Quarter end. Stress like I have never felt before. Is there something that I can do tell these people at the University of Toledo that I need them to bend to my wishes- today. Right now, in fact. Please get up from your desk and do as I ask. I have been reasonable. I have been flexibile. You have been inflexible, intractible and unyielding. I do not want to go through this again.

Of course, the blame lies on myself. i am like the university student late submitting a paper because the car broke down on the way dropping it off at the prof's house 10 minutes before the deadline. Well, you should not have left it to the last day. However, sometimes it works out that way.

Recently I have been watching a lot of movies, mostly because we don't have cable tv. So this week I watched All About Eve and Pusher. I had seen Pusher before, but I loved watching it for the second time. Perhaps I still feel the twinges of my youthful obsession with European track suits, drug dealing life gone wrong, and bad Serbian gangsters. What exactly is a draftpak schemie?

I have ignored this for far too long. What has happened in my life, let me repeat MY life since I last posted? Well, Scott and Eva came to visit our lovely city, and were treated to the most bizarre three days of weather in Vancouver. Torrential rain, clear blue skies and then snow. Finally it seems that some sense of spring has arrived in Vancouver, and with it my new spring wardrobe, which really consists of my 3 pairs of chinos rotated every other day. Only, now I talk about it. Oh, yeat there was that one spring-y looking shirt I got at the Banana Republic, which led to numerous comments at the place where I get my hair cut. I don't want to say "salon", but then I can't honestly describe this place as a barbershop either. It is staffed with homosexuals, blares either house or disco on the stereo, and I have to endure an assortment of innuendos from the male owner.

My style really hasn't changed since I was 16. I have tried many different styles, but I have returned to the only one that ever worked for me: pseudo -outdoorsy-prep-West-coast-malcontent. Nothing else has ever worked for me but chinos and a button down. Sounds really boring, but that is all I can muster up. Let me list the styles I have tried:
Surfer (only surfed on one trip to Costa Rica; cannot rightly claim to be one)
Snowboarder ( I have been snowborading for 7 years, so this is one style I could claim as my own. However, the rebel attitude does not match my Richie Cunningham face)
Mountain man ( having lived in Whistler for 4 years, I could also make a legitimate claim to be a mountain man. Don't like the Sorels or the fleece. I once owned these purple fleece pants that were floods- oh the horror)
Raver (didn't give this one too much of a chance. I was already 27 when I came along this scene. the clothes were so expensive for such poor quality)
Hippie - never actually owned any guatemalan print clothing or birkenstocks, but I did have long hair and a bandana. the waspy face and freckles assured that I would never pull this one off without people thinking I was a trustafarian.
Redneck- Kodiaks and jeans, ball cap and mack jacket. What the hell was I thinking.

Which brings me back to the age of 16 and chinos and button downs. Please note however, that I have never owned Topsiders.

It's true. I have always wanted to know the lyrics to this song.

How sad that Leah McLaren is on vacation. I was looking forward to reading her column to work myself into an frenzy so I would be awake by the time I got to the office.
Yes, the office. Sadly, I am at work on a Saturday, again.

Do you worry about the youth of today? What generation has not worried about the generation behind it? On a visit to my 97 year old grandmother earlier this year, I was lectured on how the young people today feel they can walk away from any commitment that has become inconvenient. She was specfically referring to my cousin, who had recently left her husband and young child. For what, I don't know. Because my family is old-school Catholic, there were immediate assumptions that she had become a lesbian. I asked my mother if it was true, that my cousin was a lesbian. "Well, I'm not sure", she replied, citing how she had moved in with old friend who was a lesbian.

Anyway, back to bad kids. The Atlantic has an article about young men turned killers in the normally staid state of Vermont. Having lived in Vermont, I can say that boredom must have been the reason.

Since one depressing story of teen violence and moral depravity deserves another, I watched Bully, Larry Clark's follow up to Kids. Simliar to Kids, only it takes place in south Florida. a stranger place I have not visited.

Sorry about the gap in everything here. I have been working too much lately. Now for my follow up on Free Trade. Vancouver and BC are in a sorry state, and the only solution I can see to end our dependency on natural resources is to create a free trade zone in Vancouver. We shall become the sister city of Hong Kong, complete with exorbitant real estate prices ( we already have them), a booming illicit drug trade, sweatshops and hot pot houses.....

In all my life of being a Canadian, I have never felt an event having such an impact on our national identity and self esteem as the Olympic mens hockey final on Sunday. The Free Trade Agreement comes close, but a gold in the hockey is badly needed by the country. It has been battered about lately, from softwood lumber tariffs, alleged control of our military, to the downward pressure on our loonie.

We simply must win this as a matter of national pride. I have never felt it this strongly before. This one is going to be tense.

Somehow I doubt that after Dubya wakes up in the morning, and while shaving, peering into the mirror, fancying himself as Chuck Norris sorting out the Taliban once and for all, he thinks of this.

As I mentioned earlier, I don't have any access to cable television, unless I go over to young Robert's house and get my fix of documentary television. Because of this lack of cable, I miss the boat on all the latest commercials. Which is not a bad thing in any way.

Friday afternoon I was tired and cranky, due to a minor hangover and a lack of sleep. I think I have been working too hard lately, and by Friday at noon, I am ready to pack it in. Oh, yeah, there was that beer at lunch on Friday that further lowered my productvitiy level. Well, by 3pm we were in the Shark Club, a place I would not normally frequent, but since this was the opening hockey game of the Olympics, I was there, pint in hand, eyes glued to one of the 25 television sets they have mounted on the walls. The game was forgettable, as Canada lost 5-2 in a miserable display of ineptitude. What remains clearly in my mind is a Visa advertisement that aired near the end of the game. It shows a couple driving to the airport, the man driving, the woman clearly angry at him, as she stares out her passenger window. They arrive at the departure drop-off, he opens the trunk, and surprise! there are two suitcases in the trunk. She looks at him in astonishment and he whips out a second plane ticket. The man has a look of relief on his face, which fades to a mesage about how Visa can get you out of the doghouse anytime.

I thought about this for a while after. How many men have gone into debt on their credit cards so that they can get their nagging girlfriend/wife/whatever off their back?

Ain't love grand...

A few weeks back I read this column in the National Post, about a young right winger who can't get laid. He blames his sexual defeat on his political views, stating that women find left-of-centre men more attractive than those who are concerned, perhaps passionately gripped, with fiscal rectitude and the freedom of markets to define and shape the world. I can't understand why this was worth writing, but then again I was reading the National Post. Like it is any revelation that most right winger in their 20s and early 30s were lonely losers through most of their adolescence and college years. They are exacting their revenge for the teasing and the exclusion they endured as teens. Now they work for the Fraser Institute.

I once almost bought in to the idea that markets should decide everything, that if only government got out of our way everything would be alright. Ahhh the free market. Your friend and mine.....

My favorite comic strip is back, and with an update for the latest crisis gripping our hyperactive friends down south.

Speaking of espresso, here is an alternative to caffeine in the morning. Get your rage on!

I hate to be a know-it-all, I really do. But the word is "espresso", not "expresso", which is likely an overnight delivery service and not a strong caffeinated drink. People around me use the term expresso, and irregardless and "I could care less". Oh really? You could care less? How much less could you care?

Perhaps I get frustrated by the people that sit around me because I feel I have let myself down. Oops, there goes my self pity again.
SLAP.

Now this is the sickest joke of all.

With each passing day, I watch our neighbors to the south spiral into madness I am becoming happier and happier that I live in Canada, where freedom is still not something you learn from a commercial, nor has it been trademarked yet. The US department of Immigration has barred Ross Rebigliati from entering the US because he admitted that he had once smoked pot; not because he says he still smokes pot, or has some in his shoes, or is planning on a packing a bowl when he gets down to Salt Lake City, but because he once did.

Whatever happened to "when I was young and foolish, I was young and foolish"? The real reason he is being barred is that he is proof that smoking pot did not lead him to a life of drug addiction, crime and moral depravity. He smoked weed and he still won the gold medal. And John Ashcroft just can't have that. Shit, if he had his way, we wouldn't be able to play cards or even dance.

So screw the Salt Lake City Olympics. I just want Canada to win the gold medals in hockey and curling.

Peace, Order and Good Government for all!

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.