thoughts that have possessed me today

Is there anything that screams 'I'm trying to be cool' louder than someone riding their bike with no hands?

Where did the last name Sexsmith come from? I've heard of blacksmiths and shoesmiths, but if you go back a few thousands years, were the original Sexsmiths a bunch of hoors?

fast five: or ocean's eleven for dummies

I just got home from Fast Five and I've got to say it was the most entertaining movie I've seen in a while, in that it was so gloriously and rapturously terrible.

Basically, every incarnation from the Fast and Furious franchise reunites for an Ocean's Eleven style caper to steal $100 million of drug kingpin money from the heart of a corrupted and heavily protected police headquarters in Rio de Janeiro.

The thing is, the plan to steal the money is atrocious (at one point, it involves getting one of the hot chicks to walk up to the kingpin and getting him to put his hand on her ass in order to get a handprint ID for a scanner replication later on) and the only thing more ridiculous is the fact that the gang abandons what they spend literally an hour of the movie doing to prepare for the heist to just wing it, video game cheat style by bursting though barricades and walls with an armoured truck.

It really was Ocean's Eleven for people with ADHD.

Vin Diesel and Co. also probably spent more than $100 million on cars, guns, warehouses, GPS-trackers, flights and a gigantic safe just to steal the $100 million.

In all, it was a beautiful, beautiful thing to behold.

And, thinking back, the only way the plot makes any sense is if you imagine that every time a scene ends or the camera cuts away from a character, they start doing crazy amounts of blow... I mean, Carlito's Way's David Kleinfeld type blow.

"Hey, we just stole four cop cars so that we can remain unnoticed... (SNIFF) but I bet you $1 million in money I don't yet have that I can beat you to the three of you to the next stop light."

"Hey, I'm the drug kingpin and Vin Diesel and his gang are being taken back to the US by the Rock and therefore they are now unable to steal my money... (SNIFF) but he burned $10 million of my money (by the way, I make $100 million a week) so I better ambush the FBI convoy and kill them and hope it doesn't somehow come back and wind up biting me in the ass."

"Hey, I'm Jordana Brewster's character and I'm pregnant... (SNIFF) and RAIL thin."

Honestly, I can't wait for the next edition.

Favourite lines:

The Rock, as the FBI Agent: "These guys are dangerous and for God's sake, don't let them drive cars."

Tyrese, after balking at the audacious plan and then hearing that the planned target is worth $100 million: "That's a lot of vaginal activity."

Vin Diesel, breaking up a fight between Paul Walker's character and a guy who looked like a cross between Zack Galifianakis and a UFC fighter: "Walk it off!"

quick thought to munch on

So so much happening around the globe and in the life of your friend here these past few weeks, but don't think I forgot about you.

To prove that, here is a little thought to tide you over with until herbiberous stops moving for long enough to spew out a few more words on where he has been this last month:

Without gravity, cups would serve no purpose at all.

True story.

northern twist to musical staples part. 2

Like I think I mentioned some time earlier, I'm back North of 60 working at a newspaper and I'm calling people all day long in all sorts of awesome communities and, based on the workload and the amount of time spent on my lonesome, I'm developing a bit of that talk-to-yourself psychosis.

Anywho, there's a community just south of the the Mackenzie that I've called a couple times this week and each time I do it, while the phone is ringing, I start humming... "duh-da-da duuuh-da-duh-da-duh... duh-da-da duuuh-da-duh-duuuuh... duh-da-da duuuh-da-duh-da-duh... da-da-da-da-duh-duh-duh... Kakisa..."

Not ringing a bell? Just substitute Tequila with Kakisa

Don't these humans somehow look like puppets from Fraggle Rock?

home movies

During my summer in Iqaluit, a friend and I started talking about putting together a claymation movie. I wanted to document my fruitless fishing forays in a comical way and we began coming up with ideas for a plot... and music. I was staying in an apartment not far from the airport and my neighbour had an old electric organ that she let me borrow. I lugged the thing across the hall and into the apartment, sliding it up against the wall. I plugged it, super excited about coming up with a soundtrack for our little movie. I spent hours goofing around on that thing and, unfortunately, due to my almost-luddite-level ignorance when it comes to technology, what I have below is pretty much all that I was able to record. Since I didn't know how to record the noise I was making, I just used the GarageBand feature on my macbook to record the audio through my laptop's internal microphone. To play it back, I found it was best done using the iMovie feature, but I could only listen to it if I put actual movies alongside to accompany it, as the music would stop once the movie footage ran out. So I uploaded every last movie clip I had on my camera - the camera that can't record audio - and then I was able to listen to my 4:44-minute slice of schizoid heaven.

The claymation movie, like so many of the things I get excited about, never moved passed the imagination phase.

Tonight though, I found the original, for-recording-purposes-only video, and I honestly scratched my head/giggled hysterically while it played. There appear to be little snippets from Yellowknife, Grace Lake, Rossland, Iqaluit, Egypt, Chicago, London, Vancouver, Calgary, a couple some stops along the road... and a whole lot of me walking drunk with my trusty, beat-up, pocket-sized Panasonic.

Note: A couple of the movie files were corrupted, so I had to take a long piece from Egypt and sub in a shot of fireworks at a White Sox game and a ferry ride across the Mackenzie on January 2 in -40C.

Here it is:

metaphor/analogy

The symbol of our generation is the empty plastic bag stuck on a tree branch.

WATCH

It just dawned on me tonight that we can blame everything that's irreparably terrible with music on Cher. It's not that I heard a song of hers today or anything, but when I met a friend at the stinky Banana Republic earlier - hey, I know, totally douchey... and anytime I enter an establishment and someone is employed wearing a headset (and is folding clothes nonetheless) I know it's douche central - and heard nothing but lousy - and I'm talking lousy - dance R&B shit with autotune, I realized it was fucking Cher that turned that SHAT autotune into commercially viable music.

You all know that piece of garbage I'm talking about, 'If you believe in life after love'....

I would never defile this blog with that song. Come on now.

I posted the South Park version above. I think this video clip validates Matt Stone and Trey Parker for their good sense to lampoon autotune ten years before it started boning us dryly in the auditory ass.

WATCH. I called this post WATCH because I think Cher is so fucking horrible that we should start a charitable foundation called We All Think Cher's Horse-Shit and try to collect money to teach children that making music like Cher's is just a detriment to society.

For example: Elvis had an amazing career and then he made a song called 'Suspicious Minds.' In that song, he sounds EXACTLY like Cher. Shortly after he released that song, he died. Ergo, Cher killed Elvis.

WATCH 1, Cher 0

sober realization

I just wanted to state publicly and for the record that I'm fully aware that this Charlie Sheen meltdown is being picked up and pollenated all over the land in order to keep us occupied and distracted from examining in detail the historic uprisings in the Middle East and Northern Africa. I realize that in five or ten years, while Canada is nervously watching its Southern neighbour sink deeper into destituteness and disparity and despair, Michael Moore's son will release a documentary about American apathy towards its demise, and he'll look back to when the Egyptians and Libyans took their destinies into their own hands and booted out their bloated, delusional dictators and Moore's kid will scoff - just like his old man - at how Americans just sat around laughing at Sheen while all this was happening.

I know that.

But check this out... IT'S A FREEKIN CHARLIE SHEEN SOUNDBOARD!!!

It's just toooo (toooo should be pronounced the same way Santa Sheen says the "oooooo" in "two smooooookin hotties") much fun.

I'm sorry. I'm a bad person.

walking conscious

If I ever find a serious job, I think I'll have to get it written into my contract that I can't be held responsible for any tardiness, absenteeism or poor job performance caused by the sleep I've lost from viewing the Wire. As an addict would say, I'm powerless to fight it. I just started re-watching it online - at sidereel.com - and ever since, I've been crashing later and later and even getting up super early every morning to check the next episode (you know, cause Megavideo understands the Wire's potency and only allows you to watch it in 72-minute intervals. It makes you confront reality for at least 30 minutes before letting you jump back in again.) Even though I know Kima's going to get shot or Wallace is on his way back to the West Side pit, I can't help sitting through it and that pushes my departure time from the apartment back further and further every morning.

On Friday, I pushed it the furthest I have yet. I didn't even notice what time it was when the episode ended and so when I saw it was 9:40, I nearly lost my shit. I've got a 35-minute walk to work and I was still laying in bed. So I hustle-bustled and was out the door in my gigantic winter coat, forgetting of course that it had rained the entire day previously, meaning it was like +5C and Montreal was a gigantic puddle concealing a sheet of ice.

Being late, I sped-walked to work, but any time I thought I'd save and all the effort I was exerting was wasted on a decision I made to cut through Parc Lafontaine. Terrible idea. The 'snow' was ice, covered with slush and water. It was messy and the sidewalks and paths are all 'code level: orange' dangerous, in Homeland Security talk.

I'm kind of frustrated because I'm late and I'm sliding all over the place like Bambi learning to walk on ice. (obscure reference?) I'm rushing and slipping and worrying about whether today would be the day I caught shit from my superiors, Ervin Burrell-style, but every step I take flushes those thoughts away because the ground is so awkward and potentially hazardous that I have to concentrate on where to drop my feet to make sure I don't fall.

It's really odd to be conscious of walking. It really is. It's something that I take for granted. Each step put me on precarious ground, so I had to use all my conscious thought to carefully navigate each stride. But after a while, I came to the realization that I didn't know how that would help, since I could predict where my foot would land, but there was no way to know exactly how it would feel once it went down and how that would affect my balance. It was like I was trying to be conscious of something that I still wasn't completely in control of because my body was going to self-adjust regardless of what I did intentionally.

It was a bizarre distraction, that I forgot immediately once I got to the thawed and cleared sidewalks.

I can see now though why those robotics engineers have so much trouble creating robots that can walk, because they have to calculate each variable and adjust for that and it's something that's programmed into us without us even being completely aware.

Anyways, I got to work and went from walking on ice to walking on eggshells. No one seemed to know I was late and so I guess I'll be pushing the limit again on Monday.

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.

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!

Massive, COLOSSAL, kind of funny waste of time

Because my Jacob 'Party Boy' drama wouldn't work as a written story...

should i go for it?

awesome band name #11,345

While I sat oblivious in an office tower today, as Mother Nature threw down trees and torrents of rain, I came across a neat little item -- or company name -- from British Columbia, which just might be the best band name I've come up with on this here doohickey:

Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you...

The Jealous Fruits.

random thoughts

I spent a while trying to think of how to unify all these thoughts, but it wasn't possible and, more importantly, I wasn't being productive. Productivity has become my main focus these days. It's been beaten into me at work. Be productive. Be productive. Be productive. We actually tally every single task we do each day, and with each task being given a specific time-amount value, our daily productivity is measured on a spreadsheet. What's more, our final tally is divided by our productive time -- meaning time spent working, and not on lunch or pissing or shitting or training -- and we are given a production-per-hour number.

This is not healthy for me. I'm a competitive person by nature. I can't help but try to get the high score. I've been conditioned since childhood. I blame it on an overload of video games and professional sports viewing as a kid. I find I'm completely out of it at the end of the day, having neglected using the washroom each time I have to go or taking a glass of water here and there, as I push myself to best my previous days' score.

I'll let you know how this goes in a couple weeks.

Anyways, onto the random thoughts:

In honour of the Olympics, I will give you my podium finish for the strangest things I've seen in Montreal over the past 48 hours:

4th place: Walking to a friend's birthday dinner in the Plateau after work Monday from my office downtown, I passed a Starbucks where a guy was interviewing a girl for what looked to be a position at the restaurant. What was strange about this was the fact that for a solid two minutes, some dude was pressed against the window watching everything a little too intently. I thought for a few seconds that he was a manager, overlooking the interview process, seeing that he wasn't too shabbily dressed. But then I thought, why the hell would anyone supervise an interview through a pane of glass. And then I found it strange that the two people didn't notice the guy. Until finally, the girl discovered him -- and the guy followed -- and then the dude just walked away talking to himself. They continued their interview like nothing had happened.

Bronze Medal: Getting off the train today, I watched a guy walk at full pace into the turnstile at the Berri-UQAM stop. In his own daze, he had forgotten to take out his Metro swipe pass. He literally doubled over on the metal bar. He then swore, took a step back, pulled out his pass, swiped it and walked through. Like nothing had happened.

Silver Medal: I started taking a new route to work. Well not exactly work, but to the Metro station I walk to every day. I found a really neat breakfast spot that I'm going to have to try out, but I feel like I want to wait for summer because it just seems like it would be better in the summer. Anyways, above the breakfast spot, there are maybe three vacant apartments. I'm thinking they are vacant because the windows are open and every few seconds, a pigeon flies out, picks something off the street and then returns into the apartment. It's like they own the places. It's awesome, but surreal. I really hope for the sake of humanity that no one lives in these apartment.

Gold Medal: On my way to work Monday morning, I sat aghast while a granny-aged Hispanic-looking Asian lady picked and plucked her eyebrows with these sharp-ass tweezers while the train herky-jerked downtown. I mean, people were bumping into each other with each abrupt stop or start, and this lady is going about her business with a sharp metal object pointed directly at her eyeball. It gave me the fucking heebie jeebies big time. I guess that woman has been doing her brows long enough to feel comfortable in those kinds of conditions. But it was too much for me, so I moved to the far end of the train, in case that thing went through her eye and sprayed some of that vitrious fluid all over the place.

So she takes the gold medal in the strange things in Montreal event, which by the way, is probably a bigger accomplishment than you'd think. People here are generally 86 per cent crazier than anywhere I've ever been. Like I've said many-a-time, I think one thing that qualifies someone as being Quebecois is the ability to feel completely at ease about talking to yourself in public.

I've heard some strange things as well these past couple days. Someone I met told me that they had been given a ticket on the Metro because the hockey skates they were carrying didn't have skateguards on them. Also, I recently found out my roommate did the voice for the Sixth Sense kid in the Quebec-French version of the movie. He did it before he was visited by the Pube Fairy, of course. Also, his old man is the Quebec voice for Brad Pitt and a couple other big actors. Pretty wild.

Onto the Olympics. Man. I kind of felt in a funk because the entire time I was finishing my studies (yeah right) in Calgary, and I was working in Yellowknife, I had sort of seen myself living in Vancouver as the Olympics were going on. It was this weird goal I had. Anyways, I'm not. And although I really haven't been excited about the games or anything, I think it would be fun as hell to be in that city right now. Also, I do get sucked into watching the games every time they're on and unfortunately, my roommate forgot to pay our cable/internet bill, so I can't even keep up with what is going on. I didn't even see the footage of the luge guy until Monday. I'm disconnected, mon.

Saw a bit of the opening ceremonies. I felt bad for all those native people that had to dance generically while all the athletes walked out. I hope they have good agents. Also, I want to cop some Azerbaijan pants.

I love those things.

Anyhow, last night we managed to hook up this mini-TV into our cable in the living room and get a crappy Olympic feed that only played the Men's Figure Skating event. And you know what? I watched it for two hours and got sucked right in.

I couldn't help but think that a lot of those guys are like stunted developmentally. Not from a physical standpoint, but maybe mentally. I mean, there was this one guy from Belgium decked out in a skeleton outfit.

A skeleton costume? For real?

I mean, I understand that it's all about skating a routine and becoming a character and everything, but this is probably the biggest moment of your life, your entire family and all your friends and their families and their friends are all watching you, and this is the culmination of your life's work and the most serious and important moment of your life... and you're going to wear a skeleton suit?

Pal, you're never going to have a bigger platform in all of your life and you go and decide to wear pajamas?

It's really the behaviour of a six-year-old. Does this guy need his food cut up for him in small pieces before he eats? Does he have a nightlight and need someone to check under the bed for him before he can go to sleep? Does he say 'lellow' instead of 'yellow'? I honestly wouldn't doubt it.

Also, I want to know how more people aren't getting hurt or killed in the biathlon. Really. You are giving people guns at the beginning of a race.

Think about that.

I'm sure if I ever took up that sport, I'd be tempted big time to pick off a couple of competitors ahead of me as I made my way toward the finish line. Now I'm not saying I would, but I won't lie and tell you it wouldn't cross my mind. And judging by some of the unstable cases competing in the Olympics (see Skeleton boy above) I'm surprised we haven't seen someone go Charles Whitman in a biathlon race. I'm just sayin.

And it's not like I think biathlon is uninteresting, but here's an idea to make it a little more exciting: give each competitor a revolver with one bullet in it, spin the cylinder Russian Roulette-style, and then set them off. The racers can use the bullet at any time, although they'll never know if their shot will count. Don't tell me you wouldn't watch this.

If you're not down with that idea, then what about turning the race into a paintball hybrid and the racer has to play dead for a minute or two when they get shot. That could still be entertaining.

And before I end this thing, I'm going to dust off the people I irrationally hate file and add another name...

Apollo Anton Ohno.

Oh man is this guy a douche. I can't even remember all the reasons I hate him so much, because it has been four years since I've had to tolerate his presence. But I'll give it a try...

First of all, that name! Apollo Anton Ohno. That screams someone who is desperate for attention and lacks personality (see the Basis of Personality post.)

Second, he was NBC's most marketed athlete in 2006 (or was it 2002) because he appears to have an edge. He was jammed down our throat and I remember him whining like a little bitch when he lost or something (definitely could not be true, but this is an irrational hatred thread.)

(I actually looked up what happened in 2002 and he made a big deal about this one guy passing him... yep, I am vindicated.)

Third, he was on Dancing with the Stars.

Fourth, he looks like a slightly healthier version of Michael Jackson. Just look.

Fifth, he's an American athlete and they are always fun to irrationally hate during the Olympics.

Sixth, there is this...

Definitely deserving of some irrational hatred, don't you think...

One more random thought: 70-year-old men should be barred from wearing suits and owning Blackberrys. People this age should care more about their grandchildren than lining their already fat savings accounts. In a nutshell, that's why our world sucks so much right now. It's all these self-interested, grey, old fucks who are making important decisions about our world, based on the brief timeframes of their lives, because they have nothing else at stake personally in the world. Financially wealthy, personally bankrupt.

Well Sheeeeeeeeeetttt... doesn't it feel good to get all that trivial detritus and irrational hate out of me.

Until next time, kiddos.

why we love conan

I've been following the ongoing drama between NBC and Conan O'Brien and Jay "Snake in the Grass" Leno for the past few weeks and while I rarely watched Conan on the Tonight Show -- and thought it wasn't funny the few times I did -- I do sympathize with him just a tad.

I know, I know. Dumb right? The guy makes tens of millions to talk to famous people. Why should anyone care about this, when people are nearly killing themselves in desperation for food in Haiti?

That's a good point.

I don't really care. Especially since Conan will reportedly receive a $40 million buyout on Friday when he leaves the network.

While I do feel he never got a fair shake and his show was doomed to fail from the outset due to his appeal to a younger audience and not the old timers who swoon over Leno, I can't honestly write anything more about it because really, the story is a distraction from the real things that are happening in the world.

But...

If you need a little picking up, here are some classic Conan sketches.

Three reasons why I love the guy.

Hit the link if the video doesn't load

(http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XNzYzNTQ0NzY=.html)

Find more videos like this on www.truve

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if you're in the market...

On the job prowl again, hitting craigslists and kijijis and workopolises (or is the plural workopoli?) and the ground running. Selling myself to anyone who gives me an ear and talking about myself in glowing tones and all that demeaning stuff.

There isn't much to look forward to when it comes to job searching -- other than the job at the end of the tunnel, of course. But as a way to keep my spirits up, I've been making note of some of the bizarre postings I've come across in the past week or so. And because you have been such patient listeners and loyal friends, I feel I should share a few of them with you:

The adult industry in Montreal must be alive and well. How do I know this? (Don't jump to any conclusions, my pretties. I'm not desperate enough to start starring in snuff films... yet.) Seemingly every job board, other than the government sponsored ones, is littered with many, many very professional sounding postings seeking either sound engineers or graphic designers, communications managers or sales associates. Each job sounds like it could be for a law firm or NGO or something, except for one line that subtly lists as a qualification that applicants should be comfortable with adult material.

That leads me to wonder just how comfortable applicants should be around the material?

"Comfortable, but not too comfortable," I'll assume.

There are even more ads looking for 'nice' girls for 'massage parlors'. The ads ask for exotic girls and pretty girls of Chinese, Japanese, Eastern European or Brazilian descent, because I guess pretty girls give better massages than ugly ones?

I guess it shouldn't surprise me that there are more tugs going around in Montreal than a Halifax harbour.

I found one ad looking for girls aged 18 to 55 to appear in adults films. And if the would-be video girls potentially had any reservations about appearing on video, the ad offered them some anonymity to quell their worries: there was the option of wearing a mask.

And maybe my favorite of all: some guy is looking for an extremely specific and unique chaffeur's job.

Apparently he owns a van that seats 7 and he knows Montreal and Laval very well. What is he looking to haul around, you ask? Well escorts and dancers, of course.

I hope everything pans out for this guy, who is trying to make his dream a reality.