2002-11-29

Dancing where the dogs decay
Defecating ecstasy

David Bowie, "We Are the Dead"

Yep, that about sums it up.

With regard to the end of my last post, I can only say "mission accomplished." Ouch. Remind me why I do this to myself. Oh yeah�because I'm a moron. I'm not exactly in top form right now. My contact lenses feel like little round pieces of flypaper, and I think I spotted my liver behind the wheel of a truck that tried to run me down this morning (worthless ingrate of an internal organ). I woke up four hours after I went to bed with that "Oh, FUCK" realization that despite the 'fun' aura lent to Thursday nights by their proximity to Friday, they are in fact followed by another working day.

I arrived at the pub a bit ahead of schedule last night, so I pulled out my book to pass the time while waiting for my partners in crime to show up. After I'd read about a paragraph, a baseball-cap-sporting fellow patron sidled up to me at the bar and asked the always welcome question, "Whatcha readin'?" I held up the book so he could see the title. After he'd blearily struggled through "The Physics of Consciousness: Quantum Mechanics and the Meaning of Life," he lapsed into what I can only assume was a thoughtful silence. His capsized faculties had apparently failed to provide him with a contingency plan to follow up his urbane opening salvo. After a pause dramatic enough to allow me to finish off another paragraph, he forged bravely ahead with "Do you like Robert Frost?"

"Sure," I said. "'Two roads diverged in a yellow wood', right?"

"No," he said. "That's not him."

Having failed to woo me with his literary acumen, he returned his attentions to his highball.

The bar was also populated by a small herd of gentlemen wearing black turtlenecks, black dress pants, tailored black leather jackets and a veritable pirate booty of gold chains. I'm not sure how someone can leave the house like that and keep a straight face, although perhaps I'm just out of the loop and "Eurotrash gigolo" is THE new look on the runways of Milan this season. Fun bunch, barking into their cell phones and bragging loudly about their upcoming vacations to "Dominican." And they smelled FANTASTIC, let me tell you. They were collectively wearing enough "Eau de Agent Orange" to spawn clusters of tumours in six generations of my progeny. I'm not sure what drew them to a bar that specializes in quart bottles of domestic lager and plays mostly old Subhumans tapes. I imagine they were dealing coke.

I'm soldiering on, at any rate, although when I looked outside this morning and saw the first swirling makings of a good old-fashioned Canadian blizzard, seppuku presented itself to my mind as a viable alternative to walking the dog. At least my spilled innards would be warm, and lord knows I'm well overdue, seeing as I have kamikaze-bombed my honour, such as it is, into oblivion by now. Not to mention my dignity.

I have to add this as a postscript: I just happened to open my dictionary to the page listing "British soldiers". The definition is as follows: "a lichen with red-tipped fruiting bodies." Hmm. Is Dubyah privy to this information about "America's strongest ally"? It might put a crimp in his plans.