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[famouslastwordsinmexico]

Suggested for You

     You think to yourself, I shouldn’t have looked that up online.

     You’re now staring at a bunch of banner ads that frame your email inbox. Each one is attempting to entice you to purchase succulents from flower shops near and far, small and conglomerated. The bright, animated images boast to you about how their store’s succulents will set you on the path to self-care while reconnecting you with nature. You know these ads are suggested to you and tailored specifically for you based on your search history, but, really, you just wanted to know how to spell “succulent”.

     To be fair, you probably shouldn’t be looking up non-work related curiosities while actually at work, but it’s been a slow morning. And yet, right as you excuse yourself for the trivial indiscretion, you’re called into your manager’s office. You lock your computer and worriedly head over to where they wait for you. Upon entering the room you see that there is someone else here for this impromptu meeting. Or, rather, someone has video-called in, their face on your manager’s monitor, which has been turned to meet yours.

    “A representative from HR will be joining us remotely,” your manager informs you. They then sit on the front edge of their desk, not behind it, in a manner you suspect all managers unironically believe comes off as cool and relaxed.

    “Huh. Is something wrong?” You cautiously take your seat, looking between them and the digital HR rep.

    “Oh, no, not at all. It’s just a small request.” They fold their hands in front of them. “That presentation you’re working on for Friday; I wanted to ask if you would give it over to Robert.”

    “Robert? Why? I thought it was supposed to be my project.” You worked hard on that presentation, and even harder on that project. It was something that was going to get you noticed by the higher-ups, a first step towards bigger things.

    “It is. Or, it was. It…” They stop themselves, physically appear to reset, and adopt a concerned face. “We’re simply worried it might be putting too much stress on you.” They lean in. “How are you feeling? Is everything alright with you?”

    “Uh… I’m doing fine?” You’re progressively less certain about what’s happening.

    “You sure? You can be honest with us.” They lean back. “We’ve heard you’ve been depressed.”

    The shock of this gives you mental whiplash.

    “‘Depressed’?” you echo. “Why would you think that?”

    “Well,” they begin, affecting the concerned yet distant tone in which only senior managers are capable of speaking, “it’s come to our attention that you’ve been sharing some pretty troubling sentiments.”

    “I only really talk about work-related stuff with people, honestly.”

    “No, I’m referring to the stuff you share online.”

    Dumbfounded, you blink.

    “You see,” your manager explains, “we recently employed a service that keeps us up to date with our employees.” They seem mildly pleased with themself over their technological ability. They speak to you but look at the HR rep on screen. “Of course, it’s only because we care for the well-being of everyone here in the office. And their software told us that you’ve been feeling quite down lately. They even highlighted some examples; is it not true that you recently posted about how nothing really matters?”

    You don’t recall using those words for anything. As you confusedly shrug, they pull out their phone and hand you it, showing the post in question.

    “Wait, what?” you ask. “Those are song lyrics. To a very popular song! I shared them for a ‘Throwback Thursday’.”

    “Hmm, no,” they say, taking their phone back. “I’m still seeing a cry for help. Like, what about this one: ‘All I want is to sleep and pizza and do nothing and sleep’? That sounds pretty depressed.”

    “That was one of those online things where people let auto-complete write a post for them.”

    “Sure, then how do you explain this post, where you describe how you wish the food truck across the street would ‘run you over’ if you ‘tipped extra’ for your burrito before you got back in from lunch?”

    “That’s a really old post I made when I was at my old job. The one I left for this job! I made that joke to vent. Other people liked it.” Specifically two people: a friend, and the food truck’s company (which you presume auto-likes any mention of their brand).

    Your manager sighs as they shake their head.

    “Come on, now, you don’t have to hide. You can be honest.” They lean in again. “This is sophisticated software; it wouldn’t lie. Its algorithm combed through your life and crunched the numbers. You are depressed. And, if you’re feeling depressed, we want to make sure the company isn’t placing any undue stress on you. Wouldn’t want you turning around and saying we’re unfair, or that we torment you with public speaking, huh?” No one laughs at their non-joke. The HR rep briefly writes something on their notepad. “Right. Well, when we ask you to hand the presentation off to Robert, it’s not just because we want it to turn out well, it’s because we want you to be well, too.”

    “You’re punishing me because of memes?” you ask, unsure of how much incredulity you can show without further risking your job.

    “Oh, no, of course not,” they reply, “we would never!” At this point your manager doesn’t even try to hide that they’re assuring the HR rep more than they’re talking to you. “This company does not punish depression. In fact,” they add, turning back to you, “why don’t you take the rest of the day off? We’ll mark it down as a sick day, a day for ‘personal care’, even.” They nod to themself, satisfied. “I’ll mark it down in your time sheet right now.”

    They pull out their phone and begin typing, finished with this meeting. You want to tell them not to do that, since you only have a limited number of sick days, but feel there’d be no use arguing. You stand up, at a loss for words. As you slowly turn to leave you find the HR rep is pointing towards the printer in the room. It prints off something you deduce they sent remotely. It appears to be a pamphlet. The person in the monitor motions for you to pick it up, their face set in the textbook definition of a polite smile. The pamphlet is titled Dealing with Depression.

    Your smartwatch pings as you grab the pamphlet and the screen displays an ad for succulents. You turn the watch off.

    You don’t feel like going home right away. You instead head to a nearby cafe and order the kind of sugary latte you know isn’t worth the high price and higher calorie count, but you could use the comfort. There are no real baristas here, only machines that charge you extra to print a picture of yourself onto the latte foam. You pay the extra amount. You then sign on to the free wifi, checking off the terms and conditions you didn’t read, and take a picture of your cup to share online. Not five minutes of browsing later you get a call from your mom. You plug in your headset and answer.

    “Are you alright?” she asks.

    “Yeah, how do you mean?” You wonder why everyone’s asking you that today.

    “Because you’re not at work!” You realize now that the picture you just posted is location-tagged. “And I know what kind of drinks you like when you’re feeling sad; I’m your mother, after all.” You should’ve never accepted her friend request.

    “No, it’s not that, it’s just… I’m alright. Working from home today, but I figured I’d grab a coffee. That’s all, I promise.”

    You don’t think she believes you but her silence tells you she won’t push if you don’t want to tell her the truth. You instead get a notification on your phone that your mom has sent you a “poke”, a feature that only moms still remember exists. She breaks the silence first.

    “Well, okay then,” she offers, “if you say so. Anyways, there was something else I wanted to ask you about.” Her tone gets conspiratorial for her next question. “Are you and Jamie dating?”

    “What?!” You nearly choke on your latte. “No! Why do you think that?”

    “Your aunts told me,” she answers plainly. “And, apparently, some of their friends told them first. They’re still not used to, you know, those kinds of relationships.” As progressive as your mom can be, her age and upbringing still show from time to time.

    “I don’t even know my aunts’ friends, why would they think I’m dating Jamie?”

    “They saw your picture online.”

    You rub your eye, annoyed.

    “What picture, mom?”

    “Well,” she starts, and if phones still had cords you could imagine your mom twirling hers now, wrapping her finger as she shares the gossip, “you see, one of your aunts’ friends was online and saw you as a suggested friend.” You never understood what algorithms determined those suggestions. “She was curious, so she went in and browsed your page. There it was, a photo of the two of you, looking pretty close and cozy.”

    You check your account on your phone. There’s no way someone randomly looking you up online could’ve seen that photo. Although, how many times did the site tell you they were updating their privacy policy and you opted to skip the details of what that meant?

    “Mom, didn’t you see that picture yourself before? That was just Jamie and me playing around. You know we’re just friends.”

    “Yes, I thought it was nothing. But, those friends of your aunts talk a lot, and they do seem very convinced. I looked at the picture again and it got me thinking.” Her tone gets conspiratorial again. “Are you dating Jamie? I’d have nothing against it. Your father, though…” You block the headset mic to hide your exasperated sigh, and then interrupt before she can finish the thought.

    “We’re not close, mom, not like that. My aunts and their friends are making up stories.” You wonder how scrutinized any future pictures you post will be. Maybe you should restrict how much of your profile your mom can access. You’ll have to figure out the new privacy settings first.

    “Yes, fine, you’re right. I’m simply saying they sounded convinced, is all.” You can almost picture her busying herself with some chores at home to prove that she’s over it. And yet she adds, “I will say, though, that if you were with Jamie, I’d be very supportive. Jamie���s lovely, and would be lucky to have you.”

    You hide another exasperated sigh and change the topic. When she’s had her fill of catching up, your mom says goodbye and you hang up.

    You sit in the cafe, your mouth contorted in contemplation save for when you sip from your cup. You thought you were good at keeping your personal and online lives separate, but thanks to dubious algorithms and out-of-touch inquirers, your agency at work has been diminished and your sexuality is being questioned by people who’d be less than understanding. Even if you restrict who gets access to your information, what little slips through the cracks is still interpreted without context. Is that what the internet is now? For people to be data-mined so other people can make assumptions? Who wanted it that way?

    Your phone sets off with another notification, informing you that a local indoor plant store has followed you online. They specialize in succulents.

    You almost laugh out loud at the insanity of it. Of course; this hunt for data is mostly the hunt for ad revenue. While it’s a marvel how fervently someone on the other side of the screen wants to believe they understand you, advertisers are the ones who set the system up. And even they can’t seem to get it right!

    The fever of frustration breaks, giving way to a fever of defiance. Why leave room to be misinterpreted? You decide to live your online life unabashedly and unafraid to share all. Will someone be tracking your moves? You don’t care, but if they are you hope they can keep up.

    You grab your phone and browse with fury and determination. You share news articles and let your political leanings lay bare as you never had before. You hit “publish” on every dumb joke and inane thought you had previously hid shamefully as drafts. You post all of the pictures in your phone, and when you’re done with those you take a couple more. You follow musicians, actors, and influencers alike, so that no one would have to guess what your tastes are. You join in as many forum conversations as you can, and only stop when a person you’re arguing with, who has an anime-girl profile picture, threatens to dox you. You log off.

    When you finally get home you’re bleary eyed from unblinking browsing and shaky from the excess of caffeine. You want nothing more than to decompress. As you turn on your TV to search for something to stream and zone out to, you call out to your virtual assistant device and say, “Play something soothing.”

    Though your command was vague, as the speakers turn on they start playing exactly what you only now realize you had in mind. You love this band, even if you hadn’t thought of them in a while. Your phone goes off with a notification that this band has a concert coming up soon. As if on instinct triggered by serendipity, you click the notification to buy tickets.

    While browsing various streaming services on your TV you come across several documentaries that you’ve heard confirm a lot of opinions you’ve had on the state of things. While you’d love to be proven correct, you’re more in the mood for something light. You wonder if they have this one funny movie that’s a reboot of a movie that’s based on a book. Before you can remember the title you see it listed. You hit play.

    Ultimately, modern movie watching entails being on your phone, so you scroll through whatever new content was uploaded on your commute home. While you idly browse, you find another tailored ad, this time for a t-shirt boldly claiming that people born the same month as you are kind yet shouldn’t be messed with, each line in a different garish font.

    “Ha,” you laugh to yourself, “what a stupid ad.” Even after all the data you gave them, advertisers are no better than your manager or your aunts, thinking they know you and what’s best for you.

    Suddenly the page you’re on refreshes. What loads first is the ad, this time for a different shirt that’s admittedly more your style. The tagline reads, “Your life, your look.” Unsettled by the coincidence and feeling like you’ve found yourself in a conversation with your phone you didn’t know you were having, you try to click on a different link. More content loads just at that moment, though, shifting the layout of the page and leading you to click on the ad instead. Surprised, you fumble with your phone to close what’s popped up, but as your panicked fingers slip your phone decides you mean to go through with the order. You adjust your hold on your phone but somehow manage to set off a biometric scan that confirms the purchase.

    As if queued by your consumerist momentum, an ad interrupts the movie you’re watching (since when did this streaming service have ads?). The volume seems to increase on its own as the TV blares at you.

    “You don’t necessarily feel you age, so why look your age? Our skin cream can miraculously take 5 years off your face, letting your inner youth shine through.” The ad shows a model before and after using the cream. It makes a specific point of telling you the model’s age, which is your age.

    You search frantically for the remote to turn the volume down. No matter what angle you point the remote at it, the TV refuses to recognize your button pushing. You get up and simply turn off the TV manually. This gives your virtual assistant device space to chime in with a separate ad.

    “Tired of the long commute to your workplace? Find more free time while moving into one of the fastest growing neighbourhoods that’s perfect for you.” The voice emanating from your speakers describes listings in a building that you recognize is half a block away from your office. You run to unplug the device.

    One by one more “smart” appliances in your home, devices that you now question their need for internet connectivity, begin to play or display ads that were made to appeal to you exactly.

    “Our energy efficient windows fit your green lifestyle!” your thermostat boasts, citing a climate change article you just read.

    “Let us deliver the groceries you need for the recipes you love!” your fridge demands, listing off your actual favourite recipes.

    “Bzzt!” vibrates your electric toothbrush, calling you to look at its charger’s digital screen and see an ad for a dental clinic, featuring a close up of a mouth you’re weirdly certain is actually yours.

    As your apartment comes alive with the sounds of aggressive advertising, you’re terrified. You step out onto the balcony. You think to yourself, and only to yourself, that you need to get away.

    A delivery drone floats up from under your balcony and stops right at your eye level. It’s been outfitted with a display monitor. It plays a video.

    “Looking for a vacation?” it asks. “Why not fly out to Pasadena, California? You can visit the Cactus & Succulent Society of America’s annual show and sale!”

[famouslastwordsinmexico]

When I was younger I’d measure how much I’ve grown up by where I was allowed to go by myself. My parents had that fear I imagine most immigrant parents had, where they were worried I’d get lost in a city where they didn’t know anyone like they would’ve back home. When they let go of their fear I felt so adult being able to take the bus on my own or to go to the store across the street with no one to tell me when to cross.

I remember the first time I had permission to walk alone was when I was allowed to go upstairs to our apartment while everyone else was playing in the parking lot. I must’ve had to go to the washroom, or maybe grab a ball or badminton rackets. I walked down the first floor hallway to the elevator, clutching my mom’s keys firmly because I was certain that if I lost them I’d lose the right to go places by myself.

As I walked I watched the doors to all of the other apartments. I never realized how empty these hallways can feel when it’s just me. I don’t know why I did it, but I started to spook myself by imagining arms reaching out from those doors, trying to grab at me and steal me away. I picked up the pace and stayed as close to the middle of the hallway as I could.

Next month I’m going to move into my own place for the first time. My reasons for staying so long at home were financial and familial, and I stand by them, but this has definitely been long overdue. It’s one of the last things I’ve had to do to feel truly like an adult. Walking down those new hallways reminded me of how I imagined those disembodied arms and hands reaching for me, but I think that’s a funny memory. I think I can handle it all now.

[famouslastwordsinmexico]

Other Side

     I sometimes lose myself going through thresholds. The act of pushing a door open makes me forget where I’m coming from and where I’m going. For a brief moment I live only in the act of crossing over, of being in-between.

     I don’t know why I’m like this. It could be an object-permanence thing. Maybe I’m subconsciously fascinated with human-made boundaries. Would I feel this way if I pushed past overgrowth onto a jungle path? I’m not sure. All I know is, I lose so much of myself in these moments that once I cross over, I need to take some time to recognize where I am, and to remember where I was and how it led me here.

     So, when I walked in on you in the bathroom, I didn’t stand there blankly out of some perverted stubbornness. Also, you’re the one who forgot to lock the door, come on.

[famouslastwordsinmexico]

Barrett’s and Beer

I was at a bar with my girlfriend for her co-worker’s birthday. It was a pretty quiet night of drinks and discussions with people I’d never met before. At some point, though, we heard glasses banging rhythmically. The people at the table next to us had started to sing a sea shanty. I never really expected to experience a bout of singing like that in a bar, and I especially never expected it would be with a shanty. It wasn’t a song I’d heard before, but I was actually the odd one out, as most of the people at my table started singing along. I watched, stunned, as our table and theirs formed a chorus, belting verse after endless verse about life in Halifax. They didn’t even stop when someone from the table next to ours dropped and shattered a glass they were banging, nor when the waitress came to sweep up the shards. If my girlfriend didn’t look equally as confused, I would have thought I’d been experiencing an east coast flavoured fever dream.

When the song finally finished – or when enough people finally gave up on singing the whole thing – the Maritimers between our two tables exchanged niceties. Their conversation didn’t go far, though, and they all returned to their respective tables. But, I started to pay attention to the people from the other table, those mysterious instigators of song.

There were four guys. I couldn’t guess their ages, since they all looked like they were 15 going on 50, but based on their clothes and the way they carried themselves, I assumed they were in grad school. One sported the reddest sweater vest I’d ever seen and had facial hair that told me he’s wanted to be a professor since before he could stand. Another wore a yellow jumper and, though he looked like the young, plucky stowaway the captain takes a liking to in every movie about sailing, he also had on a wedding band. The third was balding and seemed so at home wearing his messenger bag I could swear it was sewn onto him. The fourth guy wore a dress shirt that was too formal for this bar, and he was noticeably the only person of colour at his table. I was also the darkest-skinned person at my table, but there was something about their table that gave me comfort in seeing the diversity. Otherwise, they’d come off as the kind of guys who maintain an alt-right blog in their spare time. My girlfriend and I instead agreed that they come off more as the ghosts of a long lost crew of Nova Scotian sailors.

As the night progressed and the drinks flowed, we all stopped paying attention to the other table. It was a surprise, then, when our conversation was interrupted by the unmistakable sounds of rising conflict and argument. We tuned in just in time to hear Dress Shirt speak in a scorned, accusing half-yell.

“How dare you make fun of the French in my face?”

He was speaking to Messenger Bag and standing, as best as he could, despite how drunk he clearly was. Messenger Bag was also standing, leaning back to avoid engaging Dress Shirt. Every time Dress Shirt spat a new accusation, Messenger Bag would shrug and gesture exaggeratedly to the waitress currently giving him his bill, as if to say that none of this was his fault. The waitress wasn’t looking at any of them, as if to say she didn’t care to intervene in their bullshit.

“You call yourself a Canadian? You’re not a real Tory,” Dress Shirt snarled with a slur. “How dare you make fun of the French?”

“I’ve made jokes about the French with you a million times,” interjected Sweater Vest. “You didn’t have a problem then.” Dress Shirt didn’t pay any attention to him, and stayed fixed on Messenger bag.

“How dare you make fun of the French? In my face!”

Everyone at my own table had stopped talking. We were now too busy trying to not laugh at all of this. “In” his face instead of “To” his face? Insulting someone by calling their status as a Canadian into question? We didn’t look at each other for fear our stifled snickers would become joint bellowing laughter.

Dress Shirt started insulting Messenger Bag with Québécois slang, spoken in a thick French-Canadian accent. When he switched back to English, repeating the same accusations, Messenger Bag said nothing. He nodded curtly in a tell-me-how-you-really-feel sort of way, but the way he clutched his shoulder strap betrayed the fact that he preferred flight over fight.

“You’re not a real Canadian,” Dress Shirt spat again. “And you’re sure as hell not a good Catholic!”

That was almost it for my table. A number of us audibly snorted from the effort it took to not laugh out loud. We held it together, though, long enough for Messenger Bag to finish squaring up with the waitress and for Dress Shirt to finally sit back down. Messenger Bag put on his coat and moved to leave. He stopped to lean back over his table and deliver his last zinger, his final blow before the mic drop with which he wanted to close the argument.

“You know, I can see now why our condo kicked you off the condo board!”

Louder snorts erupted from my own table.

The night continued. Our table drank more while their table conversed reservedly. At one point I had to use the washroom; Sweater Vest was leaving the washroom at the same time. He held the door open for me and let me through with the kindest smile. It was such an earnest show of politeness that I felt bad for laughing at him and his friends. Sure, they come off more like an alien interpretation of what it means to be adults, but there’s no rulebook for growing up. If sea shanties, over dressing, and condo boards make them happy, then I guess I’m happy for them.

I will, however, be accusing all of my friends of being bad Catholics like it’s the worst of insults.

[famouslastwordsinmexico]

From Afar

     Wanting something for a long time is exhausting. Finally getting it is exhilarating.

     As you wait and want you take time to process everything. Is this really something I want? What about this possible pitfall, or this supposed flaw? The distance allows you to work out the answers, letting you shoot down every con until you’re certain this thing is absolutely perfect for you. Then one day you get tired of waiting and just go for it.

     It’s amazing. It’s everything you’ve ever dreamed of, but knowing you’re awake and get to experience the reality of it makes it all so much sweeter. Your entire world changes. Even the act of breathing becomes different; every inhale is an excited gasp and ever exhale is a relieved sigh. Certain physical feedback you adored before – a smell, a touch, a look – become the very reason you wake up every morning.

     But, defining your happiness by one thing leaves you vulnerable. Losing what you wanted is excruciating.

     First you ignore the signs that things are different. Then when too much has changed, you convince yourself you can work through it. You subject yourself to pain, hanging only by the thread of the memory of how good it all was at the start. Before too long, it’s too much to bear. The physical feedback that once brought you so much joy now becomes a symbol of great loss. When you experience that smell, that touch, or that look, your stomach drops, your skin burns, and your eyes water.

     You don’t want to hate this thing you used to love so deeply, even though part of you feels that’ll help you get over it. So, you let it go and have to learn to live on your own again.

     “Uh. Okay. So, you’re saying that finally getting a cat was…?”

     The greatest joy of my life.

     “And developing that cat allergy?”

      The cruellest act of fate I have ever fallen victim to.

[famouslastwordsinmexico]

I disappeared for a bit, but I’ve still been writing Here’s me performing at True Stories (Told Live) Toronto, a show at The Garrison. I’m telling a reworked version of “Gimme Sympathy” with a friend on bass

[famouslastwordsinmexico]

I'm in a weird place in my life right now and have a few things that I need to work on and address in order to understand what kind of person I am. The boundary between the person I am now and the person I'll probably be for the rest of my life is approaching and it takes many forms, all of which I want to be ready for. In times like these there are a lot of things to be uncertain about so my only solace are the few things I do know. One of those few things is that, I don't want to be like the guy in the gas station I heard today asking the cashier, "May I please get some change before you close what I believe they call a 'tilly'", who then proceeded to say "tilly" five more times before someone finally told him it was a "till". All of the power in the world to you, tilly guy, really, but I just can't.

[famouslastwordsinmexico]

I went out to see a friend of mine DJ at a club down on Queen Street. It’s a pretty swanky place, but in a way that’s more annoying than intimidating. It advertises itself as a “masterpiece of untamed sophistication”, for fuck’s sake.

 On the way down there one of my friends finds a pair of pliers just sitting atop some random mailbox. He works in HVAC repair, and apparently they’re really good pliers, so he decides that, fuck it, he’s nabbing them. I point out that he can't risk taking them into the club, lest security decides he plans to disturb the shit with them. Fortunately next to the club we find a plywood facade built where some storefront is getting construction work done. My friend dips in there and drops it off.

 When we arrive at the place no one but our DJ friend is there. 10:30pm is the time you’re supposed to leave for a club, not arrive at it, but we’re 23 and lame. I mean, I rarely stayed out late on Thursday nights back when I didn’t have a job to keep me from doing just that. We hang out in the tiny DJ booth and watch as eventually people file in. At first it’s only girls showing up in packs. Each group consists of four-to-five blondes of indeterminate age. I start to wonder if it’s a ladies-only event and we just flew under the radar. As if on cue, though, the frat boys show up. I’m not exaggerating; it’s a frat event and my DJ friend is in said frat. The club fills up with his “brothers”. Half the place is now made up of pale guys who have the same haircut or sport backwards caps, and enough of them are named “Josh” for me to think they’re all named “Josh”. I figure it’s time for me to leave.

 Everyone else is staying for a while longer. My friend wants me to grab the pliers for him. Since his car’s parked in front of my place he asks me to put the pliers in my own mailbox so he can grab them when he gets back. The whole thing feels super sketchy but this guy's one of my best friends so I say I’ll do it. I maneuver my way past the Aryan-harem-fantasy and cesspool of young-adult egos, trying not to bump in to anyone for fear of looking like a creep, and leave the club. When I get to the construction space I see the pliers immediately on the floor at the entrance.

 I bend down to grab them, look up, and see two dude-bros taking a piss. I must look like some gang-banger coming back for his stashed weapon. Worse, I must look like a dumb gang-banger who thinks pliers make for good weapons. I don’t want to stick around and answer any possible questions. I say nothing and promptly leave, unceremoniously shoving the tool down my back pocket. I head to the subway station and take the train back home, sitting uncomfortably.

[famouslastwordsinmexico]

I’ve recently been followed by a porn-blog bot. That’s the third one in two weeks. I don’t know how these things find me, especially since I’m not Tumblr-famous, I rarely post anything, and the only sites I follow here are web comics and music blogs.

Still, I wanted to say, “Hi”, and give these bots a brief summary of myself and this blog.

- I frequently mispronounce “milk” as “melk”

- I post once a month at best, once every six months at worst

- For years I thought my height was 5′8″ because I’m 178 cm tall, which equals about 5.8 feet. 0.8 feet is 10 inches. I’m 5′10″

- Sometimes I write poetry. Well, I write things that read like poetry, but then they end in a sort of punchline that almost always contains a curse word in it

- Speaking of which, I’m better at writing comedic things. I just never do

- I genuinely like oatmeal raisin cookies

- I’m embarrassed by some of my older more “serious” posts but I won’t delete them because they serve to remind me to not make anymore “serious” posts

- I’m not going to follow back your fucking porn blog, damn it, stop following me and making me think people read the shit I write

Cheers, bots!

[famouslastwordsinmexico]

I went to the Toronto Comic Jam last week. It’s a monthly event in which people meet in the back of a bar to create comics together. You draw one panel, another person draws another panel, and so on, and eventually the sheet is filled. At the end of the night there’s a collection of these one-page comics, each mostly inconsistent in art style and largely inconsistent in theme. It’s great. It’s like an exercise in The Exquisite Corpse method. A single comic can go from a tribute to a classic strip from the Sunday paper, to an abstract caricature ejaculating. (As I wrote that sentence I realized that, with the internet, that’s probably a more common combination than I care to think about…)

The thing about me being there is that I don’t draw. I write. So that’s what I did at the comic jam. I wrote about the friends I was there with, one of whom started with sketching me. This led to self-conscious lines like: She’s gotten to my hands now, so if my handwriting looks extra bad it’s because I’m trying to be a good model. I continued to record the night’s events in my little notebook.

She’s switched out her page with someone else. Underneath the panels of the two other artists, both of which depict smiling girls with cartoonishly large heads, she begins to pencil in outlines. … She pulls out her marker now and begins to fill in the lines. Her heavy black blocks stand out against the mostly white background. The blocks reveal the shapes of a shirt, flowing hair, and what I assume to be a witch’s hat. This hat doesn’t appear in the other panels, so either it makes sense with regard to the dialogue I can’t read, or she’s bored and wants to change shit up. It’s possible she just wanted to draw a witch and didn’t give a fuck what other work was given to her.

Later I wanted to stop weirdly documenting her, so I asked my other friend what I should write about. “You can write about the ceiling,” she said – this sentence starts the next passage in my notebook. I proceeded to describe the ceiling.

Remember going to the local Rainforest Café with your family? Or, if your family was as low-income as mine was, do you remember exploring the Rainforest Café gift shop, ooh-ing and ahh-ing at everything but not buying anything, and Definitely not actually getting a table in the restaurant? Yeah? Okay. Now imagine it without the gift shop. And without the tables. And without the fish tanks, the speakers playing ambient rainforest sounds, the flashing lights emulating lightening, the sprinklers emulating rain, and the animatronic snakes, crocodiles, tigers, and whatever other animals that served to scare the shit out of 7yr old me. You should be left imagining a dark room with vines on the ceiling. That’s this ceiling.

“Well, if that’s all it is, then why not just say, ‘This ceiling is covered in vines and is in a dark room’?”

Because that isn’t the thought process you go through upon seeing this ceiling.

I had to leave early so I didn’t get to see all of the completed comics. But, they always showcase them the next month, so I could check them out then. In the meantime, I figured I’d post some of what little bit of writing I’ve done in a stupidly long time.

[famouslastwordsinmexico]

Fact: You can change the outcome of anything that happens today by assuming it’s a prank.

For example, say your boss fires you from your job for a very legitimate reason. Maybe you’re always late. Maybe you have a habit of stealing peoples’ lunch. Maybe you chased a coworker around with a stapler.

When you get fired, respond with, “…’Aprils Fools’?” By law, your boss is required to then say, “Ha, yeah. I totally had you going for a second,” and then give you a raise.

[famouslastwordsinmexico]

Happy Halloween

[famouslastwordsinmexico]

This is Dunebug, a band I'm damn proud to be in. Here are a few songs we've been kicking around for a while. Maybe you won't like it; maybe it's not your cup of tea; maybe you’ll look at it and go, "This isn't tea, do you even know what tea is? This is more like glowing toxic sludge. I feel like I shouldn't even be near this". But, like I said, I'm damn proud.

[famouslastwordsinmexico]

On Hands

One of the last things I notice about a person is their hands. That might be to a fault since I’ve heard that they’re supposed to tell you a lot. I can’t tell you the number of Mentalist-esque shows and movies I’ve seen that have had characters deduct another’s every action since middle school just from their hands. According to other shows and movies I should be looking at hands if only to see if the person is married or not. Too bad I don’t care about the adolescence or marital status of strangers.

Still, this makes me wonder what others might see when they observe my hands. The obvious answer is, nothing-to-write-home-about. I don’t wear a gold band that indicates that I’m married. I don’t have any huge, glaring disfigurements. Not to mention I also keep them in my pockets a lot, due to a contradictory combination of shyness and belief that in certain stances it makes for an attractive pose.

Upon second look, though, I suppose there are a number of things one can note about my hands. I don’t know what they might say about my character or my life, but they do stand out. (I’d like to note that I’m refraining from making a sore-thumb joke here. I’m proud of myself.) My hands seem to be abnormally big for my arms – that, or, my wrists are abnormally thin. My fingers might seem a tad thin, too, though they’re not long enough to warrant inherent skill in, say, piano playing, so this fact might not be readily observable. The back of my hands have slightly more hair than most, which would’ve lead to a Robin Williams joke/comparison were it not that I’m still not over his passing. I suppose these details aren’t entirely uncommon.

The uniqueness of my hands comes from a number of scars. There’s a slight discolouration from the number of times I scraped my right fore-finger’s knuckle on the rim of one of my drums since I’m a clumsy and shitty drummer. Currently there is a tiny crescent shaped cut on my thumb from a snapped guitar wire due to me being an even shittier guitarist. There’s the ghost image of a pretty nasty burn to remind me of the time I was heating some pasta sauce on the stove. On the back of my left hand is a coffee-bean shaped collection of scar tissue left over from my incident with a milling machine – I punched a drill bit and lost. These cuts have mostly healed but are still visible to the discerning eye.

Heh. Heheheh. You can’t see it, but I’m making one of my hands look like a duck. It’s talking and quacking. It’s pretty funny to watch. Ha ha.

[famouslastwordsinmexico]

The Box

     Once, I got a box and started putting stuff in it. It was one of those boxes you use for moving, the cardboard cube ones that can be carried sort of easily, only, I wasn’t moving. I just felt like putting stuff in a box.

     At first I’d pick the stuff at random. I’d take whatever was laying around that I wasn’t using, and drop it in the box. Then after a while I got to thinking, was there some kind of pattern to what I was picking? Was I subconsciously choosing these things in a particular way, or something? I couldn’t figure it out, but afterwards I started being really meticulous about what I was putting in the box. I’d examine the hell out of objects, turning them over, deciding whether or not they should go in the box. If I was looking at two different objects, I’d be torn. Does this old stapler belong in the box, or does the bottle of expired paper-whitener deserve it? I didn’t even know what this box was for, but I agonized over decisions like that. I’d consider putting both things in the box, but, no, that’d be crazy.

     It got to the point that I wouldn’t even pick up an item for the box unless I was getting the right vibes – or whatever – from it. I started to go out and buy things just to put them in the box. I was curating this container and I didn’t know for what. I went to all kinds of stores: hobby stores, clothing stores, office supply stores, pawn shops – I even went to a music store and picked up a CD for an opera singer I’d never heard of before. If it felt right for the box, I bought it and stuffed it in there.

     When it got to the point where putting any more stuff in would prevent the box from closing (I didn’t even know if I wanted it to close), I stopped putting stuff in and thought hard about the box. What was the subconscious pattern? Why did I start doing this? Surely part of me, or the universe, or fate, wanted me to do this and there was a good reason for it. I couldn’t figure it out so I dumped all of the stuff out onto my bed and started to organize them. I categorized them alphabetically, by colour, by size, and even by weight. I tried forming little narratives in my head with all the parts, explaining what they had in common. I tried stacking them together. I tried combining them. Nothing really worked.

     Eventually I realised there was never any reason for the box or the things inside of it. I wanted so badly for the random choices to have meaning that I started manufacturing my own randomness. It was all for nothing, and nothing was really changed because of it. It was just wishful thinking.

     I threw out the useless stuff, gifted the stuff I didn’t need, and kept the things I figured I still wanted. I still don’t know what to do with that CD, though. I don’t know anyone who’s in to that sort of stuff.

[famouslastwordsinmexico]

I tried keeping a dream journal last year, and I think I wanna give it a second shot. It lead to some pretty vivid dreams, it’s supposed to encourage lucid dreaming, but more importently my dreams got super weird. Like when I dreamt I saw a guy ask a girl out and she said she’d love to but she can’t because, “She is an egg robot being controlled from the inside by her overbearing hen mother, and her hen mother does not approve.”

[famouslastwordsinmexico]

Detour on Bus Route 9

     It’s been almost half an hour now. After we hit that bump we never stopped going up. Our bus is drifting lazily upwards and a little bit northeast. The wheels are still pointed down towards the road we’re floating away from, so really it’s just like being stuck in traffic. We sit on this bus, waiting to see what happens next.

     I’m wearing my headphones, but the album I was listening to was done way before we hit the bump. I mostly wear them so people get the idea that I don’t want to talk to them. Right now I’m using them to hide the fact that I’m listening to peoples’ conversations. Like these two kids in the back of the bus; if I had to guess I’d say they’re eighth-graders, though they certainly talk like they want to seem older. They’re both turned around in their seats to look out the window.

     “How long d’ya think it’ll take before we can’t breathe anymore?”

     “Nah, that’s stupid, we’re totally far from that, don’t even worry about it.”

     “I dunno, I just feel like we’re close to breaking through the stratosphere.”

     “Which one’s that again? I thought we were still in the lithosphere.”

     “Wait, no, I think that’s, like, the Earth’s crust. Like, the surface parts, with the rocks and soil, or, what do they call it… hubris?”

     “Hume-us?”

     They both pause and look at each other. They then ask, at the same time:

     “Hummus?”

     They begin to laugh at the mispronunciation. Turning away from the windows, they fall back into proper seating positions, still laughing.

     The guy beside me is busy playing one of those mobile puzzle apps.

     A few seats ahead of me I see one guy constantly checking his phone. There are no new notifications, so I think he’s just checking the time. After a while he sighs in an exasperated way and gets up from his seat. He approaches the driver. I can’t hear what they’re saying, but I can tell he’s relaying concern to the driver, and I can see in the rear-view mirror that the driver is as frustrated as she is sympathetic. Above the both of them I see the red “Stop Requested” light. (Someone pulled the cord just after we hit the bump. I don’t know if that person was expecting to be let off a couple of metres above ground, but the doors didn’t open and no one said anything about it.) They converse this way for a while, and the guy goes back to his seat, although he doesn’t look like he got what he wanted. We then hear the driver announce over the speakers.

     “Ladies and gentlemen, I apologise for the inconvenience. I’ve contacted dispatch and told them about the situation and they said they’re on top of it. For now we’ve just got to sit tight and wait for a response team, or wait for further information and instruction. Again, I’m sorry for the inconvenience.” She finishes her transmission and I hear a quiet murmur of discontent from the other passengers on this bus, plus a couple of groans.

     The guy beside me has moved on to some kind of platforming game.

     There are two older people near the front who are having a kind of loud conversation. I can tell they’ve never met before since their conversation began in that casual how-about-this-weather sort of way.  It started with the both of them looking out the window and pointing out buildings below that they recognize. Now they’re talking about how the city was when they first moved here.

     “Yeah, you see, me and my friends would spend every night at Rancheros,” says the tanned gentleman. He has the accent of a Latin American who’s now probably spent more time in this city than he ever did down south. “Every night, we were there, drinking, dancing; it was a beautiful place! Now that it’s not there anymore, ah – it’s a shame.” He’s standing up, talking with one hand and holding on to a pole with the other (even though the bus is no longer rocking back and forth as it did when we were on the road).

     “Mm-hmm, I remember Rancheros. That was a good place,” the grey-haired lady responds. She’s sitting in the seat below the man, her posture surprisingly straight for a woman her age. She looks like she was some kind of manager or something when she was younger. I imagine she was the type of person who could have a whole room look to her for direction the minute she walked in. “I used to prefer this bar down on Queen; they called it The Clover Tavern. I don’t go downtown anymore, but my grandson says it’s still standing.”

     “Oh, you used to go to The Clover, eh? That place was crazy! You’re a tough girl. I’m starting to think you could drink me under the table, yeah? We’d be sharing tequila, and then, pum!” He slaps the back of one hand into the other. “I’d hit the ground before you, no?”

     The lady smiles demurely. She then half-heartedly reassures him that wouldn’t have been the case.

     The guy beside me is checking Facebook on his phone. There are no new notifications. He scrolls through his newsfeed for a bit, stops at someone’s new profile picture, likes it, then closes the app. He starts playing a racing game.

     I shift in my seat to get a better look out the window. The weather has been gorgeous lately and so has the sky. The sun is just barely beginning to set, so as it kisses the horizon the sky spreads colourful fabric behind it, the oranges and yellows giving way to pinks and then blues, which in turn fall to black that slowly reveals the stars to the east. With the city lights below us I guess it’s more likely those are satellites and not stars in the sky, but they shine brightly all the same. As we float further up I can see how truly massive the few clouds above us are. I think of what it would be like if our bus passed through one.

     “Ugh, come on,” I hear the guy beside me say. I look over and see that he’s lost his race due to a notification popping up. His phone is telling him it has less than twenty percent battery power left. He presses the button that reads “Dismiss” and begins the game again.