Daylight Savings Time

Set your clock back. Go back to sleep.

Count the sheep, and make sure tomorrow's flock has the same number. You've gained time to make sure it works out.

Tomorrow's still just Sunday, though, so even if you fuck up, you'll have the whole day to get acquainted with your new surroundings,  your work week shouldn't be affected by any of this, if it even exists.

Who's Pissing Me Off Now: MacLean's Edition

MacLean's. A Canadian institution. The Great White North's equivalent of Time Magazine. Except it's full of shit.

From half-researched stories on political corruption to half-assed stories on cultural figures, it has continually promoted a vision of Canada that exists to no one save a few elitist federalists but poses as a top news organization. Oh, sure, it's nowhere near Fox News' bias, but it no less depicts a country nothing like its real-life version.

All in all, here is the country as they view it: Vancouver is as expensive as New York City, but much safer, and hotter in weather. The Alberta sandpits are too valuable for their oil to complain about the pollution they make, and the people populating the Prairies are welcoming and hard-working, like American rednecks, but more tolerant of the indigenous peoples. Ontario is the best place on earth, with a strong economy, social services that work and a powerful establishment that protects it - and the rest of the country - from an American takeover, while Québec houses those retarded French people who cannot take care of themselves and are rotten to the core. Finally, the Maritimes are filled with unlucky toothless fishermen who, if they had any sense in them, should move to Toronto. The Inuit don't exist, except when you're running a story on global warming, preferably one in which we see polar bears drowning, at which time, you must show one toothless Inuit who says he's never seen the weather be so warm in his native Inuktitut language - to make sure people realize we haven't forced them to speak English and respect their ways of life.

In this recent piece about the Montréal subway system, they strive for a nostalgic tone, the good old days when the City had all these plans for the future and wasn't the desolate wreck it has become, with the World Fair, the Olympics, the first MLB baseball team outside the U.S. (The Expos)... things were looking up. Then came the 80s, Gino Vannelli, Men Without Hats, Corey Hart, Céline Dion... and bankruptcy, buildings crumbling, scarce jobs, no baseball team, the Habs' longest Cup drought ever.

And these MacLean's assholes saying they'll miss the ''old'' subway cars because they reminded them of better times, despite, and I quote:

Language woes, caustic politics, the War Measures Act, economic downturns, two referendums, an ice storm, the flight of thousands of its citizens for more English pastures: throughout all the calamities you could always depend on a bubble-bodied, rubber-wheeled, Smurf-coloured train to take you quickly and efficiently where you needed to go.

Uh, Champ... first off, ''language woes'' you were more than partly to blame for with the way you view the potato-and-beer dieting peoples, which, in turn, caused caustic politics, the ''terrorist'' acts that resulted in the War Measures Act, which themselves led to referendums to clear the air politically which then led to Anglos skipping town. It's all one thing. And none of that has anything to do with the subway system, which actually doesn't always ''take you quickly and efficiently'' anywhere near where one needs to go.

The fact that it doesn't even lead to the airport is a problem, as is the fact that it doesn't go all the way East and barely halfway West of the island. It goes North twice (one off the island) but leaves large territories unserviced. Not only does it not run 24 hours a day, one line doesn't even stay open until midnight on most nights. When it shuts down, the bus system replacing it is inadequate and doesn't run nearly often enough. It is now as expensive to use as NYC's system, but apart from two lines over-servicing downtown, under-services anywhere else. Rust and shit literally fall from the walls of most stations and rats run amok in the tunnels. Vomit puddles and stains can be left for months at a time where they sit - see Joliette station, half-way in the Angrignon direction platform, for proof. One station, Peel, was closed for a couple of weeks a few years ago because the building it was under collapsed on top of it.

It is a crumbling piece of nostalgic crap. People argue it's cheaper than hailing a cab or purchasing a car (factoring in insurance and licence costs and gas and whatnot). That's true. But such reasoning fails to factor in the amount of poverty in Montréal, the percentage of people making less than $15,000 a year who yet depend on said public transit to actually go to their shitty, underpaid, probably unhealthy job, and the fact that if the costs of the Métro keep rising, they still won't be able to buy a fucking car and will opt to stay home to cash their $10K welfare rather than walk three hours a day to bust their ass at work for $15K.

(Not Quite A) Timeline

Man, I have no idea what day we are.

It's labor day, or something, I just checked, but that doesn't help me much.

Some days are different, some aren't, so even the clichés don't feel like helping me out.

It's weird, after spending the bulk of the summer doing just what I had intended to do, which is take it easy, catch up on organizing my shit, take care of my cats, write new songs, try out new bandmates, feed this blog more than just occasionally, look for a better-suited day job (ideally: columnist in a weekly paper, or writer of some sort) to no avail, book my annual festival so that it happens in early-to-mid September - and spend quality time with the people around me.

Along the way, fake priorities reared their ugly little heads, especially in the past 4 or 5 weeks. Suddenly, work weeks started taking up 60 hours of my time - and I started losing track of it. Time.

So much so that I booked a show for my festival, Wednesday August 26th, but for some reason, probably because I hadn't written a date all summer long, I drew flyers with ''May 26th'' all over them - and never thought twice. I went and got them printed... $10 for 200 wrong-date useless flyers.

Then I wrote checks to the government to reimburse my student loans... out of the four I made, two were ok. The other two? Incorrect date, of course. The year was 2008. Needless to say, they were returned to me.

Fucking time. It escapes me, eludes me. I'm 30 years old - the type who still acts like a 16 year-old, or so I've been told - and can't remember what I had to eat 48 hours ago. What's it going to be like if I ever reach 75?

In the meantime, I stopped for a breather this weekend, only to see my neat little fucking world crumble before my eyes. I should have just kept going with blinds on, like Forrest Gump when he starts running for no apparent reason.

Instead I sit here, alone, unable to confront my problems because they've been running away from me all fucking week even though they brought it up themselves. Someone's making me eat a shit sandwich with extra stink, and it so happens I'm not a fan.

I have a feeling that when Mick Jagger sang ''Ti-i-i-ime is on my side, yes it is, boy'', it was addressed specifically, to me, right now, telling me he's got time and can grasp it - but I don't. It flew past me all summer long, and today it stands still, taunting me. Tainting me, even.

Not everyone has the same amount of time, so it's more about what you do with it in life that matters, I think. And what matters, to me, is friends, family and lovers. Everything else is in the way, an obstacle, whether it's work, bills, pastimes - even the fun parts.

The rich can afford to make their time with their people more comfortable (and generous souls can even help others who are not in their close circle), but at the end of the day, that's all there is: people, and time. And at times, some people have had their time, and it runs out.

I'm still undecided where I'm going to run with mine.

Shit, I don't even remember what day we are.