I am very smart when drunk

I like to think when I am drunk that I have come up with great analogies and metaphors for things. I often try to summarize a period in my life with a drunken analogy and last night I thought I came up with a great one but as with all drunken revelations it does not seem so acutely accurate anymore.

I use to get a kick out of pissing on bar toilet seats just a little and now I concentrate as hard as I can just not to miss the bowl.

No words to describe this

I woke up this morning with either a bug bite or a measle on my arm. Like all good children I squeezed it as hard as I could to see if I could heal it. It started to bleed and not puss so I deducted that it must be neither measler nor chicken pock. Only later in the day did I fully realize the extent of what had happened. I began to itch quite badly on my back and upon inspection in the bathroom it was revealed to me that I was the victim of a spider attack last night. While in slumber a spider, or spiders, bit me in three separate locations. I believe that I was able to squeeze out the babies in two of the three hatcheries but one bite on my back may have been to late and it is possible that spider babies could result. Time will tell if I have become yet another host to these carnivorous parasites.

A singing wet snake

The eels have a new album out, actually a double album that upon first listening sounds pretty good. It seems as though its a bit more, well, all over the map. There are some great tracks there though.

I love how the manager at work likes to base all of her experience and knowledge of travel gear on her 6 week vacation to Thailand. All her stories revolve around it. "I used this bag and it saved my life", "I wore these travel underwear and they were awesome. It was so hot in Thailand". People like that make me never want to travel again. I will give someone my personal opinion on something if somebody asks for it but I am aware its mostly useless to rich old ladies anyway. I did offer advice the other day with a travel belt and the manager corrected me saying "in my experience this was no good because in Thailand..." Jesus Christ, Thailand is one damn country, its a travel hot spot and there is nothing that people have not seen eight million times there. Its a great country but damnit go someplace else too before giving advice and dont ever correct me again, ever please. I spent nearly three years of my life out of country goofing around so your precious six weeks in Thailand mean shit to me.

They hired another graphic designer at work yesterday. That makes two graphic designers, one video editor, one art historian and one current uni student and then retail-all-the-wayers.

The Dominion of Canada

There is a grassroots online paper that might interest people. An old editor friend of mine got it going and they try to cover non-mainstream and under-reported stories. There is a great daily blog section of daily news and story comparisons and the underreported section often is entertaining too. There is some other stuff that people may find interesting. Right now there is an interesting story about the privatization of our water by bottled water companies.

http://www.dominionpaper.ca/

I know a lot of the contributors so maybe I am biased but its still another place to waste time.

The french really do hate us... screw them!

I work with mostly french people. I speak french with them so I am an exeption to most of this but they hate the english. They are so freaking racist towards us. They generalize us, think we are stupid with our logic and also think that we are mostly spoiled people. Any rich anglophone who comes into the store represents this english contingent while the french rich rude person is an exception. I can hardly believe what they say and then say to me "but your cool, your not one of them, your from the Maritimes". One looser went on a rant today that all McGill students are just there because their rich parents paid for them to be there. I am going to beat up a bunch of old ladies next week and a bunch of yound queebster ladies. Its time for the fists of furry to break free.

Here are the t-shirts I did for the design competition. I still dont know which one won.

Tron or the story of a whore

I met a lady named Tron today at the store. She was a jewish wife with balloon boob and no bum or wrinkles.

She reminded me that:
There is no such thing as a lack of imagination, just a surplus of stupidity.

Louis Riel is a Chester Brown written graphic novel that is awesome. Its a beautifully drawn book and pretty interesting. Not since grade 7 has our favorite metis captivated my mind.

Nobody's there

I often pretend I dont see people and I keep walking. Kate and I were walking home the other night along St. Laurent and she spotted someone up ahead talking to somebody. We both know and dislike this person, so I put up my hoodie and she pulled her umbrella down but we still passed withing a foot of her. It seemed impossible for her to not notice us and she would have yelled hello had she. Hmmm, I wonder how many times a day people pass us by who know us. I know I hide my face at least 2 or 3 times a week avoiding people and I am sure its reciprocal but I leads me to wonder how often its unintentional.

I have a favor to ask everyone. Please sign my petition to get Dr. Gray's Anatomy off the air. Its one of the worst shows ever but it has a time slot that forces me to watch it. Melodramatic angst shit does not a show make.

Sushi and Nipples

So Kate was invited to Maisoneuves magazine launch party last night and I tagged along. What a crazy party. It was the most "tv like" party I have ever been too. I dont think I was good looking enough to be there. I have learnt how to pretend to be a designer type so I squeezed in but wow, what a party. The place was packed with gorgeous people, there was a fashion show going on when we first got in, there was a naked buffet where fruit and sushi are eaten off of naked people. We just missed it but it was funny to watch people eat fruit later unknowing that someone might have been sitting on it naked. There were also artsy video installations and a pictoral vernisage, oxygen lounge chairs, shiatsu massages, The High Dials (great local band) rocked a hard set, ample alcohol, co-ed bathrooms with all that they entail. I saw a woman pull her top down to show her boyfriend her boobs. We thought we wouldnt know anyone there and it was hilarious because Kate knew about 5 photographers there and I knew a couple of artists from Mt A. Got to meet some cool "important" people, screw them, my calculator watch is cooler than them. It feels like I have been drinking for three days though. Seems pretty accurate. I have a new found respect for tv parties now. I cant wait to find one like an OC beach party.

Death Cab on the OC last night.... Seth truely is the master of that show.

Unification of Access Points and Redundancy

Rooter: A Methodology for the Typical Unification of Access Points and Redundancy

These guys are awesome. A few MIT computer science guys wrote a program that randomly generates math papers, graphs, equations and all in proper syntax. The result it hilarious, it all appears to be legit but its nothing by well composed giberish. They submitted papers to several conferences and got accepted at one. They were then going to get the program to write them a talk that they would read out at the conference. The media got wind of this, the conference then found out that the paper was not legit and that they were being made a spectacle off so their invitation has been rescinded. They now are asking anyone else who is going to the conference to succeed their place to them. Why not, any conference that would accept that must be pretty shitty.

The CNN story is here, I heard the CBC version which was better but take what you can get:
http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/science/04/14/mit.prank.reut/index.html

Tom Cruise pulled out a 2-1 win last night in our third place match. That league is so shitty. It makes you feel guilty even when you win because you have to argue all game with jerks over every second call. Some big oaf ran one of our guys over from behind then took the ball and scored and would have tied it up but we have to tell the guy that its a foul to run someone over. Big jerks, running through girls too. I never want to play in an unofficiated league again.

Les Shins

Well I have to say that the Shins put on a stellar show last night. I was pretty impressed. They played at the Spectrum, my new second favorite place to see a show. The crowd was weird and didnt really move much but nonetheless, gave it their all with each successive post song applause. An ecclectic mix of people, ages, styles too. It kept amazing me how the masses seemed bored, or was it just awkward, and then they went all nuts at the end of their favorite songs. The band seemed genuinly contented by the cheers they got before their generous three song encore. The Shins for their part sounded awesome. Such talented fellas, they swaped instruments several times and their tri-chorused vocals sounded sharp.

Its now 4:40 and I have for about an hour now been dizzy free so I think that is a testament to how much I enjoyed the show. I remember the days when I liked to go to shows stone cold sober to not miss anything. How much did I actually miss by doing that.

If a logo appears somewhere here its because I am trying to get the hang of uploading pictures. It should be the potential logo for a longboard skate crew in the maritimes. The Wolf Pack is gettn' 'er done.

Jet setting is style

I was pretty damn bored today so I jotted down anything interesting that happened to me during my shift of soul disolving. Notice how nothing is actually intersting. If you actually make it through this whole thing you have less to be proud of than me. That is not meant to be self-depricating.

9:55 - arive at work, a lady is waiting outside to get in. We open up and let her in early, two other ladies join in and don't even let us get the register up before they are making returns and complaints.
10:25 - have a conversation with a co-worker who thinks she speaks english well but she doesn't, she doesn't speak to me in french either even though it is our best comon language. I hate speaking to her. She makes me feel dumb because she doesn't understand anything I say. She is an acrobat though so its explains alot.
10:43 - I am bored out of my mind, I start this list and consider defecating in my pants as a valid form of entertainment right now.
10:47 - watch the hand-car-wash guys accross the street. 6 of them have their deck chairs in a semi-circle. Who gets their car washed before noon on a Monday?
10:58- re-arange the Opinel knife case, fantasize about slashing a lady's arm when she totally ignores my 'bonjour'
11:08- watched a fat guy try on sunglasses. The all look small.
11:25- had a tutorial on electrical transformers and converters. Also served 2 ladies, my age and marveled at how unsocial people are to people in demeaning employments. At a coffee counter or wherehave you the jokes I was throwing would get a laugh at least but all the people I serve in the store feign deafness. I want to date their divorced mothers to show them real horror.
12:33 - flip up the ugliest faces on travel "Guess Who", damn Max is gross
1:20-2:30 - sit down and talk to my co-worker who I hate talking too. She talks about her past drug use, how she lived with a drug dealer and a very long story about a road trip to Florida and all the crazy, high things they did. She went to Epcot Center high. Wow.
2:45- served a low talker, I hate low talkers as much as mean old ladies now. Do they secretly want me to kiss them? Is that it?
2:50 -cleaned electronics with a vacuum cleaner
3:23 - put price tags on neck cooling ties
3:30 - refilled the stapler
3:31- tasted stapler on as many materials as possible, it will not penetrate hard plastic, Windex bottles for example
3:56- saw a lady trying on skorts walk around in her underwear (blue), she was old and it was disgusting. I dont want to see that. Why dont attractive, or at least not gross 45 year old ladies do that?
4:00- confide to my collegue that I would be happier if Oprah were dead. This came up after she kept mispronoucing opera. She was listening to shit radio all afternoon that played ethnic blends.
4:07- I got my revenge. All the pompous, rich, hatefull, self-inflated shits that come in and treat me like a dunce get their just when they ask to use our toilet. Its not for customers but we let them. Its sick, I would not let my mother ever use it. Its just small, dark, dank, dirty, out of toilet paper mostly and just something I know most of them are horrified to use. Screw them. I think I may start pissing on the seat. The lady with blue underwear's friend had to go.
4:31- listened to a Bostonian grandma tell me how we have to order portable potties for kids to pee in. She thinks its stupid for us not to carry them. Like I want anything to do with kids peeing.
5:08 - take out the garbage, I love cleaning up after people. UMMM garbage.
5:58- serve a slow talker, he asked the dummest questions about sleeping mask ever. Which one keeps the most light out? They are all the same moron. One is blue, one is black and this one is burgundy. He was in sweat pants and then asked me personal questions about my job before leading into asking about a possible position. I should of just said you can have mine. But instead I passed the buck and told him to come back with a CV on Wed. I wont be there.
6:03- biked home in less that two minutes and groaned for 45 seconds while shoving my face into the couch.

The rest of the day I spend walking in circles around the store, or leaning on things or tidying up boxes or just avoiding customers. I also make lists.

Where was I ?

A lot of my friends and family have noticed lately that I am different lately, saying I am acting different, not my usual self. Some people have said that I just need kick to get me going. Well, I found it. Molson Kick, the lager with guarana. Not since Drew Carey in 1997 has anyone thought of a cafeinated beer but thankfully the kind people at Molson have come to my aid. I have been drinking Kick for about a week now and I have to say that my life is significantly better. I no longer stumble home drunk and pass out, I now have the energy kick I need to come home and satisfy my woman before passing out. I am not longer drunkenly quiet sunken into some couch, I am now drunkenly annoying and loudly rambling off my opinions. I am no longer a generic 'beer' drinker. I go out and get my kicks and have a personality due to it.
Okay, Montreal had its 'coming out of winter, its spring Im going nuts, its pretty much boobie, I mean summer time' weekend where the city was invaded by pheremones and tank tops. This city is the sexiest city in the world bar none at this time of year. Think of a normal city as an 11 or 12 year old boy. Interesting and fun (not in the pervy, MJ way, but this part just helps with the analogy) but when this time of year comes around it turns into a 14 year old boy raging with hormones. Its kind of crazy and hard to explain but when you are here and experience it you know exactly what I mean. Its super hot and the babes are insane (luckily I have the best one).
So I have a blurry recolection of most activities since Wed. night. BBQ season took off here and there has been a bunch of BBQs and beer gatherings. Drunkenly a few nights ago (shortly after three buddies crashed their one bike that they were doubling into a parked car really hard) we made a pact to have a bbq every weekend each night at a different house. Its a great idea and two weeks running its been in effect. I just baught a cheap bbq tonight to join the fun and upon coming home to what I hoped to be a quiet night getting stuff done since I have been drunk for the last few days/week but Kate opened a bottle of wine to marinate the steaks so here I am again drunkenly rambling and getting nothing done.
I served a woman today who had literally diamond encrusted sun glasses and a plastic face. I asked her to marry me but she just mumbled that I am no better than her hired help.
I still work in a luggage store.

I need to be supervised

I need to be supervised everytime I go into a Dollarstore. I go crazy in there because it is so cheap and they have so many fun looking things. I always end up wasting ten bucks on junk and things I dont need. I went in with Kate yesterday because she was looking for colored plastic so I roamed around and came out with a bunch of fun. Fun that is until I got home than I had a bag of dissapointment. I should have learnt my lesson from previous trips but I thought that the inflatable shark would make a good couch/floor pillow (its much smaller in real life than its picture, much smaller. I think that they hired midget kids to play in the picture), the gun that shoots a plane 'up to 20 feet' measures feet in Nintendo feet or something because it only goes about 4, the birdhouse and bird feeder do not even come with nails to put them together (the package says everything included). I was excited to get home, lean up against my new pillow and put together a bird sanctuary but instead I had to settle with a table full of cheap shit and dirty dishes. Than later our soccer team lost in the playoffs and then I got drunk and watched the Daily Show and I forgot about the Dollarstore. The point of my story is that John Stewart puts global economics into easily digestable perspectives.

Well I am not a real loser anymore

To my surprise I actually won something today. I am one of the winners of a Montreal wide design competition. Its a competition called Onetop that challenges designers and artists to use an uncomon medium, the t-shirt, as a base for their work. This years theme was society and I had submitted three pieces so hopefully this will get me somewhere better than luggage sales. There are 30 winners, which sounds like alot but there are hundreds if not thousands who enter and this damn city is saturated with people who are more talented than me. The advantages are a big vernisage, 2 months of exhibition space, a free t-shirt of my design and 20% of all profits from the sale of my shirts. It gets a bit of coverage in the design world too so I am pumped.

Me and the Joads

Tom Joad heard that there is work not too far from here and it pays well and they say it might be a weeks worth. It might be worth checking out. I should go with him.
I got payed yesterday, or not really. I got some money yesterday, I wouldnt want to call it pay for fear of insulting people who do get payed. What the hell does the government, employers, employees and everybody else think people can do when they make less than $10 an hour. I got payed for my two weeks and I barely make enough to pay my bills. I have the measiliest bills, no huge debts, no large financial burden yet by working 30 hrs a week I can barely survive even by eating shitty food and drinking cheap beer. Forget about saving anything or paying off my moderate student loan. I feel like in a trap similar to the Grapes of Wrath, although not a severe but really, if I were to stay like this I would have nothing in life. You can not have a child, a car, or even a dog unless you work 55+ hrs a week or have a plush job that gives you a false sense of security. Who knows how to get a plush job, all jobs I want are lower paying jobs so thats great. Even if I tried to get a high paying job that I hated I would never get it for lack of experience and pertinent training. Even with a degree and a EAD certificate I am pretty much destined for not-much-moneydom. It seems pointless going to work when I make less than $50 a day. I was making more in the states in a day then I do here in week.
Where is a nursing mother to give me some milk?

Dr. Doolittle and the story of the Dr. who couldnt

Okay, maybe the first two or three seasons of E.R. were alright. At worst they were at least original, in their content (unless stretched to include M.A.S.H.) but I have had enough of all these horrible hospital shows. I watched a ridiculous new one last night, Grey's Anatomy. Have foreign children started writing these shows now? Jesus there are too many of these crap shows, ER, House, Chicago, Grey's Anatomy, Scrubs... what demographic are they targeting? Med students or viewers with a longing to live the glorious life of a surgeon. Most med students I know are pretty boring and factory production line, nothing like their 'funny' and 'sexy' tv counterparts. I have never once heard of love in supply closet, although I am sure it happens, but not as much as on tv. If they are going to continue with shitty hospital shows they had at least better get better writting that they have now. I mean Grey's show did not know if it was a comdey, a drama or a piece of shit. ER is so overly saturated with melodrama that it oozes out on these other poor followers. TV hospital shows suck. I want more tv Vet shows.

Ba Ba Booze

Well that was a great weekend of drinking. I got my income tax cheques that intantly boosted my finances by a factor of 32. To celebrate on my supper break I rushed to the Quik Mart and picked up a case of Molson Kick, its got guarana and otherwise its a Molson tasting beer. I washed down my salami sandwhich with a quick one and rushed back to work and I do say the caffein ingredient got me excited to finish my shift whereupon I finished the rest of the beers and felt the perk of the drink for sure. No more passing out drunk for me. Yesterday night was a good friends wedding and I have to say it was pretty good. Felt pretty sweet drinking lots of wine on a leather couch in front of a fireplace listening to a live string quartet but the night got ruined when supper was served because it was so big and tasty that I was so bloated that getting drunk was real hard after. I had about two bottles of wine before the food but they got negeted and I tried in vain to sink as many ceasars as possible later on but to no great avail. I should have brought some single buddies though. This was a ladies galore event. I counted 14 people on the late night dance flour, 11of which were girls and 8 of which were single and all of them were worth buying breakfast for.

The ruination of my cathoidation

The dead Pope sure does know how to ruin an otherwise fine week of t.v. Nothing but Pope specials from people who only lents space in their thoughts for the Pope after his demise. I do have to admit that its not just the pontiff that ruined tv this week but also our friend Fat gut Ferbey and his Canadian team mates competing in the World Curling Championships. I watch a mere hour or two of non cable tv a day (4 hrs less than the national average) and these two dandies monopolised the 4 stations that we get. At least Fat Gut turned it around and made the playoffs or else I was going to sell my tv and buy a ticket on the H-train. Still as a person living in a democracy I demand more freedom of choice for my tv viewing. I should not be forced to watch either of these programs. Free tv for all and a broader range of programming.

Maude is a real card shark, 2 people I hate

I am not talking about weather but the onset of summer has sprouted more than just tulips. I am talking about all the morons out there who magically appear as if riding in on the first rays of the spring sun. Yes, yesterday was nice, sunny and warm but today it was not. It was cold, grey and wet. I was wearing a toque and coat yet morons who were warm yesterday still went out in shorts and tshirts today. I saw them out today walking to work. It was cold and wet. I want to give all those people I see that are way under-dressed and overzealous about the coming weather, a big kick in the shins. Smarten the hell up, they are the same people who complain non stop when the get sick too. Jesus.

We had our first playoff game last night in our co-ed soccer league and its a self-officiated affair so you call your own fouls. We played a jackass team and all game I was a sportsman and called my fouls and handballs then near the end of the game I take a ball down with my chest and then shoot it way over the net from about half. The other team all start shouting hand ball and yelling. They score in the resulting confusion while I tell them that they are big idots (well I actually said "Jesus you jokers are so pathetic")and they have no clue what they are talking about and that I call my own fouls and that it did not even touch my arm. We were up by a few by then and it was in their half of the field too. Jesus, there are too many damn annoying people eating food and breathing and taking up space.

Another jerk lady came into the store today and complained at the two of us that were working because she was double parked and we were both serving customers with large purchases. She kept interupting us and complaining about the service because "I only have a couple of minutes, I am double parked". She was some richy rich type lady but she baught our cheapest luggage. Go figure. I f'ng hate old rich pretentious ladies who think they own everything. They come off as being so powerful but I could smash their faces in and go smash their car so easily but I am not being violent its just that they really are so powerless and petty that it makes me want to puke.

I am pretty pissed off today with all these dipshits, forgive the angst.

My best friends

I have always had a 'dream team' of best friends that in an ideal world would hang out with me. Last night I welcomed a new buddy into our possy. The Daily Show had one of the funniest kid ever who had a gigantic head, so big in fact that no football helmet would fit him so two years ago, his town rallied around him and chipped in to have one manufactured to fit him. Last night Rob Cordray went back for a follow up visit two years later and the kids was still on top of his game. Not football, he quit that, but on top of his hillarious game. He would be the quiet dry hillarious guy in our group that also includes Gordon Shumway (he would be the groups prankster), Richard Branson (he has billions of dollars to play with but he is also a nice guy), Julliane Moore (every gang needs a hottie, a plutonic hottie mind you), Beck (cause he is pretty darn cool) and me (cause its my stupid fantasy that proves I have not mentally matured much past the grade 6 level).

Return of Rabit

The most empathetic character I have come across in literature lately is Harry "Rabit" Angstrom from John Updike's Rabbit series. What a hillarious personality that guys has, don't be led to think he's a funny ha ha character, Kate would in all likellyhood despise and be sickened by him for example, but he makes me chuckle non-stop.
I'm reading Rabbit Redux right now and came across this quote where Rabbit, a former highschool basketball star is thinking about his son who is kind of squat and unathletic (Rabbit also somewhat begrudges his 13 year old son because he often mistakes him, out of the corner of his eye, for a strange woman in their house due to his build and shoulder length hair)
"How can I get the kid interested in sports. If he's too short for basketball, than baseball. Anything, just to put something there, some bliss, to live on later for a while. If he goes empty now he won't last at all because we get emptier."

Randy 'Fat Gut' Furby is the worst thing to fall upon Canadian sports in decades. He makes me so angry and I am not even passionate about curling. They gave up 3 in the tenth to the Us yesterday for another loss (Ferby was at 66%, pathetic, my dad would of been like at 52% and he curls three times a year and even though they beat the Fins Fat Gut was at a team low again of 79%). What a joke skip, I would take the ghost of Sandra Shmurler over him any day. Canada, the favorites, sit at 3-2.

Ben Folds new album Songs for Silverman is solid. Its worth stealing.

Things that bounce

Here's a riddle for you: Whats flat, made of paper and bounces? Well in my case its cheques. I have had 3 cheques that people have given me bounce in the last 6 months. I think I may be running with the wrong crowd. When I was selling cocaine my clients never gave me bad cheques. The bank is getting sketched out and I have never once given a bad cheque.
Need another reason to dislike the elderly? Some lady calls the store today and asks if we have anything called and Exigo. I ask her what it is and she is not sure. She wrote it down awhile ago and remembered we might carry it. She did not know what it was, wether a bag or a piece of clothing. Then she asked if I saw it on t.v. it was on some mourning show back around Christmas but she wasnt sure what show it was on. I said that I am not familiar with that name whether as a brand or as an item so she asked if I could suggest what it could be. I use to think that there was a limit to how dumb people could be, there is none. Some people's brains must have been run over by 18 wheelers at some point in there lives cause there is no other way to explain such stupidity. This lady want me to guess what she saw on a mourning show 3 months ago. If I could do that lady there would be no fucking way I would be working at a crummy retail store when I would be touring the world with Raveen the magician.

Reverend Jesse Jackson should be the next Pope

Ding dong the Pope is dead. I have stopped really caring about much at work. I proved that I am a good worker and a decent guy in my first two weeks so now there is no reason for me to give a rats ass so I started mixing 'work' Chris with 'home' Chris to surprisingly fun results. The other day we were cashing out and it was just me and the manager girl (lazy eyed) and I asked if I could have two hundred bucks, she asked why, and I said to buy a whore, then I said if I had all the money in the till I could buy any whore I wanted. This is all said in french so they never quite know if I am totally aware of what I am saying. I get really long pauses until they laugh. Then yesterday moments after the Pope died I went to see the store owner who up to date has had only proffessional conversations with me and he is a quite a stand up guy if not a little stiff and I asked him if I could go home and mourne and he just looked at me and could not understand where I was coming from. I laughed about 5s later so he wised up but it was hilarious. I am going to have fun with these people until all of whats left of me has withered away.
I am still interested in self-lobotomy kits so let me know if anyone finds one.

I am the happiest man alive

I am for sure the happiest man alive today. April fools, ha, I am not the happiest man alive.

A few years ago in a small american town a bank was robbed and the theives made off with a handsome score of 2 million dollars. Over the next seven years the FBI invested 43 million in the case and never found them. Makes sense.