Alston: April 2006 Archives

Imaginary conversation with zura:

Me: You know what bolas are, right?
Her: Yeah, sure. Why?
Me: Where could I get some?
Her: I dunno. Looking to catch some game?
Me: Well, I...I just thought it'd be cool to have some. Or one. Whatever. You never know when you might need to stop someone dead in their tracks, you know?
Her: *recovering quickly from thinking "What the fuck...?"* Yeah. Yeah, I could see that. It could be part of your utility gear when prowling the streets at night.
Me: (thinking) Uh, no.

The irony of me thinking that she was lame in imagining having a superhero utility belt when I was asking about handy-dandy bolas that you could carry around with you "just in case" is not lost on me. Nor is the fact that I had an imaginary conversation about an imaginary event. Read on.

I was taking a long walk today. I ended up walking down Avenue Laval, a beautiful street with expensive brownstones and townhouses. I passed one that was especially nice (I peeked in the window) and imagined owning it; living there.

I was walking with a friend and decided to stop in for something. Then I heard a noise from upstairs. I run to my room to investigate and see a guy running away while trying to put on my favourite outfit. Let me remind you that this is not a dream, it's my imagination. He's out the fire escape, almost out of the alley, with me in hot pursuit. I'm chasing him from alley to alley, along Prince Arthur Street, into the nearby drug park. And then I think to myself, "I could put an end to this if only I had a bola..."

There's always a reason why people have these strange thoughts, questions and requests, but it usually isn't worth explaining the path to those thoughts. Anyway, I thought it was funny.

I know that I have been gone in the past month or so, and certainly since leaving the country for a week in February, and definitely since losing my job. I suppose I haven't felt as though I wanted to share anything with anyone. Or that I had anything to share. Not even pretty women. But this is NOT a post about never posting again, or going on hiatus, or anything. I find those annoying.

Life, for various reasons, hasn't been a walk in the park in 2006. Nothing that I care to get into (see? Geez, I annoy myself here) but it has made blogging difficult. I do want it to get better, so I will make an effort to say something, ANYTHING at at least one of my three blogs (the other two are here, and here, and the second is NSFW) every other day. It's really not much, but at this point, I'll take anything.

Or was he oversensitive? I think it was the latter, but then, I almost ALWAYS think that.

Last night, I hosted a pub quiz at Hurley's. It allowed me to get in front of a crowd of people and speak about whatever I wanted, to challenge the knowledge of people (although I overestimated everyone's abilities in mathematics) and to wear a flashy blazer. I didn't do as good a job as I would have liked, but if I ever get the chance again, I would hope that I could keep more than 50% of the original partipants all the way to the end. The champions Patrick, MJ and Michel (and a fourth that I cannot recall from the previous month) were ousted from first place by the team of Procrasto, Shatnerian and Kowy. Sweet. I like it when other people win if I can't.

One of my categories was "Last Month's News", and one of my questions was, "How many Canadian casualties (including both deaths AND injuries) were there in Afghanistan last month?" Answer: 18. Eight-fucking-teen. I bet that's more than in the previous nine months there. Apparently most of those were accidents.

There was a pack of American/Newfie yahoos causing trouble, being loud obnoxious, shouting out answers and so on. It was a mistake to allow them to play (although I didn't know at the time that they were like this) although I don't know that it would have made a difference anyway. After I asked that question, one of them turned to me with hate in his eyes, as though I had pissed on the grave of one of his friends that he lost in battle. "That's COLD, man. That's real cold. Using their deaths as a game! It's not a fucking game!" And so on.

Did anyone notice that there were a hell of a lot of Canadian casualities in Afghanistan last month? I sure as hell did. It was the reason that category: so that I could ask that question. As one that really doesn't like the idea of us having to do this shit (and I am far from convinced that we are there to "do the right thing and chip in"), it outrages me that we are losing lives to the chaos there. By asking this question, I wanted to make the people in the room aware that a lot of Canadian (and obviously Afghan, American and British, etc.) blood has been shed. Do we know why? I don't think so.

March was a terrible month for Canadian forces. Eighteen dead and injured. If he had lost a friend there, I think that my question honoured them and brought them to the minds of about 40 people that night. Would he have cared if I had asked the name of a murder victim? Unless he had a personal stake in it, I fucking doubt it. In any case, regardless of his feelings, I asked about news stories, which is fair game. I'm [not that] sorry, but too bad.

The yahoos mostly fucked off after the second round and went downstairs where they continued to cause trouble. The guy and his friends were bitching about my question all night. They were even belligerent to the staff. Was I insensitive? Should I NOT have asked the question? I think that these people were wrong and I wasn't. As of now, I'm not willing to swallow any wrongdoing. What do you think?