post semester stuff

It's interesting that often my blogs are manifesting themselves around the same time that there are kids running around outside my bedroom door, and I've slept insufficiently.

Semester 3 is done.

Intense few months that was, but really, really hard to quantify for some reason. I tell everybody that I've been busy; that I've been struggled to get the massive amounts of work done, thus killing my social life (although killing a social life in Ottawa is like hanging a rapist, it does more good than harm). People ask me, "What have you been doing?" and I struggle to describe it to them.

"Stuff." I say, "Lots of stuff."

And there has been stuff between other stuff:

I was voted by my classmates both Grumpiest Old Fart, and Radio King. The latter is either based my age-like seniority or my skills. Maybe both. In my acceptance speech for the former I thanked everybody by saying, "Fuck the lot of you."

In terms of the classes themselves the things I sucked at, I really sucked at. Particularly sales. I squeaked by in the course barely, unable to stomach the endless waves of sychophantic double-speak from a sales professor who had spent a lifetime in sales.

The course culminated in a role-play where I had to pitch advertising to her. She was meant to be a car dealership. The most frightening thing about this exam- and ultimately, her -was how deeply she believed in her own little fantasy dealership, to the point where she was actually selling cars in her head up until the point of my exam.

She also couldn't see the difference between 'Where you see yourself in the future' and 'Where you want to be in the future'. If you can't see the difference either you should probably be in sales.

So that class didn't go to well.

Another course I took was Podcasting. It eventually mutated into Marketing. Not that anybody in the class noticed the change, as the program took place in the computer lab. As a result most people were surfing the net for three hours every Friday. Some of us became obsessed with the game Scorched Earth in which you launch missiles into the air to try to blow up other missile launchers on other computers. It sounds inane and stupid, and it is. It is also is very addictive. Often the simplest most banal things are.

At the awards ceremony (In which I won the Grumpiest Old Fart award and Radio King) a guy puked so hard he hemorrhaged his eyeballs. I asked him the following day, "How do you puke so hard you hemorrhage your eyeballs?" He started citing statistical evidence of it's occurrence, but I didn't hear most of it because I walked out of the room. I have a feeling he may go through the rest of his life with people only hearing the first bit of what he says. Not a great talent if you want to be in radio.

I can't say that I left the party without pie on my face. I did find myself slow-dancing with a blow-up doll. There was a logical reason for this, but if i try to explain it to you you'll probably leave the room after hearing the first bit.

Over the past few months I've become mildly obsesses with a show called House. I'm not a television watcher (lacking cable) but when it was pointed out to me by a few people that i reminded them of the lead character I had to see it. The lead character in question is an embittered, snarky diagnostician who goes through the show deconstructing people in a brutally honest, yet sarcastic, way. He is a total asshole, and only the censorship laws keep the other characters from saying it. In every episode he's called an asshole in some new and creative way. I'm waiting for them to recycle calling him and asshole without actually calling him an asshole but they haven't yet. I'm drawn to the series because it's so well written.

I've also blagged my way into a club claiming to be this guy:

His name is Alex Rios and he is an outfielder for the Toronto Blue Jays. I don't see the similarity but my fellow hooligan Phil seems convinced of it. When he tells others this they seem convinced of it as well. Without ever seeing the guy before I managed to get past the line at a bar and be personally greeted by it's owner...Even though the Jays played that same day...In Atlanta...Apparently the guy new enough about baseball to be able to make the association, but not enough about geography to perceive the bullshit.

Also I'm not sure if this is a step up, or down from being told I look like this guy:

Which I used to get a lot of.

The toss-up between looking like a baseball dude than can't string a coherent sentence together or the sleazebag from Titanic is a tricky one.

And, I can't exactly identify when the switch from Rios to Zane happened, but I suspect my increasing weight has something to do with it. I know that when I arrived in Canada a year and a bit ago I weighed 157. I now weigh 210.

Living in North America does that to you. Thankfully about a year ago I had the foresight to start a heavy cycle of exercises to battle my body going pear-shaped (It just occurred to me that that's what the expression means; I keep using it to describe clusterfucks (which is what you eat that causes your body to go pear-shaped)).

Other things that have not occurred is getting a girlfriend and leaving Ottawa.

I've given up on the girlfriend thing. It just ain't going to happen. Either women here are a mess, or I am. The beauty of it is I don't really care either way. Most of my friend's have been whipped into a domestic shape by their relationships, and it's kind of a pear-shape...No that doesn't work; rather a potato shape... Fuck it, they've become sedentary.

As far as leaving Ottawa goes, I'm coiled like a spring, getting tighter and tighter wound every day. I'm on the home-stretch, I can feel it. One last semester of school and then I can go. I've been compiling a list of Non-North American English-language radio stations around the globe to apply to. I know where I'd like to go, but it will be tricky getting there without some hard experience in the real industry. Although, I must say, this program at Algonquin College is probably about as close to it as possible.

In the mean time I'll just have to deal with my cabin-fever by heading to Florida with some friends for the New Year. It'll be a road-trip starting from Chicago and ending in Corkscrew FL(Yes We Can) with two couples and me.

As usual there is excited email-type plan-making between all the participants (two couples, and me). Suggestions about timing, where to go, what to do. I have always been a "The Best Plan is No Plan" kind of guy, but I couldn't resist getting caught up in the excitement:

My Thoughts:

-Just to clarify, Terra, I'm arriving on Saturday the 27th at 13hr to O'Hare. Depending on what time you decide to meet me I'll head into the Chicago suburbs to attack mailboxes with baseball bats. BONUS: You get to try to find me based on the trail. DIFFICULTY: I will be in the back of a pick-up truck and the driver will be hopped up on gin so the trail will be erratic.

-I would be interested in Nashville purely from a "Heartland of Rock-N Roll" point of view; check out Sun studios, the whiteification of the delta blues, fondle Robert Johnson, etc. BONUS: You get to see me fondle a dead blues guy. DIFFICULTY: I would like to get to large bodies of water and sun poste haste, so if this ties up too much time, we may have to bend the time and space continuum

-The last time I was in Savannah I hated everyone I was with, and they hated me. In keeping with consistency we all will have to generate a solid tangible mass of hatred towards each other. I can facilitate this by repeatedly flicking you in the ear, and you can call me a Vegetarian. BONUS: Due to the untimely hospitalization of Chantz's mom Chantz and Steph will likely be in Savannah if/when we go. DIFFICULTY: Chantz's mom is hospitalized.

-I want to lay on the beach and do NOTHING short of allowing my heart to beat once every few minutes. I would like to maximize the time doing this. Disney and Six Flags were designed by Nazis, and goose-stepping sounds suspiciously like doing something to me. However if something weird comes up; like people wanting to wrestle possums, or Fleetwood Mac is in town, i'll increase me heart rate for activity. BONUS: I will require the bare minimum to survive, simply a bedpan, beer, and someone to stuff some cheese in my mouth occasionally. DIFFICULTY: Cheese makes me fart.

-Trev, as you well know, I am able to sleep in the car. With five people taking shifts all-nighters of transit are well within our means. However, when i'm driving I like to listen to the German electro-group Scooter at maximum volume. I like to loop the part when they go "ABFAHRT!!! Yeaaaah! LOUDER!!! ... Yess! Abfahrt!!! Abfahrt!" which, as it turns out, they've already looped for my convenience...FOR THE WHOLE GODDAMNED SONG.

-If you want to see Chantz in Savannah, it's probably best to go before. It's not really a huge deal for me to hang around and sightsee. I have, after all, read Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. And keep in mind, they shoot people that look like me in these places. BONUS: You get to see an actual historical lynching. DIFFICULTY: you'll have to explain it to my parents.

-arin

What followed was a stunned and awkward silence from all other participants in the conversation thread. I'll bet they're starting to dread insisting that I go. And well they should; It will be a total clusterfuck. And pear-shaped.

Which is fine by me.

a squeek in the life of...

Aaaah. A moment to write. But what about?

Well...This weekend has been a gnarly bit of ups and downs: My headphones snapped in the middle of opping a show. I missed my Thursday morning 6 to 9 air-shift on CKDJ.

That last was like a Bugs-Bunny cartoon where he suddenly sits up straight in bed with a "boing!" noise and spinning spirals in his eyes. Except with me it went R-rated almost immediately.

"Faaaaack!" I screamed as soon as I saw the light of day beneath the window blinds. It was 8.30. I had overslept by four hours. I was supposed to get up at 4.15am. The alarm I had so carefully set the night before on this very laptop had gone off at the right time. The speaker jack just wasn't in at the right angle for the message to be passed to my audio system.

So I jumped into the car and sped to school where I was told that the professor knew I missed the shift. Duly he lopped off 20% of my final mark. This, I believe is, fair. It's a 'The Show Must Go On" kind of industry.

I got kicked out of a local bar the Saturday night before because of a difference of opinion with a Nazi bouncer. Nothing violent, and the place was playing country music so it could have a been a blessing in disguise.

So could the spontaneous explosion of my headphones in the middle of a show. It earned me a new pair from an empathetic father. But not before the bizarre scene of the two of us huddled, yet again, in his sawdust filled work room trying to "Super-Epoxy" the original headphones back together.

I reckon the most super thing about that particular epoxy was that that it hardened in a matter of minutes. . . Except when it was in place to secure bits of Sony plastic together. But kudos to my dad who worked at the thing like Conan turning the grain mill. Even with sardonic comments from his son:

"You know dad this, whole scene is giving me bad thoughts." I said after 45 minutes of us pinching stiffened fingers like vices around the two pieces of plastic waiting for the glue to dry (we tried speeding up the process with a hair-dryer but succeeded only in burning our fingers).
"What? Why is that?"
"I have this memory of you repairing my clarinet the same way, and the bottom half falling off in the middle of a concert."

It's true. One of the more awkward moments in my youth.

But forget all that...

Courses are going generally well. They should continue to do so as long as I don't fuck things up enough to lose all my credibility .

The restaurant work, of course, is annoying. There is only so much to say about a place that serves food to the lowest common denominator. So low, in fact, they may be buried under seven inches of hardened steel and missed the whole 15% gratuity thing we have here in Canada.

At this restaurant I work for Lebanese people that cook Italian food. This is not as bizarre as it might sound. There is a landed immigrant Chinese guy nearby that owns an Irish pub. He told me and my friend that the patio was not designed for smoking, despite it being outside and totally without walls.

Anyway, these Lebanese people speak Lebanese to each other when there is only me to talk to. Which is always because we never have any customers. Regardless, they're all nice people, just really moody. Sometimes I feel they are inexplicably frustrated with me. Other times they feed me some of the Lebanese food they secretly cook when no one is around. Which is always.

I'm still single and could probably use a shag and a warm body, but that would distract me from developing my theories. Like the one about how the Internet is tweaking the female intellect while it dulls the male's exactly the same way beer and communism did in the Czech Republic.

We had a federal election and despite much whining and mud-slinging Canadian politicians showed just what a bunch of bitches they are capable of being.

Running, was a guy with a sketchy moustache and not a hope in hell, a woman who looked like a groundhog with even less of a hope, a man who couldn't wrap his tongue around basic English words, and said things like, "We alf to waken up de canade-jun peeples wit de dvlop-ment off hour new eelec-shun.", and finally a guy who looks like he should be propped up in a shop window at a second-hand clothing store wearing a hat with ear-flaps.

The last guy --the head of the Conservative party-- won last Tuesday night. We once had a Prime Minister who couldn't operate half his face because of a stroke. This guy can't operate any of his face for reasons that remain a mystery. I assume relief will finally come to the man- and his face -when he finally has a successful bowel movement.

Two day after that some of my more retarded classmates made loud innuendos about the Medias Sales Prof having the hots for me in front of her face.. The don't know this, but if this sort of thing continues they will wake up one morning to find their kidneys floating in a jar of Listerine beside their heads.

Unwittingly they have brought lollipops to a knife fight.

I did an insane amount of push-ups last night and am starting to feel the soreness. In a couple of days I'll do an insane amount of pull-ups...the goal being muscle failure. I'm actually impressed at my commitment to this kind sado-masochism. There is something cerebral and zen about the whole thing I guess. It could also be a convenient way to do the best with excess food and a social vacuum.

Today squeaked by with my Friday evening sports broadcast in the evening. I'm finding newer and more creative ways to express myself on air; saying things like, "..while the economy plummets like fat people on a ski hill.." and, "It's civil war in the Province of Alberta tonight as Edmonton faces off against Calgary on a frozen pond." The irony doesn't escape me that I know virtually nothing about sports, and care very little. It's the process I enjoy.

I enjoy being on the air. I enjoy doing production. I enjoy the fact that our Friday Evening News Anchor got the word "incentive" correct on the third try, and she fucking nailed it.

Good for her. I owe it to myself to at least keep up to that kind of conviction, and learn, and fall flat on my face, and learn some more, and fall less.

So I guess that's what I should write about.

dhool scaze

So school has begun...

I've got my two rollerball pens which glide across the paper like hawks in the wind. I'll probably lose them both tomorrow. I've got a new-fangled binder thing in which I will write ALL my notes. This is opposed to last year where I has a bunch of books which I carefully labeled and colour coded based on the class. By the end of the first semester they were as confused and convoluted as land-ownership records after Russian occupation. Actually studying for an exam involved an absurd cross-notebook paper-trail and the deciphering of codes that I probably dreamed up while drunk. I figure if I'm doing mental acrobatics just to kick-off the study process I'll keep all my notes in one place.

I don't have class before 10am which is a wonderful relief. This means I have two whole hours to work myself into a wild rage about the Ottawa bus system before I get to school. Sadly, however --like last semester-- I've got a three hour radio show every Thursday morning starting at 6am. Like last semester I'll be crucified by my professor for 'not giving it enough life' on air. Perhaps I will start a serious cocaine addiction to deal with this issue.

Hey it is showbiz...

Our class of 50 has been whittled down to about 25 since the beginning of last year. It's hard to tell the exact number because everyone is moving around too much. They are an older more mature bunch, many of them are even 20 years old now. Many haircuts have been redesigned and streamlined. Many outfits slightly more subtle. Many zits far more sparse.

Even the class goof, whose chair toppled backwards, said "Oops, my bad." rather than make ass-head comments at the rest of the class from where he lay prone, his legs sticking straight up in the air.

They guy with the huge ego (who I genuinely like because of his honest authenticity) is slightly toned down. The guy with non-sequitors is slightly less non-sequitous. The chattering dumb-ass may have a bead. The girl I have a not-so-secret crush is more underwhelmed, and the other one with the outfits smiles a little more.

Yes. The electricity of shared excitement and/or doom permeates the air. We are second years now. They are first years --all 50 of them.

I got my first year buddies yesterday; the two guys who I am meant to train and coach along the way. Like many of the other first years I wonder if they'll make the cut. Will they strive and persevere amidst the torrent of work and extreme stress of on air work. Will they climb the scholarly mountain and shake their fists at the sky when May rolls around next year?

Nah. They're pretty much fucked.

But forget all that. The question really is: Will I?

music here: a fresh rant

I wish people would stop asking me what I think of the band:

Sweaty, with crazed glee in their eyes, they'll say, "So, what do you think of the band, pretty awesome, eh?"

I'm a lot more tame now. Whipped into standard issue Canadian politeness I will say, "Well, they're not really my thing..."
To which they'll reply, over the blare of Hotel California, "Huh?" they're heads bobbing up and down to the sweet awesomeness of the song.
I'll repeat, "They're NOT REALLY MY THING."

So the conversation ends.

I used to say, "Fucking hell, this is absolutely the worst crap I've heard since the last time I was out in Ottawa listening to music. How is this possible? Are ALL the bands in this town competing to be the most unoriginal emitters of saccharine shit around? How is it possible that there is not an iota of creativity amongst musicians here? And what is wrong with you people actually encouraging this utter garbage?"

This also ends the conversation with added bonus of glares. It is also a lot closer to the truth in terms of my feelings about local music.

Last Saturday I met a friend at a bar in the trendy part of Ottawa, the so-called 'Glebe', which sounds suspiciously like something you might find under a toilet rim. She was there because her friend played in 'The Band'. I was there to see her and was willing to put up with inevitable gunk coming out of the amplifiers. They were a young bunch of guys: two guitarists, a bassist, a drummer, and a keyboardist. Sadly the venue was so small the bassist was almost sitting on the drummers lap, and the guitarists were forced to do the 'The Two Guitarists Rubbing Their Back's Together Thing" out of necessity rather than the sheer coolitude of the act.

They played all the standards that Canadians are obsessed with involving three chord progressions, four/four timing, and the kind of whine usually associated with the highest calibre of pussy. This kind of thing is on par with the faux-british accents of punk rockers, and the soulful throaty bellowing of jack-asses and their ballads.

What finally did it for me was when they burst --to the obvious happiness of the crowd-- into country music. I did a double-take; yes they were a band of twenty-somethings in the ubiquitous plaid shirts and jeans playing country.

Country music offends me. It's a little like mullets in that it's common knowledge that they are totally uncool, and that none of your friends has one, and none of their friends has one, yet you know they're out there lurking in some inbred throwback possum-eating town waiting to cause you paroxysms of horror and/or giggles.

In the blessed quiet after the band's set I found myself in conversation with a woman in her fourties. She asked, "So, what did you think of the band?"
"Erm..."
"They're pretty great aren't they?"
"Ah?"
"I think these guys are going to go far" she gives me a sly, modest, smirk, "I'm actually kind of promoting them."
I can't resist, "Go where? They didn't play anything original. Then again it may be just what Ottawa needs; another cover band to replay the same music written by people decades ago because nobody has the creative muscle to come up with something different today. I'm not positive, but I think I can safely say that if my asshole was an amplifier that's what it would sound like."
"So, I guess they're not really your thing, eh?"
"Yeah, pretty much. Good luck with that promoting thing though."

Since I've returned to Ottawa I haven't heard a single band that has caught my fancy, and yet everyone is a self-described musician. . .Shit, I'm a self-described musician (among other things), but you can forget me assaulting other's with my sound in anything other than a campfire situation unless it was new, unique, imaginative, and good.

There's a new song on the radio. It has the exact same melody/progression as the song Werewolves of London ("A-woooooo, werewolves of London"). Because these assholes couldn't come up with a chorus for their rip-off they used Sweet Home Alabama, verbatim .

Essentially what has happened here is the blatant combination of two of the most overplayed songs on contemporary Canadian radio. If you were to line up the the fans that embrace this whole-hearted chicanery, the pig-fucking sales people that promoted it, or the creativity by-pass motherfuckers that perform it and gave me a flame-thrower, I would not know who to torch first.

This, to me, is the sign of a coming localized musical apocalypse --'apocalypso' you might say. Music in Canada --what is popular-- is imploding into a black hole which will suck the last squeaks of Canadian creativity into it.

I suppose I can't blame the musicians though. The close-mindedness of the audience perpetuates the brutal cycle of unoriginality that saturates this country.

But I tell you this:

If I hear one more jerk with a guitar telling me how confused he is, or another glasses-wearing pixie girl describing how battered and bruised on the floor she is, or another fuckwit clever-hairstyle sporting band revelling in the hot girl across the room, or any songs about heroes, dancing, what they're striving for, what they're running from, retards that succeed, or successes that retard, I'm going to start getting violent.

riding the retarded mule

Oooo two blog days in a row...

Must be a lack of life:

Anyway, once a week the lads and I go and see a film. Those without babies that are able to tear themselves away from their wives/girlfriends, that is. You see, my friend's in Ottawa have the worst case of pussy-whipping I have ever seen...and that's saying a lot, because I've seen a lot. I can't comment on my female friend's because I seem to not have them anymore. At least not in Ottawa...Sad actually, I suppose the female/male imperative is too high here --the expectation to fuck to serious in this eviscerated town...

And blah, blah, blah...

So we saw Tropic Thunder and I loved it. Why? Because it tore Hollywood a new asshole. It brought to light all the stupid clichés that the American blockbuster bashes stupid people with. My thinking is this: whether you get it or not doesn't really matter. However, if you don't get it you're an idiot.

Something else unique I did was actually take a bus. A miracle, really, considering everyone drives in order to tackle the huge distances from suburb to suburb through suburb. Actually, that's what Ottawa is; a massive sprawling suburb, jammed with split-level wall-to-wall carpeting houses with tiny little lawns and garage doors. Sure we have the odd building here and there but they're bunched up like elephants in a defensive clusterfuck around the Parliament Buildings; the seat of Canada's government.

It's no wonder that no matter how green Ottawa claims to be the majority of people are driving cars the size of Gulfstreams to get around. The public transportation in The Nation's Crapital is the worst I've ever seen...And that too is saying a lot, because I've seen a lot.

First of all it's expensive; three bucks a ride. The routes are erratic and silly, having very little to do with anyone's actual destination no matter where they're trying to go. The stops themselves are usually hidden behind trees and other tall shrubbery so nobody can find them, including the bus driver. Although Ottawa is very up to date with the computerization of the routes, including having schedules posted on a website, there is very little correlation between what you read and when the bus actually shows up.

That last is a crime worthy of a flogging. I mean, what is the point of even posting a schedule even nobody follows it?

Last night I looked online (wistfully at this point) to figure out when the last bus was leaving downtown because I was watching the late show (ah yes, the last bus runs at midnight, the bars close at two. You do the math.) The website told me the last bus goes at 00.23. Fine, the film should be over by 23.50. Except when I got to the station after the movie the schedule there said the last was at 23.59. Methinks the OCTranspo Website People need to communicate with the OCTranspo Bustop People by using some other means than farts in a room.

Luckily I was in time for the last bus. It was late naturally. Buses are always late in Ottawa. Except when they're not. When they're not they're early. This has happened to me a number of times; the bus cruising by ten or fifteen minutes early (or was the one before it late?).

I can barely describe the mute, hopeless, and rending frustration when this happens. The incredible self-control it takes to not jam a pen into the driver of the following bus; arriving 45 minutes later.

It's that limbo when you're not sure if the bus is late or whether it went by pre-maturely and you missed it. The utter helplessness that you have to rely on the schedule of a half-baked bureaucracy which is run by a bunch of crack smoking chimps. This can really fuck up your day.

Anyway, last night, the 23.59 arrived at 00.15... and promptly went in the wrong direction. There was a few moments of reserved contained Ottawa-style panic --like the hissing of cats in a box-- and then an announcement by the driver over intercom, "Sorry folks, my mind wandered a bit there."

Astounding.

drinking the single whine

There is a severe disruption going on in the universe. A shakiness in the veneer of reality, a troubling state of affairs from which there appears to be no light.

The trouble has to do with my penis.

It's not getting laid.

A while back I railed against this in the form of a long missive in which I blamed this agonizingly contrived North American society with it's "get 'er done" mentality. Far better to rapidly follow the scheme of things and get the 2.3 children after you achieve a cubicle job and wife you only like some of the time.

I blamed the venues for meeting people as being crap. I blamed my age group for an incredible lack of imagination and adventurous spirit. Dating, for people my age, has been relegated to the same kind of monotony as people's day jobs. You meet people on-line via any number of the dating websites, you cycle through a bunch of people, till --hopefully-- you have an equivalent, or mutually satisfactory income, and then off you go.

Essentially dating, like everything else here, has become a corporate-controlled mechanism. The list is endless of sites and organizations providing dating services for "people on the go". It's unclear where these people are going, but I suspect it's the next channel on the television set.

I absolutely refuse to engage in this type of thing for three reasons: 1) It's fucking lame, 2) A picture and a few written words is no way to meet someone, therefore 3) It never works. It's one of these things --like the slow death of long-distance relationships-- that people are really slow to pick up on.

And Canada has it bad. Statistically per-capita we are the highest users of online dating sites in the world. I suppose you could blame the cold, but that wouldn't work in Sweden. Of course, people in Sweden are per-capita better looking than Canadians, but whatever.

Canada is also number one in the world of online sex...Someimes I look around and can understand this. Other times it makes me want to cry for this nation. Regardless, when in Canada, think twice before you use someone's keyboard.

So where does that leave me?

Trying to quell the bile in my throat when I see another couple. They are everywhere; on television, in movies, on the radio, canoodling on the beach, fondling in restaurants, touching on the sidewalk, fucking in the bushes... The whole experience is tweaked by my self-consciousness at walking down the street by myself.

ALL my friends are in relationships --for better, or for worse-- and it boggles the mind. How did they get there? They certainly didn't meet on eHarmony. Ah...yes...they've been together for a while, they met like most normal people do, via friendships, or a bar.

I guess I'm feeling excluded but it's not as if i haven't tried. It's just that every encounter I've had with a girl has gone utterly pear-shaped; from the return and subsequent shafting of who I thought was the love of my life, to the utter and idiotic maneuverings of well-meaning friends to try to "set me up"... When people start with, "You know, I know this girls who would just love..." I say, "No."

Sigh. Maybe it's just me.

My teeth aren't straight. I'm bald. Too tall, too skinny, too dark. Just plain unattractive. I can't speak. Disdain the getting-to-know-you bullshit. No major income for a 33-year-old. Live with my parents...Shit...when you look at it that way...

I am a pariah with the freedom to do only one thing in my freakish singlehood: make lewd and inappropriate comments to my friend's girlfriends. I'm too pathetic for them to even get angry at me.

I've told everyone that asks why I'm single (with the same tone of voice they would use to ask why I have a turd stuck to my forehead) I say, "I'm not going to find what I'm looking for here."

Which is true.

I suppose my attitude doesn't help either.







...Fuck you...

ya, babies.

So i'm sitting here fighting off a head cold. It sucks because i've got to shake the fucker by midday tomorrow when i'm doing a reading of George Elliot to a wedding party. By the same token, however, it justifies me locking myself in my tiny room to avoid the screaming chaos right outside my door.

The kid is here.

My stepbother's one-and-a-half-year old, Luke, here to spend time with his grandmother...My stepmom.

I hear a loud whining scream, and then I hear the parents, "Did you just bite your finger? Did you just bite your finger? Aw, poor Luke, he bit his finger while eating food. Did you bite your finger Luke?"

Creeping Jesus, how stupid can you get?

Maybe i've reached a threshold with babies, having just spent an entire week in Sandbanks (Eastern Ontario's vacation paradise, if by "paradise" you mean endless kilometers of sandy beach coated with young families) with my stepmom and her two kids --who both have babies-- their spouses, and my dad.

Around the dinner table at the cottage they ask me why i'm so quiet.

"Look around the table" I say, "besides my noticeably dark complexion what makes me different from you?"

They can't figure it out.

"I'm the only one here who hasn't had a kid. What can I contribute to the conversation when its all anybody talks about?"

In fact, I could contribute to the conversation with things like: Your children should be institutionalized, they exhibit all the signs; they're megalomaniacs, kleptomaniacs, retarded, sociopaths, egomaniacs, suffer from narcolepsy and attention deficit disorder, they're gluttons, they have zero bowel control, they're narcissistic, they have both avoidance and dependence personality disorders, and they have two volume settings, "Loud" and "Off".

I could say these things but then I would be faced with that infuriating sanctimonious smirk that new parents put on right before they say, "When you have a child, you'll understand."

That may be so, but I plan on having a mute.

Okay, they're cute. But could you imagine if they weren't? The human race would come to a dead stop. Even then some babies look like Mick Jagger. But not to the parents, never to the parents. To the parents they have given birth the most breathtakingly beautiful creature in the world.

And not just beautiful, smart too. Smart enough that parents have to repeat everything they say to their baby two or three times, while it's rummaging around in it's diaper for hidden doodles.

The voice goes up three octaves to a high-pitched whine, "Do we like corn? Do we like corn? Do we like it? Huh, Do we, do we?"
"BGAAAKLL"
"Oh! He said we do. Did we just say we do like corn? We said we do like corn didn't we? Didn't we?"

No wonder the kid is so fucked up, he thinks he's you.

And there it is. Maybe it's not the babies that are the problem, because the only thing that trumps their annoyance value is their parents.