Paris Hilton's purse-lacky wearing a pink tutu. They don't make Homeward Bound movies anymore. They make Beverly Hills Chihuahaus.

Dogs aren't supposed to be this small, people. The Taco Bell Dog was a fucking junkie, ferchrisake. Why do you suppose he spoke like he did? Dogs aren't that skinny and skittish. This dog was a fiend and he became a hero and a prototype. I see grown men walking these tiny purse dogs on leashes through parks now (and I keep praying for an eagle or hawk or some sort of prey bird to swoop down and take them away.) I'm sure these dudes are probably neutered too.

I call upon dogs - and I'm talking about real dogs here - to recoup the term and relegate all pampered, thump-up-butt dogs to the doll-gs category.

I will get the ball rolling for you since I'm sure it's difficult for you to access the internet right now.

You are not a dog if:

- you are a fashion accessory.

- you don't have to be taken for a walk every day.

- you don't enjoy being outside. (Can't get over that one.)

- you wear any sort of clothing (other than boots in the winter and maybe a bandana around the neck for an older dog. Shades are cool with me too.)

- you incessantly bark at other dogs or mammals that are at least 10 times your size from behind your masters leg. (Worst dogs in the world in my humble, tear-inducing onion.)

- you are bought and sold over eBay by someone living in a big city.

Please feel free to add to this list.

WHERE MY DAWGS AT!?!!?!?!?!??!?!?

Quebec

I'm going to bullet this baby because there is no underlying thread to this underlying thread.

I went out of town this past weekend to celebrate Quebec's Canada Day: St. Jean Baptiste Day. Got in touch with the songs of birds and open fields and small town folk again. Felt good. The air was definitely heavier. Denser. Nearly as dense as I felt at work on Monday after living 'the guh lyfe' - like my man Razor Ramon would say - for the past four days.

- Before the trip, on the Wednesday afternoon, the kid experienced his first earthquake. It wasn't anything major, but at the coal mine, on the 11th floor, we definitely felt the building shake. At first we thought it was construction, but we saw the people in the building across looking a little flustered, as they peered out their windows down at the street. A couple fellow coal miners got word from friends of theirs that they'd felt it elsewhere around the city. From what I read, it measured a 5.5 on the good old Richter scale and was centred about 300 km North of Ottawa, meaning it was definitely something we could feel in Montreal, but we shouldn't be expecting Bono to team up with whoever the biggest name in record-slinging is today to put out a 'Sending our love to MTL' Song, where the proceeds would go to the survivors of the quake. I thought the experience was sort of neat, to be honest, although I won't lie and say that I didn't feel a little bit dizzy about 30 minutes after the 'eight seconds of shaking' when I thought about what had happened. Maybe I can blame my rum-drinking over the weekend on my fragile emotional state in dealing with the natural disaster.

- We started at Baie St. Paul, which is about an hour's drive into the hills Northeast of Quebec City. When we arrived, there was a gigantic fire in the middle of town, visible from the top of the valley hill we had to descend. It seemed like it was three storeys high and I couldn't tell if there was anyone around it. It looked like it was raging out of control, in the middle of this idyllic little town plunked down in between the hills and, surrounded by fields and the St. Laurent. Turns out there were quite a few folks down there. We didn't stop because we wanted to get our own fire going up on the hill at the hostel we were staying at.

Quickly we found out when we got there that there would be no fire. There was 'une interdiction de feu' due to the busier than average forest fire season. I would be missing the biggest tradition of the St. Jean Baptiste, my bud told me: the fire. (Gotta love any celebration where the most important accessory is a raging, nearly-out-of-control fire.)

- That didn't stop us from sitting around the fire pit though as we polished beers and dipped into the Appeltons. We sat for hours around the 'feu pas feu' with people from across the province. A group of guys from Montreal took control and started belting out songs on guitar. While it was a little boring and cliched at first (I find it hard to believe guitar circles existed before Sublime) once the liquor started to flow, the energy picked up and I got the most authentic and well-versed glimpse into the mind of the modern Quebecois I've has since moving nine (damn! nine, already?) months ago. A shorter guy with a chinstrap beard started improvising lyrics over his friends' strumming. It was a revelation. The first song was about how the French (in Quebec, French means 'from France. ' Quebecois are Quebecois or Francophones) were invading Montreal and particularly la Rue Laurier. I apologize that I can't remember any of the lyrics, but it was late, I was tired, half in the bag and still adjusting to communicating entirely in French. The guy was sharp as hell though and had us cracking. The next few songs were dedicated to Gilles Duceppe and the fact that nothing much had changed for the better for Quebec under his leadership (Fun Fact: I am a resident in Gilles Duceppe's riding.) There were a whole let of 'esti' and 'tabernac' and 'colis' littered whenever a rhyme was hard to come by. The guy hit up Jean Chretien and Paul Martin and pretty much anyone who has had any say in Quebec or Canada recently. Anyways, I came away with the sense that this guy feels that Quebec's interests are being eroded by status quo politicians, but their culture and language is being threatened not only by English-speakers, but also the French. I couldn't tell you what I think, because really, this was my first visit outside of Montreal for any substantial period of time (I spent 14 hours in Quebec City last October, on a rooftop drilling in cable trays and running wire and driving around lost) in Quebec and I'm woefully ignorant about a lot of the issues outside the bilingual city I currently inhabit.

- Being true rebel rousers, we did light up a fire at about 3:30 a.m. She was meek, but immediately, it filled the void it made us all feel a little more comfortable. Unfortunately, as it got bigger, and us louder, we awoke a tiny forest dweller with a big beard and ponytail who also just happened to work at the hostel. He dumped a massive cauldron of water on it and freaked out at us. I went to bed laughing.

- I'm thinking a good 70 percent of the towns in Quebec begin with Sainte. And that's a safe estimate.

- Went to a St. Jean Baptiste parade in Baie St. Paul, where they had a 14-foot paper mache statue of Jacques Cartier lead the show. I guess it was the 475th anniversary of his arriving on Canadian soil. Loved the likeness. J.C., as I called him, had his arms folded over his stomach and his eyes were glazed. He looked like he was seasick. It was great and I'm now officially referring to 2010 as year 475 in honour of the homemade statue. Parade was small town. Everyone had a family member in the parade. Kids dressed up as clowns and ran around a school float at the start and, at the tail end of the procession, in the back of a flat-bed, a bunch of old dudes grudgingly drank beer, looking a little hung-over, humiliating a friend about to get married. After touring through town, 30 minutes later, a friend had the observation of the weekend: the kids were tired, slumping around beside the truck, while the guys were just waking up, yelling and offering beer to people.

- My favourite thing to say now is "oopeli," followed by "les boys."

- I found pretty much everyone that I met over the weekend to be exceptionally nice. I say pretty much because the only people who I found to be a little salty were the ladies who run the hot dog, ice cream and poutine stands. We must have visited a half-dozen of them and I really felt like the same person was working them. She was some cloned character. The stereotype is an overweight, impatient, early 40s ladies, who wears her hair slicked back in a pony tail, and has stains all over her apron. She doesn't hear all too well and her beacon-like speech reinforces that belief.

- I spoke French the entire four days. I realized I still have a ways to go. Living in Montreal, you can pass by being able to order food or hold a very brief conversation. When I was in the country, I was constantly meeting people and trying to make a good first impression. I'm guessing most people I came across probably thought I was recovering from a stroke. At one point, I called a meteor show a 'douche de meteor,' which is a severely literal translation. It was brought up more than once over the course of the trip.

It was bizarre though. I realized how many of the conversations you have in the city each day are just short, trite bits of formality and how, in the small town, where things are slower, where there are less people and where there is less of a premium put on time, the conversations turn serious or less superficial quickly. And that's where I noticed my inability to adequately express myself in French. And I found it very frustrating. Many times, I was asked a question, I would say a couple words, stumble, search for the word, and then just say 'bon.' I felt like a simpleton. Often, they would nod and smile politely and then lose interest and start talking to someone else.

Another thing I noticed was how important being funny or making people laugh is to me. Many times I said something funny - or something I thought was funny, which is frequently not the same thing- and nobody laughed either because I was not understood or because I just wasn't funny and I felt like I wasn't clicking or myself and I didn't feel right. I felt like I was starting to disintegrate... or at least my idea of who I was was.

- We visited a town called Trois Pistoles for the weekend. National Geographic, someone said, had called the sunsets at Trois Pistoles the second best in the world, behind some vista in an African country. I can't say I disagree, after catching one on the ferry ride across the St. Laurent, which at that point was half-fresh, half-saltwater and was three kilometres wide. We ate lobsters and smoked fish and swam in a creek and I watched Avatar for the first time (in French, no less.)

Moral of Avatar: playing video games will redeem you and make you a better person. And if you wrap the game, you'll get real legs and get to bang an alien.

- The highlight of Trois Pistoles: Petanque. Boy, did we play petanque. We had to jimmy rig some lights to keep the game going past dark. The couple we were staying with - in their 50s - kept up with us (and even out did us.) The man of the house walked by the petanque pit, dumped a bunch of gas on some old cupboard and dresser drawers stacked up so they spilled out of the fire pit and lit a match and we finally had our St. Jean Baptiste fire, three days late. Under those lights, at a cottage five minutes from the St. Laurent river, on a cloudless, brittle night, we were petanque pros. Each shot bettered the game. I played the Mad Bomber and the Submariner. We were addicts. We played until our hands went numb with cold. We played until we were out of beer and were half done the whiskey. I lost, but I played as well as I could.

- Another feature of Quebecois: they can talk and talk about food at any age. I felt like food was a conversation reserved for middle-aged people. Not here. This is the land of the palette. The arguments over what area, what region, what town, what grocer has the best strawberries, poutine, cheese. We stopped at least five times to have the best 'cheese curds' or 'barbecue cheese' or 'chocolate-covered blueberries.' And they were all damn freekin good every time.

- So we drove back and two of my good friends were leaving town and having a go away party at the weekly summer event where the MDMA heads congregate and we call Picnique Electronik. I'd been putting off visiting the party because it's just a giant techno dance floor outdoors. I'm not much of a techno guy and I feel like I've become a little overexposed to it here in Montreal. But I went down and after being surrounded for four days by the sweet heavy air of the country and the stars and the sounds of birds and empty fields, I was crowded with sweaty techno junkies in the middle of the city listening to the deafening boom of techno bass and drums. It was an exercise in opposites. But, to be honest, it was fun and I think I'll go back.

We spent about four hours there and then scooted back to my place for a quick drink before scooting off to the Jazz Festival, where the Planet Smashers were playing. But as we got to Berri-UQAM, my station, we found another festival - International Drum Festival or something. I bring it up only for two reasons: 1) I know I've already mentioned this, but you seriously can't avoid festivals here. You stumble into them. I won't say it again. But it's uncanny. 2) the performing group we came across was 20-deep, with some guys younger than me with dyed orange hair, spiked belts and lip studs and some other members as old as their grandparents. No joke, there were three ladies in that group that looked like Old Town Grandmas. Like one of those ladies you'd see running a craft sale table or selling tickets for the Rotary in Yellowknife. Wall white hair, jeans pulled up high, they played alongside the youngsters and I just shook my head in awe. What a city!

Planet Smashers weren't bad themselves.

Look familiar, gents?

- And then Monday hit like an atom bomb.

Random observations and trivial thoughts:

- I've decided I want to come up with a piece of punctuation for the rimshot drum that is used after someone says a joke. You know, badum-CHING? Ideas? How about "-_*" No, that actually looks like the punctuation mark for spousal abuse.

- Having to walk to work the past two days, since I was super late, I realized my favourite part about riding my bike to work. No, it's not that I get to work faster, or that I get some added exercise, or that I get to beat some sad-sack car drivers to work in the morning. Nope. The reason I love it so much is that I don't get accosted every five steps by homeless people - the same homeless people - asking me for change. For the record, some of these people are in better shape and are dressed nicer than I am. In a bike, I can just drive right by.

- I was WALKING to meet some friends for a baseball practice in the park the other day and I saw the most bizarre dog walker. Imagine a guy in his 50s, who kind of looks like Lucien Bouchard wearing a hockey-dad track suit coat, caring around a nine-iron. This in Jeanne-Mance park, at the foot of Mont Royal, keep in mind. He lines up his shot as his dog waits patiently and dutifully behind him. The man rears back and uncorks a 40-yard loping shot with a tennis ball, which his dog chases down and brings back to him, as he walks contentedly a few dozen feet.

- I hope there is a special place in hell reserved for Sean Kingston for this four-minute piece of plastic.

I hear this once and it's stuck in my fucking head for two weeks. "Shorty fire burnin ponne dancefloor."

Everyone seems to hate that Justin Beiber kid. How does Sean Kingston get away without any residual hatred? This guy has a lyric that goes "She's as cool as fire." We wonder why we're all so stupid. I hope Sean Kingston has to spend eternity in a 10-foot-by-10-foot cell with a kleenex-less chronic masturbator.

- I missed the whole G8 and G20 fiasco. I'm sort of glad. I don't know what to think about anything anymore. Really. Bankers make me sick. Politicians make me sick. Police officers make me sick.

This thing cost anywhere from $1 billion to $4 billion, according to what media outlet you believe. And we're going to be fitting the bill. $4 billion to put on a three-day meeting? And we just take it up the pooper, no questions asked. Surely, there were some people that pocketed some cash from this whole thing. There is no way anyone is going to be able to account for every penny from this thing, particularly when so much of where the money was spent is shrouded under 'national security.'

That $4 billion could have bought us a lot. A Mackenzie Valley Highway. Hey, maybe if some of that came this way, I could get a family doctor or even see a doctor and get a long overdue check-up and not have to go to a walk-in clinic, which turns people away if they aren't there by 9:30 a.m.

The thing that scares me worse is that the whole security and money spending and protestation and police brutality was all a distraction. These were the things that kept people talking, kept people arguing, kept getting reported by media outlets and kept us from knowing what was actually going on inside. And let's face it, burning police cars are a lot more attention-grabbing than a bunch of comatose, white guys spouting cliches. Like I said, I haven't read up much on it, but I read a Naomi Klein editorial that said many countries agreed to cut their debts in half by 2013, which will affect spending on social programs, including health care. (Hope I can get an appointment by 2013.)

I got the feeling that a lot of people didn't even know what they were protesting. Or they probably did, but everyone had a different cause and the fuck do politicians even care any more about what the electorate thinks when they'll keep getting voted in due to the dearth of anyone real who wants to challenge any of the old thinking. Protests don't work anymore. Not when they can decide where you protest and can cordon you so far away that the insulated Industry Minister Tony Clement can tweet: "Wow, what a successful #G8 + #G20! Lots of substance on economic, security & devt issues. I'm proud of Muskoka, Toronto & Canada" after Canadians were getting their asses beaten for simply assembling downtown. Hey douche, you give me $4 billion and I'll throw a pretty good party too.

That's probably what makes me the sickest: how far away we are from our leaders and how they are able to escape any meaningful discourse about what is going on in the country. It's just an old, boring, played out game they play and these old guys play. They don't ever say anything engaging. They are machines.

I don't think I'll celebrate Canada Day this year.