I used to know this guy when I went to university, and he was pretty fucked up. He was thoroughly alcoholic, yes, but what that article doesn;t tell you is that he had some issues with ritalin. I remember him shoving a few into my mouth one night (I'm not kidding exactly) and thinking later "Jesus, this shit is awful, how can he do this stuff? I feel like crap!" But he did, and throughout that period of drinking and pill-popping it was quite difficult to call him a friend. I didn't dislike him. In fact, I found him at first to be rather expressive and intelligent, albeit a little crazy.

I didn't know him as well as a few of my friends did, and I can't say I ever grew close to him, but he was a person I hung out with from time to time in group situations, usually partying. Ater the first few times I hung out with him, he degraded rather quickly to a state of rampancy, growing more eccentric as the weekends rolled along. Eventually, he just became the kind of guy who would walk from place to place saying non-sensical, almost schizophrenice things to everyone and no one in particular.

I remember once he approached me at the bar and said "Steve, there's some obvious tension between us. We're not communicating", explaining that a girl I had dated briefly was "coming between us". I didn't really know there was an "us" to come between. At my band's last show, he came up to me after every song and asked that I announce my roommate's birthday, even though I'd mentioned it three times already. In his mind, he totally tuned out the facts because he was drunk and high and couldn't bother to apply facts to reality. He had these imagined concepts of what the world was like around him, so I suppose his inner world must have been intensely subjective and suspended from the real chain of events that comprised his social life.

A lot of people avoided him. He was simply too much, and it was quite often a sad thing to watch. We often felt for him, but we really couldn't do anything. We accepted him not solely as a casualty but a powerful warning as well. We saw this shadow of a person

But once I ran into him during exams and he had decided to take them seriously that semester. He had spent all day in the library and was going to do more. He was rationally discussing the topics of his studeies in a scholarly fashion, coherently and with conviction. It was ike I had seen a completely different person that day, as if I had met him that night at that party and instead of him putting pills on my tongue, we sat down and had a conversation about something of interest. It was as if all that time in between our initial meeting and that moment had been rewritten. I could almost see flashes of Kyle as a someone capable of motivation and thirst for knowledge.

Having read that article just now, I realize that he had it in him to change the whole time, and he's had the sense to do so before the situation got any more desperate. I'm very happy to see Kyle's story portrayed in the context of a relatable issue at Queen's, particularly after the wholeHomecoming mess. While Kyle is definitely a unique guy, there were most certainly others like him who were maybe less outward about their vices than Kyle but just as mired into to bog as he had been.

It's not limited to gender or race either. Queen's was probably the only scene I've ever experienced where I could count on two hands or more the number of actual drunks I knew at any one time. None of them were suffering as physically as Kyle was, but their emotions and health took less than desirable turns when they upped the sauce intake to daily occurances.

Queen's culture is ambivalent towards alcoholism, there is no question about that. To students, it's a humourous addition to someone's character. To Kingstonians, it's a nusance that nobody really wants to do anything about. To the administration, they only care about it when the headlines start blasting on the ticker.

I've been to other universities. U of T students are afraid of hangovers and McGill kids like their wine with dinner and a joint. When I visited Reed College in Portland, Oregon (which I always felt was Queen's if it cut 90% of its population down and kept only the smart, cool people who actually gave a shit about anything) I was amazed to see a nearly dry frosh party with a fucking salsa band headlining the show. People were dancing exotically! What I would have given to see that at Queen's, but instead I got people's chants of "ohhh-laaayyyy oh-lay -oh-lay oh-lay" outside of my window until 5 am because Queen's students have centered their lives around drinking. I watched akid rip the seat off my toilet because the drama students initiating him into his forst play made him drink whiskey and shots of cooking oil. I saw a drunken mob maraude a cafeteria on a Friday afternoon, turn the place upside down and then get arrested for smashing stolen glasses on the ground and blocking fire trucks. One of my friends stole a car from some driver who had left his keys in and the motor running for a minute, all because my friend was loaded and didn't have the sense to ask himself basic, logical questions like "should I be driving drunk in a stolen car right now?"

Don't get me wrong, I loved a ol' good belt once in a while, and still do, but for CRYIN OUT LOUD! I don't need to deprive my brain of oxygen that many times a week, and if I ever choose to do so, I'll make sure I don't wake up my neighbourhood while I'm at it. I won't flip any cars and I won't go fuckin bananas when someone tells me I shouldn't flip cars and I certainly won't tell old Chinese people that "it's time to leave the neighbourhood".

And neither should you! Think about what you've done like our friend Kyle and start making things right again.

ZANY ADVENTURES WITH THE KULESHOV EFFECT AND TRANSLATION MACHINES

СВЯТЕЙШИЙ SHIT!!! Моим сердцем кровотечения будет звонок
wake-up для смерти на земле. Представьте если мы все имеемые
БЛОНДИНКЫ NIFTY LEGGY для того чтобы всосать наши краны.
Такие были бы настолько ШПУНТОВЫ. Я был раз лягушкой на
McDonalds. Hoiw много времен делает BILLY JOEL
делает шутки flatulence?

ВОПРОС О SWEEEEEET!

STILL AND SOUND

The following are a production still and a sample audio track from the upcoming, ongoing gallery project Before the Fall by video artist Ben Roberts and sound engineer Steve Birek.

COUSTEAU AT THE COTTAGE

"TURN AROUND BRIGHT EYES" OR "PAPERBACK WRITER"?

Oh, hi, nice to meet you, I'm the nurse in this play...I just ate the front row.

Dear Diary,

I'm back in the drama...theatre, that is! Not silly girl troubles. Aw, lordie! What a hoot it is to be back at the ol' thespian games. I've gone from a lead actor all the way to sound technician in only 6 years. What a feat!

And my, the parties those dramatists throw! Oh, the karaoke, the lights, the junior high-ness of it all!

I'll never forget those grand old times in University, when my old actor roommate threw all his cast parties, right in our house! Boy, do those kids sure like to make out and fall hopelessly in love with each other. Like, remember the time I listened to a grown, 26 year old theatre director cry outside my bedroom door for two hours at four in the morning over the unrequited love of an 18 year old girl who'd only had her first kiss an hour before? Oh, sweet Jeezies, I'll sure miss those wacky days of youth.

Seriously folks, avoid actors, acting, stages, theatres and anyone who walks near them. It's impossible to tell whether people in drama are real or not. They're always acting and twisting the truth. They're creepy at best, supernaturally possessed at worst. Like, I mean, are they actually alive, or just really from the legions of the undead, roaming the earth on screens and stages, fooling us with their Stanislavskies and Dietrichs so that we may be caught off guard in a moment of emotive enternatinment so that they may eat our brains?

I'm not sure, I'm having trouble figuring that one out.

THE GUY STEVOS GUIDE TO THE GREATEST CANADIANS OF ALL TIME IN NO PARTICULAR ORDER

On this day, Canada's 138th birthday, I bring you The Guide Stevos Guide to the Greatest Canadians of All Time In No Particular Order...



THRUSH HERMIT - Have you ever seen that video for "The Day We Hit The Coast"? Where they put on all that fur trading clothes and walk through the woods in late winter on a sunny day? And at the end they reach a stage by a stream and rock the fuck out? Yes, it was very Canadian. Chalk Clayton Park up as one of the best albums of all time, let alone Canadian albums.



MARC GARNEAU - Ladies and gentlemen, the first Canadian in space! Need I say more?
*FUN FACT! Canada was the third country to make it to space. Researchers like The Mars Society of Canada are calling for a Canadian led mission to Mars, which apparently is not all that impossible.



STOMPIN TOM CONNORS - In his book On the Cold Road, Dave Bidini of the Rheostatics recalls his trip to Ireland as a youngster: "[Stompin Tom's] My Stompin Grounds became my way of communicating what Canada was like without having to stumble through my own hazy ideas about home (Tom, after all, had a song naming the provinces and their capitals, a handy geography lesson in under three minutes)...Tom's voice drew me back across the ocean, and the songs about bobcats and Wilf Carter that I'd once been embarrassed to listen to anchored my identity in a culture where nationhood was everything." Sure, Tom's a real mainstream name, which in Canada generally means misplaced in CBC specials and overcelebrated by too many journalists, and he's not the first thing a street-cred obsessed indie kid would toss into the jukebox. But in all seriousness, this man is a hard-nosed rebel who doesn't take shit. He was a moderately well-known artist in the country, folk and traditional circuits through the 60s and 70s, but he shunned fame and the music industry in Canada at large, sending back all his Junos and hanging his boots to rest until the early 90's, when Dave Bidini helped resurrect his career and put him on the path to iconhood (but to me he's very much an iconoclast).



THE PEOPLE OF WINNIPEG, 1919 - Most people forget that this quiet Canadian city was the only place in North America that came anywhere close to a modern revolution? For six weeks, the people of Winnipeg took part in a prolonged general strike that put the city at the centre of global news for a whole summer. For the duration of the strike, which was supported from the get-go by the police force and fire department, the Strike Committee and those overwhelming number of people who cooperated with them maintained a syndicalist municipal government that only a few cities around the world succeeded in even attempting. The Strike did not die under its own weight. On the contrary, it was killed by a robust RCMP, the vigilantes of The Citizen's Committee of 1000, and their The Strike serves as a lesson of history that any movement of the people - and that's what it was, it did not belong solely to the unions or the activists, it found its way into the middle class and the public sector and crossed racial and ethnic lines - any movement that attempts to rid the system of unfairness and injustice will face extreme hostility from an elite group that do not wish to understand the concerns of those they commit to serving.



LOUIS RIEL AND THE RED RIVER REBELLION - The world's first touring western Canadian protest band. They sold enough copies of sheet music to go platinum back in 1885. Their tightness as group, sense of dynamics and ability to just jam on some sick shit was at least twenty years ahead of its time. They actually invented ragtime, which was stolen by Le Caravan Cajun de Jacques Brossard and brought to Louisiana, where it was immediately appropriated and popularized in their image. Their gutsy, feisty uncompromising sound had never been heard before, and due to the fact that records were still by and large uninvented back then, they will never be heard again. Louis Riel, their revered band leader and community champion, was hanged for treason after he extended the musical ethos of the Rebellion to the political sphere.



THE ORIGINAL GREENPEACE GANG - These guys and girls were the Cousteaus of envronmentalism, taking to the seas to protect us from oil spills and nuclear war. Their purpose has developed since those early days and now Greenpeace is a global pool of activists working for our future. They took on Davidian tasks but never once flinched in fear or compromised their principles. For that, they belong on the list over anyone else.



IMMIGRANTS - If it wasn't for the millions of people who populated this country over the past two centuries, we'd be a colonial vestige, a lost piece of land. The perspectives of emigrating communities from around the world have allowed us to live in a global society. Their come-uppance in this country is a testament to how hard they worked to shed the burdens of the often hostile resentment towards their presence.We can send Canadians around the world without real fear, as our concept of "far and wide" has grown beyond our borders.



PEACEKEEPERS - In a way, they're the true Canadian diplomats. From Cyprus to Bosnia to Rwanda, these men and women have been at it since 1964, not to fire bullets but to stop others from doing so. They have been underfunded, neglected and treated poorly by their own government and military heads, but wherever they were, they made progress, sometimes minute, but always significant. I a, of the opinion that every young Canadian should someday serve as a Peacekeeper or be assigned to support them at some point in their young lives.



DR. NORMAN BETHUNE - As important as Florence Knightingale and far more relevant than the characters of M*A*S*H*, this doctor made his way to China, Spain and other civil war zones to provide medical assistance and social leadership to the dispossessed. One of the world's first advocates for universal health care and illness prevention, Bethune's trademark mobile ambulance unit was a world-leading, life giving machine of people power.



THE MACKENIE PAPINEAU BATTALION - The first Canadian volounteer force to fight fascism's ugly face. 1,500 anarchists, syndicalists, unionists and communistst travelled to Spain to take on Franco's reactionary army and Hitler's vicious Luftwaffe, defending the Spanish Republic in a bitter fight that could have, but sadly didn't, stick it to the fascists and weaken their sick quest for global domination. The Mac-Paps were blacklisted when they left for Spain, given a brief clemency during the Second World War, and once again targeted with arrrests, trials and further blacklists during Cold War paranoia in the 50s. Only recently have they been given veteran status in Canada.



DRAFT DODGERS - By far our best cultural acquisition from the States. They burned their draft cards, crossed the border, and we gave them a country to believe in again. They did this under the risk of the death penalty or long jail sentences, and were condemned to losing contact with their families for a whole decade before they were given clemency...and you know what? The majority of them stayed here and gave us our favourite "cool dads", university professors and collectors of soul records.

The party condo has been built!

I spent a bit of time in condoland today and again this evening. In the afternoon, I strolled down a street in the west of the annex and found a new project. It's aim is to make some condos and townhouses out of the Loretto Abbey schools that sit side by side. I applaud the plan for the junior high school, which will not destroy the building and be replaced with a mammoth structure of opulence. A two or three story extension will be built atop the existing building, and some design changes will be made to the window areas, but fundamentally, this seems like a sensible thing to in comparison to what's planned for the older, more Catholic looking Elementary school. Instead of taking the same idea for the junior high and brilliantly making us of the existing building, they're going to tear it down and build a series of modestly luxurious town homes. This angers me slightly, as it is the purpose of the Annex as a historical district to keep its old buildings preserved at least on the exterior. The school could easily be turned into discrete, spacious and highly liveable town homes, but instead they're going with the decision to level this beautiful and practical space.

Later on, I took the plunge into a different reality altogether, just a few blocks away in the twilight zone that is Yorkville. There I met Trevor, who somehow inherited this loft like condo on CUmberland just west of Bay. It was the first time I had ever been inside an apartment with more than one floor. I honestly thought such things are situated only in penthouses high above the city, but not on a middle floor of a relatively low-rise condo building. Equipped with two balconies, this place is a must for at least one good dinner and wine party for those of us who will never get the chance to do such a thing in Yorkville otherwise.

We took a stroll the strange recreations of forests and deserts at Cumberland Square, both agreeing that these locations resembled sound stages than they did public space. We crossed through these monuments that housed beams of green light in hollow, grated futurist columns. I felt that while it looked mighty fantastic, it's actually a regressive design because it forgoes any concern for the excessive use of electricity required to run such projects. While it should be noted that the lights used are far more efficient than the ones we screw into our lamps at home, one should consider the nature of necessity and scarcity. Why, in an era that warns of the excesses of hyper-electrification should we use our dwindling resources for show? Why not make an object shine on its own rather than manufacture the radiance with electrical power? The future, in my opinion, depends on how much we can curtail the use of electricity and make the wonders of the pre-modern world work for us again.

We moved on to the massive rock "formation" in the middle of the square, just beyond the colum fountains. We could feel the rumblings of the subway line underneath and I felt as if we were awakening a dinosaur. There, three girls who had been partying intermittently between the rock and Sassafraz (a place I laid eyes on for the first time that night and realized that it's probably too expensive for me to even set foot in) mistook our smoke for a joint and asked us to pass it over. I, at this point, did not need any more, as I'd been smoking prolifically all day, so I offered them my last joint to smoke later when they were on their way. "You deserve hugs and kisses!" said one of the girls, and boy, do I wish that were true.

"It's our rock," said the casually dressed brunette.

"I like that it's yours," I say.

"Yeah, we've been hangin here for a while now. We've been coming in and out of Sassafraz since 9 or 10 to get loaded and come sit on the rock. Monday is our night."

"How long has this tradition been going on for?" asked Trevor.

"Since tonight," she says and shrugs.

The more formally dressed blonde was lying in a pile of what looked to be paper ripped into hundreds of pieces.

"What's she lying in?" asked Trevor.

"Her shattered life," the brunette replied jokingly.

The third one, a lovely and polite but drunk girl dressed in black complained that she wasn't going to make it down the rock face on two feet. They announced that it was time to go, but not without telling us to come back next Monday at around 9 or 10.

Upon closer inspection, Trevor revealed that the pieces of paper were actually various photos and negatives of perhaps a significant other. I wonder if there will still be pieces there next Monday.

If all the stereotypes are true, then...

Chinese men are unemotive. Chinese women are annoying.
Jamaican men are assholes. Jamaican women are bitches.
White North American men are fags. White North American women are dykes.
Easter European women are boring. Eastern European men are manipulative.
French men are pricks. French women are depressing.
Italian women are sluts. Italian men are childish.
Hungarian Jewish men are gullible. Hungarian Jewish women are beautiful.

************

Walked around Queen and Roncesvales today for the first time since I was too young to remember it. It seems that when the party's happening (it's Pride weekend in Toronto) I'm as far away to the fringes as I can get. Nonetheless, it's a strange looking corner on the extremity of the city, almost unbefitting to Toronto, since it's not every street corner that opens up to a massive lake. It's probably as close to "seaside town" as Toronto can get. Ended up eating various grilled pannini sandwiches at a place called Daddio's or something to that effect. The place was more or less a tribute to the movies and mid-century life, run by aging but nice artrock hippie geeks. They had names for all their sandwiches there, and we ate "The Godfather", "The Haight-Ashbury" and another Godfather. I guess it was the Godfather II. Anyway, we were talking about Jason movies for some reason and the counter clerk (who looked like a strange Pride weekend love-child of Ryan Larkin and Crispin Glover) piped in to confirm to us that yes, indeed, they had made a Friday the 13th in space. There was nothing totally special about the place, but the food was excellent lunch fare. The place is a bit of consumer art project, it seems, one of those throwback retro restos "gentrified for your convenience", as my friend Pete M. might say, in the middle of a run down edge of downtown.



I noticed that most parts of the city are relatively quiet (with the exception of some of the more Pride oriented sectors). The heat is rather terrible today, one of those barely tolerable spells that borders on intrusively uncomfortable. I suppose the festival will be braved by many despite the elements, as it is one of the largest parties in the city, and if not the largest, then certainly the most youth-driven of the bunch. As a bonus, it's very accessible to those who do not identify as Queer. You do not have to alter your personality to fit in, so long as you are tolerant and open to sexualities that might be different from your own. Caribana, on the other hand, is so hardcore Caribbean that you feel like a bombarasclat just being there. Being a Heeb with a predilection for pre-1970s reggae and a taste for veggie-patty wrapped in coco bread does not make you tight with dancehall yardies. It don't work for Matisyahu and it don't work for me.

Heat, smog...This is not the Toronto I remember from childhood. I guess a place can really change over the course of fifteen or twenty years. But hey, at least the Caribbeans and the Queers stayed!

ON NOTHING DAYS

The title of this entry is a reference to a short film made by one of my old film profs for the CBC when he was 16. It's a teen angst epic which you can catch a glimpse of here. By my estimation, it probably wasn't an amazing film. but for a 16 year old with a Bolex? It's probably watchable, if not slightly genuine, which is not something you can say about the vast majority of films made by 16 year olds in the 1960s.

I am feeling severly uncreative these days. Perhaps it's the heat and humidity. Is there something about clothes sticking to your skin that draws the inspiration juices away from your brain and into the atmosphere for others to steal?

The problem stems with music. Since my epic video-game-sapce-country-funkpunk band broke up due to unsustainable long distance issues this past March, I've touched my guitar maybe ten times, and it seems like each time I do so, a string breaks. I could buy a new set, but I've got nothing to play! I tried the old 1985 electric piano I've had since I was 5 for a while, to some fantastic results, but those days seems long gone now. When will I break out another "Morning In the City"? ) oh, wait, considering the circumstances under which that song was written, probably never again in that context (ie. a certain "drug" was "used" in the making of that song that caused some serious reality issues for the next couple of weeks). It's been months since I've written a song and I'm wondering what this is all about.

The other day, I came to realize: maybe it's because I'm bored? Ok, well, I'm not bored in the "I've got nothing to do" sense. I'm talking about something much deeper and paralyzing.

Let me explain briefly:

Over the course of the 20th century, movements that pushed great art to the forefront were spurned from causes borne from desperation and imminent threats to well being. What does our generation do now? We just get bored, despite the fact that world is more fucked up than ever. As a result, a lot of our work in the atistic fields is aimless, guided only by the "we've got nothing better to do" mentality.

I'm afraid I suffer from this numbing inability to strive for change, and thus, I've got no songs to sing for anyone at this moment in time because singing out of boredom is like masturbating without feeling horny.

TAKE AWAY THE GHOSTS THAT HAUNT ME NOW

I swear to sweet christ a ghost follows me around in my apartment. I hear little things here and there, like the doorbell going off when it doesn't, and some rumblings and shouts when no one else can hear anything. I feel my cellphone vibrating in this one corner of the kitchen, every time I'm there my leg feels that sensation through the pocket where I keep my phone, yet it never actually goes off. In fact, I can barely get signal in my apartment. All summer, I lived just one floor above in another apartment in the same building, and I had no problems with cellphone service, but here, I'm lucky if I don't have to dial 3 times before I can get through to the other end.

When I told this to Angela last night, she was the classic skeptic. "Solution: get a new phone, and have your hearing checked!" she said.

WORK DIARIES : DAY ONE

We make lamposts for a living, here in this dark cauldron under the city. My sister says she's got enough money to make it through college, but I don't believe her. That's why I'm working down in the pit, so she can go to college. I was never terribly enthralled by her being courted by intellectual types, but they don't have to make lamposts underground for a living, like me. Perhaps she will marry a nice student who can one day become a good father and husband.

"Let's get goin!" shouts the foreman. He's from Boltsville, where they make bolts for our lamposts. He transferred over so he could "get into the reeeaaal workin!" or so he keeps telling us.

"YOU! GUY STEVOS! MOVE YER ARSE!!!"

I hustle. I've only got about three hundred bolts left to screw in on the main shaft, but if I don't beat the clock, I can't get started on the head chassis by afternoon, and they'll keep me on main shafts for the rest of the day as a penalty. That would be rather fine with me if it weren't for the financial cost. You can make as much money finishing a single lampost as you could working a hundred shafts.

The lunch whistle blows right by my face at usually sometime around 3am, but never at the exact same time. I'm not sure why it's been left without an autmoated time clock, but then again, it is a steam whistle. It's so loud and grating that even with my hearing protection in place, it sears my aural canals and rattles my ear drums. My ability to hear high frequencies is out of whack for several minutes afterward, which is generally fine, but today I've been taken aside by the autocrat, who speaks with more sibilance than I can bear at the moment.

"rgghghgVObwmnuah! Come see me in myofffffmhgggn!"

He tells me that my flow rate has deteriorated to a state of virtual unsustainability and if I drop any lower, he's giving me my papers.

"We NEED these lampost, Stevos! If you can't keep up with demand, you'll have to hope for some better luck when you'e keeping up to life on the street!"

What a day it's been already. I'll have to spend another afternoon bolting in a hundred tin shafts.

When the day finishes at 11am I'll have to make sure I pray to the big Morgantaler in the sky that my sis gets a scholarship.

OLD SONG IN NEW FORMAT

GUY STEVOS - Morning in the City

Those of you who attended the last two FUN! shows would have heard this tune live. I based the parts on an acid jam I'd had with Trevor in January, which I basically transcribed from memory. The lyrics came a couple of weeks later, after a particularly moody and confusing day. Teaching it to the band took 15 minutes and it was all of a sudden a real tune. After our final gig, I recorded it at home in two hours and passed it on to Jason at Synaptic Plastic to master it, hence all the nice reverb.

But I have to admit, this song was inspired lyrically by a hip-hop group called Heavyweight. I'd sat in on a couple of studio sessions with them, and they'd had this one sorta gloomy, jazzy tune about taking the train to work everyday that put in me in a certain mood everyday. I suppose the chord progression must have had that same atmosphere to it, so as soon as I started to put the aforementioned jam into a song, I was back in that same mood. You know what I mean, that lethargic, dredging feeling you get sometimes on a dolorous day. It snows in the morning and rains at night, life is riding on a slow current day in day out, and you can feel the wave of desire moutning within you, assuring you that there must be something more to life than cycling through your day.

I needed some kind of hook, and I remembered the MC jokingly rhyming "up up down down" to the beat. Everyone laughed and didn't take him seriously at the time, but I must have stored it away in some special place, because as I wrote the hook, the "up - down - together" bit came naturally.

So yeah, props to that session with Trevor, the inspiration from Heavyweight, and the two live performances with FUN!

REBEL ENTERTAINMENT UNIT : THE SECOND COMING

it's amateur night at the drake hotel
i wake up from my crash pad, and here i live in hell
there's a scarf wearin girl lyin naked to my right
and there's a scar on my face from a second row fight
i ate breakfast in the lounge, free food receptions
for the afterwork crowd making serious connections
i go down to the basement and there's the whole band
they're gonna play without me and take home a grand
but i plug in my laptop and proceed to drop
the hottest shit from brooklyn and the kids start to hop
and the band starts whinin and gets booed out of town
this is how i do it when them bitches aint around

(sample)
girl: ooh, is that my favourite dj?
guy: aw yeah.
girl: aww yea!
(busta rhymes sample)
busta: wooha!
(macarena sample)
aiiight!
CLAP!

they dragged me to some bougie party after last round
it was so exclusive that it couldn't be found
just some random cheap apartment and my ex was in the sink
pukin all her guts out from too much to drink
it was her first time drinkin since she got out of the clink
and her voice is so loud, it's gettin hard to hear me think
she gives me a kiss and i taste her nasty vomit
she says "honey let's go hit it it, c'mon, you know you want it!"
i said "baby, i love you but i gotta turn the page,
and besides, i left my fuckin gear alone on the stage!"
i busted back to beaconsfield and headed down the stairs
but like i expected some fucker stole my wares
but i could buy another deck, the cash i made was tight
i'll set it up like fiya and boom: another night!

MY NIGHT BITCHES!

(guest dancehall vocalist)

dema sey dema sey dat mi nuh pley no geetah
and mi papy tell me "bwoy, gwan git yaself a job!"
so me wire up him table and me make a rinky sound
but dem girla and dem rudie come to dance me all around
dey pey money affa money, me pley dub a rub a dub
me pley soca me pley fela me pley all of africah
me pley all de rootie skankie nuttie rocksteady fi jah
and me take home all dem money and me show it up to pa
he sey "bwoy, me tinkin crazy, but is you now self-employed?
gi ya daddy one touch, me little rudie jungle bwoy!"
and now me play up drake hotel and all dem wanna hear
is original bob, but jah know, it pay de bill
and dem girlie still wanna make pass me bombaras
but in dis drake hotel, and dem be all bombaclat


(sample from the film "max")
hitler: i am the new artist practising the newww aaaaart!

NOT EVEN A MOUSE IN THE HOUSE RIGHT NOW

"good lord, what 'aaaaave ye done?" said the middle aged british woman as she walked by the housepainters. "you've got bluddy paint all over the bricks! well, oi'd say, if that were moi ploice, i'd 'ave you clean it right off!" as i watched from the front balcony her argument with the painter about whether or not the offending marks were made while they painted, she smiled at me as if she were helping me out. but i gave her a look of disrespect, the kind of "you're crazy, lady!" look, but she sauntered on proud of herself for helping out the little guy, when the truth of the matter is that no one cares if a bit more fresh paint got splattered on the already splattered brick wall. get a life!

they've turned the water back on in the building, only two hours later than promised. not bad, i must say. they're also paiting the front doors and putting new varnish on the wood interiors in the halls. and to top it off, we're getting new vinyl windows in every apartment free of charge. let's just hope they're not priming up the place to throw us out and start renting it off to the expanding crowds of forest hill and yorkville that are soon to invade the annex and quite possibly my beloved home.

THE INTERNET IS OUTTA CONTROL

i made a tune today that's being played on CKUW in winnipeg tonight. i'm not sure when exactly but i'll leave the song for you to download:



GUY STEVOS - June June (Jean Rouche mix)

FUN WITH THE PHOTOSHOP ARCHIVES

great, just what i need. a bleedin' TTC strike!

why are cities such poor managers of public utilities? our transit system is far too important for this kind of fuckery. it's being ruined and we'll have a real tough time working this out.

the TTC and everyone who has a hand in it can go to hell. my hope is that this strike is so devastating and punishing to the city that they have to overhaul the system altogether. they should fire moscoe and all the goddamn people in the head office, and start fresh. they ought to hire young, innovative thinkers who can change the face of the organization (a face that has grown progressively uglier since i started riding in my childhood.) maybe then we'll get some consumer-friendly fares and packaged token deals, better staff than those dicks who wear the maroon jacket these days, a serious above-ground lightrail system covering the city to replace these dinosaur streetcars and slow buses, and a stronger relationship between city council and the workers of the TTC.

in the meantime, we can all forget about economic recovery for a while. we can all forget about our taxes going to use as well, and while we're at it, we can all start wearing comfortable shoes.

i know i'll be walking all summer. if there was no winter in this town, i'd never use that stinking transit system.

A CALL FOR YOU TO PUT YOUR PANTS BACK ON AND THINK ABOUT IT FOR A SECOND

it's so easy to feel the void that's supposed to be filled by a significant other, but why does it have to be a void? and if it cannot be any other way, why does it have to be filled by only that one thing? do you really need it? in the long run, for most of us, yes, but right now?

there are certain things that we need because we're constantly told that we need them. one of these things is the love-sex-romance continuum.

i feel that films, television shows, contemporary songs, literature, photography and advertising dictate to us that without a sexual/romantic partner, we are nothing, useless human beings who have nothing to share with anyone and no future to look forward to. every character in every story about young people is either in love, dating or having sex with someone or many many people or looking to have sex, date or fall in love with someone or many people.

every character is in some form of a relationship with another human that involves sexual or romantic tension and fulfillment. even the single characters.

the single character is a complex one, however, portrayed primarily through paradox. they are alotted a certain amount of freedom, but always in the context of having the choice between partners at the snap of a finger. but in the end, they are never allowed to NOT have any sexual interests. they always pursue and either succeed or fail. i move that these characters are not single at all, for they are reliant on these relationships or potential relationships, however meaningless or fleeting they may be.

but what if we were to invent a character that was driven by other motivations than procreation and sexual pleasure? what if success and failure with regards to relationships was irrelevent to this person? no major character that i've come across has been free of their sexual impulses or perceived romantic responsibilities. for once i'd like to see a film in a conventional setting (ie person goes about daily life trying to find meaning) that has NOTHING to do with sex. a film i saw tonight, called The Rage in Placid Lake, came close, but of course ended in the same old female-male hookup at the end. a novel by michel houllebecq called the elementary particles works in reverse, starting it out with a relationship that ends up inspiring a character to reject sexuality from his world view. i propose that sex not be a part of the equation from point a to point z, just for once. an experiment in trying to concentrate on something else.

i believe that some of the greatest minds in history have prevented themselves from improving humanity because they were unable to channel their unrequited sexual feelings into a different kind of energy that still propagates the good things about the human condition.

you might say that making an asexual character would be problematic because it wouldn't be realistic. true indeed. we are all sexual creatures and we act upon those urges and desires daily. but for chrissakes! it's fiction we're dealing with here! we can make up anybody we want!

let's put this sacrifical lamb into the fray and see what happens.

now, if you'll excuse me, i have to go and fantasize about the lovely gemma from the aforementioned film.

MORNING IN THE CITYYYYY

up...down...together
up...down...together
it's morning in the city and the paper's at the door, your coffee's on the table and your shoes are on the floor
up...down...together
up...down...together
the weather today across the gta calls for periods of snow and then some rain
up...down...together
up...down...together
let it out, c'mon let it out, it's a long day ahead and it's only just morning
up...down...together
up...down...together
the train is now boarding, this is your final warning

sometimes in this city it is not easy to meet people. no one really wants to talk to you because they already have enough friends, acquaintances and people they just met in the last hour. no one wants to start a band with you because, well, they're already in five, and attempting to create a new "scene" in this town is about as useful to anyone as an extra button on their nicely pressed vintage shirt. so i say "fuggeddaboutit!" be anonymous and have fun with it. take a good walk and discover that buildings, windows and trees can be your friends too.

such was the mood on my way to class this morning. i could have sat in a dim studio for four hours with a bunch of people who don't give a fuck while our instructor spent the session just correcting all the cabling errors the last group left behind for us to fix. and all for what? so we can mix some whack cacophanic tune with so many tracks stacked on top of one another that it's like the tower of babylon in a pro tools folder. no thanks.

so instead of going straight, i turned right as i got off the streetcar on bathurst and headed westward to the far reaches of the queen west expansion. i finally found a place that is trying to kill me. a small diner near the hotel stretch fed me, for the price of 3.95, a pile of potatoes that looked like they'd been glazed with paint, three shimmering sausages, a coffee and FOUR EGGS!!! i got so much energy from all the protein and caffeine that i could have thrown a table over the bar. it was a great meal but now i can't have breakfast for a week.

from there, i proceeded through the grey area between portugal city and little italy. a little shop on dundads west near ossington housed a display in their window of portraits taken by their photographers over the years. grey pictures of children on their communion days rested for eternity behind cheap glass under fake gold frames. men, who by all accounts must be either old and withered or dead by now, shine in their prime as slick-haired gentlement on the store's walls.

on mansfield ave. between grace st. and bellwoods ave., a franciscan church has yet to take down its nativity scene display from its front lawn. larger than life dummies dressed in biblical shepherd clothing advertise a long since passed passion play, and stand watch over the manger. draped across its side walls hangs a sign in italian and english that says:

ILLUMINI UNA CANDELA PER IL VOSTRO CARO
LIGHT A CANDLE FOR YOUR LOVED ONES

inside the hut are several large, transparent candle holders that house white candles. around these glass monstrances are tape strips with names like "vecchio" and "andolini", but no first names. beside the church sits a palatial home with a statue of the virgin mary holding her baby boy on her lap. it looks at you so personally that you can't help but think it's a friendly presence.

gradually i stepped lightly towards my annex paradise after two or three hours on my feet. on ulster st., a mobile window washer on his bicycle recites a joke about president bush to a female friend. "jokes are ok," he informs her, "so long as no one's getting made fun of. i don't like mean jokes or racist jokes. but newfoundlanders tell the best newfie jokes ever!" they part ways and he waits at the traffic light, radiating a kind of modern-day gallantry perched atop his bike with his long red beard flowing from his cheeks and his scottish tam resting on his head. with buckets and squeegees slung over his shoulder, he rides off to go wash windows. chim chimeney cheeroo, i almost sang.

rastafarian city workers, their big bright hats clashing with their orange jumpsuits, take posters down from the streetlamps on harbord. the fish and chips store owner shovels the slush from his sidewalk. central tech high school students skip class and fuck around outside the pizza place. beautiful university girls in their long skirts and black tights walk home from lectures with books in arm. today is a cloudy, average day, and nobody is really up to anything special that i can see, but such a day is what keeps me living here in this, my beautiful city, the place of my birth.

but what's a walk in the west end without a trudge up the baldwin steps? from there i look down at dupont, spadina and bloor and further beyond, breaking through the haze with sheer force, the CN tower and the skydome. this is one of my favourite spots in the city, as it's one of its the most elevated points. one day i will go to the top of casa loma and get an even better view. i was always too afraid of climbing those tourets when i was a kid and therefore missed out on a lot.

a man walks up the steps carrying his bike, upside down, on his shoulders. the tires extend sideways as far as his arms would, and he rests the seat on the groove bewtween shoulder and neck in some ritual exercise that makes a proud pedestrian like myself gasp in horror.

it's time to go home.

NEW PHRASES FOR THE BORED : PART THREE

reject all forms of formal language and start combining various dialects and patois.

ex/

"tabarnak! ya done fuck up all mi rasclat shit! ben crisse, bredrin!"
= holy fuck! you messed up all my goddamn stuff! sweet christ, brother! (quebecois and jamaican patois)

"ye bampot! n'eo ket ur banne kafe, met stot marc'h eo!"
= you fool! that's not coffee, that's horse urine!" (scot slang and breton)

"that patrinfikulo better bec mon chu or i'll onanigi his alligator c^iesulino!"
= that motherfucker better kiss my ass or i'll jerk off his alligator whore! (esperanto and cajun)

courtesy of the alternative dictionaries (and no, they're not some new band from new york).

NEW PHRASES FOR THE BORED : PART TWO

you ruined my day (or anything to that effect) = "you sunk my bizzle shizzle!"

NEW PHRASES FOR THE BORED : PART ONE

beside the point = "beside the pint"

you lived beside a graveyard
but were buried miles away
with such ground to traverse
i'll visit on a rainy day
they wouldn't make you ashes
it was never meant that way
so they put you in a box
i carried you into to the grave
i took all your possessions
and i livened up my place
so my monument to you is now
inside my living space
the instrument's in storage
never sees the light of day
but when i listen through the f-holes
i can hear the songs you play
i'll never sell it off
not even for the highest bid
and when they see me play it
they'll say "my, just like she did!"
when it gets restored
i'll learn your flighty bow technique
so that when they see me playing
they'll be talking for a week

AYY MAMA!

don't you just love your mother? i love my mine. she came to town this weekend on business, the one time a year they throw money at her for an afternoon of easy work, and she spent it all on me! steaks from fine shops were cut and grilled into pies of blood, ice cream and strawberries consumed by the gallon and vodka shared in the after dinner twilight. and she even cleaned my bathroom and fed the cat!

i think my mom should sublet here over the summer. considering all the rapacious bullshit she traverses through every day in the confines of a university dental school in the middle of the prairies, she could use a few months of rock n' roll life with her little baby boy.

i'd offer her weed but she's probably have a heart attack.

REBEL ENTERTAINMENT UNIT: VERSES FROM THE DARKROOM

CULTURE WAR

they'll never let you join the military
so you might as well become a revolutionary
start your own party
political party
militant wing revolutionary army

culture war! knees to the floor!
en garde, monsieur, it's a culture war!

put on a mask
grab a gasoline hip flask
put your hands together and
BLAST! BLAST!
rebel entertainment unit radio broadcast
lightning fast, looks aghast
this is how the spirit of '22 lasts



HARDCORE MAN

he's a hardcore, hardcore man
he's a hardcore, hardcore man
he's a hardcore, hardcore man
hardcore, hardcore man

lives his life by a hardcore plan
(he's a hardcore, hardcore man)
has a brother named hardcore dan
(he's a hardcore, hardcore man)
drives around in a hardcore van
(he's a hardcore, hardcore man)
cools his room with a hardcore fan
(he's a hardcore, hardcore man)

he's a hardcore, hardcore man
he's a hardcore, hardcore man
he's a hardcore, hardcore man
hardcore, hardcore man



SOUL

i'm sittin in a bar where nobody laughs, nobody talks, nobody sings
i'm sittin in a bar where nobody laughs, nobody talks, nobody sings
i'm sittin in a bar where nobody laughs, nobody talks, nobody sings
i'm sittin in a bar where nobody laughs, nobody talks, nobody sings

i'm sitttin in a bar with artists, actors, rockstars, lawyers
mothers and their children, mailmen, escorts
quarterbacks, gardners, nurses, doctors
out comes the waitress, dour faces
clocks on the wall from different places
someone here's got words for the masses
but who has spoken? no one yet.

i'm sittin in a bar where nobody laughs, nobody talks, nobody sings
i'm sittin in a bar where nobody laughs, nobody talks, nobody sings
i'm sittin in a bar where nobody laughs, nobody talks, nobody sings
i'm sittin in a bar where nobody laughs, nobody talks, nobody sings

hey, you, lookin out the window
show me a sign that you're living, breathing
blow me a kiss, tell me a story
shake my hand, feel my pain
you...who me? yes you!
grab me by the shirtcollar, kick my face in
drag my little broken body off the stage and throw me in the gutter
put your feet into my shoes and wear them down with the soles of another
SOUL!

yeah! uh huh! this is the way we break the silence!
yeah! uh huh! this is the way we channel rage!
yeah! uh huh! this is the way we break the silence!
yeah! uh huh! this is the way we channel rage!



AFTERLIFE AFTERBIRTH

i'm an aborted foetus in the afterlife
colda had a job, coulda had a wife
coulda had myself a kid one day
but no! the doctors killed me

abraham lincoln suffered from afflictions
spiritual inhibitions and eerie premonitions
they say he loved the theatre, it took away his breathe
but his balcony tendency set the stage for death
the reunited nation, wrapt in celebration, were shocked at the murder
they felt for america and how much it hurt her
but we look at things now in the twenty first century
they've released john wilkes booth from the penitentiary
lee harvey oswald is on the attack
he wears a flack jacket in the streets of iraq
our potential for compassion has falle through a crack
in a global black hole and there's no turning back

i'm an aborted foetus in the afterlife
coulda had a job, coulda had a wife
coulda had myself a kid one day
but no! the doctors killed me

LA POSTE NOUVELLE

ok, ok, "new post!" says kerri, so i'm obliged to update. my ears are "squished", as they say in the field, from some listening tests i took a few hours ago. they had us sit in a room and listen to pink noise (all audible frequncies in human hearing played at once) at high volumes (~100dB SPL). an octave band would be increased by 12 dB for 3 or 4 seconds and we had to identify which octave on the frequency scale it came from. i found it quite easy, despite its taxing nature. all you had to do was listen during the training rounds (i'm not kidding, that's what they were called) and associate a sound with a certain octave. for example:

octave 0 - prehistoric earth
octave 1 - distant prehistoric earthquake
octave 2 - close jet engine
octave 3 - subway moming towards you down near the edge of the station entrance
octave 4 - subway moving right in front of you
octave 5 - roaring crowd
octave 6 - clapping audience
octave 7 - releasing steam
octave 8 - car driving through rain
octave 10 - deflating ballon

i aced it, thankfully, but since it was our first test, it's the easiest. next week and, for the rest of this semester, we will have a one and a half hour listening test based on music and dialogue, much more complicated ad subtle than pink noise.

so, reflections on the past month:

.1 it turned out to be much less impoverished than i thought it would be. i managed to go out three or four times a week to enjoy live music and didn't necessarily have to get loaded to do so, thus sparing me much cash and some room in the brain(click on that link for a new grand theft bus song that captures everything nicely.)

.2 mind you, there were some times when the catacombs of the old cranial organ were flooded with shite. i managed to get a lot out of a little. here's the explanation:

(f)x = more than x

where x is cost

i spent a good deal of time in that warm blanket that only a good toxic haze can bring you in the coldest of times. no damage has been done and i'm sittin pretty waiting for the next bomb to drop.

.3 i learned a tonne in school, but not everyday. sometimes it was a frustrating waste of time. but there were enough key moments and full days where my attention was sharp and my thirst for the knowledge at its highest.

it's friday and all i wanna do is DANCE DANCE DANCE...

HEY, LOOK, IT'S THE EVER INCREASING COST OF LIFE

ttc fares are going up to $2.50 a ride next month, which upsets me thoroughly. if you use the ttc twice a day, five times a week, then how much more do you pay per year starting march 6th? roughly an extra $120.

oh, that doesn't sound like much to you, does it, mr. briefcase man? is that what you spend on paper and office supplies a day? an hour? a minute? does it ever occur to you that you're subjecting riders to an even faster rise in the cost of living?

oh, but you don't ride, of course! after all, if i were a ciy councillor responsible for a fare hike, i'd steer clear of the ttc to avoid some of the wrath that would certainly meet me every time i hear the click of the turnstyles or the dropping of tokens into the slot or the hiss of the automated doors opening and closing. (mind you, if i were a councillor who rode the ttc - perhaps there are some - i might be more inclined to oppose the hike.)

now, i'm all for things like user responsible services, and no problem with adding costs to them. i take no issue with putting a small price on grocery and garbage bags. but we can be responsible for the upkeep of those things. if we don't want t pay the price for a shopping bag, we get a bin and bring it to the store. if our garbage is too full, we work on minimizing waste in the future. but there are major problems with this fare hike from a populist perspective.

one of the biggest problems is not the cost, but who pays for it. we cannot possibly be made to think that we are wholly responsible for the upkeep of our transit system. aside from basic measures of considerate behaviour, like paying our fare or keeping the stations and vehicles clean and non-violent, we cannot be expected to do much else. we as citizens cannot fix a damaged track or operate a tcc vehicle. the ttc is a specialized service which requires specialized service people to keep it working. and that costs a lot of money, fine. many millions if not a billion to run that system every year, and that's ok with me. but it's rather painful to think that we, as riders have done little to degrade the quality of the system, yet we must bear the brunt of the cost to repair it. which brings me to...

2) the extra $120 a year this will cost us. save some office workers who ditch their expensive cars for "the rocket" (who do make up a good percentage of riders, admittedly), the ttc is for most riders a budgeted cost that must be met each day or week or month. another $120 a year means that parents, married and single alike, may not be able to afford some vital material with which to raise their children. some people may have to start waking places more often, like myself. i as a young healthy able-bodied person can handle that, but what about the middle aged? it's not fair that they might have to walk longer distances, in some cases up to an extra hour or two a day, no joke.

what can we do? boycott the ttc? protest? well, i guess by default many of us will be staging our own little mass walkout when we can't afford to ride everyday.

as far as advertant opposition, it's too late to stop this increase, but you can bet in another couple years, city council will raise the spectre of the dreaded fare. and when that time comes, we should tell tour loyal and dedicated public servants to take a salary cut instead.

i wonder why the paper guy never fails to creep me out late at night/early in the morning. i was out front of the building during the wee hours enjoying what looks to me like the tail end of the nice weather we've been having, when i mistook the paper guy for a thief in reconnaissance. i figured he might have been a collector, driving around in his van to pick up discarded chairs and bottles and cans to sell out of the recycling boxes out on the street, but then i saw his newspaper in hand. i suppose the paranoia over newspaper guys dates back to my high school years in winnipeg, where i once woke up to a car pulling into my driveway. i went to the front door to see who was there, only to come across what i interpreted as a shadowy figure on my front walk throwing a brick at my front door.

spent yesterday evening and night at the el mo, where as part of a class assignment, i got to help record The Dream Band's reggae set. we used a really raw and basic method (we omly worked levels so that another class can do a proper mix) but it served as a fine opportunity to test out some of the stuff we learn in class. it's also rather nice to have your instructors' bosses listening to your mix in the phones while they close their eyes and bob their heads as a smile spreads across their cheeks.

i must go out and buy a couple of things today: a) the replacement for my one and only patch cable that i deemed too unimportant to pack after a few too man at a gig in kingston. b) some soap...i ran out yesterday and i feel so greasy under my clothes. i hate that shit!

ARTIFACTS FROM ANOTHER TIME

i had a dream last night in which i was back at my grandmother's apartment shortly after she died. as members of our family gathered all her things to be redistributed amongst kin, i went into the room that was once my grandfather's study. sitting there on the couch was her violin, her beautful 200 year old gem that she had played since she was a child, that she somehow managed to retrieve after she returned from the camps in '45. before i could touch it, it started playing on its own, although not visibly. the strings weren't vibrating and the bow was still in the case, but through the f-holes a bright, sunny piece played, no doubt by the ghost of my grandmother who gave me one last song.

i was so displeased that i had to wake up from such a beautiful dream. but my dad has kept the violin for me to learn one day, so in the end, i have the satisfaction of knowing this.

also in that room was my grandfather's med school diploma. when he returned home after the war, he went to his home only to find it in ruins. he went through the rubble and one of the few things he could retrieve was this diploma, which had only a small rip in it and was slightly browned over in one spot. he was so happy to find his diploma because it was one of his first victories as a young hungarian jew in a class of rumanians who resented his not only his superior intelligence and humble grace, but who he was. it was also the first step in a decade's worth of oppression that he had to endure.

the things they left behind in their apartment were plenty, and as a result i was able to put most of my room together when i moved from my temporary home on the upper floor to my new place on the lower floor of the madison house, just one week after my grandmother died. my father saw that i had taken a candlestick vase, an earthy green on that took the shape of an old lady's bust portrait. one of the few times in my life i saw my father cry when he said to me "please take good care of this because i remember this from my old house back home. i used to play with it when i was a kid."

here we are in the 21st century and our long and complex family history is contained within these few artifacts.

BOYCOTT UPS, SHIT ON THE GOV'T

apparently, this isn't exactly today's papers - it's been going on since 2002 - but UPS is suing the canadian gov't under NAFTA's chapter 11 provisions. they feel that because canada post uses the same facilities for both its letter and parcel courier services, this creates an unfair subsidy for canada post and thus hurts the business of UPS.

linda mcquaig echoes my sentiments on this matter beautifully.it's a goddamn cash grab and it's going to cost you and me some tax money. now, i don't think the gov't should get off so easy. it was mulroney who approved this provision, but the neither the chretien nor martin gov'ts have repealed this ridiculous act of compliance with free trade lobbyists.

vote green and none of this shit would happen.

A NEWSPAPER STORY PART 3

PART 1
PART 2

In mid December, Adam and Warren circulated an e-mail around the office that nobody would be getting any Christmas bonuses this year due to disappointing sales. That meant that I wouldn’t be receiving a $20 note that apparently I was entitled too. For other people who had been there far longer they felt hurt because when Adam takes his vacation during Feb. to warmer climes they know it will be courtesy of their bonus money. However, the Christmas party went on as scheduled and let me tell you that it was one that could only happen at the Save an Ad.

The Christmas party was to start at noon on a Friday. We would come in to work as scheduled and the office would still be open because some people would be conducting business, such as the car magazines. It was also payday for us so that was another added bonus as well. When the clock struck noon, all of us stopped working and went to unload cases of beer from Seamus’ car. There was also a buffet that included veal, eggplant, and salad. I’m sure Jenna enjoyed the fact that the veal was gone in no time.

Buckley asked Adam if it was ok for us to smoke weed in the promotions room during the party and he told him that we could go outside since it wasn’t that cold. A little bit later, Brian, who worked in displays and was Buckley’s smoking buddy, came in to the promotion room and started rolling a spliff. He was going to take it outside but Buckley insisted we smoke it in the promotions office. Brian said that he did not think that Adam and Warren would appreciate it. Buckley replied that he asked Adam earlier if we could smoke inside the promotions room and since he’d said we should go outside, that meant it was ok to smoke inside. Buckley, who had successfully conned Adam and Warren into controlling the promotions room, was too lazy at this point to even lie. Maybe that’s a sign that you should be smoking less weed. Buckley also made an announcement that “Brian has 15 half quarters for sale”, as if the art of subtlety did not exist.

Brian relented and pretty soon the room smelled like someone had burned a pound of reefer. There was an eight year old girl at the party, one of the employees daughter’s, and we were all worried that she was going to come in. Sure enough, she opened the door while we were smoking one of about 85 joints and I was just like, get away! The door kept on opening and eventually no one even cared. Seamus did walk in and this one guy name Dan from classifieds, who apparently was the original Dan at the Save an Ad, passed it to someone else and was like “I don’t even know what is going on.” I asked Buckley if Seamus cared and he told me that a bit of weed that someone had bought from him earlier was really from Seamus. This reminds me of a little vignette that Alicia had told us before. Apparently, a memo was sent around the office asking people to check if they smoked weed or sold it. A few people actually checked off that they smoked weed. Alicia thinks that the memo was sent out not to punish anyone but for Adam to get more hookups. Apparently, I know why this memo was not sent around when I was working at the Save an Ad because Adam could do worse than to ask his trusty manager Seamus.

At around two, some Russian lady came in and appeared to be distressed. Brian saw her and he was like, do you want to place an ad? Apparently, Buckley forgot to give the cheques for Adam to sign and the Russian lady, who worked at a nearby cheque cashing place called Money Hut, did not notice that the cheque wasn’t signed when Kavitha cashed hers in. She was promptly ordered to go to the Save an Ad to see what the problem was. When the Russian lady smelled the weed and saw everyone drinking she must have had visions that she had been had by Kavitha and that her immediate future would involve an unemployment cheque. Eventually, everything was sorted out and things resumed back to normal.

There was a little bluegrass hoedown going on in the promotions room involving a banjo played by Winnie, as well as various utensils. People commented that it felt like we were involved in a sequel of Where Brother Art Thou. Someone suggested that we should do a documentary on the Save an Ad and I told them that it was a bad idea because people would accuse us of staging it. Everyone promptly nodded their heads in agreement and that was the end of that.

Believe it or not, the Christmas party was the first time that I had been high at the Save an Ad. I refused to get high at work because I was not going to play their game. There’s a consequence for everything, and one reason I think so many people stay on at the Save an Ad is because their constant smoking renders them unmotivated to move up in life. A week prior to the party, I had a conversation with a few people who said that people either quit the Save an Ad right away or stay forever. As I was sitting on the couch a thought cracked through my haze that I had crossed the invisible line from a potential quitter to a lifer and that I was at the point of no return. Was I going to be stuck in the Save an Ad reality forever or would someone merciful send me to the next phase in order to save me from such an existence? Eventually, the crowd dwindled until just myself, Buckley, and Brian were present, or more accurately, Brian passed out on the couch. Somehow I managed to find my way to the subway and go home.
Like the Indianapolis Colts making it to the Super Bowl, some just things weren’t meant to be. In my case, I had missed the deadline to extend my work permit in Canada so I just decided to move back to the US. I made one last visit to the Buy & Sell to say my last goodbye to everyone and see what its like to be Buckley for a day. Instead of bumming cigarettes, I was giving them away since I bought some from the US for everyone to have. As they say, the more things change the more they remain the same and the Save an Ad was no exception.

If I ever forgot how ridiculous the Save an Ad is I sure remembered during my last day there. Apparently, Buckley thought he had been checking his e-mail address Buckley@promotethis.com even though Seamus had it on record that he hadn’t checked it since Dec. 24 (it was Jan. 6). Apparently, Buckley was unaware that his e-mail account had been set to Buckleyandpromotions@xxxxxxxx.com. Now I know why Buckley never received my e-mail saying that I was going to quit. When Seamus asked Buckley if he had remembered the password for Buckleyandpromotions.com he was like, “Um, I can’t remember.” Dan gave Buckley the advice that “maybe you should smoke more weed.”

I was talking to Dan of classifieds for a while and only then did I really begin to feel the pathos of the Save an Ad experience. People had been continuously calling him for free ads but no one would was willing to purchase a bold one. Eventually, Dan pleaded for someone to take him out of this “free ad reality” but he knew that was not going to happen. Before I left we smoked a joint and he told me that if you ever come back to Toronto you know where to find me.

So how do I sum up my experience at the Save an Ad? A cynic would say it was nothing more than a temporary job that I took up to pay the bills while I was wrapping up school. However, it obviously meant something because I did not write these words because I got bored watching the grass grow in winter. No other experience in Toronto, or in my life for that matter, gave me the inspiration to write a multi-page diatribe such as this one. Quite sadly, or not, it’s a high possibility that when I’m an old man, unless I leave a beautiful corpse behind, the Save an Ad will be my most prominent memory of Toronto even though I completed a Master ‘s degree in Geography at the University of Toronto.

As I reflect on my experience at the Save an Ad it brings up more questions than answers. What is the purpose of the Save an Ad? Is it a tax shelter, a secret government program to employ the unemployable, just another badly run business, or had I been tripping for two months? Thank god I’ll never know because I’m never going to work there again.

To end this story I’m going to bring up an interesting vignette. As I said in the beginning, I asked Dan if he was sure that the Save an Ad would overlook my legal status and he said he was certain it turns out he wasn’t allowed to be working either. He told me that he is on disability. Whether it was for his schizophrenia or drug addiction I will never know because I don’t ask questions that I don’t want answered. Ignorance is bliss.

THE END

- d.f.

A NEWSPAPER STORY PART 2 OF 3

PART 1

It turns out that there were also some crazy people in display. One of them was named Winnie who was in her fifties but looked older and didn’t say much. She had absolutely no tact and the only time she said anything to me was when she asked me if I had a cigarette in her low growling voice. Apparently, her boyfriend was a crackhead who always fell off the wagon when he got it together. Winnie got evicted from her apartment and was staying in a motel that did not allow people to have pets. She kept her cat in the Save an Ad office temporarily. Once, the cat ran away from her and she was frantically looking everywhere for it around the office. Seamus, being the veritable smartass that he is, made an announcement on the intercom that “Winnie has lost her pussy.” Before I could finish laughing he made the announcement again just in case no one heard the announcement the first time. Its funny, but before this incident I had never really paid any attention to Seamus. He was the only person, besides Warren and Adam, that made decent money from in the Save an Ad, owing to his position as general manager. Although he is 34, he resembles a frat boy who recently completed university and who thinks that he is a bit cooler than he is. The cat stayed in the Save an Ad for a week and it designated the rug around the copy machine as its litter box.

Adam and Warren took a special interest in Winnie that went beyond the call of duty. Even though they were universally derided by everyone around the office as being tight with their money, I think that Adam and Warren helped pay for her temporary accommodations. According to someone, Winnie was Adam and Warren’s get out of hell card. On Winnie’s desk was a picture of her holding an “employee of the month” award next to Warren and Adam. I asked a few other people if they had known about any such award and they had not.

The writings on the wall suggested that Radk’s 2 year reign as boss in the promotions had run its course. This had nothing to do with his behavior but rather the fact that only myself and Graham showed up with any regularity, which meant that the room was not making the money it should. Eventually, Graham was told by Seamus that he was being moved to classifieds. However, Seamus insisted that Graham get a new outfit since his current one, which consisted exclusively of a green Gap sweatshirt and a pair of jeans with big holes below his ass, wouldn’t pass muster outside of the promotions room. Seamus asked me if I wanted to be moved to display and I said sure because it would free me from working inside an ashtray.

Graham actually purchased a new outfit of khaki pants and a buttoned down jean t-shirt but apparently Seamus was jerking him around and he was never even moved to classifieds. I was moved to display but only after prodding Seamus. The promotions room was still open for business.

My new desk contained a computer that had been completely taken over by viruses. When I innocently tried to check my e-mail it would always re-direct me to pornographic search engines. I figured that I would get some training but that was not to be. I observed someone for 30 minutes on a Friday and that was the extent of it. I was given absolutely no direction and was told to look up numbers in the yellow pages and just randomly phone up businesses. As I’d find out, business owners treated phone solicitation as a crime surpassed only by shoplifting and embezzlement.

There was a person in display that provided leads, consisting of ads found on the internet, named Buckley. I had noticed previously as the shady guy that always bummed cigarettes from Alicia. Buckley had two monitors hooked up to his computer. Supposedly, Adam and Warren could access anyone’s monitor through the computer network in order to see what they were doing Buckley’s solution to this intrusion on his time was to link another monitor to his computer that could not be accessed by Adam or Warren.

After a futile effort thumbing through the yellow pages, I asked Buckley for some leads. He provided me several pages, most of them consisting of massage parlors located in Barrie, north of Toronto. Invariably, the vast majority of the workers that I talked to were either Russian or Chinese and they were paranoid. Whenever I asked for the person that handles “advertising” i.e. their pimp, they were always miraculously on vacation. And they say pimping aint easy! They always thought I was an FBI agent or something whose goal was to shut down their place of employment and deport them.

One of my funniest phone calls was to a “French” lady that provided personal massages. She answered the phone in the loveliest French accent that would put Amelie to shame, but when I asked her if I could speak to the person that handles advertising she instantaneously switched to a decidedly unsexy husky Canadian accent and said “this is not a business”. When I told her that I was from the Save an Ad she did not become combative, probably because she felt sorry for me, but instead calmly stated that she was not interested. She never did revert back to her French accent. That’s her loss because I just might have signed up for a session with her otherwise.

I have to give Seamus the genius award for moving me to display in November even though most businesses set their advertising budgets after the New Year. I was beginning to mislead businesses unintentionally as my desperation increased. I started calling travel agents and telling them that we had a very extensive travel section. When one expressed surprise, I decided to check out our travel section and it consisted of three little ads that even Sherlock Holmes would have trouble finding.

At the end of my first week in display, Radk was informed that he would be demoted to classifieds. After about 18 months, Adam and Warren finally got a clue that just maybe Radk wasn’t a good fit for the job. During his last day as boss, Radk celebrated by smoking crack and he openly downed a Vex (alcoholic beverage) in front of everyone. Even though I sound very negative about Radk I feel sorry for him. If I had tears to spare I could cry for him as sadly he resembles a dead man walking. It is highly probable that he will meet his maker by way of a drug related death and if he wants to reach fifty he better start praying hard.

So what was the fate of the promotions room? Well Buckley actually persuaded Adam and Warren that he should become the new boss of promotions. Buckley was in his early thirties and married with one kid. He looked a bit younger than his years and must have been the shady kid with the backwards baseball cap that sold pot in the middle school bathroom. In the early 90s, Buckley was part of a band called XXXX that signed a major record deal with Sire Records and produced one album called XXXX . One of their music videos even got played on MTV once. He said that the “Madchester” scene from Manchester, England had a large influence on their sound and, judging by the name of the band and album, LSD apparently did as well.

Buckley totally revamped the room and put up a multitude of posters that were not necessarily the most appropriate decorations, given the fact that the occasional odd client came in to place an ad. They included a poster of Kurt Cobain, aliens, and various movies. Right in front of one of the desks was a poster of the LSD guru Timothy Leary, superimposed on a purple psychedelic background, exhorting us to “turn on, tune in, drop out.” Buckley did ban smoking in the room because otherwise he would be smoking “a million cigarettes” or more accurately bumming them.

Buckley was going to provide leads and he devised a new pitch that reflected his loose interpretation of ethics. As Alicia said numerous times, Buckley is a con artist and he admitted so as much with a shrug. For $55, we told the customers that we would run their ads for eight weeks and it would continue on until their car/item was sold. Unless they elaborated, we tried to finesse the fact that after 8 weeks their paid ad would in fact morph into a free classified ad that was not categorized in any particular order, rendering it difficult for consumers to find it. Also, if consumers were reticent about giving their credit card numbers over the phone he told us to tell them that they would not have to pay G.S.T. while in fact no one has to pay G.S.T. for advertising.

Warren and Adam gave Buckley full autonomy in terms of recruiting new workers, which he found off a music discussion board called 20Hz. His hook about the Save an Ad was that “it’s a cross between (the movies) Glengarry Glen Ross, Office Space, and Gummo.” Many people replied back to him, including one person who was concerned that he wouldn’t be hired because he lacked sales experience but had worked at hotels and had done “like 3,000 hours of volunteering.” Buckley was able to attract three people named Dan, who became Stu, Ben, and some disaffected Joy Division like kid. Timothy Leary’s words apparently had an impact on the Joy Division kid because all he did was stare out into the blank space. To no one’s surprise, he quit within a week.

If there was one thing that Buckley did with consistency it was smoking pot. Everyone in the office knew, except Buckley because he probably forgot, and he rolled joints at his computer as if he was in Bob Marley’s house. He did have the courtesy to smoke his joints outside. On Buckley’s first day as boss, Adam asked him why his eyes were shut and Buckley replied that he was tired. Adam told him to use Visine the next time he got tired and said that he reeked of weed.

It was comedic that out of all the people in the office, and in Toronto for that matter, Adam and Warren picked Buckley to run his own office and granted him full control. If the Save an Ad was located in by some alleyway in the suburbs that would be one thing but they let Buckley control his own office in the middle of downtown Toronto which is supposedly Canada’s economic engine.

The next round of hires from 20Hz were a couple of friends that had recently moved to Toronto from Abbotsford, BC named Jason and Jenna. They were in their early twenties and were more on the alternative side. Jason looked like a slacker who managed to keep up appearances while Jenna was one of those annoying vegan types who wants everyone to be one too. I was tempted to buy her a mink coat.

Apparently, typing ads became too much work for Buckley because it interfered with his duties of surfing the internet and getting high. He, without consulting Adam, designated Jason as his “secretary” and as Dan said, Jason morphed into Buckley II. Between typing up the occasional ad, Jason would explore the wonders of MSN. It was a treat watching Buckley slumped in his chair behind his two monitors while listening to Happy Mondays tunes, predating their seminal album Pills, Thrills, and Bellyaches, that I thought only I had listened too. Oh, Sean Ryder would be so proud! Like clockwork, Alicia would tell Buckley to turn the music down and he always came up with the same comeback which was “turn down your hearing aid.” I’d always envision Buckley going back to his high school and telling his teachers, who probably told him that he’d be a burnout with no money, that he does absolutely nothing at work but get stoned and surf the net and yet still gets paid.

Kavitha, who is a 19 year old girl attending Centenniel College, came in to work at the Save an Ad. She apparently had worked there previously and was known as a star seller. I asked her how she got introduced to the Save an Ad and she told me her story. She used to work at a telemarketing place downstairs, which was replaced by the worst Middle Eastern restaurant you’ll ever find. She got fired from that job after she was overheard by her boss on the phone telling an old lady that it was not necessary for her to get her credit card since she said she would have to turn on her heart monitor in order to walk across the room to get it. Kavitha is very nice and she had this personable quality on the phone that seemingly made callers forget everything and give her their credit card number.
If someone wants to place an ad with us they have the option of sending us a photo of their car which we will place on our website. I got a call from a client that complained he had repeatedly checked our website and could not locate a picture of his car. I told Buckley, and he told me that putting pictures up on the website is too hard because, apparently, that meant he’d actually have to do something. I noticed that the guy listed a website in his ad called www.skylinegtrs.com which featured various cars for sale such as Nissan Skyline GTRS, of course, and Mercedes. I went to take a look at it and it was the most amazing thing I ever saw. Each little tab made a different car sound effect when you moved the cursor over it and it was filled with flash animation. I was like, how do I explain to this guy that we can’t put a fuckin picture on the website because its too “hard”? Besides, our website, looked like one that was put together by a bunch of grandmas to promote a high school bake sale for the school library so he probably regretted in the first place that he placed an ad with us. In order to deflect himself from having to handle complaints, Buckley designated Jenna as the customer service lady even though at times she appeared as diplomatic as Saddam Hussein.

- d.f.

PART 3

CADILLAC FOR EACH FOOT

"we drink too much, we sleep to little, we're out of touch with nature,
would you catch me sideways? i don't know."
- flatt street, supafly baggypants

what a mantra for 2005. it's a new year. we start tonight's episode with a new series by contributor d.f., an old roommate from the annex palace over the past summer who had some experiences with not-quite-so-sane people in an under the table workplace while awaiting a work permit. he's gone back to indiana to lay low for a while, but he's left us with "a newspaper story", so keep tuning in every day for a new episode over the next three days.

it should be noted than names and places have been changed from the original in order to save my ass from these times of constant threat from lawsuits. i've also edited slight grammatical errors, as it was sent as a draft.

***************************



“It’s a cross between (the movies) Glengarry Glen Ross, Office Space, and Gummo”
- job classified on the music discussion board 20HZ for the Save an Ad

Introduction

A new sub-leasee took over my place in the summer of 2004 which meant that I would have to find a new place in Sept., since it was apparent I was not going to complete my MA before the summer’s end. Luckily for me, I found a place just up the street and the price was right. Two of my new roommates were Michelle and Dan who were a couple but lived in separate rooms. To no one’s surprise, they officially broke up within a few days of moving in.

My first impression of Michelle and Dan was that they were free spirits who cared about others. When Dan told me that he had taken a break from school for a few years, I pictured him traveling the world trying to help the less fortunate among us. Dan and I lived in the basement, while Michelle’s room was upstairs.

My funds were running low and I calculated that I would probably have to secure some sort of employment by mid-October in order to insure my solvency. The only caveat was that I would have to work under the table since my student permit prohibited me from pursuing employment off-campus. My original plan was to ask my half great uncle Ernest, (my grandfather’s half brother) for a job. He owns a Thai restaurant near Eaton Center called the Salad King and he had a roster of 60 employees. He certainly could have taken on another worker since his restaurant was perpetually busy during the lunch hour, necessitating the need for his waiters/waitresses to take orders on a PDA system, and he had recently completed $1 million in renovations. My mom was not too hot on my idea since he was not exactly her favorite relative. My great grandfather had four wives and my grandfather was his first-born son, while Ernest was the baby of the family and was procreated by his mother when she was in her twenties and my great grand father was in his sixties. To put their age gap in perspective, Ernest was born around the same time as my mom. Apparently, the young pearl, or gold digger as some might say, received a higher share of the inheritance than she “deserved,” and she passed it along to Ernest with, according to my mom, a side helping of arrogance.

I asked Dan if he knew of places that would hire me under the table and he told me he knew of two places. He said that he worked as a telemarketer for this newspaper called the Save an Ad Classifieds who hired people as long as they had a pulse. I questioned him point blank if they would overlook my “illegal” status and he said there would be absolutely no worries on that front. I then asked what sort of workplace the Save an Ad was and he chuckled. Apparently, it was in its own unique category as far as jobs went and was the biggest joke there is. I tried to get him to elaborate on details but he did not divulge much, not out of secrecy, as I would later find out myself, but for self-respect. After all, did he want me to think of him as a liar right off the bat?

Later that day, Dan’s friend “Crazy” Morris and his girlfriend stopped by to hang out. As it turns out, Morris is the one who introduced Dan to the Save an Ad a few years back. Dan and Morris were talking about their boss Radk (pronounced Radek) who liked to shove various odd substances into his veins. Dan then showed us some pictures from the Christmas Party at the Save an Ad and they were having some sort of caricature of a bluegrass hoe down. I saw Radk and he showed nothing in the picture that would betray any accusations that he had a habit. Dan also pointed out a guy named Lorne in the picture who shared similar hobbies with Radk and was supposedly going to inherit millions of dollars from his sugar mommy who is sadly dying of cancer, and was only a few years older than him.

I envisioned Radk as some sort of illegal immigrant from Eastern Europe who was a reject of the Communist system. In fact, Radk was a pseudonym, along with his last name Radchenko. To this day, I never did find out Radk’s real name and I never will.

In the evening, all of us picked up some drinks from the LCBO (government liquor store) conveniently located across the street. When we got back, Dan started talking about the pills he had to take. Unbeknownst to me, he had a chemical imbalance known as schizophrenia. If the saying caveat emptor (buyer beware), concerning random roommates, did not have any meaning before it sure did at that moment. Morris was partial to mind altering substances from A to Z and he said that Dan could handle the crazy amount of pills he was prescribed because he was a former heroin addict. Morris quickly interjected that “you knew that, right?” and I was like well I know now and I’ll never forget.

September turned in October and eventually my funds were falling precipitously low. I told Dan that I was interested in working since my MA research paper was coming towards completion, which meant I had time to fill in. He told me to come in sometime to talk to Radk.

Save an Ad

When I entered the promotions office of the Save an Ad I nearly passed out from all the smoke in the room. Everyone in the room except Dan, who chewed Nicorette like there was no tomorrow, smoked like it was 1929. Its not like they couldn’t get up and smoke in the hallway where smoking was allowed as well. I chatted with Radk for a bit and he explained to me what the job involved. We would go through older private listings in a car classified magazine called Car Swap and ask them if they want to get a “better” deal in the Save an Ad newspaper. The ads in our paper would run for 6 weeks for $30 and the hook was that if their car sold before 6 weeks they could use the remaining time to sell another item in our paper for up to three years. Radk told me to come in the following week. When I stepped outside of the Save an Ad I saw what we were up against when I stared at a nearby flashing billboard that said "carswap.ca".

The Save an Ad office is located off Yonge St. in the heart of downtown Toronto. Its located in a lowrise building around many businesses that cater more to the desperate than the rich such as Money Hut and Supadeal Pizza. The building contained offices for the Save an Ad and a couple of other publications such as Performance Racing News and Performance Auto. There was some kind of hierarchy to the place that tangentially resembled the high school pecking order. At the top were two owners of Jewish origin named Warren and Adam. The manager of the place was a guy named Seamus who I’d later discover definitely knew about Sportsline. The people at Performance Auto are mostly younger Asian guys who believe that Hondas with ridiculous modifications are the greatest thing since sliced bread. They dressed well, or at least tried to, and they put on a show of bravado like they actually had pride in what they were doing. Performance Auto contained jokers who were all white. The Save an Ad was the child that got whacked hard with the ugly stick and even within it there were distinctions between departments.

In the main office of the Save an Ad were people that sold display ads to businesses. At a glance, they seemed like relatively normal people who you wouldn’t notice on a subway. Also in the main office, and below them, were people who worked in classifieds. They took calls from people who wanted to place free classified ads and they would try to persuade them to purchase bold ads that cost money and were larger. People in classifieds represented an eclectic cross section of people who were the loonier types in school such as those that liked to play dungeons and dragons, confuse the wrestlers Stone Cold and the Rock with god, and do strange things while under the influence.

And then there was the promotions room where I would be working which was tucked away in its own netherworld. There were 3 types of people that worked there: those with criminal records or on parole who could not get hired anywhere else; people collecting welfare payments who could not legally work at all and students who needed a bit of extra cash. I was in my own unique category since I was a student and a goddamn illegal immigrant or something of that nature.

On the day before I was to start, Dan informed me that Radk had given him a call suggesting that the promotions room was going to be shut down. Even I had never managed to be fired from a job before I started but it appeared that things might change. Dan told me to come in anyway and act like nothing happened. When I came in I was told by Radk that the room was under threat because of lack of sales and that he’d only take me on if I did not clock in until I made a sale. After 2-3 hours I did make one but I never received payment for my few hours of free service.

Despite my lack of telemarketing experience, I was given no training, which appears to be the modus operandi of the Save an Ad. Radk gave me a pitch sheet which even I was astute enough to know was complete rubbish and I chucked it into some forgotten corner. At the time, there were four other people besides Dan and I working in promotions. There was Jerry who was in his upper twenties and was actually quite level headed in spite of his dress style that consisted of black boots and some weird amalgamation of anime and goth that I couldn’t quite figure out. There was Melika who was a thicker black girl that attended York University and who I found out one day was quite pious. I asked her if she did anything fun for Halloween and she said that she doesn’t celebrate it because it’s against her religion. She is part of a Church called the 7th Day Adventist that is against all fun from what I gathered. Melika was a sweetheart and if her goal in life is to save people from eternal damnation she would have no shortage of candidates at the Save an Ad to choose from. Her only sin was that she annoyed me every time she referred to the Save an Ad in her pitch as the “Save an Ad Newspaper Company.”

Graham was in his late thirties and he looked like a typical street guy waiting to get a room at the Scott Mission. Apparently, he was a former alcoholic and every time the smoked wafted from his No. 7 cigarette I wished he’d become an ex-smoker as well or switch to a less disgusting cigarette. And then there was Lorne who cannot be placed in any category and who defies all meaning of logic. He was also in his late 30s, and shared a place with Graham as well as his girlfriend and he sold unregulated painkillers otherwise known as heroin. I also think he was on parole or probation because he kept on asking Radk to give him a letter. He was a husky guy with his hair in a ponytail and wore ugly designer label shirts with big lettering. He had one Parasuco shirt that was especially hideous with its combination of puke orange and yellow. Whenever I talked to Lorne, he’d have this wicked smile and look in his eyes, akin to Don King, like he was trying to charm my soul away from me or something. If Lorne ever had a conscience he left it at the side of the road many moons ago. Dan (my roommate) was known as Gary, or alternatively as Flong which is a derivation of his surname. It is company policy to give you a new name if someone else at the Save an Ad has the same one.

There was actually another person working in the room named Alicia but she sold display ads. She is of Jewish origin and in her early 50s. Apparently, she did not get along with the people in the main office, including the owners, so she had her own makeshift partition at the corner of the promotions room. From what my ears told me she used the tough love approach to selling ads. She’d spout out expletives like they were going out of style and yet she had a whole stable of clients ready to renew their ad space. She also had the propensity to complain about how smoky the room was without irony as her ashtray filled up. She was really nice, in a motherly way, and won me over forever when she said that she did not want the new microwave to be placed next to her cubicle because her health would be harmed by the radiation. She was the Jewish mother I never had!

Later on my first day, Jerry told me I had some messages on my phone. I checked them and it turned out they had actually been sent to Radk by Lorne’s sugar mommy who proceeded to forward the message to everyone in the whole office. In the message, she said that Lorne had conned her because she provided him with a $170,000 down payment on a house even though he was still living with his girlfriend. She confirmed that she did in fact have cancer and did not have much time to live. She also stated that she gave Lorne a $5,000 ring and that today was supposed to be their wedding day. The kicker was when she said that her Lorne stole her son’s bike and I noticed that bike right next to his desk. She talked for ten minutes, until the message was cut off, and then she proceeded to leave another one. This time, she was saying how Lorne was living in a “lap of luxury” thanks to her and that she was in Penthouse, which I choose to believe is a figment of her imagination. She even managed to take a potshot at me when she said that Lorne is a loser for working at the Save an Ad when even her 16 year old son earns $800 a week. That message also went on until she was cut off. Lorne claimed that within a month of meeting her she tattooed his name in big letters on her lower back, which meant to him apparently that he had free reign to take full advantage of her. It seems that she did not give Lorne enough cigarettes because according to Alicia he would scoop up her butts from her ashtray. This allegation was confirmed after work when Lorne picked up a used cig outside the front door.

Radk was the boss of the room which meant that he typed out the ads, did our payroll, and other important things like download music and games and look at bizarre pussy pictures. He was working illegally because he was on welfare. Once when Alicia was on the phone with an important client he played these animal noises from a website called Zooish.com at full blast. Radk is around 40 and grew up in various Ontario locales like North Bay and Sudbury. Despite his gaunt looks, he had good bone structure and it appears if he took a different path in life he could have kept up a handsome appearance. At 22, he enrolled in an alternative high school in Toronto, which is for at risk teenagers, and the principal tried to kick him out because he messed around too much. According to Dan, Radk was a talented drummer during the 80s but his life went down the tubes due to a combination of excessive drug use and bad luck.

Apparently he suffered a bit of brain damage when he fell down a fire escape while he was on ecstasy. Dan told me that Radk, along with Lorne, smoked crack and/or did heroin in the bathroom regularly. When I asked Dan why they’d be stupid enough to smoke crack in the bathroom he asked me if I knew what it smelled like and I said no and that was the end of that.

- d.f.

PART 2