FACE-SHAKERS ANONYMOUS

life long boxer "FMC" has decided to give it up at the age of 47.

a face in motion is not pretty! i'm fucking howling right now going through all these photos - all 47 of them. what DID people do for fun before technology? oh yeah, create the human race.

okay, so you take the camera, point it at yourself (or at others), and just start shaking your head like the future of your sex life depended on it. shake it hard and fast (and make noises if you'd like) --- this is not sexual innuendo, this is how to do the photos like a professional. this is serious business and you've got to approach it seriously.

i would post pics of those who were unable to get a good strong face shake (sarah smithers!) going, just to show you what not to do, but perhaps trial and error is the best way to learn.

as for the rest of us, we are here in all our glory, face-shaking ourselves through christmas.

i laughed so hard i had to lie on the floor to prevent abdominal damage.


i'm back at work, by the way, for all those who are wondering where i am or why i'm not around.

i also went to the eaton centre today after work, hoping that it would be empty and there would be massive sales on because everyone would be afraid to go there after the shootings. not the case. place was packed. i found a nice pair of pants for $30 (even though i went in to find basketball shoes), stood in line for 3 seconds, then realized that i had to get out of there. thanks to lou for calling me and breaking the trance.



DRUGS SUCK

yo yo yo

christmas has come. i had no idea. it came so fast. i was working and sleeping. now it's here. finally it sinks in a bit as i look across the street at the pretty christmas tree in the window next door.

the photo is of all the gifts in our apartment (almost all - the ones i bought are in the bedroom). that's mostly stacey's gifts, and a bag of bass's.

the beautiful thing about my beautiful gal is that she loves to give. she doesn't do it because she's a materialist or because she needs her family to love her for the things she buys them, she buys them because she loves to give things to people, which is one of the few good reasons to set foot in a consumer centre. sjs is one of those people who puts time into thinking about what a person would love, what would mean something to them, or be incredibly useful.

those who lament the 'consumer culture' and 'shallow shoppers' lump in people like my gal onto the crap pile. the truth is, there must be millions of people who love to buy for people, who put a lot of thought into the gifts they get others, and who do it because they love, not because they need love.

of late, i've been the thoughtful gift giver, giving gifts that make my family members cry. it's a tough act to follow. this year i couldn't wrap my head around anything overly touching, so i just sat around thinking about what my lovely family members would love to have, or need to have.

for my younger sis, i just get her what she wants. whatever i can afford, i will buy her.

there's a method to the madness: when she was 17 and working for peanuts, she wanted to show me how much i meant to her and so she went out and dropped every cent she had on buying me a nintendo 64.

yes, a silly, dated, video game system. but i was so touched. the fact that she was so selfless about it, that she sacrificed all the money she had to try to make me have a great christmas, was so damned touching. my father had only been gone a couple years at this point, so we were trying to do whatever we could to keep christmas special. he was mr. christmas. loved it. and our traditions at christmas are set in stone because of it. my children will also hear their drunken father at 5 in the morning singing pavarotti downstairs. joy.

so this year she gets an ipod. not because material objects are a currency in the business of love (although i'm sure they can and are used that way), but because i can afford it, and i love her, and i want her to have something i know she would really love.

christmas may seem shallow and base and vain and pointless to those who don't enjoy it, but to those who do, it's such an incredible time. i have always loved, and will always love, having everyone in my family, or as many as we can manage, together, drinking and laughing and eating and listening to pavarotti and getting in fights in front of the house, and drinking, and singing, and fighting, and loving, and arguing, and staying up all night, and generally carrying on like a bunch of irish louts. that's christmas. doesn't sound like fun to everyone, but it's heaven to me.

so long, merry christmas everyone!

much love

f

wow

i can't write well at all, so forgive my degenerating posts of late.

i got rejected from telefilm. paying off that 5 digit visa bill is just going to have to wait until i can see straight enough to write something great again.

the above comics were written by my morbid 13 year old (am i right, josh?) cousin and he wanted me to post it on this site, so here it is. (click the pic to have it expand so you can read it)

a small spoof on harry potter because, as Josh responded to my 'why' questions, "all their names can be translated into really funny sounding ones, like fagrid", which i'll admit, i chuckled at.

christmas time is coming, and the office building i work in has no sign of any holiday approaching. in the main foyer of the entire building is a big christmas tree, which actually makes me smile, but in the office itself it's business as usual. people just working. no one even talks about the holidays or christmas (or sex for that matter - could be a correlation).

my bro is asleep on the couch. i woke up thirty minutes ago. i insist on playing basketball tonight. passions die slowly. i refuse to let this one go simply because i'm tired, even though my exhaustion is making me play like shit. i took, and missed, 14 shots on sunday. every shot. it was so infuriating. i left my happy place in a vile mood. ironically, it was the falling snow that cheered me up on the walk home.

the city is alive with smiling faces. it warms me like coffee, and gives me less bowel movements. (that's a shout out to my cousin josh - he of the blue angel non believers)

christmas

red wine, cheer, laughing, stories, love.

the wintertime of my youth

On Monday after work, Louis (check his site HERE) and I went to Julian (spinach) and Javelle's highschool basketball team match up. (Julian is the blurry one in dark, Javelle to his right)

(ed. note - the photos were taken with my phone again - sorry, it's the best i can do. think of it as an invitation to use your imagination - remember, if you don't use it, it will fall off! wait, wrong saying, anyway, the photos are in disarray)

we've known these two brothers since Julian was 11 or 12 and Javelle was 13. They would come out to our gym to play ball. They started coming one summer when there weren't many people populating the jewnasium, so there was a lot of room for hanging out and talking. We became friends. Sort of mentors. older guys who liked the younger guys, basically. This worked out well for them because as the fall rolls around, so too does the amount of people playing ball indoors. and because they were young, no one wanted to allow them to play with us.

we used to have a standing unwritten rule that if you were under 16 (sometimes 18, depending on who you asked, and who was asking), you played on the other side of the gym. our gym has two courts, the A court (for the good players) and the B court, for the kids/less talented players.

they wanted to play with us, and we'd fight to have them play. this endeared us to them, i believe, because we showed a genuine concern for their happiness. as the years have gone by, this has ended up serving louis and i well, i believe, because javelle is now the best, pound for pound player in the gym. jamie might give him a run for the title, but i'm going with javelle because he's 17. you shouldn't be that good at 17 (he's actually 16, but his birthday is coming up and he keeps telling people he's 17 - you remember how it is).

there are times when you have to gaurd javelle, and because of this old bond we have, he won't play you too hard and embarrass you (easy to do). not all the time, but sometimes you can tell. i used to tell him to bring it, and he does bring it a bit harder when i'm gaurding him, but not all the way. he's trying to be nice. he plays a little lazier defense on me too. oh he won't give up any buckets, but he'll let me dribble for a minute before picking off my pass.

his brother is going to be the bodygaurd to lou and i. every 2 months julian grows an inch, loses his baby fat and becomes tougher to gaurd. one day, when one of us is about to get mugged in a dark alley, some huge black dude is going to pick up the robber and throw him in a dumpster. "that's fergie!", the big huge black dude will say, and then start giggling.

anyway, these kids are super nice guys. they have a good family. while at the game, we sat with their dad (who has played ball with us before and is really really good), their mom was their with her boyfriend in the front left row, their sister was up in the back, and javelle's girlfriend was there too. we were a weird family. it was awesome. having people show up to support you like that is beautiful. taking time out of their day to say "you matter to me". little things make life beautiful.

julian and javelle seemed pumped to have us there too. it was the only time this year that their schools will face off against each other so we wanted to support them both. we were hooting and cheering and taunting and applauding both teams any time javelle or julian did something good. javelle was the best player on the floor, hands down. it was like he was playing with 9 year olds. no one could stop him, no one knew what to do with all the crazy passes he was dropping on them. it was awesome. the best part was, they had to guard each other.

the sweetest part was when julian (who is less talented than javelle) got the ball at the 3 point line, and javelle was on him. julian likes to take that shot. javelle knows that, they're tight friends. so javelle, who is a defensive legend as well as offensive, took a slight step backwards and muttered under his breath - "take it" to julian, indicating that he wanted him to shoot the shot. but not as a taunt, as a freebie, as a gift, as a sign of love, and caring. lou and I were front row.

good times.

the best or worst pic is how javelle's team, which is a school at dundas and bloor, is all black kids. and julians' school, which is at harbord and manning is all white kids (except for julian and his friend). high income at harbord, low income at dundas and bloor. to see the effects/affects of race drawn this clearly is bizarre.

here it is: - NOPE - can't do that, i've just realized. well, as you've noticed, all the pics are at the top.

some more pics. nothing major. just two brothers having fun shooting hoops. there were stories to tell, but i'm tired. yes, it's only 4:30. i'm having trouble getting over the pyschological barrier that is MIDNIGHT. anything before midnight is too early to go bed. then i'm up at 5:45.

i'll get it right soon.

the snowflakes this morning in the cold dark toronto landscape of the annex was absolutely beautiful. the city is almost yours alone that early in the morning. but that's the beauty of cities, in part, is that you're never ever alone. we share everything with someone else, constantly.

more soon.
i've been having thoughts about things.
i' will purge them soon enough.

hinto, call me/email about lunch this week. i can't remember which day.

and for ballers, remember to read my buddy zack's raptors blog. he's a reporter that hangs around the team and asks questions (and yes, he asked one for me! - fantasy ballers must read it)

thank you, nba

http://www.nba.com/rm/Happy_Birthday_December-153601-899.html?loc=textvideo#

this link is GOLD.

WARNING: only click it if you like basketball... a lot. otherwise it will bore the pants of you.

i giggled the entire time. there's at least one baller in there who, when kids see the video, see him and start crying - "but i don't WANT him at my birthday!!!!". awesome. he should be ashamed. it's okay, though, they don't make him say his name, the nba is just like: "uh, dirk speaks german and we need a white person on here".

that's it.

forgive me in advance

while in newfoundland, i told my cousins josh (12) and jordan (16) about blue angels.

neither believed that farts were ignitable.

i understand their skepticism: it's too good to be true. the adolescent joys of lighting things on fire and farting in front of other people could be combined? no way. died and gone to heaven. i can't even think of a similar cojoining of delights, that's how rare that is.

yeah, i tried to show them how it was done, but i had a couple feeble attempts. apparently, all those mussels i was picking and eating from the beach weren't creating flammable air pockets to entertain young males.

so i left newfoundland.

when they came to visit in the summer, they still didn't believe it would work, and told me so. i tried again. nothing.

so i scoured the net. i consider myself adept at searching, but i couldn't really find anything that was proof beyond a reasonable doubt. (20,000 entries, and none of those images looking like a man with a lighter near his butt)

a friend of mine said that there would be legions of entries online somewhere, and to leave it to him. well, he's done me proud. i present to you a very funny clip. thank you johnny and melissa and isabella.

this clip gives hope to young boys everywhere that they will meet a girl who actually wants to have sex with them, that they will get that car on their 16th birthday, that their acne will go away, that they will grow up and lose that baby fat, they'll be the funniest, and somebody's favorite, and understood.

CLICK HERE TO ENJOY

the gods must be crazy (or picasso is in charge of sea-life design) or the one eyed giant just found what he was looking for

too cool. i love seeing things like this that are just unthinkable until you see the photo and learn that they're swarming japan. fucking fantastic. at least they're learning to eat them (the people eating the jellyfish, not the other way around). maybe you all knew about this creature and i'm behind the times.

that would explain why i'm really into the killers "all the things that i've done", tupac's "ghetto gospel" and kanye's "family business". yes, i know their other respective songs, but suddenly these three songs are #'s 1, 2, and 3 on ye olde ipode. (to those not in the know, those are/were popular bands previous albums that i have rediscovered. it would be like picking up a rolling stones album and going "satisfaction? this song ROCKS!" in 1983. )

in this age of not buying albums, much goes undiscovered. it's like not seeing the other half of the menu at mcdonalds, and just when you think you're sick of their food - bam - ghetto gospel. (to those who receive the email version of the blog, this is where i cut out the hooters part. in case you were wondering, i wasn't going to link to a large mammary page)

the original jellyfish article is also pasted below. click the link if you want.

check out the bottom where it describes what a man-o-war jellyfish really is (i'm skeptical), and what a group of jellyfish are called. why i oughta...!!!



http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-1910322,00.html

By Richard Lloyd Parry in Tokyo
THEY are called echizen kurage and they sound like monsters from the trashier reaches of Japanese science fiction.
They are 6ft wide and weigh 450lb (200kg), with countless poisonous tentacles, they have drifted across the void to terrorise the people of Japan. Vast armadas of the slimy horrors have cut off the country’s food supply. As soon as one is killed more appear to take its place.
NI_MPU('middle');
Finally, the quarrelsome governments of the region are banding together to unite against the enemy.
Echizen kurage is not an extraterrestrial invader, but a giant jellyfish that is devastating the livelihoods of fishermen in the Sea of Japan. Nomura’s jellyfish, as it is known in English, is the biggest creature of its kind off Japan and for reasons that remain mysterious its numbers have surged in the past few months.
The problem has become so serious that fishery officials from Japan, China and South Korea are to meet this month for a “jellyfish summit” to discuss strategies for dealing with the invasion. Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party has formed a jellyfish countermeasures committee and fishermen are at work on technology to keep the marauders out of their nets.
The problem first became obvious in the late summer when fishermen chasing anchovies, salmon and yellowtail began finding huge numbers of the jellyfish in their nets.
Often the weight of the echizen kurage broke the nets or crushed the fish to death; those that survived were poisoned and beslimed by their tentacles.
Fishermen on the northern tip of Honshu, Japan’s main island, were forced to suspend work at the height of the lucrative salmon season.
In Akita prefecture some communities saw their incomes fall by 80 per cent. The gizzard shad fishers of South Korea have also been plagued by the Nomura’s.
In some places jellyfish density is reported to be a hundred times higher than normal. Worst of all, no one yet understands why. One theory is that global warming is heating up the seawater and encouraging jellyfish breeding.
Some observers blame heavy rains in China over the summer, which flowed out from rivers and propelled abnormal numbers of jellyfish towards Japan. Nutrients in its river water may have given them extra zip — or overfishing has allowed the growth of the populations of plankton on which the jellyfish feed.
Screens and meshes have been designed that allow fish through but keep out anything bigger, and a web of metal wires can be placed inside a net to chop the jellyfish to pieces.
In the meantime locals are making the best of it — rather than just complaining about jellyfish they are eating them.
Jellyfish are an unusual ingredient of Japanese cuisine but are much more prized in China. Coastal communities are doing their best to promote jellyfish as a novelty food, sold dried and salted.
Students in Obama have managed to turn them into tofu, and jellyfish collagen is reported to be beneficial to the skin.
SEA MONSTERS
The most poisonous jellyfish is the Australian sea wasp, or box jellyfish, with enough venom to kill 60 people. Wearing tights is an effective defence
The largest jellyfish ever found was a lion’s mane, with a bell 2m (7ft) across, and tentacles extending more than 35m
The notorious Portuguese man o’war is not a jellyfish at all but a collection of different organisms including stinging tentacles
Jellyfish have both male and female characteristics. A group releases sperm and eggs which mix in the water
A collection of jellyfish is known as a smack

the phoenix

yesterday was my first day on the job.

i wore my new pants ($39.99 at Club Monaco outlet)
and my new tie (DKNY - $24.99 at Winner's)
my new shirt ($49.99 at Club Monaco outlet)
and my old boots (prada knockoffs from 6 years ago for my birthday - thanks mom :). i

i own no clothing that I paid full price for. none. scarf, mitts, hats, pants, socks, underwear, shoes, basketball shoes (ebay), or whatever. never pay retail. yes. you can look this good (see above) with that attitude. (i await your frothy and evil responses below)

so my job.

it's great actually. i'm an editor at desjardin securities. i make good coin. my office mates are really friendly and the atmosphere is very chill. it's not an entry level position, so i'm not jockeying with 23 year olds who want to move up the chain. for this type of job, this is as high as you go.

fortunately, the editors are a little artier than the analysts (an editor edits what the ANALyst unearths about various companies and sectors regarding the stock markets - we are the last defense before it goes to reuters and bloomberg etc - we're actually paid to be the anal ones - figuratively).

my office mate is a good dude. he reminds me of Pat Russel, actually. he has his master's in english, was obtaining his PhD before running out of money, and was hiding in Korea teaching at a university there before realizing that he had to put a foot down in canada somewhere or he'd never be able to work in the country: "so, you're 34, and you've never worked in canada?". so he's been at the company for a year. he's the newest guy there. he says the turnover is insanely low. the job i have is a maternity leave. these are good signs.

everyone seems to be generally nice. it's only day two, but i'm hopeful.

so here's the deal.

i work from 7am until 3pm.

i'm in heaven.

i get to still have some life. 3 oclock is pretty early. i was told i would be working until 5:30 every day.

it turns out that that was a way to find out if i'd be okay with the job. she said there will be nights when you stay that late. the guy in my office, daniel, works from 6 in the morning until 6 at night a lot of times. but then, we're paid by the hour, so, i guess it adds up and he's fine with it.

i work 40 hours a week, and when i go over 45, i get time and a half. she said that when i learn the ropes, i will be working lots of overtime. right now, i'm kind of useless so there's no point in paying me overtime to learn the ropes.

i'll keep you posted. today i danced home listening to wolf parade.

i got two hours of sleep last night.

too much coffee. a sleeping pill couldn't even keep me down. stacey was annoyed because i kept moving, getting up, taking some pepto for heartburn at 12:20, drinking water, peeing, taking a prevacid pill for the heartburn at 12:40. finally the sleeping pill at 1:15. stacey got up and put the fan on the chair at 1:45. it was too hot. she left for the couch at 2:30. she came back to bed at 5. my alarm was about to go off 40 minutes later, but i was up.

i'm about to take a nap. i wasn't sure sleep would come, but it has crept up on me like a thief. i play basketball tonight. rest i must.

POTTER

This movie is fucking awesome.

You 'may' need to have read the books, mostly just to know what polyjuice lotion is, and to help fill in some of the gaps about what's really go on in the background (ie. that hogwarts is on edge the entire time), but this movie was incredibly well done. written, directed, acted. sad to see the new dumbledore isn't half as good as the actor who died.

remember when you'd see a movie as a kid, and things felt very new? remember how you felt when you first saw the matrix? well, it's not 'quite' as big a deal as that, but it's quite eye-popping.

i think the reason i was blown away was that i had read the books, and i had created these images in my head. to see them in digital celluloid was much more vivid. take some of the most creative people in their field (the digital creators), combine them with a great director and a demanding producer and some respect to ms. rowling, and you end up with a visual that is much better than my creative mind came up with.

i have a desire to always be wowed, i WANT to be amazed, i want to smile and giggle with delight at the unthinkable.

if you're a fan of the books, you've probably seen this movie. if you haven't, don't want for the dvd. if you're not a fan of the books, but have seen the others and wasn't really sold on them, this one is entirely different.

every trilogy has its dark centre. this is potter's. star wars has 'the empire strikes back', the lord of the rings has FORGET TITLE SO INSERT IT YOURSELF. all stories (or most), have an internal arc.

they move from the light, towards darkness, and back to the light. generally. in a movie, the middle part, act 2, is typically the struggle against evil/time/trouble/drugs/injustice/etc. the last act is the overcoming of that. over the course of a trilogy, it mimics the 3 act structure, making each film/book an act. and within that, fractals.

the holy trinity. triptic (sp). triskelion (my tattoo). we're enamoured by THREE. it works on our consciousness in a unifying way, if we can balance the three properly. in a painting, a triptych (sp again, hoping to get it right along the way), the painter tries to balance the elements. so does a writer of a film. do does the writer of a trilogy. potter is a mammoth collection of books that i'm guessing will be able to be broken down into a trilogy. the first three books were all small. the goblet of fire was the first of the massive, and marked the beginning of harry's adolescence. an interesting 'dark time'. the last few books will be harry overcoming his obstacles and stumbling out of adolescence as a man. there's a trilogy in there.

do i have a point?
no. not really. i'm still not on the patch so i'm looking for distractions.
i just find it fascinating the way trinities work on us.

the patch even works on a trinity. you start on 21 micrograms, then go to 14, then 7.

sarah is coming over for brunch so i'd best start cooking. she just buzzed the door as i typed that, actually.

arivaderci!

my last weekend of freedom

my last weekend of freedom starts now.

tonight i'm off to see harry potter, and then i'm going to go out for an expensive dinner, just because i'm BACK BABY! I'M BACK IN THE FLOW!

i usually splurge big when i get a big chunk of change. when i won $1000 at the casino i bought a laptop. when i got my first wave gig, i leased a 4runner and bought a laptop. when i got my second chunk of telefilm money i went to NYC and bought a laptop. when i got my gig on mustard pancakes i bought a dvd surround sound jobbie. and then i bought a car. and then i got a huge chunk of telefilm money, and i didn't buy a damned thing because i had to go to school and pay for it and all. and i had just bought a car.

so now i'm back in the flow.

and all i've rewarded myself with is work clothes. shame.

as a freelancer, you have to live frugal. i'm the king of frugal, in fact, in another language, i'm sure that frugal and fergus are spelled the same. but when you get a nice little nugget of $$, it's nice to reward yourself.

so i'm going to eat like a king. i love food.

ESPECIALLY BECAUSE i went out this morning to take care of some things and forgot to put my nicotine patch on. i walked past a woman and she smelled bad and i got SO mad i wanted to yell at her that she 'FUCKING SMELLS, TAKE A SHOWER!'.

knowing that this is not like me, i wondered where the hell that burst of rage came from, and then i realized i was out in the city without my crutch. i started to rush home to put one on, but then i figured i might as well give it a go. i'm now nicotine free for the whole day. last night i took off the patch at 1 am. i have been 'free' ever since.

my flesh feels really hot though.

and i want to fucking punch stuff.

no one can understand. those who have quit can't quite recall the edge you get. i played video games in the afternoon, not for pleasure, although it is fun, but to keep the mind on the long term goal of not smoking. anything. i'm going to try

a) overeating popcorn
b) overeating delicious fat food
c) alcohol
and
d) sex

whatever it takes, my friend, i'm willing to go the distance.

pics from the raptors game

only thing noteworthy in here is that the shot of the shotclock shows that there is 2 seconds left in a great tied game (2 seconds before the game becomes untied, in their favour).

another shot is, i think, jalen rose getting dunked on, which is awesome.

other than that, my cameraphone doesn't have great resolution so you get what you can.

and jen, thank you for the info :)

ummmm....

That photo is funny.

Well, maybe to some it's more than funny, but when I snapped it, I was laughing. They're trying to get the cork off the bottle. Insert nine million bad metaphors and jokes and similies here. I'm not going to.

We had a dinner party on the weekend with Stacey's ex-boss at Chatelaine and my ex-mentor teacher. Our gay guardian angels. guardian gayngels? i'm trying to figure out a good word for it because i'm going to write them a poem. they go above and beyond in trying to help stacey and I out, so i figure with one of my legendary poems, we'll be even.

i realized lately, while trying to take care of all my business before MONDAY, that i don't like work. SURPRISE!

my senses are heightened on this issue because i feel like a man condemned to prison, and these are my last days. initially i was rushing about trying to secure gifts for my family for christmas so i wouldn't have to be a weekend guy jostling with the throngs of late shoppers who would gladly crack your jaw to get ahead of you in line.

but after two days of it, i realize that i can't do it. i can't concentrate that long, that hard, on shopping. even when i get some nice gifts i still feel like i wasted my time. perhaps shopping is meant to be a social event.

like golf in that you talk to someone for 4 hours, while intermittently hitting a ball around. but really it's about the talking.

i've been everywhere in the city lately.

there's a place on mavis road where all the outlets have congregated. it's like las vegas for suburban shoppers. stacey and i went there initially to get dishes for our dinner party with the gayngels, and then i also happened to buy pants and a new dress shirt for work. i'm confused about buying clothes for work: so i have to spend money so i can earn money? when do i start breaking even?? it's bay street so i have no idea what i'm supposed to be wearing. BAY STREET! HAHAHAHAHAHAH! i crack myself up. a good job on bay street. yeah, that's what i always wanted.

in fact, in my early university days, that's true. irony? no. empathy? please. yes.

so the end of my freedom dawns. as bush would say, there is a price for freedom (visa bills) and now i need to pay for it. (only bush would include a clause that says if i can't make the minimum payment i have to send a sellable organ to the credit card company as a deposit).

what i really wanted to do here was post some pictures from my phone of the basketball game i was at. louis got some tickets to the game. they were AMAZING TICKETS. he decided to take me. muchos gratias, my friend. they were about 3 rows behind the raptors bench. the game was phenomenal. of course we lost in the final two seconds.

if you took 'ode to joy' and sped it up, added the sound of gunfire, tires screeching, and a vocal track of a man rushing into iraqi combat screaming his head off, that's how i felt watching this game.

i said a few kind words to the GM Rob Babcock. I mouthed off the "raptor killer" sign carrying guys who were in front of us, because i felt the sign was disrespectful to the team. I jumped up and down for joy when matt bonner hit a game tying bucket with 2 seconds remaining.

a two and a half hour event that feels like a big build up to emotional orgasm. just when it feels like you're almost there, jason terry sends you home with blue balls. we must not forget the joy we had for the past 2 and a half hours.

while in a giant future shop on mavis road i took a seat on a plush leather couch in front of a giant screen television and played a hockey game on the new xbox 360. i was incredibly unimpressed. looks just like any game on the PS2 or Xbox.

i'll take my sports up close and personal, please, and my freedom with a dash of income.

our society is a fucking mess

women still inferior

the glorification of shallowness and greed

the cult of celebrity and the rise of the meritocracy

those we trust to lead the world are rife with scandal

corporate control and exploitation


this is brilliant, because it means there is room for great art. 1984, animal farm, the clash, american beauty, apocalypse now, gulliver's travels, a modest proposal, public enemy, death of a salesman, et al. friends of reason, compassion, empathy and justice, will return in new guises.

blogging

some people don't blog.

my friend jbaum has never been to the site, even though i talk to him as though he has:

ie.

F: so it's finally happening.
J: what, your penis reduction?
F: no, i got the job.
J: you did? when?
F: didn't you read my blog?
J: i have never read a blog in my life.
F: oh, here's the link, read it and call me later.

just kidding, i don't give him the link, but it would make things easier.

it's funny that by having people read this, they are somehow catching up on my life.

i realized the importance of blogs because of my friend mai and her blog at comrade chicken. in reading her blog, i felt closer to her, more aware of her daily life, however constructed and edited a blog is. but it's better than nothing.

the surgery photo below is awesome. i don't know why, but i'm saving it. it's just so fucking bizarre to me that a dentist would sew up someone's gums through the gum and out the other side. bizarre isn't the right word: repulsive.

i pulled one of the stitches out yesterday. i was trying to brush really lightly and it came loose, so i put my finger on it and pulled it out, fascinated and horrified as i watched the thread exit the wound and begin to bleed. CODIENE!

speaking of, i went shopping today for metamucil. didn't buy it. do you know they charge $15 for you to crap regular? nope, i'll do it the old fashioned way: i'll do nothing.

okay, i'm sure the old fashioned way was probably to shove a stick dipped in boiling water up your ass. i love that they might have sterilized the stick so that they could cover it in the vilest excretions our bodies create. there's a reason we're repulsed by it - EVOLUTION. those who were interested in and played with the proverbial brown died, and those who thought it was nasty didn't. having too much fun imagining things that didn't ever happen.

although i have a theory that anything that you can ever imagine has happened to someone at some point in history. ie. -

a guy jumps off a building to kill himself but lands in a garbage truck and lives. unfortunately, an hiv infected needle pricks him, and he dies a slow terrible death over the next ten years.

a woman cuts off her husbands penis and he becomes a famous porn star after its reattached.

oh wait...

stranger than fiction indeed.

my fiance is about to go to sleep and so i must leave my ranting mid stream! lucky you :)

MY DENTIST HAD ME IN STITCHES

((((the black lines there are stitches that go right through to the other side of my gums. this picture does the carnage no justice))))


i've been having a tooth saga. it goes way back. i'm going to go way back for you.

dental plans. stacey got one while at rogers. it took me a while, but i went to the dentist for the first time in 5 years. The last time i had gone it was because my mom's coverage was about to expire on me when i turned 25.

i had sent out a mass email to my toronto people asking them for dentist recommendations. seems that not a lot of them go to the dentist, as there was only one referral (louis - shout out!) that i didn't follow up on. jesse had suggested "that place in kensington market", but he'd never been. i called and booked and went and took xrays and was told that if i didn't get to work on one of the teeth it would turn into a root canal.

HAH! i thought as i left. root canal? my teeth are in great shape. he's looking for money. i put it off. and off

and off

and developed the need for a root canal. not painful at all, just expensive to cap the tooth. insurance covered thousands and thousands of dollars for all the work i had done. thank you ted rogers.

since then, i have had every cavity save 2 redone to replace the mercury fillings with the white stuff. LEGENDARY. very happy.

let me also say that i love my dentist. he's very cool about pain: "if it hurts, tell me, and i'll be happy to freeze you. it costs me next to nothing, and makes you happy, that makes me happy". and yes, that makes me happy. i get 4 needles every time i go. shit, i walk past the place on my way to buy fruit in the market and i stop just to numb my face. that's how much i love this guy.

so i've been there A LOT. we're like friends. the dentist has a basketball court out back, and one time we went and played for a while before he removed we got down to work on the teeth. i did a great left handed spin/fake move on him and ever since he thinks i'm an amazing baller. he keeps inviting me to play on saturdays with him and his "he played for team canada" friends. my dentist is a basketball loving black man.

i want to play but am nervous i wont' live up to the hype, because he keeps calling me a 'gym rat' and a 'gamer' and stuff, and saying "i was just like you man, when i was your age". then again, i've been a bit of a legend lately at the gym, so i'm thinking of going to settle the matter.


back to the tissue. i was having a lot of problems with this one tooth, and he did a test and determined that it may have been cracked. he opened the tooth and saw an exposed nerve, so he did a root canal. that didn't fix it either, because he thought it was still cracked and a cracked tooth needs to be removed.

so i didn't go back for 6 months.

not because i was a coward, but because stacey didn't have a health plan, and my actra fraternal plan has already been maxed out.

so stacey now has a plan from house and home, and i'm back in the dentist chair. i go in on thursday, and we talk, and he tries to save the tooth again (instead of extracting it and putting in either a bridge at $2200, or a drilled in implant at $2800). he drills to the tips of every root of the tooth, then fills it, then takes an x-ray - looks like a crack. i make an appt for the next day to extract it. so -

on friday he slices open my gums, does a bunch of stuff, and determines that it's not a crack, but a perforation at one of the 4 points of the root - that's why it was looking like a crack. so he says he's going to save it. he also did some work beneath the root of the tooth beside it.

so with the gums opened, he realized that all he HAD TO DO WAS GRIND ONE OF THE FOUR PILLARS DOWN. understand that this is above the gumline.

so that was done, my tooth refilled, and i was on my way. oh, yeah. we've got to close up that lush bleeding pile of wounded flesh.

to close up the gums, he had to go THROUGH the gums to the other side. i have 3 sets of stitches that go THROUGH MY GUMS!!! take a look at the picture again, and consider how hard it was to push the string through.

EXCUSE ME WHILE I VOMIT ON MYSELF.

my face has now swollen up immensely. i have to take tylenol 3, antibiotics, and a mouthwash, and i bleed constantly, especially when i laugh. fortunately, stacey's not that funny :)

unfortunately, that's not true, and i have to hold my face, literally, when i laugh. but pain doesn't feel like pain when you're laughing. maybe the USA should tickle people while they electrocute them. just a thought.

but the tooth is saved. hopefully. i wouldn't go through this again.

yesterday i had to be in stratford at 8 in the morning, which meant i was up at 6. problem was, i went to bed at 1:30, stacey woke me up when she got in at 2 to have a recap of her night, and then i was worried about the alarm, so i kept waking up every 45 mins to check the time, eventually just getting up at 5:30 and starting the day. I WAS EXHAUSTED. the drive, the drugs, the teeth, the sleep.

on the highway i was having hallucinations. was strange. could have been the pizza. but the effect was as though the entire world i was looking at was in two dimensions. it would all go flat. sometimes it would blend together a little bit, like the clouds would blend into a car, or a car would blend into a transport truck.


when i got home i popped half a tab of T3 and half a glass of wine and fell asleep - and missed hinto's play. i woke up at 9:30. the play started at 8. my sincerest regrets my dear friend. i was a disaster yesterday. i know you would do come to my performance/award ceremony/funeral and not miss it for anything. you're a wonderfully supportive friend. i'm thinking of something to make it up to you.


on friday when i went to the dentist, i bought him a bottle of my new favorite wine and thanked him for trying to save my tooth. he was so appreciative. which is nice, because he spent 2 hours on me the day before and didn't charge me anything. and then after yesterday, he's not going to charge me anything that i can't get covered for, and then, he's not going to charge me until they pay me. he's nice like that. we'll see if he's nice like that after saturday when i kick his ass.

bought a new tie and shirt today for me new job. handsome devil, me!

rented madagascar, the 'kids' movie. i love 'kids' movies more than 'normal' ones.

my pvr is still king - BUT I FORGOT TO RECORD THE FIRST RAPTORS WIN OF THE YEAR TODAY!

long post. i'm going to get rid of the google ads. i thought there'd be a chance, naively, of generating even 5 bucks a month, but that's not going to happen. i'm sure most people don't even see the ads, and i don't want to run a big ad down the side of the blog.

2 more weeks of freedom.

it's not the NYT, but it's a start

SONGS IN OLD SUITS

-- Site Summary ---

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This Week ........................... 69

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Average Visit Length .......... 2:57

thanks for making it all worth while, readers. i'd like to thank my mom, for making this possible, and my mom's mom, for ditto, and god, ditto the ditto.

anyway, i got the job. just found out. money. good.

i bought a TV tuner to watch basketball on my computer and let me say that it is the GREATEST THING IN THE WORLD. stacey was watching some show she likes last night, and i was watching STEVE NASH THROW DIMES! it was heavenly.

I GOT THE JOB.

wow.

been a long time.

i'd like to thank hinto, for checking in, and steve, for being a loyal and sympathetic reader (who just a few days ago told me he was going to offer me a job), and my cuz J-Rod (my real cousin, not no street slang), and my moms, and anyone else out there in the real world working a real job. wait up, i'm coming too.

updating is pointless, no?

i'm not sure if it's better to update continuously, or to actually put some thought into the post but post less often. feedback would be great.

i was surfing the interweb yesterday and came across an add for my yahoo personals column (wise guys). HILARIOUS! and that stupid photograph that is supposed to represent me (the used car salesman one) is a part of it. damn, that's dorky. at least my name is patrick decker (am i supposed to let that out of the bag? **looks around to make sure i'm not attacked for giving terrible advice**) and no one has any idea. funny to see, though. wonder what the exposure is like.

my mom's computer got fried the other day, possibly by the electrical storm. she took it in to a computer place and he told her it would cost $400 to fix... ummm... dell has brand new systems, with a monitor, for $449. annoying. anyway, she wanted me to call and just talk about the specifics, so i did, and it's a guy i went to highschool with! hilarious! he was the biggest nerd of all time, and i don't say that lightly. he was a nice guy, but classic nerd. dandruff, weird old blue sweaters, bad glasses, massive acne, and LOVED computers. he was in the A/V club. when i was in grade 4 or 5, we hung around a bit. i would go to his house and play on his commodore 64. in highschool, i'd say hi to him and stuff, i wasn't a jerk, and didn't make fun of people, so when i called him and said "is this bob, who went to central?" and he said "yeah". i said, do you remember me, it's fergus? and he went... "fergus... hmmm... i'm not sure". LIKE HE WAS FLIPPING THROUGH ALL THE FERGUS'S HE KNEW! it was HILARIOUS! dude, it's okay, we're grown men. i knew you. it's cool. you're fixing computers at Frankie's in Stratford, that's great. why are you pretending not to know me!?

so i said, yeah, it's you, we hung out in grade 5, playing commodore 64 at your place. He said "yeah, and look where i am now". that was sad. i wanted to tell him i was a big unemployed loser too, so we could commiserate, but i thought i'd let it slide. people are strange. but lovable.

hinto keeps calling me while i'm out, and i want to tell him that i have a cell phone, but he knows that, so i'll write this.

took in two teacher's apps today, and got lost at both york and U of T. york is a fucking disaster, architecturally. it looks like it was thrown together by kids with giant blocks of bland shitty toys from different depression eras.

two down, one to go.

no word on the job.

updates

there are no updates.

my mom had a great time in toronto, as did I. Late night at the pub, then home, then tired, delirious laughter, the kind that you get when you're really really really tired, and won't stop, and you giggle and giggle and giggle.

i don't know about the job yet (thanks for the concerned call, hinto, although i'm sure you wanted to gloat about KG or at least trading away that awful hines ward guy :) , but i'm already buying things in my head. new basketball shoes, and new shoes. i'm not greedy. oh, and a suit, from the store www.extoggery.com (i think it's .com, but it could be www.extoggery.ca) . they have nice used suits for $140 - $80.

i'm waiting on telefilm funding (what film person isn't?).

i'm tired, for some reason. oh yeah! today was the end of week 6 on the patch, and i had to go down a dosage, so i'm getting less nicotine. fine so far.

watching 'charlie and the cholocate factory'. 6 out of 10.

have completed all of my teacher's college applications. damn, that took FOREVER. will hand deliver two of them, and possibly the third (to UWO).

received my degree in the mail today (the paper part), and saw that they included 'dean's honour list'. i will always have that to show my kids/your kids/friends/enemies/etc when they wonder why stacey has her Master's and i only have a BA: "she had to keep going to school until she got A's", whilst i got off easy.

bad humour, but that is the point of blogs.

constance

I had a monster night playing ball last night. i was unstoppable. the only drawback was that i was dropping my shots on fellow friend/baller/fantasy pooler/late night phone caller louis. such mixed blessings. when i hit the last game winner, a fake left, spin right hook shot in the lane, he said, "you can celebrate more, it was a good shot". i didn't want to rub it in.

my dear friend joel wanted to make a documentary about my father. at first i thought it would be fine because joel is a gentle and wise soul, and i have known him since i was in grade 4, which is the longest i've known anyone. then i balked. i realized i wouldn't be comfortable with someone playing with my father and my family's legacy like that. When money is involved, things get strange. if he was doing it for free, i think i'd be okay with it. but to do it to make a buck feels exploitative and so i shut it down. sadly.

i feel bad for joel, he was so excited to do it and he was going to frame it around my family tracking down the 8 half brothers and sisters we've never met. yes, for my mother, i was a first born. for my father, i'm number 11. perdita (translation: lost child) is my mother and father's 'LAST child'.

yes, my parents hung with atwood and lawrence (the margarets), yes, dad punched farley mowat, yes, they were a part of the canadian literati scene. It can seem so bloody interesting when looking into the past at all of these incredible public figures that were just drunk on the couch, but i'm not interested in seeing that story. i see it all the time. in my head. (no, i'm not crazy... heh.. right?)

sometimes we drop things on our friends that make us feel good, but has the opposite affect on them. in basketball, that's the nature of competition - i try hard to stop you, you try to stop me, we elevate our game and have fun doing it, and when it's all over, we go out for a bite to eat (i had the P4 at noodle bowl, by the way, and it's DELICIOUS).

in the world of business, the nature of competition is such that it can obliterate friendships, and i value friendships more than business so in the case of joel, whose friendship i am honoured to cultivate, i opted to nip the business aspect in the bud before it could blossom.

in an email i wrote, i said: in rereading this email, i remember that you're such a wonderful and gentle soul. i hope i have not offended, you are so kind, generous, patient - all of the qualities i value in our species. you are a prince among men, and i am honoured to call you a friend.

enough on that.

today, my mom is in town and sleeping over. her and her friend dorothy are in the big city to go shopping to help her friend get over some recent unfortunate events. that's so cute. right now, as i type, they're probably laughing really loud about the fact that mom is about to vomit on the subway.

life is a beautiful circus peppered with laughter. my memories are generally a faded grey, and all i remember is laughter breaking the haze like fireworks, popping, cracking, booming over the universe that is my life.

DAILY BLOGGING

http://www.tonypierce.com/blog/2004/06/how-to-blog-by-tony-pierce-110-1.htm

reading this list made me realize that i SHOULD be blogging every day. so i will. sorry that this isn't much, but if you blog, that link is a quasi-cheesy rant with some cool links (like the hit counter that is free that you can put in your blog).

i believe i got the job that starts at 7 am and ends at 5:30... YAY?

of course she liked me. i give a great interview.

here's hoping.

basketball season has started. AWESOME.

i'm trying to get a TV tuner for my computer so i can watch and record games in here. anyone who has info about how to do it on the cheap for a laptop, drop a line.

ferguscookathotmaildotcom

money

you need it.

because you need it, you want it.

sometimes you want it even when you don't need it.

i went for a job interview yesterday. it was at a big banking institution that is involved primarily with investing. i told the nice conservative lady how i loved that the stock markets could be viewed as having the entire global economy on dialysis, monitoring the world view tick past.

this is blatantly not true.

she asked me if, as an artist, how i felt about the capitalist system. i said it's not perfect, but it seems to do the most good for the most people. she said, then how do you feel about our governments support for the arts. i felt like i was being innoculated against liberalism. so i trashed the very system that had given me my income ever since leaving school. first wave, after all, was also privy to tax breaks and bonuses from the government. then on to telefilm, all the films i worked on which were american companies shooting here for the government benefits, and even mustard pancakes (no comment).

it was as though i had to destroy the hand that fed me, in order to be given food by this new, 'proper' and 'capitalist' hand. it was spooky. i can't express this enough. why were we having this conversation about my incongruency between believing in a capitalist system and then also believing in cultural protectionism? there was a subtext and it was: this is the real world. dog eat dog. i'll fucking kill you for your salary so sit up straight, pray to jesus, support the death penalty and lower taxes for the rich, and believe in the power of money or i'll throw you back to the hippies you artistic leper. you've been living off of daddy's handouts long enough.

i felt sick to my stomach with this slap in the face to my past, so i added an addendum - i said that the film world handouts don't work because there are too many pigs at the trough, abusing the system. the money isn't allocated properly. of course i believe this - all struggling artists who miss out on the pot of gold accuse those who do get it of abuse. doesn't make it true, but it feels good to say, sometimes.

i also said that the government help incubate start ups, that many countries do this, especially when faced with extraordinary pressure from outside the country (ie. USA). cultural protectionism is a strange concept because it is as though the government is suggesting that artists define the national identity. i know it's more complicated than that, but if i may use blanket statements, and i will, than that's it in a nutshell. the government is paying for the abstract.

even my initial chosen field of academia, economics, is abstract. nothing exists but in our heads. i wanted to explain to ms. capitalist interviewer that the economics of protectionism make the money the government dolls out come back in double.

so the job i went out for, i got the interview through replying to an add on craigslist. it turns out, a headhunting agency was posting it. so i'm going through a headhunting agency, which means that if i get the job, a part of my wage goes to the agency, because the agency is the one paying me. fine. it pays $19 an hour, which is fine. i'm just doing this until next september anyway, when i go to teachers college.

i was told that the job was to start at 8 am, and go until 5. that's fine, i can live with that.

at the interview i find out that the job starts at 7 am, and goes until 5:30, and that many times i might be there until midnight. oh, and if you think that's okay for you, mr. hippy, remember that just because you were there until midnight doesn't mean you can come in a little later the next day - 7 am, sharp (and i'm sure if i slept there they'd be okay with that too).

okay, i said, that's fine, i've done worse. it's hourly, right, so there's an incentive there, and i can be financially motivated to work those hours, sure. if i'm working 15 hours a day, i'll snag almost $300, and that, i can live with. well, not exactly, it is hourly now, but we're trying to change that... and go with a flat rate.

wellllll of course you are. anything else would mean that you'd be a socialist hippy, by actually paying them for the hours they worked. no, it makes more sense to pay them a flat fee, of course, haha, hahaha, let's have tea! splendid.

and that was my interview with the capitalists. splendid.

the tragic-comedy begins now, because i'm fairly confident i'll get the job.

the job is: proofreading the insane amount of reviews of various stocks written by senior analysts. pages upon pages about X company. these men (and they are all men) know more about XX mining company than their own families. i'm serious. they can tell you a companys birthday, they can guess what the company is going to do, it's entire wonderful and fascinating history... it's woefully depressing.

my job would be to make sure the sentences and numbers are correct. and there are crazy deadlines. the 7 am start is to ensure that when all the investors and people who work at the company arrive, there is a slew of reports for them at 8:15.

and if i get the job, i'm going to have to take it. it pays too well. am i a victim? am i a cog? well, i get paid well enough to get moving on to teacher's college, so despite me crying victim about waking up at 6 am and working 12 hours, i'm using them as much as they're using me (?). probably not. obviously they make more than they pay me, but if i'm willing to work for them, then it's a fair barter.

if a company hires a recent university graduate, they get a percentage of that persons wage back in taxes. i wonder if they knew i was a recent grad, if they'd use it. i wonder if ms. capitalist would.

socialism is a poor man's capitalism.

capitalism is an abstract concept that makes monsters. and makes me get up at 6 in the morning. well, if i'm lucky.

an olive branch, with strings attached

so i'm extending a healthy 'how do you do, thanks for coming back to the blog after all this time with nothing new posted in so long'. and i ask a favour - to anyone who knows anyone who knows anyone who is able to hire someone, tell them to hire me. yes, it's come to this folks. begging (disclaimer - must know shakespeare to get the joke in the link). i've already sent out a mass email to everyone i know who works in the film biz, to no avail so far.

A friend here in toronto has recently become a general manager at The Pour House Irish Pub, and I've put in the call to be an 'anything that gets paid'. Here's hoping.

Also, i said i wouldn't post until i had something positive to say - well, here it is - day 11 of quitting smoking. I am on the patch, but still, 11 days is better than 0. it's going to work this time because i have this voice in my head that is mad at myself for smoking for so long. that gets mad whenever i feel sorry for myself that i'm not able to smoke (i know, it sound stupid to the non-smokers, but the brain gets up to some unusual tricks to make you smoke). this time, i'm going rambo. which is cool.

just got a picture from an old friend, and university room mate (kam singh to those who know), and he had a baby. i hear he also owns a chain of subway restaurants, which is hilarious if you know the guy. in fact, everything about the man is hilarious, especially if it has to do with him being serious. but good on him. the last i heard of him, he was dating a white girl and keeping it a secret from his mom. so far so good, i guess, as the baby looks dark as night, his mom will never know.

i haven't written anything in a month when i finished up my telefilm application and finished that second draft on Screech. As good as it feels to accomplish something, anything, especially if you deem yourself a writer and you finish writing something, writing is not something that is inherent to your soul, as so many aspiring writers like to believe. I think there are a million backscratchers for whatever itch it is that writing cures. right now, my itch is cured with video games.

you've heard it before, an artist says this is the only thing in the world they can do to ease the burden on their soul, etc. When i hear this, i vomit on them immediately. we are too multifaceted, too talented, too malleable to be only built for one thing.

I heard a saying once that said 'it's always the second passion that you excel at'. it only stuck with me because at the time i had fashioned myself a singer in my earlier days, and at the time i had heard this was moving into writing. hearing this made it easier to move on. it gave my ego/pride/self a bridge to cross to let go of music. if i heard something like "the first passion fades, the second passion pays for a while, but the third passion sticks" i'd remember it too. basketball is beyond passion, it's obssession, so it doesn't count. Searching for passion number 3.


i've got lots to say, and my fingers are blaring, but i haven't put my nicotine patch on yet, and it's 11:30, and i'm getting antsy. i can tell because my writing starts to get bitter and i go off on a tangent about something stupid (insert 'your whole blog is like that' joke here). i have sent emails out like this, i have left phone messages that trend towards seething. it's not pretty. i must eject.

smoking is evil - this is my brain right now, blowing up.

can't type....

must.... force... myself...

to... move.....

tough times

depression follows poverty. luckily, i aim to cure my poverty by quitting smoking using zyban, thereby alleviating both afflictions. october 3rd, the day of my gal's birthday is the day.

am applying to teacher's college these days, and am just dumbstruck by the questions they want you to fill out. they're very confusing because they seem so simple, and you wonder, 'they're basing their acceptance on how i write this, soooo, what am i missing?'. they only give you a few lines, and you've got to come up with something about how you're going to change the future of education based on this one time you looked at a kid with a ruler in your hand. i'm perplexed. fortunately, i'm an infamous bullshitter.

almost all of my friends are libra's. it's so strange.

hinto, joel, stacey, and i'm missing someone. sorry someone i'm missing, i'm sure i'll come to the party (no not you JT, i think you're on the cusp of libra and some other sign, hence your permanently mottled state)

busy month for the parties.

am going to casino niagara for joel's party. unemployed and in a casino. sadly enough, i probably fit right in.

stacey has opted out of karaoke (i do not CARE how to spell it), and wants instead peace and quiet.

hinto is having a bbq luncheon or something like that.

and i'm having humble pie every freaking day.

i'm not posting again until i have something positive to report. (no, fantasy sports does not count, fortunately)

This is how they get you

that little face kills me. My Aunt Evelyn's dogs that were kicking around when me and my gal were back home in the summer.

Funny how cute things are when they are tiny. Why does this dog get a free pass with me, just because it could be one of the cutest things i've ever seen? He could be a vicious killer. Maybe that look into the camera is saying "if i were a foot taller, you'd be coming out of my ass in 2 two days, buddy". We have these predispositions to people based on how they look. "he looks like a nice guy", "he looks trustworthy", "she looks stuck up".

Considering that we all understand how we wear masks in our day to day life, and knowing that looks are deceiving, it's incredible that we can assume someone is X by the way they look. I think, perhaps, that the way someone's face/shape/movements are does in fact shape the person they become.

The kid that looks a bit like a geek, gets treated like a geek, becomes a geek.
The pretty girl who is given everything along the way becomes accustomed to being a princess, and is a princess.

Of course we have deviations, but perhaps there is something to physiogyny (i'm too lazy to look it up, but it was big in the 17th and early 18th centuries as a way of knowing someone's personality by the shape of their face). It's been around a long time, and we would still take one look at a door to door salesman and decide right then and their if we should listen to them. We would do the same thing in a bar, at a job interview (no, none to speak of, thanks for asking), on the street - there are types of people that come up to you in toronto and ask for change - sometimes you give, sometimes you don't - why? Because of their 'looks'.

If you look like a dumb bully as a child, you may be treated as a dumb bully. As you grow up, reacting to that treatment, you become shaped by it. Are you YOU? Or are you a product of what others think YOU are?

Why do taller people earn more money? Because 'taller' is a relative term (in china i'm tall, in canada, not so much), and shorter people 'look up' to (literally and figuratively) taller people, assigning them traits they may/may not have - but by the time they have developed, they have assumed a superiority over shorter people that shorter people have given them? I don't have the answers, i'm merely a vessel of infinitely pointless questions.

I believe my size and my look lend people to believe i'm intelligent. I'm not sure exactly why, but I think it's the case. I will constantly prove people wrong, but they insist i'm making a joke, or think i'm saying something deeper than they understand. so i live a lie that other people forge for me, which, in my case, i'm happy to oblige them. wouldn't want to ruffle their worldview.
that said, i did make the dean's honour list for english. I've started putting it on my resume, because i can't think of what else to do with the 'honour'.


BRIEF PERSONAL WORK UPDATE

the boy who changed everything, my telefilm pitch, got canned and an older project called "the saint john's" was resurrected, and rightfully so. i've finished it and will be sending it off shortly. the next couple of weeks will be spent prepping the application, contacting producers about my second draft of 'screech', the newfie musical that is HILARIOUS, if i do say so myself, and applying to teacher's college. i still haven't found a job.

plugged in, a pervert of the airwaves

http://stfunoob.com/nola/scanner.pls

put that link in your browser, and you're listening, live, to a scanner picking up the Emergency Communication Frequencies in New Orleans/ Baton Rouge. It's so bizarre. Beyond bizarre. I am disconnected from something terrible that I'm fascinated by. I think I enjoy listening because it is so disconnected, it's so calm that it makes the horror of Katrina fade away. At night, it's quiet, but in the daytime there is so much activity, and they're still not coordinated.

the politicization behind this is obscene. why can't anyone admit they were wrong? not just about this, but about WMD, about getting Bin Laden, about abuse at Abu Gharab... it's always 'deflect and defame', and it works. Karl Rove is spinning the inactivity to blaming the local governments. I've been doing a lot of research into all this political deception (mostly using the huffington post).

here's an interesting little article, but i can't find a great one i read today. It's not as though I have anything to add to all this. It's just digusting that politicians can't be adult/mature/responsible/intelligent enough to say "we screwed up, we want to fix it, it's my fault, let's go save some people".

the US administration are, unbelievably, making me lose faith in humanity. because they 'represent' the american people, i feel that the most powerful nation in the world is full of absolute maniacs that speak out of both sides of their mouths - religious and 'christ-like' on the one hand, and selfish pigs on the other.

other news:

not much. opted to stay in toronto for the long weekend instead of going to the cottage. the cottage is great, but sometimes it's nice to take the city back. I went and saw "annie get your gun" on its last day in town. It was okay. billy ray cyrus as the lead? not because he's cheesy or anything, but he was probably the flattest actor i have seen in my life, and that is not an exaggeration. poor bastard.



what an odd blog - bush to billy ray, hate to achy breaky. all in a day's work, folks.

not pleased

so i finish my degree and enter the 'real' workworld for the first time. I've never worked in an office or at a 9 - 5 job. this is very new. and very frustrating. i went to a headhunting agency that my friend, hinto, went to. He has just gotten a government job as a junior policy analyst. not bad. what do i get offered today? if i might insert 10,000 pieces of paper into a Molson mail out for three days. i didn't even ask how much it paid. that's depressing.

yesterday i was offered a job for 6 weeks that paid 11 dollars an hour doing data entry (because on my test it showed that i was a fast typer - yeah, i guess, i've been a fucking writer most of my life). now, 11 an hour works out to $440 a week, minus taxes, puts you somewhere around 375 per week. WHAT?!? maybe outside toronto one can live on that, but not in this city.

i'm trying to pay down some bills and save for teacher's college next year. so for all that education i have, i'm a mail stuffer and a typer... this 'real world' thing is a scam. i'm scrambling to find something else, but the money is about to run out and i'm about to sink.

i forgot to check last night's lotto numbers. perhaps things are about to change. hope floats eternal.

fashion as relative eco-socio-politico index marker

Funny this. A great friend of mine who runs a skatepark in ohio (wow, people do crazy cool things) sent me this pic. We all went to highschool together, and we were the local skatepunks.

Although I feel very much an individual today, i remember that feeling back then too. I noticed that in the picture above, we are all wearing converse (different colours to differentiate the difference, of course), we all have basically white jeans on, and we're all wearing baggy-ish untucked shirts. individualism is hard to see here. but i guess that's the point. it's relative. and at that age, we weren't trying to be individuals as much as were were trying to differentiate ourselves as a group from other groups. (that's me in the middle, at 14, with a cigarette hanging out of my mouth - always a class act this one)

when i went to vancouver to work on my first television show, i had a unique fashion sense that made me feel most like me based on what was around me in Toronto at the time. I dyed my hair orange, spiked it up like Johnny Rotten, wore ties, untucked shirts, and suit jackets. i wasn't a mod, i didn't fit with them, i just felt unique.

Vancouver, however, was more conservative in all things, including fashion. my toronto style felt very very crazy in vancouver, and so i had to tone it down to match my environment. If the fashion style is a scale of 1 - 10, with 1 being rebel and 10 being a member of the communist party, i likened myself to about a 4. In toronto, that meant i could have red hair and wear strange clothes. in vancouver, a toronto four was like a 2. i was a freak, a homosexual, a mod, etc. etc all these things i didn't identify with. So i had to find the 4 where i'm comfortable. I still had my flair, it was just different, toned down.

fashion as identify is specific to place. what counts is where you are on the scale. and that is all that counts, of course, because fashion doesn't really count. but WHY are you a 1 or a 7 or whatever?

in other news

i'm done school. i'm a graduate. i got my marks today. 83's in both classes. yes, i'm boasting, i'm very proud of myself. i got straight A's in all my english classes. teacher's college should be a lock. at least i'll never have to PA again. man, why do people do that job?? do they think it's the big IN they need to the industry? what a ruse!! most people at the top positions have NEVER been a PA in their life. the guy i worked with as co-PA was a bitter but good guy who thought he was a writer director, but, at 29, had never written or directed anything in his life. i'm tired of these people some days, and proud of them for having hope in the face of such awful odds. the human spirit is indominatable, earth's real cockroach adapts and moves forward, proud and blind and hurting and wonderful. the glass IS half full today: because i love my mom. found out good news today. or, no news, which is the good news.

too long, too little

forgive the time between posts. I finished my exams for my undergrad degree and have hopped straight into the job hunting fire. i met with a headhunter, i hunted online, and i took a 7 day job being a PA on a film. i've never been a PA. it's funny that my first job in film was on a writing team, and my most recent one is as a PA. it's supposed to be the other way around. i wonder what other things i'm doing backwards.

all i know is that after two 11 hour shifts i'm exhausted. the reason isn't that 11 hours is too long, or that i stayed up all night. the reason is that i'm bored out of my fucking mind. without my brain having anything to do, i'm as good as dead. when i'm in the office, i am simply there to answer the phone. the only time i'm feeling okay is when i'm out driving, which isn't enough. on the plus side, they did rent me a dodge magnum just like this, which is a pretty gangsta car. at least there are only 5 more days.

the boy who changed everything, my next film project, is coming along. i've managed to scribble down a light outline at work to try to retain my sanity, and maybe i have something, maybe i don't. too early to tell. but instead of the kid finding oil, it may be treasure. not sure. i can work in the newfoundlanders who coaxed ships towards hidden rocky shoals so they could plunder them. my people. robin hoods of the east. fortunately, they were the poor, so robbing from the rich to give to the poor still rings of nobility, even though they just kept it for themselves which, i guess, is technically in line with robin hood.

i wish i had something interesting to say, but unfortunately, i'm all out for the moment. i could regale you with stories of producers being wankers, or stacey getting a free ipod from the bay for showing up at one of their functions for people in the magazine business, but these aren't that interesting. when you work such long deadening hours, life is reduced to the minutiae of the mundane.

i will post soon. my mood will soar as i approach the end of my PA career and with it, the quality of my posts.

wherever he lay his hat

My mom is currently standing in that same yard that this picture was taken in. That's our place in Newfoundland, what I consider 'home', although i have been there once (see previous posts) in seven years. Home is a concept that is not rooted in reason or sense, it is, cornily enough, something found in the pit of your stomach (or heart).

I love Toronto. When I was living in Vancouver, I had a sno-globe of toronto featured prominently in my crib so I could always remember it, that Stacey had sent me. I loved it. When I returned back to Toronto after a 2.5 year quest, I consumated my love by frolicking like never before. In dirty alleys, pubs, bars, resto's, on my bike in the summer air, on patios... i drank it up.

Lately, though, I feel that my wonderful city isn't meeting my needs. I'm not sure what that means, it's just a feeling in my gut. I would happily buy a home here, which I will in two years (when I'm done Teacher's College), but I'm not sure I'll ever get that same feeling of 'home' that I get when I'm in Newfoundland. I'm not alone either, as the summer months in Newfoundland are found jammed with buses, boats, and planes bringing genetically similar looking people back to the place they were born. It's like a big giant island of family members.

Yes, I'm romanticizing a bit, but when my gal and I flew in to St. John's on the solstice last month, the guy I was sitting beside on the plane ended up living right next door to my Nan, who lives in one of the most remote places on earth . (look for fogo, you'll see it). RIGHT NEXT DOOR! He's related somehow, i think he's my mom's cousin.

In a city like toronto, so few actually grew up here. Perhaps those who grew up in the burbs and move into the city also consider the city itself home. For the rest of us, I'm guessing it's not. We try to make it home. For those who love it, we don't litter, we enjoy what it offers, we laugh on the streets, and bike home at night and swoosh around cars and dogs, we enjoy the 'wildlife' (skunks and racoons - you know who you are!) , and we generally try to recreate, somehow unconsciously, our previous homes, the comfort of being surrounded by comfort.

it's not easy. Toronto is my second home, and I'll have to be content with that. I've lived in so many places, travelled, and moved, and on purpose and by accident, from England to Conneticut to BC, to Newfoundland, to Stratford and London, from Avenue Road to Madison Avenue. The one thing that change gives you is perspective. As Tom Waits sings in San Diego Serenade:

I never saw the morning 'til I stayed up all night
I never saw the sunshine 'til you turned out the light
I never saw my hometown until I stayed away too long
I never heard the melody, until I needed a song.

I never saw the east coast 'til I move to the west
I never saw the moonlight until it shone off your breast
I never saw your heart 'til someone tried to steal, tried to steal it away
I never saw your tears until they rolled down your face.

almost done

I have just put the finishing touches on what i hope is the last school-based essay i ever write. because i took 5 english courses, i've had all essays all the time. no multiple choice goodness.

now i'm staring down the barrel of a job.

i finished my latest script for telefilm and although it pays well, i seem to spend well, contrary to popular opinion. that's not true, actually, i did buy a car, pay for tuition, and buy a diamond ring, AND live in toronto, so i guess i'm doing okay.

so not having written anything because i have been in school, i have nothing to sell. so i'm kind of at square one. mcdonalds should offer a lottery where you get to win one of their restaurants, and all you have to do is buy a filot-o-fish once a week to enter. yes, I AM one of those people who helps keep that item on the menu.

i went to canada's wonderland with my cousins and uncle and aunt and sister on monday and i have 3 words to say about it: awesome. last year when i went i guess school must have been in because it wasn't quite so busy. i figured that it would be kinda empty, considering it was a monday but that wasn't the case. it was SOOOOO FREAKING HOT. it must have gone up to 40 with the humidity, and there was no escape - no escape, that is, except the splash park. so we headed over to the wave pool and leapt in - ahhhh, nothing is as refreshing as warm urinated water on a hot day. you just put it out of your mind and enjoy the cool down, which is what we did.

disclaimer: for people who respect me, don't read the rest of this post.

ummm... yeah, so this guy... he went to this theme park, and umm... this guy went to the water area, let's call it the splashy parka... and uh, the highschools were all out and it was a hot day... and ahh... this guy's cousin put on his sunglasses so he wouldn't get caught staring at all the young girls in bikinis... and uh, this guy told me that it was insane and he felt like a dirty old bastard but he couldn't help it and if you were him you'd do the same thing.

i don't know, sounds like an old pervert to me.

anyway...

that's it that's all. feels great to be done school (well, august 6th i write two exams, but no more essays feels like i'm done). i will hold this accomplishment above everything else i've done in my life to date, other than tricking my fiance into saying yes.

in response to the response

Wow, what a response to my earlier post. thanks to everyone who sent emails and posted and such. much obliged.

i have some news - i'm going to be a university graduate in 3 weeks. it's only taken me 12 years. i was a bit dismayed to find that the school doesn't recognize the incredible effort i must have put in over those twelve glorious years because all it says on the degree is 3 Year BA. Three year BA? that's an insult! ah well, it will still feel great to get it. perhaps i'll enjoy it even more because i had to go back to get it. the feeling that one gets, if one is prone to thinking of oneself as being WELL over average intelligence, when one walks into a room full of 17 and 18 year olds at 30 years of age to study first year english after having been a professional writer for 5 years was somewhat humbling. but i like to think that i have the maturity level of a 12 year old, and if i had thought it wouldnt' have hurt my grades to fart out loud, i would have done so to get a laugh (as i've said before, farting is always funny - it's the one thing that a 70 year old and a 7 year old still laugh at). but it worked out, and my intelligence (or claim to it) took much solace in my marks.

i had started out in university, like most people, unsure of where i wanted to go. I got an A in economics so they invited me to join their faculty in a really nice official letter. Despite my father being a professor, i didn't understand that if I joined the faculty i would then be on track to complete an Economics degree, and so i happily joined what i thought was a beer drinking club of adults who found all the cheap pubs and imported drinks on sale. Alas, that was not the case. So i eventually dropped out and ran to BC with my current fiancee to write the next great canadian novel, but when i got there i picked up a copy of Douglas Coupland's latest novel and found out that it had already been written.

when i returned to school, i enrolled in film, and proceeded on THAT course, but then, all of my friends were leaving school, and without having completed the degree, I left too. All i needed was 1.5 classes for the economics degree, and 2.5 (half a year) for the film. So what do i do when i want to complete the degree? go for english, which i need 5 (a full year) to complete.

Anyway, a long stage that is soon a part of history, and i can look forward to teachers college next year. that's the idea anyway. I'll be spending the next year writing and looking for work - any work - not necessarily writing (although i'll still be writing for chatelaine.com as a relationship columnist in the wise guys section (i'm patrick decker, the brother, no that's not my photo, yes, it looks like a used car salesman), so if anyone knows of anyone looking for people to work for them, drop a line.

my essay that i've been writing is about to crash, so i'm going to knock this off. i was going to include some pics of some things (calm down ladies!) but will have to wait until i'm trying my best not to work - which will probably be tomorrow.

a treatise or justification of marriage

The anti-marriage stalwart has died and a new anti-anti-marriage one has replaced him. that would be me, and that would mean i'm engaged. I had many reasons, not the least of which is love, beauty, and a sense of wonder at partaking in such a custom. It had been 10 years since we had become a couple, so no one can accuse me of rushing into things.

my main reason was prompted by another wedding:

i had attended a friend's wedding, and during the dinner, when speeches were being given, the bride's father stood up and began to tell stories about his daughter, stories that made me weep, not just because they were beautiful stories, but because my father will never be able to stand up and tell stories at my wedding, no matter how much i wish he would have lived to see the day. So that began my lamenting the absence of ones we love.

compounding this was the following christmas, where my lady's father had his heart stop during dinner and the whole family had their hearts stop too while waiting to find out what happened. sitting around the hospital room waiting, fearing, all that was not said, not often enough, all that should be done, the true feelings of child to parent bubbling to the surface, regret, sadness, fear, and a future pondered without the bright light of their father. it was terrible. i decided then and there to not let my gal's wedding be full of speeches about those who they wished was there to attend, but couldn't.

the final reason was that i love my family. all of them, i think they're all wonderful people, and i wanted to stop being greedy about the whole thing and share them, give them, to my gal. i can't imagine a better gift. marriage may not be thought of as sacred, but if it can bridge any familial bonds and bring people closer together, then it's a powerful putty.

I was also able to propose on our recent trip to newfoundland, on the beach by my childhood home on a sunny day, forever investing that wonderful place with new memories, reinvigorating what was becoming a museum of my childhood into something new, a retrofitting of the mind, and also a bonding of her to something that i hold so dear.

the beauty is that we're not in any rush to get married: if it's taken us 10 years to get engaged, dont' expect any hasty rushes to the altar, there is no 'with child' on the bumper sticker.

i'll be done my two summer courses in 3 weeks, and will return to writing. it's funny, when you hear artists talk about what it's like not to be practising their art, it sounds cliche and false. they say 'it feels like a part of you dies' or 'it feels like you're partly dead', but it's true. i haven't spent so much time being non-creative in my entire life and, on the whole, it's depressing.

having finished my newfie musical 'screech', i turn my attentions to "home blown" or "blown home" or something (i just thought of them last night before falling to sleep), a film about a newfoundlander who returns home to find that the land he has been bequeathed (yes, and i love that it's cliche) has oil under it, and everyone wants in on the action, and the mayhem that ensues. i'm trying to figure out a way to make the main character a 12 year old kid who always walks with his head down so he can find things, but it's difficult. the alternate title was 'the boy who changed everything', and we'll see if we can bring him to life yet.

reading those titles above, i'm not sure i like them (although i'll keep 'the boy who changed everything' if i can).

out