Never Forget (2)

September 11, 2001.

I'd been in a relationship with the (now-former) Lady Of The House for a year, and it was my first trip away from her. It was smack-dab in the middle of my two weeks, sleeping in Trois-Rivières at night and working in a field in St-Tite by day, counting the cars passing by on the highway - a lonely, boring job if there ever was one.

Every day, we'd wake up around 6 AM, get to the hotel's dining room by 6:30, leave for work around 7, come back around 7 PM.

But on that day, the news was on: a plane had accidentally crashed in one of the towers. And, half an hour later, the other plane crashed and it was now clear this was premeditated. With all the world's news cameras watching, live, showing the despair, people jumping out of windows, others suffocating in the street. Reports soon flocked in about 4 highjacked planes and everyone on TV had their opinion about what was going on, and what was going to happen.

And yet the shuttle to take us to work was there on time, and we hopped on it, confused, disoriented, some numb. It was hard to believe World War 3 may have begun and yet we were about to carry on as we would on any regular day.

On the other hand, what choice did we have? We weren't directly involved in anything, and the world around us was still happening, shit needed to get done.

But when we arrived in St-Tite, it was a strange spectacle: many of the homes there, in Québec's one true cowboy town, had American and Canadian flags in their backyards - an extremely uncommon sight in our parts - and the American flags were at half-mast, signifying a national tragedy.

And yet people were going about their business: bull-riding competitions, horse shows, selling merchandise, food, jewelry. Stepping in horse shit. It was surreal. Unreal, even.

How could the world go on now that nothing was ever going to be the same? Then again, how long did it take before we just kept doing what we'd been doing anyway, and the only thing that ever changed was that each day, we'd have more rights and freedoms taken away from us. That, and bearded, tanned fellows were getting a harder time than ever before.

But nothing else really changed.

And that's why I'm pissed off about the wall-to-wall, week-long coverage of the memorials.

''Never forget'' is something everyone should deal with on their own, in their own way, not a stupid fucking catchphrase to be repeated ad nauseam on every news channel, in every publication, on commemorative plaques and plates - and especially not t-shirts.

It's not something a political party should have the right to shove down our throats, especially if they keep blocking support for the first responders any chance they get, usually mere minutes after parading an NYPD cop or NYFD fireman in front of a camera.

Wearing a flag pin or driving a car with a flag bumper sticker doesn't actually do anything for anyone either; you're not ''more supportive'' of the victims than anyone else, and ''supporting the troops'' doesn't help in this particular case either.

Flying planes in building was a political act, not an act of war. ''Never forget'' is aimed at the innocent victims - not ''first and foremost'', but ''only'' , and the consequences of the attacks (two ten-year wars... and counting) mean very little for the friends and families of those who perished.

''Where were you/I/we on 9/11''? I answered that already. But more importantly: where are we now? And where will we be in the future? And how exactly is the world we're shaping a tribute to the departed?

We should have been busy making a better world to live in, one in which events like those from ten years ago wouldn't be a daily possibility. Instead, we used 3000 useless deaths as an excuse to kill over 150,000 more.

Kids Who Want To Die Young

I was walking down the street last night, coming home from the grocery store, when two kids are walking towards me, in the opposite direction. The one on the left is tiny, probably between 10 and 12 years old, with the emo-ish haircut from three years ago; the kid on the right was tall, I'd give him maybe 14 years of age, lanky, cap on sideways, wearing a green shirt.

The tall gringo asks me if I have a cigarette for them, to which I reply: ''no, I'm sorry, I don't smoke''.

And he proceeds to name-call me, saying my armpits smell, that I stink of urine, that I'm full of shit. Of course, he waits until he's 15 feet away from me to say any of that, and so I just turn around and stare at him as I keep walking my way.

He then says I should look out for cars from the oncoming traffic, that I could get hit, and all I could say was this:

Kid, between you and me, you're the one who isn't going to die of old age.

Ah, good times. It's nice to know we're raising the next generation to be complete scumbags, in case the planet does kill us within two years, it won't be too much of a fucking loss.

I could have ended it there, maybe I should have, but no. Later, I was having a conversation with the Former Lady Of The House and I mentioned this, and described the kids... they are customers at the video store she manages - and the whole staff hates them. So refuse to even service them. Ha ha. Pricks.

Dance Movie, The Lindbergh Line & Sébastian Hell @ Bar St-Laurent 2, August 3rd, 2010

I got at Bar St-Laurent 2 at 8:45PM and, to my surprise, the only people there were the Former Lady Of The House, her friend and her friend's boyfriend. That's it - one table's worth of humans. Even the bartender wasn't at his post behind the bar - I had to go fetch him behind the sound console for him to start making any money off of us, and I hope he was glad I did, that was 8 beers right there, and 6 more 15 minutes later when three of us had finished our first two.

It took until 9:30 for anyone else to come in - and even then, they were the other acts performing that evening, so me and my buddies were starting to wonder if I was going to be playing to an empty room. It was, after all, a stormy Tuesday evening. Luckily, the closer it got to 10PM, the fuller the place got. Not full enough to start earning free beers, but enough to ensure whatever happened would end up being a good time for all.

By 10:05, Will Austin - my drummer for the evening - and I got on stage and sound-checked an improvised rendition of Prince's 'My Name Is Prince' and then proceeded with the show. I'm not narcissistic enough to critique/review my own performance, so I won't, but I'll say this: I had a good time. And the setlist was:

1. My Love
2. Let's (Last) Dance
3. My Music Is Rock But My Love Life Is The Blooze (instrumental)
4. Sonic Reducer [a Dead Boys cover]
5. Selfish (slow version)
6. Bitter End
7. Daughters

Next up was my favourite new band of 2010, the previously-blogged-upon (and playing only their second show ever) The Lindbergh Line, who again were up to par. So much so, in fact, that the crowd requested an encore after their set... and I don't blame them one bit! As a band, depending what you're willing to focus on, there's always something interesting going, whether it be the songwriting, their ability to play their instruments, the tightness of their sound, the tribal pounding of Denise Williams on her drums while she's hidden in the back, the unfairly good looks and terrific rock stance of bassist Karl Leblanc, or the surprising power and stamina of could-have-been electro-pop queen Myriam Chebat's vocal-and-guitar attack, with each song building in intensity from her presence alone.

Then it was time for Halifax's own Dance Movie, which on this night consisted of... well, pretty much singer and guitarist Tara Thorne, with Denise Williams sitting in on drums. Their MySpace mentions three band members, and I do know Denise is only sitting in on half the shows of the tour they're on together, so my guess is the actual drummer just couldn't make the first part of the tour.But Tara has a good enough stage presence to pull off whatever setting she chooses - alone, as a duo, or in a band. Her songs hold up too, and the Former Lady Of The House actually thought she had been the best performer of the evening, with the best songs, one of which is set to play in the upcoming season of Degrassi... it was like witnessing a cross between old-time Soul Asylum (in the days where Dave Letterman called them ''the best live band in America'') and Death Cab For Cutie when they, themselves, were good. All-pro, all good, right there.

So good, in fact, that I opted to stay for even more beer to reminisce after the show ended when the initial plan was to leave at midnight no matter what because I had an early day this morning...

If you can, catch the tour as it heads to your town: St. John, NB (5th), Fredericton (6th), Antigonish (7th), and Halifax (the 8th).

I Told Jeffrey Ross Where To Drink

Last Friday, as I was getting out from the most boring XXXtreme Humour Show of the last 5 editions of Just For Laughs, putting on my earphones and gearing up for a walk home, Jeffrey Ross was walking up the hill with his crew/hangers-on and pointed at... me.

He then asked me where he and his buddies should get their drinks on, saying he'd been told to go on St-Laurent street but he couldn't find any decent bars.

I responded by saying he'd probably been told to come on St-Laurent because all the bars there were really expensive, with high cover charges and $20 drinks and nothing but gold diggers to talk to - a plot to get him to spend his not-quite-hard-earned American money on our most expensive strip. I told him he'd have at least as much fun on St-Denis, but that the folks there might be a tad smelly, and instead strongly recommended two places - Fouf's (where I actually ended up with the Former Lady Of The House later) where the music is fun and the terrace is comfortable and where his semi-fame wouldn't get in the way of his having a good time, and Madhatter's, on Crescent, basically the same ambiance but in English, and if he'd feel the need to get his legs moving, all the bars surrounding the Hatter's were dance bars.

He seemed to like my honest manner, and, really, I just told him where I'd go if I were me or him.

Now I just hope he doesn't call his next stand-up show Don't Listen To Strangers, featuring a skit called Why I Hate Montrealers...

Absinthe: Nectar Of The Gods: Yahweh, Or No Way?

So on Friday, I was playing the Velvet Underground tribute show, Waiting For The Man, with new and old musician friends - and we had a blast. Most of the people there seemed to have a lot of fun as well, except maybe for the Alternate Lady Of The House, who doesn't like that style of music.

More importantly, though, was the fact that it was played at L'Absynthe, the bar named after the infamous drink 'absinthe', banned - under false pretense - in many countries between 1912 and 1915, usually because it cut into wine sales, and the wine distributors invented bullshit stories about absinthe giving epilepsy and tuberculosis when, in fact, it was used as a cure for malaria for a while by French soldiers in the 1840s, who brought their taste for it back home and inspired its popularity. The closest it got to the symptoms of epilepsy is that it has thujone in it from the wormwood, which can give spasms and lead to seizures in too high a quantity, but usually absinthe bottles contained far less of it than was first thought - although some modern brands have a relatively high 100mg of it.

In any event, it's legal nowadays, but barely imported and extremely expensive (think $12 for a small glass of a cheap brand) - and we couldn't pass up the opportunity to try it in the place that is named after it...

It tastes like black licorice, from the anise in it. That means it tastes kind of like Jägermeister, and pretty much like Ricard Pastis, both of which can be had at a third of the price, if you like that sort of thing. If you're ambivalent, it's too expensive for what it is. And if you hate it, you've just been punked out of enough money for 3 beers.

For my money, if you want to get fancy with a hint of anise, go the the Golden Elf - also  known as Liquid Cocaine, Nazi Zombie, Sledgehammer, Gestapo, Iron Curtain, TG Black & Gold, or, simply, Jägerschläger - half Jägermeister, half Goldschläger. That's heavenly.

Absinthe? Not quite. Come to think of it, not at all.

I Had A Dream... A Fucked Up Dream...

I woke up with a weird feeling this morning, my dream was messed up.

I was living in a huge second-storey apartment in a four-storey building, lots of people were coming-and-going, regulars from my life, my mom, the Lady Of The House, a few friends...

For some reason, I don't think my particular apartment had an entry door.

Walking down the stairs to the sidewalk, I came across my upstairs neighbours (folks that don't exist in my actual life), barely dressed, wearing only skimpy black leather outfits, but too small to be S&M, maybe borderline fetishistic if anything - and they were going to my downstairs neighbours'. They asked if I was going too, and I replied something along the lines of ''not this time''. In fact, I wasn't aware that anything was going on there, and my curiosity was awoken. Now I wanted to know exactly what was going on there...

So I tried peeking in from their living room window, which had a view on the huge lawn. It also showed me an outside view of my building, a luxurious modern castle-like construction made from dark brown bricks. And every time I was close to seeing something, I was either caught by someone inside, or interrupted by a passer-by who thought I was a thief - not to mention by my 'people', who wanted me to come back home and 'fulfill my obligations', even though in my dream it was never clear just what those obligations were.

So it turns out to be an orgy downstairs, and I'm not the biggest fan of that type of congregation, so I decide against asking in and head on home, only to find that my ''baby girl'' needs me - that's right, I have a daughter. The longer the dream lasts, the less clear it is how it is that I became a father (I'm nowhere close to this in real life) - but I am, and I have to make do.

Unfortunately, I have an appointment with some sort of lawyer/notary/suit-and-tie dude downtown, and am already late for it (now that, I can relate to!), so I have to find a way to carry the baby and head there... I can't find anything better than an empty 12-pack of imported beer (the type that once open has plenty of holes of the sides), so that's her ride.

We get to the building, and it's this massive all-glass structure in the middle of a highway, on top of another highway, and the main lobby door also serves as the elevator going upwards, and it's barely one-person deep and three-people wide - again, all glass, all see-through. In my dream, I was scared shitless looking down, if this were to happen in real life, I'd probably refuse to go up at all - which, incidentally, is what the kid was thinking. She was crying and screaming loudly, trying to escape her box... when I was awoken by my cat meowing at me for breakfast.

I wonder what would have happened had I gone in the elevator, and what the meeting was about.

Freaky thing...

Chasing The Dragon

This one is a weird one; even today, bits of that evening come to me in bizarre flashbacks that barely make any sense until I tack them on to whatever hazy memory I have and somehow the events are reconstructed a little bit more.

There was a particular night this summer, I must have played a show and then we'd gone to party at the bar near my house afterwards, it's pretty much the only way I can account for my friend, The Big E, to have been there.

The details of what went on before things started fucking up are still hazy today; it could have been a night where the Lady Of The House and My Dad had been there where an old woman came on to me a bit hard, grinding against my leg while I was just sitting calmly and talking with the folks at my table, then proceeding to give me a full-on ''I Touch Myself''-style show on a chair she'd pulled next to me and acting like a stripper (but keeping her clothes on, at least). Eventually, though, she was tossed out of the place, and chances are she ended up fucking some panhandler in an alleyway somewhere.

Then again, it may have been a totally different night. Oddly enough, I mostly remember the details of what happened after we'd all had, perhaps, a little too much to drink. There was this drunk nerdy girl, the type you see in movies - kind of cute but that you're pretty sure that is she took her glasses off she'd perhaps be hot, or maybe she'd be the type to get gang-banged by a boatload of sailors, you never know - anyhow, she was playing pool, for all we knew, but at some point when that ended, she came to sit at our table. By then, The Big E and I were the only ones left.

Beers followed glasses of Jack Daniel's, then beer made a comeback. The girl was visibly way too fucking drunk - and so was E. E doesn't require much - usually a single shot of vodka will help derail his whole night - and, even though he stayed on beer all evening (he dislikes JD), he was way past his point of tolerance. Myself, I was in my comfort zone. Closing time - 3 AM - was rearing its ugly head, and I was just getting started.

Last call came and I ordered us a massive round - two beers each, and a quad-JD (four ounces) more for me. They let us finish our drinks before closing the place down, but apparently my partying mood was contagious. Many of the other customers decided it'd be wise to continue ingesting booze in the alley behind the bar; I went home (not even a block away) to grab a 40-ouncer of JD, that I planned to share with Big E.

When I got back, E and the girl were standing outside the bar's locked door, in full view of any and every passer-by, facing each other, forehead-against-forehead. I wouldn't have a problem with it, despite the girl saying she had a boyfriend for most of the time we were inside - he's no concern of mine - except E's Lady is possibly the closest friend I've had this past year, and I won't let him fuck their relationship up for a drunken tart in a shit-hole local bar - at least have it be something meaningful, for fuck's sake. So, when I'm near enough for them to hear me, I say ''am I interrupting anything?''

- No, E answers, you got here just in time.
- Good, I reply, now let's move out back.

They both get out from in front of the door and start walking ahead of me when I notice she's got the worst Plumber's Crack in the history of mankind - pretty much her whole ass is showing. All I could think was to use my best Denis Leary impression and say ''Pull up your fucking pants!'' while pulling them up; I didn't expect her to be so light, so I lifted her two feet in the air in the process. I can still make 'em fly, I guess.

When we got to the alley, sitting relatively comfortably, the girl doing her best to stick to E like glue, everybody there kept telling him to throw her away. We were all drinking, having a good time, when weed started making the rounds; that killed E and pretty much got him to fall asleep right then and there. I had to convince two girls to escort him home - one who had fake teeth, and her friend. I'll get back to the fake-toothed girl in a later post, she's so worth her own chapter, but we got E the hell out of there while his magnetized date-for-the-evening went to throw up. We got her in a cab before she realized what was happening.

Eventually, as more people left, the more obscure - or at least less public - habits and consumptions came to arrive. A girl we've come to nickname Duncan, coming off giving birth to her first child, and her boyfriend, Scary Bald Punk Dude, started doing lines of coke; that's not my scene at all, though, so I politely refused and kept drinking my Jack.

It wasn't long before more weed made the rounds, and for Duncan to offer me a ''special blend'' she'd just bought, in a pipe (I hate fucking pipes). I didn't take much, because it didn't seem right: no smell, no taste, no real buzz. It didn't feel like anything at all, yet I recognized the feeling - I just couldn't put my finger on it.

Suddenly I felt warm inside, like a fever taking over, but putting my hand to my forehead, I didn't feel a change in temperature; I just went back to my bottle, and to the conversation. By then the sun was coming up, and we all went our separate ways. I got home and was relaxed - but I couldn't sleep. And as my brain was trying to figure out why, my heart was pumping because I couldn't come up with an answer; I can usually control my main body functions to an extent that scares people, and when I lose that control, everything fucks up and a feeling of unease, of extreme nausea takes over. It took me a half-hour to get back to normal, and enough energy to do so that I was extenuated and went to sleep. Finally.

The next day was even more bizarre. I wasn't really hung over - that, in itself, wasn't entirely out of the ordinary, because I can take alcohol, but I had ingested copious amounts and was at least expecting a migraine - but I couldn't find the energy to move, either. Lying on my couch, watching TV, when a position had become uncomfortable, I had trouble mustering the strength to just shift over a little. And - another rare occurrence in my case - there were blanks in my recollections.

I remembered E wanting to keep our whereabouts secret, but I recalled having even better arguments in demonstrating that it'd just be easier to ready to disclose most of the night and, perhaps, just leave certain elements out of the retrospection - say, a certain lady whose forehead was glued to his and whose ass was taking in the Montréal air when I got there.

It took me hours to remember I'd smoked up, and a while longer to remember the ''special blend''. I was pissed off at myself for having forgotten, and at having agreed to it in the first place. Then I started wondering just what the hell it was; it couldn't have been pot, that's a given. Pot and coke - or pot and crack? It seemed unlikely, there was no ''uplifting'' effect to it, no heightened senses, no added strength, if anything, it was the opposite. And knowing how I have an ''addictive'' personality (weak self-control when it comes to consuming, whether it be simple stuff like goods or food, or others), I do my best to steer clear of hard drugs because I know I'm the type who wouldn't keep it recreational.

It took a few months during which I'd have occasional flashbacks of second-long moments from that night (yet another unusual occurrence) before I'd remember what that familiar feeling had been; it came to me in the most awkward way, too, reading Slash's autobiography... I'll have a complete post about it later, but when I was a teen, I was prescribed Oxycontin to re-balance my system after having been sick all Winter (something like 6 or 7 tonsillitis's in a row combined with a lack of sleep when Spring came)... and Oxycontin is nothing other than a semi-synthetic form of heroin.

Suddenly, it all made sense: the ''lack'' of effect, of smell, of taste... they weren't what I expected, so I didn't see it coming. The feeling from the next day was explained too: I couldn't get myself to do anything, but my brain was feeling fine, it's just my body that couldn't follow.

I still get flashbacks at times that help make the general picture of that evening clearer, pieces of the puzzle that help piece it back together. And, each time, I'm reminded to not take just anything from people I barely know, and, considering the way I am, to stay the fuck away from that substance because the next time could be the last time I enter a situation with my mind intact.

Cheated Hearts

Cheated by the opposite of love
Held on high from up, up, up above
Kept my high from the second one
Kept my eye on the first one

Now take these rings and stow them safe away
Wear them on another rainy day
Take these rings and stow them safe away
Wear them on another rainy day

- The Yeah Yeah Yeahs

I'm probably going to be singing this one tonight. It's kind of the flip-side to their other song 'Maps', but where 'Maps' is about the beauty of the beginning of a relationship, 'Cheated Hearts' is where it all goes sour, the downfall, whether it's fast or slow, whether there was 'actual' cheating or if the whole thing feels like a sham, whether it's a lack of trust both ways or just loss of enjoyment.

I was listening to both songs on my way to work today (it was the 'random' feature, not a Yeah Yeah Yeahs trip), and I thought about combining both as a medley for tonight's show, with one segueing into the other, but it turns out 'Maps' is harder to flesh out chords that fit with my voice to accompany it, so it'll be the other song alone.

It's somewhat fitting that a stroke of coincidence would make it so, though, because 'cheating' was a topic that came up today at work - I have to add that we're all friends, and all relatively close, so we know things would never leave the confines of ''secrecy'', if anything was to be kept silent.

Anyhow, we got to talking about a couple of friends, who happened to have been a couple at some point, as well as both having worked at the same place I'm at now, and how one of them (the guy) had, indeed, cheated on his ladies - numerous times, on numerous ladies, with numerous ladies. He was a Pussy Hunter. He claims, however, that this particular time, with this particular girl, it just wasn't the case. She had imagined it by going through his emails and past Facebook comments for the past 4 years, and he considered it the worst breach of trust he'd ever witnessed (the girls he's cheated on might argue otherwise, but that just adds to the fun of being a spectator in this one).

Now, I've had both done to me: cheating, and going through emails, Facebook comments, she even went through every single file on my computer. I'll agree that one is more invasive than the other, and that because the one doing the searching is actually looking for evidence, they might believe that what they see is evidence because it seems odd to them (for example, having a life-long friend in Copenhagen, Denmark say they'll ''help keep you up all night'' because it's daytime there and it's night time here, and I have to stay up for the night, and it's no burden to them to write once in a while - because they're up anyway - might look bad, if it weren't for who the sender is).

Hunter's attitude, anyway, now, is that if His Lady (or Next Lady) were to do that to him, it'd be over right then and there - ''move out, fuck off, and I don't want to have anything to do with you anymore'' is how he put it.

I'm not so sure I'm that cut-and-dry about it, myself. I'm not saying I'd let it slide totally, and I know I'd be pissed off (especially if she'd read this post beforehand), but I let it happen with The Lady of The House a few times already, and I'm not sure I wouldn't again - I haven't put a new password on the computer or anything. But it does feel like a major breach of trust every time, though.

I guess it depends what you want to base your relationship on. Me, it's Trust. But I still think a Soiled Vagina (especially if I'm dipping in it when it's still inhabited by someone else's leftovers) is more serious than a Breach Of Security In The Mail Room. I think. That's the thing with shit, and shitty situations: you can never be sure until it happens. But you can imagine.

Homoerotic Wednesdays

It's been a bizarre day, to say the least.

I woke up around 11AM, which isn't so bad since I was only working at noon. But the reason I was working at noon was because I had to finish by 7PM to help Alternate Lady Of The House move some boxes from her current apartment to what will be, in a week, her new home.

I have a glance at the news on Cyberpresse to find out that the Habs traded Kyle Chipchura to the Anaheim Ducks for a 4th-round draft pick - could have been better, could have been worse, but that's another slow player no longer on our team.

Upon opening my email (mainly to see if work has unexpected news for me to attend to before getting there), I get this:


That's right: Traci fucking Lords wants to follow me on Twitter. The real Traci Lords. One of my first boyhood crushes (alongside Samantha Fox, Claire Pimparé, Nathalie Simard, ahead of Demi Moore - who caught up on lost time in my teen years, though! - or Christina Applegate) - and a pioneer in self-advertising (as well as in underage porn, pseudo-techno music and other things).

Then I get ready and leave, and just as I'm locking my front door, I notice the light from my porch broken on the ground. This, after twice having people de-pot flowers and put them in our mailbox at night... and our next-door neighbour not being targeted that way... it kind of got me wondering if we'd done anything wrong lately...

Then I walked to the subway to realize it was warmer out than I had expected - a very welcome surprise - accompanied by the extra surprise of having the subway attendant refusing to let me purchase a ticket, then scooting outside for no apparent reason, leaving me to pass through without paying - which, again, suited me fine because I'm dead broke, as the bank froze my fucking account for no reason whatsoever.

The ride to work was uneventful, as I was reading Slash's autobiography and listening to my mp3 player - both very entertaining.

I get to work and know I'll have three employees at my disposal for tonight's shift, two that are doing well and one who needs coaching, but that I'd have to give everyone at least a few common pointers to look for even though two of them don't really need them... except that Brendan, the one who needs help, isn't there... so we can just have the shift as is and not be bothered to give out a long speech and teach - and that works for me, too, because I just realized that my voice is on the verge of disappearing.

I then made a call to the Alternate Lady Of The House only to find out she may not need my services after all, as her mother's there already, painting and bossing people around.

So it was a mid-karmaic day, with one good thing offset by a bad one, but never to the extreme of any one side... and Greg, my employee and sometime drummer is in a homoerotic mood, mostly joking about balls, cocks and asses in double-entendres.

As Ice Cube once said, and as I've quoted on here before:

All in all, I gotta say, it was a good day

Instant Karma

It sure feels like Scandinavia at this time of year: you can smell the snow begging to drop from the sky, it's dark in mid-afternoon, all sports talk is about winter sports and all arts talk is about dark, depressing art, be it music (heavy stuff like black metal), scary paintings, or black and white pictures.

For a night owl, though, it's an early Christmas.

Kind of makes you wish life were like an all-inclusive resort in the Caribbean, where you could drink all day, relax all the time, work if you feel like it, and not feel an ounce of remorse in the process.

My life will be undergoing some massive changes in the near future, mostly filled with people disappearing from it - it won't be a first, but this time I may not have close friends to fall back on like I did all the other times. Not that I don't have friends I love and that I think love me back, just that for the past few years, our ways of life have gone in totally different directions and I wouldn't want to impose my presence more than the twice-a-year habit the last half-decade brought us to.

I used to have three big bunches of friends I'd jump from every season or so, so it never got boring and was always new and fresh - plus I could alternate between English- and French-speaking gangs and not lose one in the process. But now...

With the Lady Of The House moving out, and Alternate Lady Of the House having purchased a faraway house with her long-time boyfriend, my immediate circle of friends went from 3 to 0. Add a best friend in Mexico, one with a one-year old - and a serious day job taking care of invalids and night school to better his financial situation - plus one who is perennially busy and has hundreds of other friends to see, and a music scene of hipsters I disagree with more and more on a daily basis - I'm starting to see my future path open up before me: to see other humans, I'll have no choice but to become a regular barfly at the corner Bar Fullum, like the old guys that seem to have their chairs molded after their asses for having been there too often and for too long.

Or maybe I need a car. Or maybe I need to move. And if I need to move... NYC, or the ocean side? A city filled with strong nightlife, or a quiet beach-side place where I can relax and die? Every time I keep pulling out, they keep pulling me in...

Physical Work Vs Mental Work

I was debating the values of physical, menial work versus more cerebral work, the other day, with the soon-to-be Former Lady Of The House who, as is customary when people have known each other for roughly a decade, seems to think her work has more value than mine.

Some folks refuse to admit they are both demanding - and at just about the same level, at that. Working physically, using your muscles to move and lift things, to run, stand, takes up energy; at the end of the day, tiredness occurs. Concentrating, thinking, creating also requires energy: the brain works and assimilates information, data, then organizes it; at the end of the day, you can still be ectenuated, exhausted, mentally fatigued.

In the first case, your muscles refuse to follow what your brain asks of them and you slouch or sleep; in the second, your brain refuses to work anymore, thus even if your muscles wanted to move, they couldn't, because the brain can't tell them where or how to move.

The end result is the same fucking thing: fatigue.

One isn't necessarily worth more than the other, by the way, they are different ways to accomplish things, and often, one person who cannot do one or the other just won't ''get'' the effort it requires.

That's all there is to it, really... I've been up for 20 hours, writing, thinking... it's almost 8AM and I should be getting at least some sleep. Guess I'm fatigued...

Stéphanie: Girl Of My Dreams

Because you never know how or when a chapter of your life might end, it's always tricky to get started writing about it. But it never pays to wait too long, because you might forget crucial details or its termination might bring a sour taste in your mouth that will melt the good times from your brain forever.

This one though, was a big piece: my quest and obsession of the late 90s, my luck and love of the 2000s.

It's hard to pinpoint an exact date at which it started, because it seems we were often in the same area at the same time - even in the same building often enough - from the late 80s onwards, when I played a handful of shows at local dive La Brique despite being well underage. But that one's unlikely, if only because I was so young and she wasn't even legal yet either, and girls on the verge of adulthood in bars tend to hang around with older men, not younger ones.

So that brings me to the late 90s when I moved to the Plateau. The closest and best supermarket was only a few blocks away, a mid-sized Provigo where we'd both shop. I was single and enjoying life, at school during the day, rocking out in bars and hanging with a large group of friends at night, and working at my first dream job (L'Échange) the rest of the time; she was dating Fernando, a body-building jobless ape who apparently cheated on her all the time.

I don't remember when - but I sure remember how and why it was that she caught my eye; she had everything I ever wanted in a girl, the best of them all; top-notch quality everything. Long, flowing curly brown locks, a piercing stare from blue-green eyes, curves that would make a TV car commercial highway jealous - and breasts bigger than my hands can handle.

Problem is, the Ice Storm happened (bet you can't wait until that one's explained - as with my stint at L'Échange, it'll be in later posts) and created a shit storm in my life that led me to move to NYC and, later, move in with my mom at l'Île Perrot, then with my new-found dad and grandma in Pointe-Aux-Trembles for a summer - all while straddling one College and two universities in two languages.

Time passed and I ended up living in the Centre-Sud district in time for New Year's 2000, attending Université De Montréal. It turns out that a few fellow Cinema students also lived in my neighbourhood - and they all worked at Vidéo 20/20, two blocks from my place, open 24/7. I'd rent stuff there all the time, mostly at night as per my lifestyle (and because I was at school during the day) and eventually made friends with the night worker. He wouldn't give me free movies, but we'd drink beer and order pizza and eat it there during his shift, using the ice cream fridge as a table.

And because karma has a way of making things go full circle before spinning a complete 180, I started a habit of returning the films during the day, on my way to school and, lo and behold, who was the assistant manager? The afore-mentioned Girl Of My Dreams. She was going through changes in her life and they were reflected in her physical appearance: weight loss, sudden blondness (meh) and an eventual short-haired blondness (doh!)...

There was also one instance where a movie I had returned ('It', the TV miniseries based on the Stephen King book, in double-VHS format) hadn't registered in the computer (something you have to expect when the worker is a drinking buddy - during his shifts!), and she didn't believe that I had returned it, so she actually went downstairs to verify that it was, indeed, there. She thought I was ripping her off!

In any event, time passes, and one of the friends I'd made there, Norm, becomes my flatmate. It's early July 2000, and since many of the store's staff are celebrating moving into new apartments, they decided to celebrate at a local dive - L'Astral 2000 (no, they haven't updated their name to keep up with the times). Being one's roommate, I'm also invited. As luck would have it, the seating arrangements have me positioned between Norm and Stéphanie, as he would introduce her to me - the Girl Of My... you get the idea.

I think I recall there was a ''singer'' performing, the type of fucker who sings cover songs and is backed by a terrible Casio keyboard, but thankfully not loud enough to drown out our conversations or make us want to drink elsewhere. There was, however, this one dude, much older (think late 50s, early 60s), looking like a much older Jimmy from South Park, who wouldn't stop hitting on her - he was also a video store customer; she pretended I was her boyfriend (classic) to make him go away, and from then on, to help the story stick, she made sure to pay more attention to me than anyone else at our table.

When 3AM came around, two girls invited themselves to my place so we could continue the party - Stéphanie and her roommate and employee Mélanie; additionally, Norm brought a chick over, our friend (also in film school with us) Louis' ex-girlfriend, nicknamed ''The Star'' for her knack for lying on her back and not moving an inch during sex. Norm and The Star promptly went to his room, while me and the prettier ladies moved into mine, a luxurious double-length room with adjoined living room that made for a nice suite all to myself.

As we drank more and talked, time flew by, and Mélanie decided to go home to sleep. Eventually, Stéphanie and I made our way into my bed, and at least one of us was in it for the next 96 hours - that's 4 days, genius.

The rest of the summer was more of the same: if we weren't at work (and, most of the time, I wasn't), out drinking, or eating, we were fucking. My birthday - and September, i.e. Fall - came along, and we realized we were, pretty much, dating.

I had bagged my Dream Girl, and she had stayed; she was mine.

And, of course, all dreams end.

The Treacherous Journey From Employment To Unemployment, Volume 2 - Painting Yourself Into A Corner

I've been a fucking ghost.

The people in my office love me (or so it seems, at least), I've been the mediator-who-brings-sunshine in quite a few conflicts of late, and always got the job done on time, oftentimes working overnight, sometimes non-stop for a whole weekend.

I'm respected by my immediate bosses, those who co-sign the work I do on my own and get paid ten times my salary, because they know what they ask of me and they know no one else could do it as well for so cheap. And it suits me, too, because I almost never sleep, so working at night on some absolutely-due report after having had the time to write, play a show, spend time with the Lady Of The House and maybe even see friends and/or watch a hockey game is worth less money.

But that means that I'm rarely there when the Real Bosses from the Toronto Office call in, so after a while, as the job kept getting done on time, they sort of forgot about me.

Some tasks I shared with others, one of which was supervising a complete crew as they collected data, something I've been doing on my own for 6 months now. But for the first seven and a half years, it was teamwork, a stask I shared with at least one other person, many times taking less shifts than the other person because I had the other, usually pressing, things I needed to do - on time, usually for the next morning before my immediate superiors got in.

Every single other supervisor was fired. That's at least five of them, maybe even up to eight. Yet I remain. Because every other supervisor's 'extra' tasks included contact with the Toronto Office - not me. 9AM to 5PM on weekdays is my time off from work, time where I could be sleeping. I may be working during those hours, but never there, always from home or a remote location where I could concentrate, as I wasn't allowed any mistakes; the fruit of my labour went directly to our clients, and bore my bosses' names, but they never even reviewed it - they rarely had enough time to anyway.

Recently, The Boss came to town and called a complete staff meeting. It was serious shit, Monster News. Everyone who was there was given an ultimatum, and most were told they only had two weeks of work left, the others were given a choice of moving to Toronto if they wanted to continue with the company. The Montréal office was closing down.

What news awaited me, personally? I wasn't even invited to the meeting. Eight years working for The Boss, and on the Day Of The Big Overhaul, I was at home, sleeping. My whole division and I only had a shift the next day, anyway.

And when I did get there, I had no idea, so it felt strange that everyone looked like they'd just been told they had terminal cancer. And it took hours before anyone filled me in on the details.

Lucky me, though, I wasn't there. I had been forgotten, so The Boss made it seem like it was on purpose, and that my staff and I were going to remain. The rest of the company, a whole floor above a shopping mall, 16 desks, 4 closed offices, 2 reception counters, 3 meeting rooms, a kitchen, an IT room, a printer room - all rendered useless, still paying rent for, while me and my crew took up a space that was barely bigger than my living room, working for our last remaining client. Makes sense.

Only our last remaining client told me, three days ago, that they were thinking of going in ''another direction''; online. More straightforward, more random, better odds of getting the exact sample they were looking for.

Sure, I became a ghost, and sure I'm probably going to outlast my peers by a month, but I did so by painting myself into a corner.

Then again, I thought ghosts could fly. We'll see what happens next.

I'm Calling It: Summer's Here

It's 5:30AM, the sun is shining bright.

The evening's been a good and festive one, what with a dance show and a night out in a club afterwards. The night ended at my friend's pad, who lives a block away from my place, and it turns out I had some leftover beer in his fridge. You know, when everything seems to be going your way...

It's just a block's walk, but a million things run through my head: love, life... but none more than ''life is good''. A half-drank six pack of Sleeman beers in one hand, a lukewarm slice of pizza in the other (La Mère's special, too, with green peppers, pepperoni, smoked meat and bacon underneath thick layers of cheese), more cars than humans out on a bright Sunday morning...

It felt right.

So what if it was below 10 degrees (52, for our metrically-impaired friends in the Imperial System), the situation itself made it summery. Walking in short sleeves, drunkenly, in the wee hours of the morning, after a great night out, carrying food and alcoholized beverages with no regard whatsoever for The Law, taking my time, not freezing to death... all that was missing was the ocean. And I'll agree even more in a few minutes when I stick my fat self right next to the Lady of The House in the holiest of beds - mine.

Ain't asking for much, but ain't need for much more.

Summer's here. It's finally good to be alive again.

How I Broke My Back And Learned To Let A Bomb Go Off

Thursday, April 14th, 2009. Roughly 3:30PM.

This will seem like some Harvey Pekar-type shit - and maybe, really, I should do matter-of-fact semi-boring comics rather than blogs - but it's a story with enough sad/funny/pathetic life in it that it was worth putting up - kind of like telling the world about losing my virginity to a condom with a hot older chick watching. But here it is:

I am home, as has been the case of late, what with the lack of work I've been subjected to. With me is the Lady Of the House, and her best friend, Alternate Lady Of The House. I'm in my (home) office, working - writing. They're talking, and come to a question I have the answer to. I get up from my chair with the clear intention of providing valuable input that, admittedly, I could have screamed across three rooms, but I decided to deliver the message in person. I'm polite and gallant that way.

Except I don't make it all the way up. When I reach the second-model of the evolutionary chart, caveman-like 45-degree angle (or so it seems), my back locks in, the bottom of it turning all matter into excruciating pain. So I never make it all the way up. And as each step forward takes longer to achieve, my body also gradually fails to rise; two steps in I scream, three steps in I crouch and scream again; fourth step is a knee on the floor, a loud FUCK! and finally there I lay, flat on my stomach, immobile.

The beltway in my pants happens to be right at the junction between my office and the dining room, meaning my torso is in the dining room, and my legs are in my office. It looks silly, but it feels ridiculous. Both Ladies Of The House laugh, as they fail to comprehend the level of pain I'm in.

I can take pain. I've played injured in macho sports like hockey and football. I've walked 45 minutes home from school on a broken foot and ankle at age 9. I've had a broken foot for the past two years. I've had toothaches and tooth nerve pain. I've had regular back pain for the past 15 years, usually for a couple of days at a time, every two or three months. I know pain, and I tolerate it well. But never had I felt this particular level of pain.

I was, for all intents and purposes, paralyzed. I couldn't move my legs without provoking my back to ache, and it was worse with the left leg, which I felt still existed but didn't want to respond to my orders. Worse still, when I tried moving it, be it with my arm or my other leg, the pain was killing me.

So both Ladies, experts at ridiculing others, started making fun of me and my predicament, but even laughing brings pain, which only makes it funnier to them. Soon enough, they are next to me - well, my torso part anyway - rolling on the floor, crying of laughter.

Alternate Lady, being a professional dancer and dance teacher, also often has back injuries and back pain, and tried to help me out by using team stretching techniques, namely on my left leg. But the laughter had brought air into my body, and as soon as she lifted my bent leg up towards my ass, I passed gas. And it was one of those noisy farts, too, right in her face. Of course, First Lady starts cracking up again, so do I (and pain ensues), Alternate Lady drops my left leg in shock and awe - and that hurts even more. And apparently, that level of pain is just fucking hilarious to obdurate women, and the Funny Fest lives onwards.

Fifteen minutes pass by with little to less action action to recount, so Alternate Lady decides to leave and head to her own place. I'll still be on the floor for another hour before I can even attempt to move, when the Lady and I unite our forces and manage to get my ass in bed, where I'll lay for at least another hour without moving so much as a finger.

Throughout the course of the evening, I will attempt bold maneuvers like trying to go to the washroom to take a leak, but the first couple of times I can't even manage to get there at all and have to retreat to bed, while the third time is a semi-charm, one in which when I get there, helped, my penis seems to have stage fright. Just what I fucking need.

My head feels dizzy from the constant pain, and I can't stand upright for more than a few minutes. And on the few chairs I do try to sit on, the pain comes to warn me that it isn't a good idea to stay there. Eventually I find out the living room couch is a relatively comfortable place where I can sit in a tolerable amount of discomfort, with the added bonus of entertainment - TV, cable, DVD player, Playstation 3, Blue-Ray discs... it's where I'll spend the next week, give or take. Sleeping sitting down, in just about the same position for a week, my back is getting better - the meds are helping, gotta love those painkillers - but my ass is starting to hurt and my legs often get numb. But I'm up-to-date on Weeds and saw every movie nominated for this year's Oscars. And I finished my season of NHL 09.

So I got my pop culture done, had an excuse to be a couch potato and to neglect my blog for a week, and even got to a level of intimacy with Alternate Lady that only anal sex could have achieved or matched, but she doesn't believe in that shit anyway.

As Ice Cube said:

All in all, I gotta say, it was a good day