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).