Fuck Frankie.
The most fun you can have with your pants on.

Every summer up until high school when I wasn’t in the woods with the family I was on my block playing Fuck Frankie. The core of regular players included myself, three other same aged neighborhood catholic school kids; Keith, Sean, Brent and the Christiansan brothers, Chris and Ryan. They were a little younger. Our day always ended with one of them going home crying and/or bleeding. They always came back though. No one can resist the spectacle that is Fuck Frankie.

Keith was the organizer. He had to be because his yard and the surrounding yards next to and behind his house were the absolute best playing field. His house was fenced and bushed and gated with garages, cars, fences, boats all around, a forking gravel alley frames the area. The neighbours were truly excellent in allowing us kids to tramp and run all over and through their properties. On one side were a bunch of perpetually stoned college kids and a really nice old couple on the other side. “You hear that dear? Keith and his nice friends are playing Fuck Frankie again.” Keith’s three legged collie added a comically hoping and barking X-factor into the game.

So after any combo of the posse showed up at my door (Keith only lived 7 houses down), I would head over to meet up in front of his house at his large concrete steps and porch. This was the home base and location of  many exciting explosive and violent encounters. We chose “Frankie” with that baseball bat hands game and much cheating. Lacking a bat we used dirty circular rhyming ending in “and you are not it”.

So it’s basically a rough and profanity laced version of hide and go seek. All the non-Frankies go and hide and after a few minutes Frankie starts out from the concrete steps to come and seek. Just finding someone isn’t good enough though, Frankie’s got to catch you. As soon as someone spots Frankie from their hiding spot they take a deep breathe and yell with everything they’ve got FUCK FRANKIE!!! (It is so satisfying to yell this as loud as humanly possible, try it sometime.) That signals to everyone to run back to home base. If you can make it back to the steps without Frankie grabbing you, you’ve made it to the next round. If Frankie nabbed you, well congratulations now you are Frankie number two and the first place loser. So it’s all about stealth and cunning followed by frantic bursts of speed and agility, hurdling fences, juking and jiving, taunting and humiliation. The winner is the last non-Frankie. Sometimes the last non-Frankie would go hide and all the Frankies would go to the corner store without you. What a bunch of assholes.

We played other games too. Jailhouse was a good one because it involved locking people in a garage. Street hockey, baseball, water wars, other mischief. Fuck Frankie was the all-time favorite though.

Burnt toast. Toothache. Headache. Dirty. Sore. Have to work all night. So fucking tired. I’m spreading depression wherever I go. I was told so.

I had this poster on my wall from about age 10 to probably about 13. Video Village gave away all their posters for new releases to whoever wrote their name on the back of them. Even as a kid I thought it was a lame sequel. Part 3 was even worse. This poster was pretty damn spiffy though.

Sunday afternoon. So lazy. Nothing brilliant here. Coffee tastes like shit today. (It is shit, Austin. Oh, well, it’s not just me then… It’s a bit nutty.)  It was in my thermos all night. Reheated, it tastes charred, scorched, burnt. It’s mostly hazelnut cream with a few Belgium chocolate beans dropped in. I ground it in the decaf grinder at the store in a mundane act of rebellion.  

Maybe one of my plants will like it. They were watered for the first time in a solid month yesterday, maybe longer. I refused to water them until they showed some signs of needing it. It took a long fucking time and only the small ones showed some browning. I get the feeling it was just for my benefit and they are obtaining nourishment in some other more sinister way.

I have a thirty minute computational biology presentation tomorrow/today (Monday). I’ve decided to wing it.  Presentations are more fun when there are long awkward pauses.

Early one mornin’ while makin’ the rounds
I took a shot of cocaine and I shot my woman down

Music music music. I have brought some back from the future. “Magnolia Electric Country – Trials and Errors”, a 2005 release. How did I get my big fuzzy paws on it? Indie Torrents. That is my secret little site that only the hipsters know about so shhhh. I snatched a whole bunch of new music this weekend. I’ll put some new tracks up on my player at the bottom of the list.

Shot her down because she made me slow
I thought I was her daddy but she had five more

This Trials and Errors album is little twangy. A rock-country hybrid. You know I don’t mind country music too much. I have to be clear though. The heavily produced, bleached blonde, mass marketed, digitized sludge that is played on country radio stations and television channels is not what I consider country music. Chances are you haven’t heard the country music I listen to. There is a show on CHRW (University Radio) Tuesday nights at 10pm called Hardcore Country that I enjoy. I bet you would too. It is raw, emotional and cliche free. That reminds me, I’m putting up “Johnny Cash – Cocaine Blues” on my player. It is an all time favorite. “The Reason – The Joke and The Gentleman” and “The Blow – Hey Boy” are kind of fun tracks I just added too.

99 years underneath that ground
I can’t forget the day I shot that bad bitch down

Ohhohaa! Checked my email and apparently somebody sent me an unexpected parcel. It is down at the rental office of my building. Can’t get it until Monday. Now I’m going to be thinking about it all weekend. Who sent me the present?

Crashed back to reality. All the swagger and smack talk are gone. Finished one project only to turn around and cower before four more looming menacingly. The magical term finish date of December sixteenth continues to approach. I like how it’s a hard date. Succeed or fail, it will all be over on that day and I will be able to assess the damage and recollect myself.

It snowed today and promptly melted. This is probably the last week for my well used bicycle. A shame because it will be a loss of two hours of much needed cardiovascular exercise every week. Maybe I can work trips to the cardio room at campus recreation back into my routine. I paid for a full locker and towel service in the men’s locker room and it is going to waste. I don’t miss it though. It smells like ass in there. Yes, ass. I’ve been told the women’s locker room has individual shower stalls with dividers between shower spaces. That is totally unfair. In the men’s locker room it is all open concept prison style. 3 or 4 shower heads to one metal post. Full frontal man nudity no matter where you look.

The Christmas gift giving at work has begun. I was given a bottle of wine by a friendly lawyer tonight. I can’t tell if it’s any good. All I know about wine is that anything under 12.5% alcohol is unacceptable. Does anyone know how the Merlot grapes were in Argentina 2001?

It’s amazing what you can do when your back is against the wall. My coding skillz are so 1337. My affine gap penalty global alignment brings all the girls to the yard. Damn right its better than yours. I can teach you but I have to charge. It’s fast and lean and mean. Explosion overpowering, over the competition I’m towering. Don’t you dare compare me to the rest that’ll all get sliced and diced. Competition’s paying the price. Watch out motherfuckers cause I’m dangerous. I’m starting to think I may actually survive this term.

I have insomnia tonight. An old problem that hasn’t visited for a few weeks. It’s a topic I’ve researched a little. One of the tips to get through it that works is not to lay in bed trying to fall asleep but to actually get up and do something relaxing for a while and then go back. It is a mistake to just roll around and get frustrated because that makes sleep even more difficult in coming. You can ruin a whole night in bed that way, the later it gets the more frustrated and stressed you get as sleep continues to elude.

So I am up and taking this opportunity to watch some anime!

It has been a while since I indulged. I just watched Kino’s Travels episode eight, it is a series with a total of thirteen episodes. Very beautiful. Not just the animation quality but plot wise too. Most episodes are self-contained stories about a traveler visiting a new country and interacting with the people and their unique customs. It has a post apocalyptic feel where all the nations are self contained entities knowing nothing of what is outside their borders so they are all at different stages of technological achievement. It is very colourful and usually upbeat but has some darker themes too. (slave traders with a secret in episode two.) The episode I just watched was about a girl who dreamed of flying. Inspirational. I think I’m sleepy enough now. Goodnight. 

I can’t stop fantasizing about having amnesia. I even flirted with the idea of not posting for a week or so, then coming back and pretending to be back from the hospital and a hit and run bicycle accident. I would have posted about how I discovered I had a blog and what I thought of all my previous entries from my year 2000 perspective. I could have asked everyone for information about myself. That would have been fun.

One of these things isn’t like the others, one of these things just doesn’t belong

I was reading an article on the Iraq election date and embedded in the article they slipped this cute little photo op in. It is probably white house tradition but come on, he had to know people would get a laugh out of it. (I sure did.) Another interesting note, those are the old Sesame Street matching game lyrics but in recent years they were changed to “One of these things isn’t like the others, one of these things just isn’t the same“. Not too hard to see why they changed it. I’m not complaining, it’s a positive change.

2025 me here: I’m guessing the broken link was some sort of joke about Bush Jr and the Nobel Peace Prize.

Static whine echoing in skull. Eyes open, sparks dance in the air. Thick hazy fog. Metallic taste. Breathing
slow and deliberate. Limbs heavy. A cool soreness. Where am I?

So tired, so numb, so much more to do.

got to get away

I think I have good post material for tonight. It could be entitled “The old man and I”. I slaved away from 7am to 7pm today so I don’t know though. I need to eat and relax a little. My back hurts. I feel like soggy toast. I’ll be in my bowl chair if anyone needs me.

Ehh. So tired, restless, unhappy, quick to anger, huffy, fluffy, puffy. Not going to whine about the old man. Where was I? Sleeping on a keyboard at 3am on campus. My face was probably all checkered from the keys when I woke up. The metallic taste, probably my new filling. I’ve spent over two grand on dental care this year. Never again will I neglect my teeth. Floss and mouthwash.

So lost right now. Maybe tomorrow I’ll find my way home.

No time to update but I need some sort of break.. Despite what I like to believe, I am not a machine. Feeling very self-destructive this evening. Instead of putting in a Herculean effort to finish some projects and assignments I just want to lounge around in my pajamas, drinking coffee, maybe screw my TV cable back in, maybe some anime, Xanga commenting. Arg. Not good, I think I just convinced myself to be bad. I’m unprivatizing yesterdays big chatty post. I took it down because I hated how upbeat and peppy it was. A total opposite to what I was feeling. It is impossible for me to stay dark and brood for long though. Even when everything seems to be falling apart I can still smile and laugh. I still enjoy just being, I’ve always been an optimist and probably always will.

2025 me here: Picture links are broken. Take care of your pictures people, especially the old ones where you are young and cute.

I am on fire and doing a slow descent. Crash date is in seven days. Explosion in eight. *Yawn*  Feeling very lazy. Maybe after a coffee I will get fired back up. Sundays are probably my favorite day. Even though I have work in the evening, I love just relaxing all afternoon. It was very cold this morning, meaning this is likely my last week or two of commuting on bicycle. I get off at 6:30am and it is pretty chilly at that time. Here I am warming up at 6:50 am after working twelve hours and a freezing bike ride from work.

Note the statically charged hat hair. I then sleep for as long as my body can. Today I rolled out of bed at the crack of 2:00pm, made a large oven puffy pancake and at 3:00 pm watched the Toronto Raptors lose once again in my bowl chair and spiffy pajamas. (don’t I look like I would be fun to wake up with?)

I really do wear my glasses and pull a chair up close when watching because of my pathetically small TV. My monitor is actually bigger. My job: Concierge, aka: well dressed slave. Working all day for a mean little guy, with a bad toupee and a soup-stained tie. He’s got me running round the office like a gerbil on a wheel. He can tell me what to do but he can’t tell me what to feel. Hey, Julie… Sorry, slipped into a song there.

I actually don’t have any supervision at all.  I work at an upscale condo building providing security and coddling to the old rich widows and retired businessmen here. The biggest fish who lives here is probably Les Pyette, the editor-in-chief of the National Post. He is a nice guy, at least to me anyway. I usually see Peter Mansbridge on the week-ends too (his parents live here). For the non-Canadians, Peter Mansbridge is our big prestigious news anchor. He is ok, he dresses like a total shlub. Probably to disguise himself. There are a couple other notables but I am getting off track dropping names like a true pompous prick.

Anyway, it is a swanky joint filled with geriatrics with money. Being a student (who also has seniority here), I have chosen to work night shifts. On these shifts I have free reign of the place. They give the staff unlimited internet access, there is a sauna and swimming pool, a billiards room, exercise room with cable TV, a few other amenities, lots of places to go take a nap, etc. So that is what I am talking about when I say cushy. The drawback is the godawful pay. It’s probably the reason I have seniority here after only a few years on the job. My only real duty is to be available by cell phone so that if an old lady needs her jar of jam opened, I can run up to her suite and do it with a smile. I am supposed to do patrols too. The day staff is actually pretty busy but the night shift is free like the wind. I like to look at it as being payed to study (even though I usually just procrastinate).

P.S. If wonderplum ever comes back I’m going to one eprop her for a whole week

*grumble grumble*

At least she can’t make fun of the pictures I just posted.