There are reasons people like me don't eat at McDonalds. It goes beyond the absence of any nutritional value in the "food", I discovered. Just the other day I was feeling peckish mid-morning, as my healthy cereal breakfast high had worn off. Houston tells me it is hypoglycaemic, or however it is spelled, which I think means that it is high in natural sugars. At any rate, I got horrible craving for a sausage McMuffin with egg. I walk the block and half to McDonalds Express, which servers a limited menu (no shakes) and I was confronted with their breakfast menu. Not only did I get the McMuffin, but I bought a McBurrito, or whatever it was called; powdered egg with sausage-like material in it. On returning to the office, I hid the bag under my coat so no one would say anything. Slunked down in my desk, I gorged back the greasy foodstuff, feeling twinges of guilt and shame.

Only a few hours later, I began to itch all over, as I felt like my skin was covered in an oil slick. Sure enough, the grease in the breakfast was now finding its way our of my body through my pores. I twitched and rubbed like a junkie waiting for a hit. I guess the little "McDonalds in Me" was looking for a way out.

Anya and I are one step closer to being buried in debt and working to make payments. Ahhh, the joys of adult life.

We have been watching a lot of movies lately, among them:

How to Get Ahead in Advertising
Richard E. Grant at his annoyingly dramatic best. Why is that only the Brits seem to be able to master satire so well?

House of Mirth
Overblown schlock that feels like a Harlequin romance novel set to the screen. Poor little rich girl slut-wannabe pays the price for her outward loose image when it is revealed she is just another tight goldigger.

Bread and Roses
Ken Loach takes on Hollywood with his left-wing assault of the corporate world, led by immigrant janitors. A nice little white boy union organizer inspires the janitors to organize and unionize. It is supposed to be a true story, and I don't doubt the veracity of it nor do I think the exploitation was exaggerated. Some would say it is a very biased film, but Loach feels that the balance in Hollywood is so far on the right that one little left winger will do relatively little harm.

The Anniversary Party
Solipsistic crap. Each new character more annoying and loathsome than the previous. I guess that is the point, but what is the point in watching it?

Not that I was ever really into it, but I definitely understand what it is like to be high on gasoline fumes. It was never intentional, and it was an affliction that crept up on me, so insiduous that I never knew it was affecting me unitl it was over.

It can all be blamed on my car. Well, I should take some blame as I chose to drive the car and leave the muffler in a heap by the garage and not attached to the car. But these were desperate times. If only you knew the poverty. The warning signs were there from them beginning....

I needed a car for a job that I needed to keep. Had I not gotten this job, I would have starved or have ended up working in a convenience store. It was a sales job in Victoria, and my boss was quite adamant that I have a car. Okay. I was too old to borrow money from my parents, so I borrowed from my roomate John, who incidentally, was a student. My budget was $600, which placed certain limitations on my choice of a car. I needed something reliable, practical and inexpensive to repair.

Why I chose a 1980 Cadillac Seville, I still wonder. There were so many warning signs when I went to look at it. The engine was covered in oil, a result, the owner explained, of a previous prospective buyer who had attempted to loosen the oil filter in the hopes of lowering the price. I chose to ignore this.

The interior roof was ripped so that a yellow foam was exposed, tiny pieces of which were always falling off and sticking to your clothes. Worst of all, the muffler fell off about 3 weeks into my owning it. When I took it to Budget Brake & Muffler, the mechanic advised me not "to spend a dime on this car.". You made a mistake, he said, now move on. I asked what was wrong.

Well first of all, the engine is about to die as you can hear the camshaft bumping into something else. There are maybe 3 or 4 of 6 cylinders firing. The gasoline in the dead cylinders is simply dripping out the exhaust system, which in your case no longer exists, so it simply emitted from a hole in the engine where the catalytic converter used to be (this had been removed). You're inhaling raw gasonline fumes when you drive this car, he warned, but I didn't seem to take notice. He leaned into me and said loudly "THAT SHIT'LL KILL YOU!". I thanked him for his advice and decided to drive the car until it died.

It lasted for another 4 or 5 weeks, when on a sunny day just after St Patrick's Day, the engine seized. I pulled over, walked to a tow truck company and asked for some help. The driver tried starting it, only to hear the sound of pistons locking in an eternal embrace with their cylinders. I bummed a smoke from him and he gave me a lift to the bus stop.

Days later, I began to notice an increased awareness and heightened senses and alertness. It was then that I realized I had been in a permanent state of lethrargy and intoxication since I had started driving the car.

Advice for entrepreneurs, by Tibor Fischer:

Jim could see how being an employee was a wondrous thing, and how he envied humble, lowly employees who could walk out of their offices and not have to think about work until the following day. The joys of employeedom overpowered him.

The adventureres who thought they lived dangerously by biking through civil wars, sky-diving, mountaineering, bungee jumping, freebasing finally didn't know real risk. There was nothing more dangerous than having your own company. You jumped out of an aeroplane, you were merely wagering your life; you ran a company, now matter how small, even a cornershop, you were risking your soul

Why Schoolboy77, you may ask? There isn't much of a story behind this one. No fetishes or obsessions are at the core of my identity with this moniker. I first came across the term "schoolboy" used in a unconventionable or figurative sense in a book called Everything You Need to Know About Recreational Drugs. Part How-To guide and part objective descriptions of the chemical processes taking place and the consequences of using substances that people of all cultures use to get high, low, agitated, stoned, cranked, wired, drunk, chilled, freaked and fried. Written in the mid 70s by a trio of doctors it stated on the back that "neither pro nor con, we realize one thing: drug use is booming. The chance that it will subside in the future is virtually nil." It became my drug bible, and I read about every possible way to get high and some substances people ingest in the hope of getting high, such as banana skins. Why would anyone think that smoking banana skins, known as "mellow yellow" it states, would get you high.

The entry for codeine listed all of its street names, one of which was "schoolboy". I liked the idea of a drug being called schoolboy. I was only 16 at the time, and imagined seasoned drug-takers in the mid twentys reminiscing about the schoolboy days of popping Tylenol 3s and sucking back half a fifth of cheap scotch. I never actually tried codeine, but the name fascinated me.

The number 77 has no significance to me, other than being visually appealing.

Quite recently I was visited by a ghost from my past, long forgotten in a life I thought I had buried years ago. It came to me in the form of a wild-eyed vagrant outside my office at 700 in the morning.

When I was 19, I spent my first summer away from home working as a dishwasher at the Chateau Lake Louise. It was my first time away from my insulated, upper-middle class world of private school, early university acceptance and good sets of teeth. After 19 years of this, I was shocked by the people who worked at the hotel; to me they seemed like freaks in circus. I had never seen people so ugly, or stupid, or poorly dressed. I am not being cruel here, it was the truth. There were people there that could only have been inbred, at least I hope they were, as at least that would be an excuse for their bizarre faces and strange body proportions. Many of these had no hope in life but to work at a hotel in the middle of a national park, make minimum wage or above, and after years of dutiful service rise to the level of middle manager, taking home $40,000 (this seemed like a loft sum in 1990).

Of course for me, this job was merely a way for me to see the Canadian Rockies and party with other university-bound students. My shift at work was a way to pass the time between waking up and drinking, and the monotony of the job was perfect for a hangover. Once I had "mastered" the job, meaning that I could do it quickly and without having to speak with anyone, I simply went on autopilot, trying to fly under the radar and be left alone by the sadistic French sous-chef.

This led to boredom, and as I just could not get any sense of fulfillment from improving my work surroundings or empowering my colleagues (although I did teach one man to do long division), I turned to tormenting the coworkers who bothered me.

Rodney was one of them. He showed up one day looking for our manager. He knew my manager's name, as he had worked for him as a dishwasher previously, and now he was back here, unannounced, probably directly from prison, to get back on his feet working as a dishwasher. He was an unwelcome addition to our team of Asian students, French Canadians and newfies, so I sought to make him feel unwanted by ordering him around. Rodney constantly told us that he had 6 years of dishwashing experience under his belt, and that he didn't need me to tell him what to do. I liked telling him what to do, being an arrogant little fuck at the time, but he always shot right back at me with his "6 years of dishwashing experience".

I should point out here that Rodney was a wiry but sinewy man about 30 years of age, with black hair and and a black beard that made it difficult to visually determine just how greasy it was or how long it had been since he showered. His teeth had not seen dental floss since his early teens, and he constantly reeked of a body odour than can only be acquired through years of poor hygiene.

Convinced that attempts at patronizing Rodney were only strengthening his position and his resolve, I resorted to more effective and more cowardly tactics. I drew crudely rendered pictures inside the bathroom stall of Rodney in various forms of copulation with easily identifiable coworkers, all male. It didn't take long for him to catch word that his manhood had been taken in some form in view of hundreds of employees. Humiliated and enraged, Rodney burst upon our manager to find out who had made these drawings, threatening to "kill the motherfucker" who made them.

I was terrified once I saw the look in his eyes. I have never seen anything like it since. He had nothing to lose and was ready to go back to prison to show his coworkers that no one messes with him and gets away with it. I can imagine that you can only acquire such an expression after witnessing extremely disturbing events. Rodney would have no reason or mercy once he went off.

He was calmed down by the manager, sent home to chill, and the drawings were removed from the bathroom wall. I ignored Rodney from that day on, leaving him to live in his fantasy world of moving up the dishwashing ladder. Until one day, while I was on pot-washing duty (as opposed to the conveyor belt dishwasher- that took a team of 6), Rodney asked me to mop up the inch of water on the floor that was leaking into his work area. I told him to do it himself if it bothered him, threw my rag in the sink, and went off to look for my afternoon hiding spot to kill the time.

While I was gone, Rodney slipped on the water I had left behind, fell and broke his hip. He was hospitalized for 3 weeks. The next time I saw him he was in a wheelchair at the hospital in Banff, having a smoke outside, enjoying his newfound addiction to morphine.

I never though about Rodney again. Until one day last fall, I was walking to work when a bearded, long-haired vagrant approaches me outside my office. He asks for change, I say no, but I look at the eyes and realize it is him. I am still walking but frozen. He notices that I know who he is.
He says, "hey man, don't you know who I am ?"
No, I say, ready to throw my hot coffee in his face and run into the office.
"Want me to take my shirt off?" A bizarre offer, but he pulls up his shirt to reveal his prison tattoos.
I yell at him to get the fuck away from me.
He backs down, and goes slinking down the alley.

But the eyes; I could not get over the madness in those eyes.

I am all about individual autonomy. Perhaps it is due to my education by draft dodging lefties, but I feel we should be free to make our own choices provided we are able to deal with the consequences.

It therefore bothers me intensely when I see others concerned with limiting the choices of others. Choices that have no impact or consequences on anyone else's life. Hence my strong convictions regarding the "war" on drugs and my complete lack of interest in moving to the US.

This morning a co-worker comes in to our work area and mentions that he needs to speak to our HR department about our hiring practices. Heads pop up from their cubicles and ask why. Concerned co-worker says that he was walking into the back door of our building ( it is in a long, wide alley that is popular dumpster diving spot), and a woman in front of him was walking towards the door, and as she reached into her pocket to pull out her security badge, something dropped from her pocket which turned out to be a joint.

Why would anyone care about this? I mean, sure it might even shock me but it's none of my business. The woman was still in training, so it's not like she was going to drive a forklift or talk to customers. No one bats an eye when new recruits show up for training hung to the gills every day, barely able to see through the blood in their eyes, in fact people think it is funny when this happens.

Man, do I sound pretentious in that previous post about having dinner at Republic? Like its name carries so much cachet that people will immediately assume I know everything there is to know about New York. And then the part about going to Spa? Who the fuck do I think I am?

If I committed some crime of pretending to be someone I wasn't, I have most certainly paid my debt to society, as I spent all of Wednesday night curled up on the bathroom tiles, hugging the toilet bowl and praying that I would just vomit. I have never felt such stomach pain.

I think I was the victim of food poisoning, most probably at Republic. I had ordered my meal by the number, and I am convinced that the waiter brought me the wrong meal. Beef noodle I wanted, chicken I got. After sending it back, it returned, with a little attitude and a firm statement that I had ordered the chicken, worded and with the tone that I was not able to remember what I ordered.

Unwilling to argue with this arrogant fuck, I accepted the chicken ( it's all noodles anyway), and was about to dig in when the waiter reached in front of me and planted a squeezable bottle of hotsauce next to the bowl. "I always use this sauce with this meal."

Perhaps I was overzealous with the sauce, but most likely it had gone off. Lucia had a bit of it, and she could not sleep due to her stomach ache. She got off easy though, because I spent from 1:30am to 5am in the bathroom, writhing, aching, bitching about that waiter as I was convinced that he planted the sauce on me to make me sick, just to show me that no one questions his waiter abilities, especially some provincial fuck from Vancouver with last year's Campers shoes. "That motherfucker, that motherfucker..." I kept repeating all night.

I had to sleep all yesterday, but I was well enough to get to the play Flicker, put on by the Big Art Group. All I can say is that I would never see anything like that in Vancouver.

We did end up going to Spa, which I recognized immediately from the movie Made. I only had one drink and went home, but it filled my checkbox under the "visit a club while in NY" category.

War.


Decades ago, the old Nazi, Hermann Goering, leaned in to his microphone at the Nuremberg trials and held forth on war and propaganda. "Why of course the people don't want war," began Goering. "That is understood. But after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along."
The Nazi leader paused, then continued. "All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger."

Sound familiar?

Thanks to wood s lot for this one.

Anya and I made it safely to NY, although I was on the verge of being sick during the entire flight. The combination of raw oysters, chocolate fondue, copious amounts of wine and beer, no sleep and extreme turbulence caused me to hold the air sickness bag in my right hand for 5 hours. The one time I got up from my seat to use the bathroom I was sent back to my seat, despite my pleading about sickness. However, the flight attendant flashed a radiant smile and displayed an impeccably sunny disposition while sending me on my way. Hey, this was Cathay Pacific.

We spent the day exploring SoHo, Greenwich Village, The Guggenheim, and the East Village. After a day of walking we were exhausted and famished when we got back to Chris and Lucia's appartment; salvation was found at Republic, a noodle house in Union Square. A little

Tomorrow we're off to the MoMA and then to Spa later in the evening....

One of the first things I realized when I got what was at the time called a "real job", was just how much time can be wasted in an office. You can make yourself look busy doing just about anything, and it may take months, or even years for your superiors to learn that you never worked at all. When I worked as a brick layer, making obscenely expensive driveways for overpriced log homes in Whistler, it was immediately evident to my employer how quickly I was working. I was either laying bricks in the ground or I was not, in which case I would be asked why I was not laying bricks in the ground. We even used to joke about the city workers who would gather round in a circle, perhaps 5 of them, to take turns at digging a hole, or changing a manhole; one person digging while the other four adopted a Ken Dryden pose with their work shovels.

When I was hired at that first job, I wasn't hired to solve some immediate problem or produce immediate results. I was hired based on some expectation of future results, which obviously cannot be determined until that future date, and even at that time there are hundreds of reasons why you didn't meet expecations. In an office, you could squeeze 6 months of employment by looking busy; walking around looking stressed, carrying papers everywhere, going on sales calls that don't exist. If I had tried to pull that off while laying bricks I would have been gone by the time the coffee truck made its first visit.

What is even more alarming is that the higher you go in the organization, the more nebulous and vague the job description becomes, and the longer it takes to get fired. It is assumed that you have reached such lofty status by providing great returns to your employer, so you are left to wallow the time away for up to a year before any suspicions are raised.

This reminds me of a story I heard from the COO of one of the big five accounting firms. He had been planning to fire an executive named Sam, but company policy dictated that he do it in person, not over the phone or by email, which is becoming more and more popular these days. Sam worked and lived in Dallas, and the COO was not going to fly to Dallas just to can his ass. Business often took him to Dallas, so he figured he would just do it whenever he got there. Sam knew he was going to get the bullet, and he knew the COO had to do it in person, so he kept a suitcase in his office, which he used to make timely getaways whenever he heard the COO was coming to town.

"Suitcase Sam" was able to keep up this game for over a year, until one day, at a seemingly safe company cocktail party in Australia, he was confronted by the COO, and summarily terminated.

Scott writes again, about his undiscovered genius, undiscovered only by the public, as his genius is quite evident to those who know him.

When you exit your creative writing class and picture your classmates eagerly awaiting for you to pass out of earshot so they can safely discuss your in-class comments and recently submitted work, do you imagine their conversations as adulatory or meanly sarcastic? And while this might be a more appropriate question for your psychiatrist, or even aromatherapist, the answer reveals much about your inner state. The proper outlook as easy as playing a film of success through your frontal lobes, like the visualisation techniques they teach in high school football -- scoring touchdowns and laying powerful well-timed blocks in front of the cute cheerleaders with button noses. As my old coach used to say: “winning is like hot broth. Ingredients: 90% imagination and for flavour, 10% will. Plus a dash of talent.” Unless imagined nothing ever comes to pass.

Sometimes I spend all day contemplating when I will be famous: universally respected for my wit, blinding intelligence, robust build and radical yet sensible opinions. The critical community unanimous in their agreement, and a little bit afraid.

I often dwell on how to best guard my privacy. Becoming too much of a media darling can steal objectivity, which holds truth. Should be serious and straight, or playful -- slipping the media only obtuse clues to decode? And I have to admit that as much as my books will be popular, their final meaning will definitely be cloaked; I -- despite celebrity status; multiple academy awards and a citation for my animated work; a UN ambassadorship, resulting in thick volumes of my collected speeches; and a lordship -- must remain an enigma. It is more a question of whether my influence on foreign policy and the structure of international society should be implicit or explicit. To be an Einstein or a Kissinger?

Honestly, I can envision a Nobel somewhere down the road, hopefully before I’m forty so I can enjoy it. Just like TS Elliot, I want to go ice-skating in my tails and top hat during a Scandinavian winter’s night. Though, with the committee being so political it’s hard to know exactly when the timing will be right.

Evident as well, especially whenever I revisit my writing, is the longevity of the movement I will inspire. Following in my wake: an intellectually cognizant literary faction as much in thrall with my personal life as with my stylistic innovations and structural bearing. A generation of young Turks with an aggressive semi-colon in their toolbox, knowledgeable of military history and displaying a healthy scorn for the Schoolmen of grammar and punctuation. Ready to do my literary bidding at creative writing schools worldwide.

I see fame and influence augmented to such a degree that bonds will be issued based upon my future projected earnings. The squinty-eyed quants, PhDs and other assorted bankers quantifying and formalising the deal will be astonished at the new pricing formulas and financial logics I develop. New vistas of debt financing and methods of derivative option figuring will be opened by my efforts. Ancient financial horizons will be surmounted, made close as I inaugurate the dawning of a new era of capital. As I near a deeply mourned death, knowledgeable experts will celebrate these innovations as containing the same revolutionary power that the invention of perspective brought to Renaissance painting and the birth of the modern. Innovations I, even now, seamlessly integrate into the structure of my more serious fiction and criticism.

Of course you will be there with me, the celebrated second prong of our two-fold, bar-b-que fork attack on the literary world. As much famed for your insight and empathy as your daring-do and feats of endurance. Two prose heroes for an age in need of serious fiction. Our lives mirrored in the art that first brought us such acclaim and critical applause.

We will patrol the corridors and hallways of Knopf, BMG and Verso with impunity, waylaying interns and speaking in loud voices. Our drinking bouts will rival any previously recorded and not a hangover will be suffered. It will be great, until our eventual split and mutual downward spiral -- so necessary for any biography worthy of acclaim. I think we will part when you viciously turn on me, disparaging my work in Esquire, the Guardian, El Mundo and Cosmo. I, of course, responding with generosity and understanding, and a tell-all book thinly disguised as fiction: A life lived less Ably. But we will be reconciled. And for the effort our handshake will grace the cover of the Economist. You will become famous in Mainland China -- personally credited with saving the Pandas from extinction.

My nephew Bond has taken to wearing a gold cape around the house. He is only in his 4th year, so why stop it? He also has a rubber dagger and magic pearl that has some kind of magical properties ( he won't specify). He was the ringmaster this Christmas, which was spent in Union Bay, on Vancouver Island. I like Christmas to be short, and this was.

I think I am losing my grip at work. Little things that usually annoy me are now sending me over the edge. I need my quarterly vacation, which is coming up in 2 days. We'll be leaving New Years Day for New York.

See ya!

I normally don't read Heather Mallick's whiny columns, however, I have to give her credit for her year ending piece in the Globe and Mail. You finally got it right Heather.

At last, witty and insightful commentary on the effects of heavy modern weaponry on a deserted and war-torn countryside. Get your war on!

Okay, so it is Christmas Eve, and I am still in the office, with a handful of others, working on next year's plan for world domination. Well, not world domination, just domination in my sales region, on both revenue and non-revenue generating areas. As most people look back on the year, they take stock, evaluate, review, assess successes and failures, and plan to make changes for the coming year. Of course, some people just hit the booze and cruise blissfully until January 10th, when December's credit card bill arrives.

My parents used to make me watch the Queen's Christmas message for my grandmother's sake. My grandmother was a staunch monarchist, despite being 5th generation Canadian and the fact that her family was likely expelled from the "old country". I love how so many of that generation feel a sense of pride for the long-lost motherland that did nothing but persecute them, discriminate against them and all but buy their passage to anywhere just to get rid of them. I have not had to watch the Christmas message since the last Christmas I spent at home, which was in 1992. Since that time, my grandmother has been institutionalized, so my family has also been spared the Queen's broadcast.


Well I have a mesage for you.:

Whatever it is your worrying about, it is probably not worth it. As I often love to say, worrying is interest paid on bill that may never come due.
It requires much less work and maintenance to be agreeable and friendly than it does to be an asshole.
You are not as cool as you think you are.
Others are not as cool as you think they are.

To all my readers, however few there may be, enjoy a safe-but-not-risk-free holiday.

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On a completely different tack, I met up with some incredibly interesting people last night. Anya and I recieved a phone call late in the afternoon ( well actually it was a message on our answering machine at home), from Thea, one of Anya's friends from McGill. Thea and Sam live in LA, where Thea has been working for the National Public Radio station, and Sam has recently become a P.I.

The strangest twist on the evening was that I met a friend of friend in a place I had never suspected as our meeting place. Scott ( see archives for Scott) had told me about a friend who had recently moved to Vancouver and was writing for Vancouver magazine. I had planned to ask Scott for his email and arrange some kind of meeting, maybe roll out the welcome mat as a good citizen would. However, it turns out that he was the person whom Scott referred to, and I surprised him with my knowledge of his arrival. A bit spooky perhaps, but word travels fast. But I am always amazed by such coincidences.

Some people call it luck, some people believe in guardian angels, some feel protected by a divine hand that washes one safely through peril and crises. At times I have felt that I had all 3 of these, as there was no other explanation for my good fortune. Sometimes it is merely the kindness of strangers.

I was reminded of this while playing black jack in Las Vegas recently. There were four of us, all seated at a $5 table, trying to make $50 last all afternoon. We had just come from a $10 table where we were cleaned out to the tune of $300 collectively, all in about 7 minutes. Our dealer at the $5 table was a woman named Tania, whom we guessed correctly was from Israel. Gold and diamond rings covered each finger, giving way to manicured nails that had stopped looking remotely human years ago.

She was a friendly lady, always joking with us, and trying to help me win. Being the novice of the group, among some seasoned gamblers, I often had no idea whether to hit or stay. Sometimes I was just guessing, and when I would guess wrong, I mean really wrong, rather than deal me another card, Tania would stare at her nails, and pick and rub away at an imaginary cuticle, pretending that she heard had not heard me.

Eventually, she took all my money, but with her help my $50 was extended by at least an hour.

On Las Vegas, I am reminded of Obi-Wan Kenobi looking out over the Tatooine desert: "Mos Eisley space station; you will never see a more wretched hive of scum and villainy."

It is amazing what some people will try to pull on you in the US. I must look like I just stumbled out of a smalltown. I must look real country, as they used to say. I am constantly hassled by DEA agents posing as dealers trying to sell me weed. It happened to me in Las Vegas, in the casino of the Flamingo.

We were sitting at a bar with video poker terminals built into it, waiting for someone to come back from somewhere so we could go get dinner. A black man walks up to the bar and sits next to me. He has corn rows like Snoop Dogg. This is how the story goes:

Snoop has just sprung from Carson State Pen, where he has just finished 18 years for shooting a cop in a dispute over drugs. He is looking for a ride home and is willing to offer me an indica bud to do it. I ask where he lives, and he tells me about 2 miles from here.
Two miles? Two miles? I say. Why don't you just walk?
Dude, do you know how old I am? says Snoop. I am 45 years old, I just spent 18 years in Carson State.

Okay, so you just get out of jail, you walk into a casino that must have a surveillance camera every 10 feet and you ask what you think or hope is a drunk frat boy to give you a lift 2 miles in exchange for some weed.

He reels back when I say this to him. I want him to know that I have figured out that he is either the stupidest criminal in Nevada or a very bad DEA agent. I want him to understand why I would not want to get into a car with someone who just spent 18 years in prison for murder.

He doesn't look that stupid, so I conclude that he is a DEA agent. Must have a great pension, because that is the must useless organization on the planet.

There are certain smells that will never leave me my memory. I have often read that the olfactory senses are the senses most closely linked to memories, more so than sound or even sight. In the pre-Christmas darkness I am reminded of the smell of diesel fumes, slush, ski wax and deep fryer exhaust. It takes me back to 1980, Stowe, Vermont.

It turns out that it wasn't a firing, more of an "I am rich enough to not have to work here anymore" which pleases me. However, the ill winds of change and uncertainty are blowing my way....Don't worry, I am pretty safe for now. I just had a shock to my confidence. While everyone else gets to ignore the rules, I am made to follow them, which is unnatural for salespeople. However, this will not be taken into account when performance reviews are made....
Ever have a day when everything went your way, and everything seemed easy? That is what was supposed to happen today, but it didn't. In fact, I feel that I have been chewed up and spit out, dumped on the side of the road. Things aren't so bad though, I could have worse problems, which, in fact, I have had, but just don't have anymore.
To make myself feel better, I often watch the Sopranos 2nd season DVDs so that I can feel better than Tony. HE has problems.

Makes me think of the blues; the Filthy Bastard Blues


There's blood on the payphone
and a crack in the glass
somebody done cut me
and kicked my sorry ass

Livin' down on Pain Street
and wakin up alone
molestin my memories
with a squirt a groan

I'm Filty Bastard
way beyond bad news
ain't got nothin but a boner
and these filthy bastard blues

From Dry Shave, by Rod Filbrandt

More firings at work, or "resignings" as they say in the emails. Who resigns from our company? There is no reason anyone would do it other than to look like they left on their own terms. Makes me think of the cliche "You can't fire me because I QUIT!" However, I think it is just natural justice coming home to haunt those who have suckled too long on the bosom of complacency and residual revenue. Enough about work, as if lugging this anchor laptop home to update my sales forecast is not bad enough.

Luckily though, at least I get to do it in the luxury of a faux mediterranean villa in West Vancouver, which I am house sitting until the end of the month. I am getting spoiled with the selection of bathrooms (five) televisions (three) and studies (two). The only thing I think it is missing is a wine cellar, however, these people don't seem to be heavy drinkers, despite the bottles of Absinthe and Hennessy in their cupboard.


I reluctantly attended our company Christmas party, which was better than last year, when they ran out of food just as I arrived at the buffet station. This year the spread was opulent and I must have eaten $100 worth of scallops alone. Everyone seemed to be parading their partners around as if on display. It was interesting to see who was with whom and what their partner looked like, having listened to endless stories about them.I was alone of course, as Anya was working. People are used to her never being at anything due to her employment in the film and television industry. What amazed me was how many people that work right under my nose.

Man this weather is getting me down. I think I have SAD, and need to go on a vacation, but none is forthcoming, at least nowhere hot. Why doesn't someone ask me to housesit their villa in Costa Rica?

Please? Anyone?