At my job I’m almost positive that I’m the least enthusiastic concierge out of our staff of six. I’m rarely cheerful and probably come off as mildly annoyed whenever a resident approaches the desk and wants something. I’ve seen the others in action, they are so artificial, fawning and patronizing it makes me want to vomit. Often, residents approach the concierge and want to chit chat about inane shit. The other guards actually perpetuate this sickening conversation. When it occurs to me, I give as many minimal monosyllabic responses as possible and let lengthy ominous silences play out while I patiently wait for the old lady to take off so I can get back to working whatever tedious assignment that is due next… hmmm, I didn’t intend on ranting. I just wanted to give a little context for the following encounter.

    My least favorite inhabitant of the building (not a resident, a leaser) is the only person their under thirty. One of two under forty in the whole place. He is an arrogant asshole. He has built a small fortune through a software company he founded during his undergrad, drives a beamer, dresses well etc. He is attending UWO as a law student. He is also globally fucked up. He talks down to the concierges. That alone would be enough to dislike him for.   

You scored as Severus Snape. Well you’re a tricky one aren’t you?  Nobody quite has you figured out and you’d probably prefer it stayed that way.  That said you are a formidable force by anyone’s reckoning, but there is certainly more to you than a frosty exterior and a bitter temper. Severus Snape 90% Harry Potter 70% Remus Lupin 70% Albus Dumbledore 70% Ginny Weasley 70% Sirius Black 65% Draco Malfoy 65% Ron Weasley 65% Hermione Granger 60% Lord Voldemort 40% Your Harry Potter Alter Ego Is…? created with QuizFarm.com

Valentine’s day is almost here. I have an old dried out black rose that has been on my kitchen table for a year. I think I also have some construction paper somewhere in the storage closet. I feel like cutting out a black construction paper heart, packing it up with the crumbling dead rose and sending them to Merle.

Instead I will go pick out a heart and cupid infested red card, write as many sweet little lies as I can stomach on it. Bundle it with a gift I didn’t have time to pick out and send it off.

I’ve secretly think of her as a security blanket. We’ve been together a long time, since teenagers. She’s extroverted, I’m kind of introverted. I say “kind of” because different friends/people would have differing opinions on this.  On one of the rare occasions I went out with a trio of friends last year. One of them asked me why I was being so quiet, the other hadn’t heard me talk that much in her life.

Anyway, Merle pursued me aggressively and it felt more like I caved in than consented. I know it sounds arogant of me but it was even obvious to friends/roomate back then. They jokingly told me to stay strong and not give in when she was calling three times a day. I think I grew to love her while she burned bright and fierce for me right seemingly right away. After three years we went long distance. It was actually good for us. She went to school in Buffalo to get her masters in education, I stayed here in London to convert my Biology degree into Bioinformatics. We had cohabited the previous two years and things were explosive. She wanted more of me and I wanted less of her.

Bought return of the native at the book store. Merle sent me Catch 22. Need something to read at night. Insomnia hit on each day off.

I saw a cardinal today. It looked so vivid against the snowy bushes it was perched on. Even though I’ve been living below the 49th parallel for almost seven years, spotting wildlife with such brilliant colour is still stunning and makes my pupils widen. The same thing happens with blue jays. The animals back home are all pretty drab. Little variation from black, brown and white… Still a full grown moose is pretty impressive and thrilling too. Bleah. This post is going nowhere. I’m dazed and fazed. More than half of my total lecture time for the week is crammed into a Prof-a-rific Thursday. During my two hour break I tune in and funk off to my favorite radio show, Super Groover Thursday. It is funky disco Motown stuff and I love it.

It makes me want to get into a 1976 green Monte Carlo with bad shocks, go pick up my Jamaican buddy Ricky and drive slowly down the main street in a run down, pawn shop inundated neighborhood. And when we go over the train tracks the car shakes and jiggles for five blocks while I drive slowly and lean way back with Barry White or the Bee Gees on the radio. Then we go pick up a big old bright blue couch at a discount used furniture store, strap it to the roof of the old menthol monster and head back the other way with Captain and Tennille or Parliament Funkadelic playing. And this time the car bounces even higher and longer as we cruise back over the tracks. Then we go back to his place and watch the Muppet Show on his new funky old couch. Actually, I want to watch the Muppet show right now. Specifically Pigs in Space. I could go for some Beaker and Swedish Chef action too.

Let’s see, what other random crud can I cram into this masterpiece? I had a caramel cappuccino donut at Tim Horton’s for the first time today (actually two of them with some timbits thrown in) Scrumdiddliumptious. Their best donut of the month since the now legendary chocolate snowflake, retired into the donut hall of fame with other memorable greats such as, glazed walnut and that orange and black Halloween one. What the hell were those called?… I forget but they were delicious.

I’ve been making good on my pledge to drink one glass of wine or a beer every night. There was a verified study that confirmed the health benefits of having a single drink a day. It has to do with oxidation. The practice has been causing me to wake up at 3am and have some pretty spectacular nightmares. Or it could be the stress and turmoil I suppose… February is marmoset month on my monkey calendar. Judging by his expression, I would say he’s worrying about his thesis and getting his degree.

Or maybe where he’s going to live in a few months. Still adorable though.

Last month it was a squirrel monkey who looked like he was just trying to reach an itch.

Lately, I’ve been making good on my pledge to have a glass of wine with supper and it has been giving me some real high quality nightmares.

It was negative nineteen this morning. I hate the goddamn cold and getting off of work at 6:30am. I was already chilled from inactivity in the cavernous lobby and the bus took forever to come. Forever. February is my least favorite month. I like July. Fuck February. And Frankie too. Upon awaking today at the crack of 2pm, I played the Billboard top 100 songs of 1961. I randomized it for added excitement. I’ve now got Angel Baby by Rosie and The Originals firmly rooted in my ear. Early sixties music sets off my inner Marty McFly, “George, you have to take Loraine to the Enchantment Under The Sea Dance!”. In 1961 the psychedelic wild sixties rock n roll still hadn’t permeated into the mainstream so it was mostly wholesome crooners with deep syrupy voices singing about crying for your baby, cruel Mary Lou, puppy love and big beating hearts. And they all have a trio of backup singers in white tuxedos with bow ties or pastel bridesmaid dresses going, “woo woo woo” or “dum dum dum” or “duh duh doo doo do duh duh ahhh ahhh ahh waa waa wah”. Most of it’s a lot of fun and I can’t help but getting into it.

The eight songs on the player at the top of the page are eight of my favorites from 1960. I like things with bongos and beatnik lingo. Like what’s happening daddy. It’s Hipsville Dobie. Copasetic kitty man. I’ve actually chosen my favorite 10 or so tracks of pop from each year 1976-2002. Most are more upbeat tracks because each time I workout I do it to a different year. On Monday night it was 1997. The Jock Jam Mega Mix from that year is perhaps my guiltiest musical pleasure. Anyway, I had class at three so I got some of my free pizza (from a pizzaboy friend) out of the freezer and heated it up in the oven. Then put barbeque sauce on it. I defy you to come up with a better breakfast than pizza covered in BBQ sauce. Yum.

I have some pictures of my place of employment that my technophile friend took with his miraculous phone-camera-gaming system-tricorder. I think they are using the garbage chutes to move floor to floor. I’m sixty percent sure I saw one standing still, looking at me through the partially opened lid of the trash compactor Sunday morning. It never runs at night cause the chutes are closed but I’m going to start it up unexpectedly one night and see if I can catch one in it.

2025 me here: Links to missing pictures lost to time again.

The Manor house
The Main building/complex
Special bonus: spaced out xmas morning me

A power generator broke on the University today. I live in an on-campus ninth floor apartment. At the time the power blew I was laying face down on my little turquoise loveseat for no good reason, still in my pajamas and lazily thinking about how I should make a coffee. I am an extremely slothful creature on Sundays and I was comfortably full with three raspberry jelly topped English muffins in my belly. The power going out meant no coffee and no shower any time soon. I had about three hours until I had to show up at work so I wasn’t terribly concerned.

I grabbed Luna, plopped into my bowl chair and listened to the opening chapter of an audiobook on existentialism. The silent, sunset shrouded, multi-hued apartment was the perfect setting for the topic. I enjoyed it. After more lounging around, listening to music and snacking, time began to be a concern. I had to get ready for work. I took a little lit camping lantern into the washroom and shaved in candlelight. By this time my apartment was dark. I tested the shower water, and as I submerged my hand, images of arctic glacier streams, frozen lakes and the polar bear club overwhelmed my senses. It was impossibly cold. So I fetched a little pot and filled it with some of the horrible icy water. I patiently held the pot over a little candle flame and passed the time with evil dark thoughts directed at my malevolent landlord, The University of Western Ontario. It didn’t work, if that water warmed at all, I couldn’t tell.

I ended up trudging to work feeling totally disgusting and smelly. My hair was truly great, half of it standing on end. I wore a toque even though it wasn’t really necessary. Anyway, since I was taking over for a friend he was understanding of my strife and waited while I showered in the men’s changing room for the pool. I felt better. I would have felt great if scholarly obligations weren’t crushing me quite so bad right now. I’m still fighting with Merle too if anyone cares. She called me scum in our last conversation. So yeah, things are going great between us. 

I just read the Scorpio-Scorpio relationship profile for kicks and it seems to fit pretty good. Jealousy is a major theme of our relationship and was the root of the scum comment. I tend to just think she has an undiagnosed case of Borderline Personality Disorder. My tooth still hurts and I don’t really have the money to fix it. Maybe I shouldn’t have listened to that existentialism chapter. Now I feel I have to find my passion. Maybe lumberjack. I need a coffee. I wanted to leave for work early and pick up a sub and a snack. Instead I had to bring cans of soup. I am so sick of soup. Soup sucks. I like how this post started out as a story and then just degraded into me whining and complaining.

I’m almost done Fast Food Nation. Congratulations, Eric Schlosser, you succeeded in taking an already anti-corporate, environmentally and politically conscious, counter-culture, media suave young man and making him even more jaded. I’m thoroughly disgusted with fast and processed foods and the corporate and franchising powers that be. I also now know why McDonalds French fries taste the way they do. Actually, I now know why all processed foods taste the way they do and the quiet industries that facilitate them. I just got through the slaughter house chapter. It was the book’s money shot of gory detail, I found myself cringing as I was walking to work and listening. Apparently, since cattle varies so much in shape and size, automation of these plants is extremely difficult. So meat packing plants rely on unskilled migrant labor with employee turnover of over 80% yearly. Pressure to keep the line going quickly is enormous and the workers have the highest rate of serious injury (mostly lacerations) among the manufacturing industry. They are also all supposedly addicted to speed. An orgy of slashing, hacking, blood and methamphetamine. Yee-Haw. In a similar vein, last night I got a rare chance to watch one of my favorite things, The Fifth Estate, an award winning Canadian documentary show that looks at societal trends and issues.
The topic of this one was U.S.A. politics as presented through the American media eye. Funding sources and probable agendas of various organizations and the effect media bias has on news coverage were examined. It was the type of show that I delight in watching as I simultaneously become frustrated and angry at the material presented.

I felt it was quite objective even though the conservative talking heads came off looking like real assholes. Bob McKeown is the long time host of the show and he had an interview with Ann Coulter. Bob asked her something about U.S.-Canada relations and she replied along the lines of, “Well, Canada used to be the strongest ally of the United States. They sent troops to Vietnam to help ours and…”. Bob cuts her off in a mild but decisive tone, “Canada never sent troops to Vietnam” (very true). Coulter wouldn’t concede the point though, right there on the Fifth Estate being interviewed by a respected Canadian journalist who has been in the game maybe since before she was born and she told Bob he was wrong at least twice. My jaw just dropped open at the ignorance and pig headedness, I couldn’t believe it. Al Franken’s right (who also had an interview), she’s insane. A total psychopath. Unfortunately, I believe they are probably more common in government and the media than one would typically expect. A man who runs an organization monitoring media ethics said some things that struck a chord in me on how information and the real story doesn’t seem to matter anymore. There are just blue facts and red facts; The truth is different depending on which party you support. I found myself admiring Phil Donahue too since he came off so intelligent and informed. An old thoughtful media veteran. There was other meaty stuff on style and accountability too but this is depressing to write about, it really gets me upset. It hurts to ponder the greed, absurdity and patriotic ego of it all.

I’ve decided to leave the UWO webring…. but before I go I will disclose three little known facts about the University.

(1) You can print for FREE at the printers at Weldon or the Taylor library (And I’m not talking about the honor system one by the circulation desk for CD-ROMs, I’m talking about the 7 cent per page ones). Only two people know about this. Me and my partner in crime. Most textbooks are available in ebook form. Draw your own conclusions here.

(2) Everyone knows about the UCC-SSC tunnel but… there are underground and above ground tunnels connecting the following buildings into one big mega complex that is ALWAYS OPEN. Middlesex College, Western Science Center, Biological and Geological, Physics, Chemistry, Natural Science, Kresge, Medical Science building. In winter this is very handy. When I am walking home from work at 6:45am on Sunday morning and it is freezing out I use my card access at Middlesex College and take the tunnels through WSC, Physics, Nat Sci, Kresge, Medical Science and then it is just a little skip and jump home to Bayfield Hall. If I brought a crowbar I could bring home a cadaver or particle accelerator or something cause all those building are totally empty at that time.

(3) As long as you keep paying you can keep coming back.

I make a differentiation between soft and hard deadlines. The softies are self imposed. I don’t know why I keep the facade up though. Every time I write “soft deadline for blah blah blah” in my little black dayplanner I might as well write in “I’m going to win a million dollars today”.  Anyway, I worked all day on a half way done assignment that’s due tomorrow in a very hard way and I desire a break. Lately I’ve been reading Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser. Well not exactly reading. I’m listening to it on Luna in Audiobook form. It’s pretty good; territory I had seen already covered in Super Size Me, but Fast Food Nation came first and goes deeper into the historical development of fast food and its marketing etc.

Anyway, it made me hungry for a thick juicy burger and lucky me, last week on the Okituk expedition, I bought a pack of Presidents Choice thick N juicy burgers, lettuce, tomatoes and sesame seed buns. The Prince Albert Diner has a yummy yummy burger where they throw on all the standard stuff and then they add a thick layer of peanut butter to the patty and this is what I recreated. It was so fucking good. The peanut butter got all hot and melty and yumm yumm. It mixed surprisingly well with the mayo, mustard, ketchup and onion. So good. SOO GOOOD!!!

My kiwis are finally ripe too. When I got home from work yesterday morning at 7am, outside it was still pretty dark, but a reddish glowing kind of dark because all the white snow was reflecting the little light that there was and the sky was kind of purplish just before the sunrise. I came into my dark apartment and put on CHRW campus radio and it was perfect dark glowing morning kiwi eating music.
It was ambient spaceship mars landing slow dreamy surreal type stuff. I sat down at my kitchen table and only had on a little fluorescent lamp and peeled my kiwi in the eerie glow and I pretended I was eating a baby alien pod and it was delicious then I had a little nap before class. The End