You!
Stop right where you are. Yes, you. Put that ass crack on the pavement or so help me.
Good.
All settled?
The voice of Bill Carrol came on. You know, the CFRB 1010 morning guy and his cadre of over-drole associates. “Did you see this on CNN?”, I paraphrase. “Now they’re using my idea to try and put a positive spin on the news. Using ‘Road to Rescue‘. I’ve been doing that for months! That was my idea!” … Continue Reading
To use a bovine analogy, there are few things that allow me to stomach the sheer, brutal cud of incompetence that seems so prevalent these days.
A few days ago, for example, I was calling the credit company to declare that I was making my last payment on the card (and the horse it rode in on), and to ask if I “should expect a final interest charge between the time the payment is made and the time it’s actually processed.”
Doesn’t that seem like a common question? Of all the possible, even improbable answers I was expecting, “how should we know what activities take place on your account?”, was just about the only one that didn’t cross my mind. It’s hard to know how to reply to such insult-bordering statements without resorting to violence, but I managed to take in a breath and yield to a cool, curt, “because it’s your card”, while silently mouthing the word “jackass”.
Such tension releasers, however, often don’t come in the moment and are usually insufficient to make you feel better. Abusing your pets/family just isn’t practical these days, and sweet sweet vengeance usually ends up being a George Costanza-type affair that leaves you even more bitter. That dead horse has been beaten enough. Instead, solace must be taken where and when it can.
I take mine in the form of anonymous social commentary, usually spray-painted on walls or sidewalks. No, these are not the usual tags; those are just evidence of perennial self-indulgence. No one cares that you were here, “SnuR<hb 2K9 dash-swirl”! — if that is your real name.
I like the stuff that shows some thought other than “oh shit I’m so wasted, dude!” Stencils are great for this sort of thing. They’re physical evidence that someone planned the affair — going to the trouble of finding the appropriate image(s), contrasting the living bejeezus out of them, cutting them out, etc. Their Holstein pattern, for me, always alludes to greener pastures where bullshit is actually nourishing, and the knowledge that someone out there really just wants to give me a chuckle. Here’s a taste.
I ran into the coffee shop for my breakfast of last resort, the over-soda’d muffin.
The shop owner (Japanese, I think) registered my order, a “BAH-nana MUPPIN!”, with the cashier. She was young, maybe fourteen, and visibly burdened with an awkwardness that was probably compounded by her own mangled English.
There was something unsettling about her presence in the coffee shop during school hours. That was, until I realized that this is the first week of March break. Then came the super (and much worse), realization that this girl would probably be spending her March break working in her dad’s coffee shop.
To all of you flying south for alcohol-fueled hijinks, allow me to express my disdain. Mostly because I never got to go.
To all of you valiant teenage soldiers holding down the home front this year, and anyone else who doesn’t get a break when, let’s face it, we should all be relaxing, let me raise a muppin top in salute. You do me proud. And breakfast.
index fingers out-apart-down-together-snap-sville. Dig?
I feel like I’ve discovered a bewitching new world right where my TV monitor used to be. In the same sense as car crashes or deformed kittens are so damn compelling, local access cable offers a dizzying variety of shows that make looking away impossible.
I just want to point out, right up front, that this is neither moaning, bitching, nor complaining. I watch enough dreck that tries to pass itself off as entertainment that, production values aside, local cable is a comparative gleaming jewel.
I mean, there’s absolutely no pretense here. These folks know that their audience is extremely limited so their shows have a real laissez-faire atmosphere. During weekdays, some of these shows must skim dangerously low over the ratings plains. The effort matches the budget, matches the content, [unfairly] matches audience numbers.
Yet, despite these seeming obstacles, we find encapsulated in each frozen frame a vast, endless realm of entertainment. Kind of like a heavy acid trip.
I was suckled by Bruce Sterling, weaned by William Gibson, and can recite the dialogue in Blade Runner from memory.
So it came as no surprise when, flipping through the latest edition of Eye Weekly while stuffing my face with a Liberty Village jerk chicken sandwich, I was drawn to Shawn Micaleff’s article on development in Toronto and the tensions it raises between pro/anti-urban development advocates.
Like an earlier article I had written, Shawn points out that construction around the metropolis is rampant (the second largest in North America), and that many of the new highrises are indelibly changing the historic face of the city. He also makes an aborted attempt to connect what’s happening today to a hackneyed version of the future as it was seen from the nineteen-eighties. Aside from a few weak parallels between the cyberpunk genre, Shawn mostly misses the point.
My best laid plans had all the chances of snow in hell.
I had been depending on the bitter cold to stay in place; I needed liquids to be able to flash-freeze on contact with surfaces. Unfortunately, a major thaw settled over the city and I ended up with nothing more than slush and puddles, and my originally planned topic ran down the storm drain along with everything else.
I was moping along until, my eye being drawn by a reflected glint of sunlight, I spotted something just as worthy of an in-depth article: a filthy snowbank, slowly disintegrating in the gentle afternoon sun, dislodging it’s treasures onto the sidewalk.
It occurred to me that the layers of the grimy snow (and more importantly their contents) were, in a sense, a sort of stratified time capsule much like the earth embankments of traditional archeological digs. Each line represented a period in which it snowed sufficiently to engulf any lost or discarded articles.
We could (more or less) correlate these layers’ contents to actual calendar days and trace the history of the pile. A whole two months’ worth of history just lay there in the dirty ice waiting to be uncovered! … Continue Reading
I’m veering away from my regular existential indulgences for a bit to wax oracular about a highly visible trend around the sprawl: the influx of permanent influences that will change, and are changing, the face of city.
None of this will even begin to approach news for most Torontonians.
The slow and stealthy creep of Metro stores over the past few years as the company gobbled up A&P/Dominion, Loeb, and other grocery stores, was clearly visible even as it came as a bit of a surprise to locals (that was my impression anyway). The re-branding was simply a facelift on a done deal, but it threw light on a trend which is continued by extra-Torontonian projects such as the Ritz-Carlton Group’s Ritz Residences, the Maned One’s Trump Tower, and even the sweet and matronly franchise of Chez Cora’s.
Basking in the summer sun and hosting merry, undulating rivulets of sweat betwixt my rosy ass cheeks, I often found myself thinking of the future.
The imagined timeline floated in the haze of somewhere around mid-January.
Yes. Chilled drinks did factor into that vision, as did various activities combining snow and nudity.
Despite this, my pragmatism allowed me to recognize that winter would also suck in many ways. I knew that, for example, snow would feel great on my ruddy bits for only a few minutes at most. After that, the joy would be gone.
I make sure I don’t look forward with too much adoration. That way on my daily travels, when I expect the destination to suck, it’s kind of nice to arrive and find that it sucks less. A shitty day can so often be transformed into a less shitty day by the expectation (but clear lack) of an even shittier day.
In between sweat, I paused to gaze forward in time again.
The year was 2009. It was a cold, bitter January. Much to everyone’s horror, Bush had proclaimed himself president for a third term. The Clintons were forming an insurgent militia and Barack Obama, having won the election proper, was being held “for questioning” by Homeland Security.
Looting and pillaging were daily occurrences. Police and even the army stood back, trying merely to contain the borders of the swelling uprising growing from within. Almost all major city cores exploded with a shockwaves of violence that rippled outward, ripping up any vestiges of civility, kindness, and humanity.
Savage survival was all that remained.
My journey around old city hall has consisted of about five meters, four of which have thus far been spent in regrettable company.
Not more than a step further, I find myself with a raised eyebrow, arched in the direction of an encircled, chanting muddle of the local Krishna chapter . They’ve positioned themselves in an awkwardly dark and inaccessible point just a bit further along the embankment.
I’ve only basked in the live Krishna experience in what seemed to be ad hoc processions around Dundas Square or Bloor and Yonge. Today, donning coats that resemble puffed-up pigeons, they’ve festively interjected “Happy New Year” with every other “Hare Krishna”. They seem like a nice, warm little community. Don’t you think?
Wrong, commie!
I feel kinda guilty for doing it; paying a guy to snap his photo. I mean, it’s supposed to be just a passing shot from the street and that’s it. He is, after all, selling trinkets for “a loonie square”, so I figure two is okay for one quick picture.
Instead, he invites me up onto the embankment where he directs his wife and son to pose. Somewhere from within three out of four uncomfortable grins, I align my shot and take it. The flash is weak and the picture doesn’t come out.
Fucking asshole of an idiot me.
I say “shit”, just a titge too loud, while grinning into the dim glow of the image. Before I even have a chance to confirm that, yes, I do want to permanently delete this already sullied scene, he jumps into action.
I, clearly, didn’t get my money’s worth.
... with pictures
... with sounds
... with videos
... with opinions
... that's shorter
... that's longer