Josh Dare: This blog will eat you

Being stranded

2010-12-24T14:27:00Z

Vossey stood under the fluorescent orange streetlight on the pier feeling like a stupid, cold idiot, scolding herself for both ever believing he would show up and also for wearing such thin clothing in an attempt to appear sexy and alluring.

She looked at her watch one more time, brushing past her rock-hard nipples. They were too pert to avoid at this stage of coldness. She saw it was 7:30pm before the first raindrop pointedly hit the watch face. He was half an hour late already; no point being wet as well as stupid, cold and idiotic. She turned and rushed back to the car park, narrowly avoiding the dump of rain that was casting in her specific direction.

She started her old bomb of a car and stared out the front window as the first thuds of heavy rain drummed their arrival in mercury-esque splashes on her windscreen. It’s a pity that I’m not in the rain, she thought to herself, because then no one could see my tears.

The car radio ominously started playing light gospel music that she simultaneously took as a sign but also immediately denounced because if God existed he wouldn’t allow one of his children to live in such pain.

The swing in the attached playground swung back and forth in the wind and reminded her that her uterus was drying up and soon nobody would ever want her because she would hold no societal value or benefit as a mate.

Her chubby fingers gripped the steering wheel so tight her fat knuckles turned blue as she cried in great, heaving motions.

Her blue, ring less fingers. Anther big cry.

The ocean sea shelled over the reassuring hum of her engine and a group of miscreant youths appeared from a nearby pedestrian tunnel as she frantically cleaned her eyes, knowing that the only sight worse than a fat woman crying was a fat woman eating.

More people followed – did a football game just end? – as she assumed the role of a perfectly normal human being who sits in their car and stares not at a beach but the promise of a beach because don’t we all do that from time to time?

The crowd dispersed and her loneliness resumed which shamed her because the frantic rush for the appearance of normality was a welcome distraction in her lonely, cold and stupid life.

Because you know that I am not only a man, but all of mankind

2010-12-22T07:15:00Z

Joel was lightly play punching me as we rounded a corner and witnessed a man being held up at knifepoint. The play punch froze on what an observer may have called an affectionate bump as Joel and I scrambled back round the corner, out of sight.

“Wherearewegoingtodo?” Joel blurted in such a hurried fashion that it presented as one word.

“Chill, dude, chill,” I calmed him. “He didn’t see us. We’ll be OK.”

“What about the guy? Do we go save him?”

“Save him? What do you think we are, super heroes?” I peeked my head around the corner to ensure we weren’t squabbling over a moot point. The guy was still being held up. Argument still valid.

“But there’s three of us against one guy! With numbers alone…”

“That’s three times as many targets,” I barked with my super serious face on. “I’m not going to risk my life for that guy’s wallet. My life is worth more than the $20 he probably has in it.”

“It’s not about that, man,” Joel pleaded. “You’re going to stand by while another human being gets robbed at knife point?”

Just that moment the knifepoint tore down the road past us, loot in hand. Joel and I raced around the corner to the victim.

“Dude, are you OK?” We called as we neared. The man was getting back on his feet, presumably after a final scuttle. “We saw what happened.”

The man stopped mid-pat and stared through us. “You. Saw. It. Happening… and you did nothing? I could’ve been killed.”

“Look dude, we’re sorry, we were just trying to help.”

“Oh yeah? If you were really trying to help you would’ve done something when I had a fucking knife to my throat, jackass.”

The absolute truth took the air out of our lungs – I suspect more mine than Joel’s.

The man caught himself and adjusted. “I appreciate the help boys, but all I’m saying is: always do what you’d want others to do for you.”

Any minute now, something’s going to happen

2010-12-20T14:25:00Z

“Duuuuude…” I said. “I’m boooooooored.”

Getting high and watching TV seemed like a great idea at the time. Phenomenal. But fast forward a few hours later…

“You, uh, wanna watch a movie?” my stoner buddy Derrick asked.

“We have nothing,” I yawngroaned. “We’ve seen them all and they weren’t even that good the first time.”

I idly flicked Cheetos at the dog, which had probably farted again but you would never smell it in the thick dense of this room anyway.

“Being a teenager SUCKS,” said an exasperated Derrick, retreading familiar territory for us both.

“I know right! Think about it: when we’re 19, we can be out Every. Single. Night.”

“Hittin’ on chicks,” chimed in the sleazebag in the corner.

I threw a pillow cushion at him. “Hittin’ on your mum.”

There was a knock at the door. I snap looked at Derrick with my mouth open. “Are we expecting anyone?” His eyebrows raised in shock said it all.

“Shit hidethebonghidethebonghidethebong!” He picked up the bong and frantically tiptoed towards the cabinet, sizing up holes and making a couple of false attempts as I frantically waved a tea towel under the ceiling fan.

“Who is it?” I called out between over exaggerated fans. “Open up,” I’m sure I heard a deep male voice reply. “THE COOOOOOOOOPS!” I hissed. “Oh man the cops! How did they know how did they know? My parents are gonna kill me.” I dropped the tea towel, jumped off the seat and ran to the mirror to check myself.

Derrick ran to me at the mirror and slapped me. Hard.

“Thanks man.”

I gave my cheeks are cursory glance in the reflection to make sure they weren’t red, wiped my eyes and fixed my long hair with a quick pat, tucking it behind my ears.

We’d been suspiciously long, so I ran to the front door, opening it and clearing my throat in one movement. In my best law-abiding voice, I dropped a suave, “Good evening…”

The Pakistani pizza delivery guy was courteous to a fault. “Your large meatlovers, sir.”

Two characters, both having the luckiest day of their lives

2010-12-17T05:10:00Z

“Eh Tom?”

“Yeah Jarrod.”

“Check it,” Jerrod continued. “’ole in one.” He was indicating at the trash he just threw into the bin, certifiably in one toss.

“Nice one bruv,” said Tom. “Hey how’d you go with that sheila last night? ‘nother ‘ole in one dere?”

‘’ole in two,” Jerrod replied in the cheeky manner that only a cockney could pull off, only it didn’t make sense the way Jerrod thought it did.

“You wha?”

“You know bruv. ‘er other ‘ole.”

“Ho ho, good one guv’nah.”

They lightly punched each other and made crude pelvic thrusts with their tongues out as they reached the newsagent.

“A quickpick for tonight’s game, thanks chap,” Tom said to the lotto saleschap.

“What’s dis den?” Jerrod teased. “You still floatin’ the clouds from last ngiht?”

“It’s £150 million tonight man. You’d be daft not ta.”

They walked out of the shop and on to the footpath. “What are your chances though dude? 200 million to one?”

“150 million to one: me,” Tom snapped back. “Besides, someone’s gotta be ‘the one’ man. Gotta get a ticket to try.” He punctuated his point by holding his ticket erect and poking out his tongue at his mate while turning to flash it at him while continuing to walk. Directly into traffic.

He barely has time to scream “shit”, but you would not have been able to hear him over the blare of the car’s horn anyway. As the brakes slammed hard, the car drifted sideways in a seemingly uncontrollable slide.

If it’s life that flashes before your eyes in the moment before death, Tom’s life could be surmised as an unfathomable wave of panic and regret. The thought lingered with him long enough to realise that the car had miraculously steered itself away from his immediate demise and into the other lane.

Jerrod has been stopped stunned only a step behind. “Bruv!” he called as he stepped forward and yanked him off the road and in to a warm man embrace that neither wished to acknowledge was more than welcome, it was needed.

“What the fuck, man,” Tom could only mutter as he patted his friend on the back. “I didn’t even see it coming.”

“That’s cause you weren’t looking, dickhead,” Jerrod expressed, harsh way that men are only allowed to display their emotions.

Stepping back on to the footpath and away from immediate demise, Tom and Jerrod continued walking as close as two males could without being, ya know, queer.

Neither thought to check for the ticket, which was in Tom’s clutches as he faced death head on but now lay discarded on the road and would later be revealed to no one to be the 200 million to one ticket.

Begins and ends in fog

2010-12-15T00:22:00Z

The mist swirled over the dead body in the middle of the dark, grassy forest clearing.

“Who dunnit?” the detective muttered, becoming a caricature of himself. “Who killed this man?”

He was, of course, addressing the townfolk who stood circled round the corpse with flames burning atop torches like the mob from Frankenstein.

No one said it, but the collective thought boomed: Tyler. Tyler knew the cadaver – well, Tony, his name was – and had held a serious grudge against him since he ran off with his woman. The fact that Tony was insanely wealthy also contributed to his motive.

The body provided no answer, bar the fact it was clearly a blunt instrument to the head that finished the job.

The blacksmith looked meek as the detective strode towards him, puffing away thoughtfully. Where on earth did he get that tobacco pipe from anyway?

“Do you know anything about this?” the detective demanded, clearly referring to the anvil-like impression on Tony’s dead head.

“It was Tyler, sir!” the blacksmith gasped, relieving us all of the duty. “It had to be Tyler. We all know their history, and the last place Tony was seen alive was in the pub havin’ a right blue with Tyler.”

The detective gummed his pipe as he undoubtedly felt a respected, thinking detective should do, and asked, “Is that so?” raising an eyebrow as he did.

The town hummed an affirmative reply, most meaningfully from the publican, which appeared to sedate the detective as the wind picked up, blowing the fog away in the next clearing to reveal Tyler’s bloody corpse.

“Trivial” intervention

2010-12-13T16:29:00Z

I laughed and giggled and entered the elevator, pressing the button for 15 in one smooth motion. “That’s what she said,” I retorted between my uncontrollable laughter at what was, frankly, another doozy.

Joey could only must a small smirk though. Weird, I thought, Joey usually appreciated a good that’s what she said. “What do you want to do tonight?” I asked when my breathing had recovered enough to talk properly.

“We’ll figure it out when we get up there,” Joey said, which I now realise was ominous but didn’t at the time.

Sadly my elevators don’t ding but the roar of the door opening once we reached the 15^th level was somewhat satisfying. We made small talk about the garbage chute – “I always go to put my garbage in apartment 16!” I playfully said, as the chute was adjacent – until we reached the front door. I fumbled with the keys and the locks – no reason, I’m just a little spastic – and cracked open the door to find all my friends and family stationed on my shitty, shitty furniture. Joey slapped his hand on my shoulder.

“It’s OK mate,” he said in a voice I assume he thought was caring but was actually creepy, “Come in. We just need to talk.”

My roommate Matt was sitting in the armchair at the head of the coffee table, two friends adopting the Joey-clasp on his shoulders as he wiped tears from his red, puffy eyes.

“What’s going on?” I asked, as this was clearly some sort of intervention. My mind raced like I was on speed. Again. Oh god, is that the problem? It’s been ages!

“Josh,” roommate Matt sobbed, “You… should… know!” He dramatically blurted out before breaking down uncontrollably.

“We just want you to see the effect you’re having on your loved ones,” said Luke, the smarmy cunt. Who invited him anyway?

“What?!” I screamed/demanded. “What what what? How is this meant to help if I don’t know what you’re talking about?”

“It’s the bathroom,” said smarmy cunt Luke. “It is… disgusting.”

“You never cleaaaaaan it!” Matt hollered, wilidly gesturing in the vague direction of the bathroom with his tissue-clenched paws.

“That’s not true,” I muttered. “I rinsed the bath tub just the other day.”

“That was SIX MONTHS AGO,” Matt heaved before once again breaking down. “You’re so far removed from reality you don’t even realise that that was last season!” Sob, sob, sob. “You have… you have to change.”

I’m being intervened… over this? The ridiculousness of the situation struck me harder than the putrid stench of peroxide. I relented. “Well, what can I do?” I exasperated.

“You just need to get down there and go for it,” was the answer.

As far as I was concerned, there was only one reply here. “That’s what she said.”

A time that you gave it 150%

2010-12-10T14:19:00Z

They do smell a bit. And what is with their teeth? Plus at home we have cancer centres; here they seem to have centres dedicated to putting moles on.

But, you don’t come to Thailand for the people, unless you’re a lonely elderly gentleman with money. You come for the shopping.

Cruising Patong mall, I was accosted – both in the physical and aural senses – by Thai after Thai with cheap wares. They were a bit much, I thought to myself as I playfully construed ‘Thai’ into forms like ‘Thai dye’ in my head and giggled quietly while burying myself in the search for unbelievably low-priced crap. A toothless wonder gummed at me from behind a case of watches.

“You like?” she asked a shell-shocked Caucasian for probably the 600^th time that day. I made the international sign for ‘just looking’ – fingers forks to my eyes that then forked the shelves – and continued looking. And then I saw it: the silver D&G watch I wanted. Like, spot on, the exact watch I wanted.

I remained coy to heighten my bartering power. “How much for, uh, this one?” I flatly asked, barely pointing at the watch of my dreams in order to not give the game away.

“Dis one?” she asked, pointing to some heinous CK abortion.

“No,” I spoke loudly and clearly and pointedly so that any foreigner could understand my perfect language, “That one.”

“300 baht,” she disinterestingly replied. I did the math in my head. $10 is 75 baht, so $300 baht is… tick, tick, tick… $40! That watch goes for $400 in stores!

Stay cool Millie, stay cool. “I’ll give you 200 baht for it.” It was worth a shot. “275,” she fired back. I was never good at bargaining and was whipped into an orgasmic shopper’s frenzy about the low starting price, so took her first offer and slammed the 275 baht into her filthy hand so fast I’m surprised it’s still attached.

After navigating the cess-ridden, shit-stinking streets to get home, we all debriefed and sipped cocktails by the pool in our resort. Lyn showed off a sarong – uh, whatever, yay Lyn – and then it was my turn.

To maximise dramaticity, I ruffled and hid my arm into the shopping bag and yanked it out with my new life purpose upon my wrist to coincide with my intense announcement of said find. Gasps were heard in Beijing.

Stunning, I’m sure one of my admirers said among a din of praise – but it’s so hard to make out individual compliments when you’re drunk of the envy of others.

A voice penetrated over all others. “Where’d you get yours?” It was Carol, the bitchy little bitch bitch, her arm quite clearly adorned by a replica of my watch.

Patong mall, I replied, gazing lovingly at my watch that I’m absolutely sure was shinier and therefore more beautiful than hers.

“Just like the real ones!” she marveled, presumably talking about mine and not her piece of crap. It’s true, I thought to myself, it is and I love it.

“Not bad for 200 baht,” she exclaimed ruefully, which hung thick in the air for the briefest microsecond before her dull fake ass watched bitch hand had to wipe my thrown cocktail off her stupid whore bitch smug face.

Every ugly light bulb in that moment glows

2010-12-08T14:17:00Z

Her hair. Her hair, her hair, her hair.

The rain beat down hard outside as we lay enveloping each other under a duvet, warmed not by the heat of our bodies retained by the duck down but by how we felt for each other. The pierce of her eyes as they looked not into my eyes but through my soul. My soul was transparent before her yet she stayed because her soul was transparent to me too.

Our tangible lips met and re-introduced warmth to another part of our connected bodies. The saliva lubricated this ongoing connection as our jaws chomped out deep kissed. She kissed with her eyes open because she wanted to see, to experience every second. She looked at me. She looked at my hair too, then back through my exposed translucent soul.

Masterfully closing the kiss in the full, rich manner to which I’d come to adore, to live for, she continued to stare at me, my soul, my everything that has, was and will be.

“You,” she barely whispered as she tucked my hair behind my ear. She tucked another strand. It was so slow, like she didn’t want it to end and it was possible she could only live to tuck my hair while staring through my soul.

Another tuck and she allowed her hand to continue from my ear along to the back of my neck, which she then dragged gently to pull me in for another kiss as I melted in her arms and happily ceased being my own entity.

Argleton, Lancashire: the town that doesn’t exist

2010-12-06T13:57:00Z

Argleton was a "phantom" settlement that appeared on Google Maps and Google Earth but does not actually exist. The supposed location of Argleton was just off the A59 road within the civil parish of Aughton in West Lancashire, England, which in reality is nothing more than empty fields.

“Doesn’t exist. Doesn’t exist. I’m so fucking tired of being told Argleton doesn’t exist.” Landon shook with rage.

There he stood, once again, in front of a newsstand; the marquee quire clearly stating that Argleton did not, in fact, exist.

Choosing to do something with his rage rather than let it simmer into a carcinogenic stress ball as usual, Lando stormed to the Argy Bargy – the pub whose name was a fun play on the local’s nickname for their beloved town, “Argy”.

The thock of a pre-thrown dart hitting the board echoed though the sparsely-populated pub as the hulking mass of Lando hulked through the saloon room, rage-crumpled copy of The Daily Mail in hand. The quiet din of the pub quietened further to a hum of whispers.

Lando hulk sauntered to the bar and assumed his usual preach position in front of the draught taps. “Are we gonna,” Lando started, his boom finally muffling the remaining hum, “sit around and take this?” He thrust the paper in the air to punctuate the point. Due to his tense grip over the masthead, the headline now read, ‘Tow xist’.

Roy, stationed on what was affectionately known as Roy’s booze stool to regulars, looked up from his pint glass and muttered in the manner that only a British drunk could, “There’s no point getting a bee in your bonnet again, youngin.”

The pub hushed and turned its attention to Lando for a rebuttal. The tension was palpable.

“No point?” Lando yelled, exasperated. “No POINT?” He yelled louder, defiantly. “There are people out there saying that we are nothing. That we don’t contribute. That we aren’t even worth including. And you have the gall to sit there and tell me it’s not anything to get worked up about? Have you no PRIDE?” Lando’s pride was indicated by his arms opening in the vague direction of enveloping the town in a loving proud hug.

Roy didn’t flinch. “I’m as Argletonian as peppered tea,” he fired back, referring to a local delicacy. “But even you can surely admit they have a point?”

Lando crossed his arms, brought his feet together and with his expression completed a stance that body language experts would aptly describe as ‘engaged’. Go on, his body language said. Now, his eyebrows and slight nod demanded.

“You know as well as the next man that we don’t exist,” Roy flatly informed everyone listening of their inexistence.

Body language experts further defined the resulting lean from Lando towards Roy as engaged and pissed and probably about to throw a punch.

“I have no doubt you feel real,” Roy said, sensing diffusion was necessary to subvert a fist-face connection. “That is, after all, part of the trick. Part of the illusion.”

Lando, arms still crossed, pinched himself underneath his folded arms to confirm the validity of his existence.

Write about something from your previous life chapter

2010-12-03T15:00:00Z

There’s not a specific moment it begins. I’m just in rehab and have been in rehab and it’s OK that I’m in rehab because I need rehab.

Do you know where you are? a psychologist asks me. “Epworth,” I say, naming the rehab centre that had always had a name and I always knew its name.

How old are you? she asks. 26, I replied instantly. She bit down on her pen, disappointed. As she pulled it out of her mouth, she told me to think about it and she’d be back tomorrow.

So I thought about it. It’s 2008 – I know this for a fact because ‘Today’s date is October 9, 2008’ is written on the whiteboard in the room. It’s 2008 and I was born in July 198… 1? So that makes me 26.

Oh… wait… what day is it?

My mother arrived with chocolate. Legend. “Helloooooo,” she cooed at me with a long o while passing me some chocolate, “How are you today?”

“Good,” I said. “Little bored. Did you bring any chocolate?”

She looked at me and then down at the chocolate she’d given me as she walked in. “Oh! Chocolate! Thanks Mum!”

“What have you been doing?” She asked. “I’m a little bored,” I told her. “The psychologist came round today, though I think I failed. She asked how old I was and I said 26.”

“You’re 27,” Mum said all non-judgmental and motherly.

“Oh,” I replied, and tried to save face by deflecting with, “Like, I have to remember flash cards overnight and there was a picture of a flower, a dinner plate and dinosaur. I told her I’d just remember the three Ps: pot, plate and pterodactyl. She told me pterodactyl doesn’t have a P in it.”

“It does,” Mum said, “It’s silent.”

“I KNOW!” I gasped. “She doesn’t. I’m half retarded and even I know that.”

“You seem better today,” Mum said.

“How was I?” I asked.

“You’ve been a bit… confused,” Mum told me. “The other day you told me you’d just gotten back from New York.” I sorta knew I didn’t, but… did I? Something about the tone of Mum’s voice and my imprisonment in rehab told me I hadn’t.

Mum kissed me goodbye. “Best be getting home. Beat peak hour,” she said. “Love you.”

“Love you too,” I replied. “Oh, Mum – next time, can you please bring me some chocolate?”

Write about a time you found it hard to breath properly

2010-12-01T15:52:00Z

Remember this moment. Next weekend, when the urge to party creeps over you at 5pm on Friday, your internal clock ticking in time with the incessant, arrogant bass line of the current club stomper, remember this moment. Sunday. Midnight. Awake 48 hours straight, yet you can’t sleep.

Regulate breathing. How do you usually do it again? Suck a big but consistent gulp into your lungs. That seems shallow, like the air is only illuminating the top millimeter. Is my abdominal so clenched that it’s constricted my ability to flow air? Suck it deep. Bloat your belly, then hiss it out your nose. Repeat.

This feels normal – why isn’t it working? It can’t be normal. Actually I don’t think my belly presses against the bed sheet so comically/dramatically. I’m breathing wrong.

Sheep will help regulate. I’ll just breath when a sheep jumps a fence. One. Baaaah. But what clarity should I give these sheep? Should they just be cartoon sheep, reconstituted white clouds against a canvas of bleak green? Or do I get photo realistic with these bad boys?

100 and wait a second. Maybe… maybe I’m not in bed at all, and I’m actually still driving and this is some hollow PSA about driving while dozy? Well, I’ll just have to drive myself home. In my head. Win win: if I’m actually driving, I’ll get home alive; if I’m dreaming, surely driving through my neighbourhood is an exercise in futility on par with counting sheep. That familiar house, that familiar street, the “good” McDonald’s.

Goddammit my breathing is definitely still too shallow. When did breathing begin to require so much thought?

Surely that’s the trick. Usually I don’t think about it. But I can’t switch off my brain. Hopefully these thoughts, these sleepless demons, will echo through my mind as a constant reminder to always remember this exact moment.

What kind of person says “Because that’s how we’ve always done it”

2010-11-29T14:34:00Z

The flabby hag spotted her fag on the balcony and briefly froze in shock before pushing her current conversational partner aside and whomping to the door.

“Darliiiiiiiiing!” she screamed as she charged through the lounge room like a rhino with access to sequins and feather boas.

But her ‘darling’ didn’t return her gaze or enthusiasm; too engrossed in the discussion he was having with his current partner. Probably about Lady Gaga.

This did not sit well with Glitter Rhino. She raised her eyebrow in a cat-like arch and snared her lip while piercing the air with a sharper, “DARLING.”

He broke the engaging conversationalist’s gaze and searched her fat face with his previously love-struck eyes.

”Chevy!” he squealed to Cheyvonne, “How are ya sister?!” while he snapped his fingers in a Z formation in front of him while back in LA each of the Pussycat Dolls’ ears burned.

“Hey hey hey,” she replied coyfully, before turning – as she always planned to – to the bunny-rabbit-ears loveable bitch, disdaining, “Who’s this?”

As the undistilled hate in the air dripped to the bare concrete, her darling replied, “This is Curtis! Curtis was just telling me about his job. He’s a model actor, you know.”

Chevy did not know, nor did Chevy care. “So you’re like a model of an actor?” she spat ruefully, laughing at him under the disguise of laughing at her inherent hilarity. “You stand around modelling like an actor?”

“No,” Curtis replied, “I stand around wearing clothes by designers you can’t afford in sizes you could only dream of fitting in to. And sometimes I act, which is why I looked so interested when you opened your gob.”

Curtis, no exhausted of darling and his one-woman gang, retreated to the party to mingle with people who have souls.

Incorporate: glorious, shining, alter, microscope

2010-11-26T16:38:00Z

I scanned the night sky. Segment 42BR, clear. Of course it’s clear. It’s been clear each and every segment we’ve searched over the last 20 years. But we keep searching in the glorious hope that one day one segment… won’t be.

But what are we expecting to see? A radiant interstellar Las Vegas sign saying ‘extraterrestrials here’ with one of those hooky arrow signs bordered by 40w light bulbs?

The most we can hope for is an insignificant glimmer from another planet that says we are not alone. And with an alter, the human experience would, in an instant, be less isolating. Less alone. Would feel less like we were some galactic fuck up.

The only thing we’ve shed light on so far is the unappreciative nature of existence. Humans are given life, given the ability to eat, breath, think, love, and the first thought is why. Millions of years of evolution made them highly-tuned machines, and like a snot-faced little kid, the thing they accusatorily demand is to be told why they were given the greatest gift.

Which is why I’m now sitting here, microscopically scanning segment 42BS in the vain hope that we discover existence so we can reach out to them, take their hand and scream why at the sky in chorus.

Describe a brooding man using no punctuation

2010-11-25T14:38:00Z

Hulk of a father standing drinking beer watching football sets his beer down sighs wipes his brooding brow as the weight of his life his persona his broodiness weighs down his shoulders and causes worry about a future hunchback which would entirely destroy any link to his former sporting greatness the memory of which is the only thing that pulls him out of bed each day to face the world which unfairly didn’t age or become broodier as he did.

What is captured in a photo?

2010-11-24T15:56:00Z

Why are images captured on film more evocative than those captured digitally?

The theory is identical: thing happens, shutter opens and the reflected light is filtered through a lens and captured on a medium.

So that medium is made up of 1s and 0s. That doesn’t make your child’s birth any less miraculous. Just easier to manipulate.

The ashtray says you’ve been up all night

2010-11-23T15:10:00Z

“Whaaaaaaaaat?” I said in my best dumbfounded voice, even though my dinner-plate pupils would’ve given it away.

“It’s overflowing!” she screams, “And next to the computer. You had speed and puffed your night away looking at porn or playing poker.”

“Baby,” I cooed, my voice gravelly from doing exactly what she just described, “I promised you I wouldn’t do that any more.” My scattered brain scrambled for an excuse. “I just haven’t emptied it in a while.”

The lie hung thick in the air. Or at least it felt like it did to me; your equilibrium really gets thrown after a twelve-hour drug-fuelled computer marathon.

She looked deep into my eyes. I look like a baby seal cub. But she’s not noticing. I’m the luckiest man ever. She sighed and placed her hand on the back of my neck. “I just worry about you, baby.” She kissed me gently on the forehead, somehow not noticing the slick of speed sweat. “Ever since the doctor told us that your liver couldn’t handle your old ways any more…” Her hand traveled gently down my arm. “I just get so scared. For you.” She brushed my elbow, tickling it. “For us. For the kids.”

Her hand reached mine. Her speech, her warmth, stopped as she noticed my nicotine-yellow stained forefinger and middle finger.

Directions to where you live

2010-11-23T15:08:00Z

Ya know that big maple tree on Spooner Street? Yeah, that’s totally not it.

The airport. Get there – I don’t live in your country.

You’ll fly. First you’ll fly over America, the land of the fat and stupid. The plane will recoil as you fly over the prentious north east, too hip to relax its wing span. You’ll feel the cool gentle breeze pumping out of your conditioned air as cross the south. Look out the window to your right and you may just see some of its fabled incest. Take a left at the golden coast, called so not because of the serene glow of the beaches.

Then you’ll fly. You’ll fly and you’ll fly and you’ll fly.. After flying over an unimaginable expanse of water, on the horizon you will spot your very first kangaroo.

Oh wait, that’s a kiwi.

Where does simple stop and complicated begin?

2010-11-23T00:52:00Z

You.

Don’t get me wrong; I’m not calling you simple. You’re just human: you make everything complicated, that’s what you do.

Take love, for example. Two penguins see each other and it’s all like, hey I like the cut of your fur that kinda looks like a tuxedo. And that’s the whole shebang. One penguin doesn’t play hard to get and aloof before “begrudgingly” going for a dinner to a fancy restaurant igloo where they only order the smallest weird bug soufflé which they only push around their plate anyway. There’s no extensive courting period before a big romantic ceremony, which is a shame because they’re already dressed for it.

No, they just see each other and BAM you’re my penguin.

So next time you’re over thinking something and making it complicated, just think: what would a penguin do?

Writers' bootcamp

2010-11-21T06:25:00Z

BANISH THE FEAR OF THE BLANK PAGE, the flier on Queen St W read. Low-grade Toronto advertising could not be more effective; as last year I was enticed into a short course at the School of Philosophy. This year, it seems, I was to be lured into a course designed to wean me off being scared of white space.

Writers’ Bootcamp, this one was called. FIND YOUR VOICE, it also promised. Of course again in capitals, which is the apparent style of any vaguely self-improvement-related-endeavour advertising.

The flier had those little tear-off strips at the bottom. I tore off a strip to find out the details of their open house session.

Writers’ Bootcamp – or writers’ workshop, as I started calling it when, ya know, I didn’t wanna sound like a wanker – is group writing. The “class” sit in a circle, and the leader provides a prompt. The prompt may be a sentence, a word, some props, a poem, someone else’s work – and you’re instructed to write about whatever it makes you think about. It may be a direct continuation of what’s presented or may be something obtuse or even completely unrelated; whatever you think of, that’s what you go with.

You’re given a set time limit – 5, 10, 15, 20 minutes – and at the end, you’re invited to share your output with the group by reading it aloud. The group then provides feedback – what they remembered, what stood out. The feedback is guided by one strict rule: no negative feedback. It’s a rough draft, crafted on the spot, so it wouldn’t be fair.

It was a great class, and I’m now sitting on a trove of about 30 stories that I’d like to share on the blog because WHAT THE HELL it’s not like I’m using it for anything else? Feel free to give your entire unfiltered feedback.

Yes, that means you can slag it.

I’ll post them in chronological order. The quality increases as the weeks bang on, some prompts resonated better than others anyway so some stories are naturally better, but in the spirit of baring all I’ll put them all up.

startwriting.ca

Article: Enhancey pants

2010-10-26T22:00:00Z

JOSH DARE pumps himself up for a look into padded underwear.

Webster’s dictionary defines an ass as “The fleshy part of the human body that you sit on”. UrbanDictionary defines an ass as “A place where courageous people do the nasty”. Other people, however, more accurately define their ass by its lack of definition. People like Michael. “Recently, I was told that I have a ‘bigh’ - a back that goes to thigh,” he says.

Michael has every reason to be worried. Straight guys identify as either tits or ass men. Us gays, though… well, tits don’t come in to the equation. Just ask Rob. “A good ass is important,” he says, “because there's something sexy and seductive about a round, well-shaped ass. It ranks up there with a defined chest and strong arms. It's perfectly positioned to be squeezed, grabbed, admired and appreciated.”

A fixation on having a pert ass may just stem from the circles you travel in, according to psychotherapist Adam Segal. “Unfortunately, in certain rounds of our community there’s a real emphasis on notions of perfection,” he says. “Self-esteem issues and body image issues are reinforced in parts of the culture where ‘this’ is what makes you a desirable gay man.”

However, such is the wide appeal of a perky rear end; even an assless wonder like Michael is empathetic towards Rob’s attitude. “A fuck you from the creator is the fact that I am an ass man, and have previously dated a guy based purely on the fact that he had an ass to die for.”

So why not do something about it, like a million lunges at the gym? “I long ago accepted that no amount of squats were ever going to give me the bubble butt that I dreamed of,” he said. “That, and some middle-aged personal trainer taking a hacksaw to my dream with, ‘I’m sorry honey, you just don’t have the muscle fibers for it. The best we can do it tone what ya got.’”

But if you can’t make it, you can fake it. Similar to a padded bra, padded underwear holds two foam pads over your ass to give the appearance of a plump bubble butt. Not included: sign saying “bounce quarters here”. And if you’re padding your nether regions, why stop at butts? Most padded underwear comes with a pad over the crotch too.

Pauline from SiliconeBody believes that, not only will they work; they’ll change your appearance completely. “Suddenly your manhood and butt cheeks look raised and fresh. You get a chiseled balanced body look, like you’ve been in the gym for months.”

If you’re worried that the pads would look unnatural, rest assured that the companies manufacturing your new ass have done their homework – and your own butt may have been an unwitting subject. Jack of Toronto’s own BottomsUp assures me, “After studying many butts, we realized that the left cheek is differently shaped than the right cheek. So in our desire to give the most natural look possible, we had molds made to produce the desired effect we were looking for in our butts.”

Your butt may be looking perfectly and naturally pert with its new padding, but make sure your motives are pure. “I imagine that there’s some people [wearing padded underwear] and it’s relatively helpful to them psychologically,” says psychotherapist Adam Segal. “But there might be another group of people that are struggling with body image issues and constantly feeling that on some level they’re not measuring up.”

Pauline of SiliconeBody isn’t buying into that complexity. “There are two main reasons men wear them,” she said. “1. They need them. 2. They need them.”

No-ass man Michael sounded like he was conflicted about his lack of butt and needed the pads - would he ever wear padded underwear? “Never to rope in the boys,” he says, “’cause let’s face it – that is just the height of false advertising. How could anyone maintain their dignity when they've picked up a boy who thinks he's gonna have a night spent eating out a perfect ass, only to find it hanging around his ankles along with his jocks?”

“I don’t focus on whether it’s deceptive to other people,” counters psychotherapist Adam. “I think more about the individual who’s wearing them and whether or not, on some level, they’re lying to themselves and whether they’re able to have a healthful perception of their body, or if they’re only able to enjoy their body if it’s masked in that way.”

He also believes that the foam pads may deter a firm connection – and your new ass may ironically lessen your appeal. “Generally, people are drawn to authenticity,” he says. “It might strike that person as inauthentic, and that might get them wondering if there’s other ways in which you’re inauthentic. It might make you less desirable in some ways: when people are looking to make a connection with other people, they usually want a sense of authenticity.”

Ass man Rob wouldn’t feel cheated if he brought somebody home and discovered their ass had a little support though. “My thought would be 'well isn't that interesting',” says ass man Rob. “I would definitely not feel cheated. The person obviously felt they needed to enhance that area, and they had the right to do it. Good for them. Why do we wear clothes that make us look slim, or toned? It's the same argument.”

Pauline has a simpler solution to dealing someone who followed your ass pads home. “Pull down the curtains; you have already made your point!”

Adam Segal, psychotherapist adamsegal.ca

Silicone Body www.siliconebody.com

BottomsUp bottomsup.ca

Review: Toronto School of Philosophy

2010-06-18T01:44:00Z

AWAKEN TO CONCIOUS LIVING, an ad for the Toronto School of Philosophy on the subway promised in larger-than-life capitals.

Being a new arrival in Toronto, it made me think the city must be an outrageously bohemian capital for there to be a school solely dedicated to philosophy: the dissection of reality, as I understood philosophy to be. And that school has such a wide reach that subway advertising was the most effective method of reaching prospective pupils – future students, ready to question the nature of their existence, and they just happen to be riding pubic transport. What kind of intellectual utopia had I moved to, and could I walk among them although my proverbial stature is no match for their apparent might?

The ad promised,“the school goes beyond ‘armchair philosophy’ and offers a setting for conscious self discovery.”

The first class

“Know thyself,” our teacher seamlessly carried on from the ad, before asking, “Why did you come to the school of philosophy?”

A hand shot up instantaneously. “I have social anxiety disorder. Speaking in groups makes me so anxious.” The group of 20 people half-heartedly listening suddenly got interested. “Speaking right now is really hard for me.”

Although this didn’t seem to be addressing question, or even adequately address why she felt it necessary to tell a group of strangers that she was scared to death of speaking to groups of strangers, the group of strangers responded in turn that she was doing fantastically, and they would have had no idea about her anxiety because she was doing so well.

Wisdom loving

Philosophy is the love of wisdom, the class was taught. What makes someone wise, we were asked. Answers popped up around the room. Calm, someone said. Another, fair. Informed, balanced, and pure and variations on like all made appearances at some point. Think of the wisest person you know, the class was implored. There was a heavy weight of a room full of people collectively thinking OPRAH.

The exercise

Each week, the class was taken through what is (cultishly) called The Exercise. Really, it’s just meditation, but at the SoP, it’s The Exercise. Rest your hands in your lap, then individually and systematically focus on each sense: touch. Smell. Taste. Sight. Hearing. Simply rest in this great awareness for a few moments, the instructions read. Or, ya know, in layman’s terms, ‘Just sit still’.

The cult of philosophy

The inference to a cult didn’t end with The Exercise. As people who were just starting at the School of Philosophy, we were ‘level one’. The servers in the cafeteria were level four, and in line with apparent level four curriculum, were sequestered to working in the cafeteria in order to become acquainted with servitude. The school, meanwhile, remained acquainted with free labour.

Beauty

There’s beauty in everything, the class was taught in another lesson. Or, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. See some beauty in something this week, the class was instructed.

I responded well. There was a person I work with that shat me. To tears. I looked at him. Not just with my eyes looked at him, but looked at him. Through him. Sure, I thought, there’s beauty there. Not physical beauty specifically, though I could see how someone could find him attractive once I took a step back from my preconceptions. Inner beauty. He meant well. To me, he may have been an annoying prick, but there was honourable intent in his endless whining. He was trying to help me when he could have been bitching me out to anyone who’d listen behind my back. That was beauty. He has it.

“I saw beauty,” another classmate offered after I shared my ultimate break though. “My good salad bowl,” she told us. “I only bring it out when I’m hosting a dinner party. Why is that?, I thought. So I ate my salad out the good salad bowl all this week.”

Reasoning

Much like a cult, people began to resign from personal ownership of their problems. The school offered an alternative to making tough decisions by yourself: levels of reasoning. Take it one step higher, the school taught. Is it best for the individual? If so, is it best for the family? The dilemma was propelled through society, humanity and the universe to reach a conclusive answer. Sound reasoning, to be sure. Class, discuss.

“I have a problem,” proffered one lady, who’d be fairly silent until this point. “I have a delivery coming by courier tomorrow. They say they can only tell me they’ll be at my house between 9am and midday! I have to be at work!”

Philosophising about what was learnered

The 10-week semester culminated with a bonus week where the class was invited to demonstrate to the class what they had learnt from the school. If not directly, evidently they were informed they could offer an abstract demonstration.

Salad bowl lady brought a bowl of salad for the class to share.

As per every single statement he had made in the class that semester, a man stood up prefaced, “I’m a graphic designer.” He continued, “But I’m also a spoken word poet. I’d like to perform for you all.” Which he did, before handing out copies of his CD to each classmate.

Spoken word poet man had a talent for such things, but this was no requirement to contribute. Another man performed a song that he had performed at a friend’s wedding to great adulation from the other class members.

I feel it’s necessary to explicitly point out that these are demonstrations of what was learnt at the school of philosophy: spoken word poetry, off-key singing and salad.

I didn’t partake. I didn’t take part: because my ‘skill’ is writing. If I were to deliver an honest opinion to the class, I would have spoken about the notion ‘know thyself’. I now know myself, I would have begun, enough to know that I do not belong to the same category of broken that has encouraged the rest of the class to attach to this quasi-religious course with such gusto.

I’m glad I didn’t take that opportunity though. While the School of Philosophy didn’t dissect any fabric of the meaning of reality, it did expose a societal fabric that showed that, despite the flawed execution, these people were only trying to dissect their own reality. It’s not up to myself to take that away from them.

Toronto School of Philosophy

29 Madison Avenue, Toronto

416 960 4833

www.schoolofphilosophy.ca

El Confuso

2010-01-12T00:48:00Z

Got tired of waiting for Xtra! (Toronto's gay street press) to publish my piece. Figure I might as well get some mileage out of it. Enjoy.

----------

El Convento Rico: it’s Latin. It’s gay. But it’s also straight. So basically it’s College Street’s Ricky Martin.

If you’ve not heard of Rico bar, it’s a dingy basement Latin drag bar in Little Italy. The translation of the name is open to interpretation: “Convento” definitely means ‘convent’; however “Rico” could mean a number of things, like ‘rich’, ‘delicious’ or ‘tasty’ (which is probably the preference).

Open on Friday and Saturday nights (plus Sunday nights on long weekends), Ricos is decidedly a gay and lesbian bar. When it opened 17 years ago, it was a little thorn in the little boot of Little Italy. The area was densely populated by recent European immigrants who didn’t really take to the idea of a gay and lesbian bar right in their ‘hood. El Convento stuck it out, however, to become a staple of College Street, nestled right next to Blockbuster and a thousand Italian restaurants.

While not being in the confines of the gayborhood (read: Church Street) has been tough, they see their location as an advantage. “That’s what makes us different,” general manager Fab tells me. “And that’s what helps. It gives our gay clientele the feeling that they are accepted.”

Although they opened as an outwardly gay and lesbian bar, they’ve now “evolved” and pride themselves on their mix of gay and straight clientele. As Fab explains, “Originally we opened to the gay, lesbian and bisexual community, and now we have evolved to cater to… everybody. No matter what your sexual orientation is – gay, straight, confused – we’re just here to satisfy everybody.” He mentioned that there is a misconception in the gay community that the bar is turning straight. “Over the years, it has progressed– but I think it’s hit its plateau. I can honestly say we have a 50/50 mix.”

Fab doesn’t agree that the onslaught of straight punters cheapens the experience for the gay crowd. “A lot of our gay customers enjoy interacting with the straight community,” he countered when asked. “I think they feel that they’re not sequestered to being open about their sexuality just in a gay club. Or, be going to a straight club and not being able to be open. Here, you get a bit of everythingwhich makes them feel, ‘I’m just like everyone else’ and it doesn’t limit them to what they can or cannot do.”

They’re doing what they can to ensure that they don’t lose the gays. “A majority of our performers are female impersonators,” Feb tellsme. “We make sure that we do hold our special Mr and Miss El Convento Ricos; our anniversary parties, which are gay-orientated; our New Year’s party, which is gay-orientated. Our music in general – yes, we play Latin and top 40 – but you can’t get through a weekend without hearing that disco tune.”

Ask for any stories which illustrate the club, though, and you’ll hit a wall. “Stories do no justice,” says Alisha, the reigning Miss El Convento Rico. “You have to experience it for yourself.”

“I think it is a magical place,” Fab piped in. ”As soon as you walk in here, come down these stairs – it’s like a different place. Whatever problems you’re having in the world, or whatever problems you’re having in your day-to-day life, it all goes out the door. You come down here and forget about everything.”

I came down the stairs, and wondered if there was separate entrance that I missed because my perception of the world hadn’t changed in any seismic fashion. It was just a smallish room that was playing host to what appeared to be a stagette night. At least, that’s what the sea of feather boas suggested. During the course of the night, the TVs displayed “Congratulations to our new brides!” while the stagettes’ names rotated on a marquee and gaggles of hens squealed at the digital recognition.

Fab had already told me that the bar is a popular destination for bachelorette parties. “They like to come and enjoy the show, watch everybody and party with everyone in here,” he said. “It’s one last hurrah. It’s a new alternative to going to a strip joint I guess.”

The music dimmed, and an announcement warned that a drag show was coming. The announcer also promoted the forthcoming long weekend Sunday night at Rico because the Chippendales were appearing. “And guys,” he cooed to the men, “if you’re thinking, ‘why would I want to go to that?’ – last year,all the women came and got all fired up over the men… but had no one to go home with.” I couldn’t see the announcer, but the tone of his voice in the conclusion suggested major sad face. So not only am I at the first gay bar inthe world that has to so desperately encourage their male patrons to come and see the Chippendales – the CHIPPENDALES – but they do so by promising a bounty of dripping wet pussy.

So, is it a gay bar, or is it a straight bar that features gay people? “We’re still a gay bar,” Fab reassured me. “We characterize ourselves as a gay bar and make sure everybody knows that we are. We’re proud to fly the gay flag outside.”

Drag shows are interesting at El Convento Rico, as there’s no stage – so the shows are perfomed ‘in the round’, with the audience making an accommodating wide circle on the dance floor so the queens can mime and gesture from the centre. The positioning means that really only one side of the audience at a time is getting to see the show proper; while the other half of the club is literally getting a bum deal.

Similarly, whether the gay crowd or the straight crowd is getting the best proverbial “view” at any time at ‘the tasty / delicious / rich convent’ is also open to interpretation.

El Convento Rico, 750 College Street Toronto.

http://www.elconventorico.com/

Write right

2010-01-02T02:02:00Z

I recently fell into a reflective state cleaning up the files on my laptop. Amongst the files I migrated from my old laptop to my new one were articles and blog posts that I’d written eons ago. So I re-read them. Laughed at a couple even, which is like the literary equivalent of sucking your own cock.

What happened to me? I used to write real good and stuff.

Facetiousness aside, it does feel like I’ve fallen off the horse. When people ask me what I do these days, I earnestly say, failed writer. And being endlessly self-critical while simultaneously magically blame-y, I have a few reasons.

I’m not writing much lately

I had a run with posting daily on my blog to see if any magic would come from cyclically spewing words on to the page, but all that did was make my own voice echo in my own head with the sameness of each blog post.

This excuse wears thin though, because aside from the produced blog posts, I wrote few articles this year: several for CitySearch Australia, which is edited by a “friend” who was doing me a “favour” by letting me write for free in the name of getting me 'back on the horse'; and I’ve wrote an article for Xtra!, a gay paper here in Toronto. That article, which I’ve just re-read, was written on spec - and pretty damn good if you ask me. Good enough to be accepted by the publisher, so spec won – however it’s been ‘scheduling pending’ since August. Which is fucking ridiculous, and killed my confidence in getting paid work for the time being.

My head is busted

A dear friend told me that one of their concerns when I was in my traumatic brain injury-induced coma is that I would wake up and not be able to write – because “we know you like to think of yourself as a writer,” was the gentle way it was put. And honestly, this is the one that freaks me out the most – maybe I lost a bit of myself after the accident, and that was the bit that wrote well?

I only write about myself

This one was pointed out by my travel buddy Bree, who has been urging me to write because I moan about it so much. When I told her I was writing this very blog post, she said, “Do you ever not write about yourself?”

Another monkey on my back, my sister Bec, has my blog bookmarked, which is awfully sweet and sisterly. When I noticed it recently, she asked why I wasn’t posting much. I told her I was bored of it; bored with my voice on it, talking about myself incessantly. “Isn’t that what a blog is?” she asked. “Kind of like your own personal reality TV show?”

Her idea of a blog’s purpose is contentious, but she was right about why I’m bored of it. I’m tired of talking about me. With the accident and moving to Canada, there’s been nothing but self-centric posting going on. I moved to Canada to escape the selfishness of overcoming trauma, except I only left the trauma behind and not the selfishness.

If there’s one thing working holidays are good for, it’s trying on new and different faces. So I’m starting a new tone for the blog for 2010. I plan on mixing it up with actual publishable work (addressing central questions and everything); maybe even some short stories, if I can develop my fiction-writing skills enough to produce something I want to share. And I promise: no poetry.

WATAH!

2009-10-28T21:01:00Z

Recently at work, because of my inconspicuous location I was put in charge of looking after the card for someone’s 15-year anniversary. Someone casually asked me if so-and-so had signed the card, so I replied, “Oh I dunno… I’m just the gate keeper.”

Which was hysterically echoed as, “THE GATE KEEPAH!”

Another time, also at work – did I mention this is my Canadian work, where they all have funny accents? – someone asked me, “Josh, say ‘water’.”

“Water,” I said.

“WATAH!” was once again echoed.

And I dreamt of cultural harassment laws that operate the same way as sexual harassment laws, which exist only in a world where I’m not forced feel like an Australian clown.

The reason we were talking about water, though, is because I was disgusted at the way water is wasted here. In fact, I raised the issue of water with the dude who mocked my “watah” because he left the tap running while he ditzed his way around the kitchen.

Coming from a country experiencing severe drought, I told him, you shouldn’t waste water like that. “I’m sorry,” he said, blankly, ingenuinely. While the water still ran.

There are small visual postcards that remind me of pre-drought Australia everywhere, from sprinklers to the OMG YOU CAN’T DO THAT hosing of driveways.

Canada is different to Australia though – they seem to be under the impression that their water supply is infinite. The poor bastards are snowed on for a majority of the year, so have a seemingly endless amount in their reserves from all the melted snow water.

I have read though that water is going to become the greatest commodity in the world as the population explodes and drinkable water becomes scarce. (Haven’t these people seen Tank Girl?)

So I guess it’s up to me to be this country’s water defender. I’m sorry, that's WATAH DEFENDAH.

Homesick

2009-10-27T20:38:00Z

I got to Canada on July 14. Today is October 27. Which, by my calculations, makes it 105 days. Or, 3 months and 13 days. Or, 15 weeks. Or, 2520 hours. Or, 151,200 minutes. Which is 9,072,000 seconds.

So I lied. They’re not my calculations at all; I just whacked the dates into a website and it spat all those numbers at me. The point of that exercise: that is exactly how long it took for my homesickness to kick in.

It came on quite suddenly and innocuously. It was actually a video on theage.com.au that did it. (Sorry, dear friends and family who are still in Australia.)

It was showing the new Fairfax building on the corner of Collins St and Spencer St that has just been finished. I worked just a few doors down from there and saw the foundations go in. It made my heart ache that I wasn’t there to see it complete. It looks like an awesome building. And just that one piece of architecture reminded me how freakin’ beautiful Melbourne is.

One thing that’s surprised me is how visually unappealing Toronto is. Sure, there are a couple of impressive buildings around the place, but there’s no cohesive beauty – at the risk of sounding biased, like you find in Melbourne.

Bias aside, I’m sure any impartial person could admit that Toronto is a little ugs. There’s not much pizzazz.

So I saw all these images of my home city, and I thought: I should be there. Why am I wasting my time here setting up a life? I should be there, my permanent home: setting myself up with a beachside apartment in Elwood, riding to work every day. Being a tourist in my own city, rather than a transient resident in this one.

It’s a very intense, hurried feeling – like you should be there right now because all of this is happening right now and you aren’t there right now.

Then it passed, as it always does, because I remind myself that Melbourne’s not going anywhere. It’ll still be there when the ugly beast that is Toronto chews me up and spits me out.

Telephunk

2009-10-26T20:15:00Z

I have to start out this blog post with an apology. Many years ago, a good friend of mine, Kelly, who has lived in Canada, told us that Canadian mobile phone companies charged you to receive calls. Bullshit, we shouted. You don’t ask to be called! How could they charge you? They do, said Kelly, steadfast. But I didn’t believe her, even up to the point I arrived here myself and signed up for my own Canadian mobile.

So, Kelly: I’m sorry I doubted you. (Oh, and happy birthday!)

Yes, Canadian mobile carriers will charge you to receive a call – the exact same amount they’d charge you if you made the call. Which sucks if you’re on prepaid, because if you have no credit, no one can call you. That would screw so many Australian prepaid users, who rarely top up – or even go weeks without buying more credit and just let people call them.

There’s no grace either – I was on a Very Important Call, discussing my banking or some such, and the call suddenly and mysteriously disconnected halfway through. Aww, you forgot to keep your account topped up, didn’t you newbie?

When I was signing up for an account (you totally can’t live on prepay over here), I said the guy in the shop, listen – I know you didn’t personally create the charge so I’m not blaming you, but how is charging to receive a call justified? “You’re still using the network,” he said flatly.

Hang on to your hats though! They’ve found a lot of other things to charge you for too. Like caller ID. Not receiving the caller ID of the person calling you, but actually sending your caller ID when you call people.

So, hypothetically, someone could be charged for answering a call from someone they didn’t want to talk to but they had no idea it was them because the caller ID wasn’t displayed. Get it?

Hi, I’m a Canadian mobile company. Dolla dolla bill, y’all.

What this does, however, is open up the market to selling ‘packs’. For example, for only $10 a month, all your incoming calls are ABSOLUTELY FREE. And look, for just $5 extra a month you can send your caller ID! OMG JOYGASM.

With the bad comes the good though – I guess they make up for their shitty, shitty pricing by chucking the word unlimited on to everything else to balance it out. For $35 a month, I’m on a fairly reasonable plan: 1,000 minutes peak, and unlimited after 7pm and weekends. And unlimited text messages. Considering it’s rare to make many calls before 7pm, that pretty much means ‘unlimited everything’.

Does this balance out the dual arse rape of paying to receive calls and again to send your caller ID? Just give me a ring and you'll find out.

Cloudy with a chance…

2009-10-24T21:10:00Z

And on to a blog post I’m reminded to write every time I call Australia…

HOW’S THE WEATHA?

It’s cute that it’s a conversation topic for pretty much every Australian, especially Mum. I get it – Canada’s got a reputation for being cold; Australia has a reputation for being hot: conversation ensues.

However, disappointingly in terms of conversation, so far the weather has been entirely agreeable.

When we got here in July, there were some hot days. It was summer, of course, so… kinda expected. But almost immediately after we landed, Canadians were apologising for the season. It’s not usually as mild, apparently. Which is odd, because honestly, it was pretty freakin’ hot.

Well, a little more ‘sticky’ than hot. The difference with Australian summers is the humidity, which is outta control here. It’s not something I’d ever really considered before, being from Melbourne, but the air is so thick with heat, it feels a shitload hotter than the actual centigrade temperature would have you believe. Because of that, every weather forecast contains the actual temperature and a handy little “FEELS LIKE” box. I can only remember one day where it ‘felt like’ 40, so I suppose that’s mild by Australian standards.

We’re in the midst of fall now though, so the thermometer’s dropped a bit. After a cold snap last week where the days were starting out around zero and reaching only 8 or 9, we’ve climbed back up to days of around 16 or so, which is totally doable.

What’s a little less tolerable though is the perverse amount of pleasure Canadians take in deriding their weather. “How are you liking the cold?” they’ll cheerfully sneer. I tell them honestly, I’m a winter baby; I love the cold. And without fail, every time that’s countered with a maniac, “JUST WAIT TIL WINTER!”

It’s almost as if they think we haven’t heard that Canada gets a bit cold. On the contrary, I’m looking forward to it – it’s totally different for me, ya know?

That said, the thing I’m actually looking forward to the most is surviving my first winter here so I can reply flatly, ‘ya know, it’s really not that bad’ – despite the fact I froze my nuts off the whole time.

This blog eats me

2009-10-23T20:56:00Z

As mentioned yesterday, we’ve been shopping around for a new place to live. The process over here is to look on Craigslist. They are stupid crazy over Craigslist for some reason, despite, y’know, all the Craigslist murders.

Searching through the “rooms, shared” board is draining, especially because we’re looking for two bedrooms and it’s hard to narrow your search for two separate furnished bedrooms and get decent results. So we’ve placed ads in the “rooms wanted” category.

Our ad basically read: we’re looking for two separate furnished rooms at a place that’s walkable to a subway. When you place an ad is you’re given an anonymised address (az56523178324@craigslist.org, for example) and when someone emails that, it’s forwarded on to your proper email address. You can’t email from that address, so you have to use your own email – so that’s where the anonymous privacy stops. That’s why you only write back to decent offers.

Such as the one we received from someone called Judy. “I have a 2 bedroom apartment in my home which is located 5 minute walk to Eglinton West subway station,” it read. It carried on, and she sounded like a pretty nice chick with a suitable apartment for us.

So I wrote back a basic reply using my mail@joshdare.com address, saying the place sounded great and we’d like a viewing. The problem being, of course, that my email address is derived from my website – so if anyone had the wherewithal to even care, from the email address you could figure out there’s website at joshdare.com. And if you did have enough sneaky sneaky about you, you could visit that website, see the links and realise, oh hey! He has a blog too!

And then proceed to read it in meticulous crazy stalker detail.

Then reply:

Thanks for your reply.

I was reading your blog. I don’t want to find myself or my home described on your blog…About the loud music, I hope it won’t be an issue. I didn’t quite understand what you were saying about the person who hit you.

It is possible to see the apartment as long as you agree not to write about it on your blog. If you don’t like it, that’s fine and that should be the end. When would you like to come by? Phone me or give me 2 or 3 times you might be available. When do you want to move?

What. Do. You. Fucking. Mean.

She’s gone ahead and over-reacted over the two most recent posts where I described the houses we’d viewed, and how the hostel told me off for music that wasn’t actually loud. She missed the point of both entirely, but I suppose the two posts she referenced could be construed as somewhat relevant to a landlord.

However, casually trying to clarify what my opinion was of the person who sent me into a coma and a month of rehab: you fucking crazy, lady. On which planet would that be OK? Why is it any of your fucking business? And get to that post, you would’ve read my more morose posts where I acknowledged the somber gravity of what happened; and how much it fucked my head. Why you think it’s even polite to bring it up in conversation – when I don’t even know you – is a concern.

At the end of the day, I put the blog posts up for the whole world wide web to read, so shouldn’t be surprised when someone does. It’s just that I don’t put them up for prospective landlords to read. If she’d read it and kept it to herself, fine – but I certainly don’t put them up so they can serve as fodder for a paranoid grilling.

So, from now on, think I’ll just go back to using my Hotmail.

Welcome to suburban Canada

2009-10-22T19:13:00Z

So, with our meticulous house auditioning process completed by late July, Bree and I shifted into our new suburban abode. I’m sorry, did I say we moved into our suburban abode? I meant we moved on to A FREAKIN’ MOVIE SET.

The scene in our street is like every Hollywood suburban movie you’ve seen: big ass cars (and we are talking huge trucks, like Hummers only bigger) driving down wide tree-lined roads which are dotted with quant little houses, most of them with a porch.

However, they’re not called porches here – they’re ‘patios’. And they substitute for a backyard; in the sense that during the warmer months, people sit outside on their patios for the cool. Because you’ve seen it on TV before, it’s probably easy to imagine a fat old black lady sitting on her patio sunlounge, next to a screen door, fanning herself and drawling, “… it shure is HAWT to-day…”

And you’ve seen it on TV because it’s actually like that. For real.

I suppose sitting in such an accessible spot promotes more of a community feel, but because I’ve been raised with the Australian backyard mentality, I don’t think I could do it – I’d feel naked exposed. It’s about a metre away from the bitumen, so it’d seem like the cars driving up the street were watching me as they drove by. It’s a moot point at any rate because we don’t have a patio – we have a massive backyard instead. With a BBQ and all, so I feel right at home.

With Halloween approaching, the neighbourhood has gone crazy with decorations. It’s only October 22, but there’s so many houses with spooky motifs already. Jack-o-laterns, cobwebs across everything, “boiling” cauldrons, spookily-lit windows – the 31st is going to be insane.

If that all that wasn’t every-low-budget-suburban-sitcom-ever-made enough, imagine my face when I walked down the street one day and saw a LEMONADE STAND. Honest. To. God. A 5c-a-cup lemonade stand. Not only did I assume homemade lemonade stands never left the movie screen; I never thought they would have left the 1950s… especially at that price. Still only a nickel! Plus America – so, by extension, North America – seems to be gung ho on safety – to an extreme paranoid level – and it’s children making lemonade, so there’s zero accountability or responsibility there. Or, y’know, respect for basic hygiene.

But the one thing that absolutely clinches our desolately suburban location for the locals we talk to here: we can walk to a WalMart. That is apparently a very sore thumb to the ‘middle of nowhere’ argument, because as it turns out, WalMarts only start where the city stops.

We came here for Toronto city, not Toronto “outskirts” – so after only a brief stay at this suburban residence, we’ll be moving downtown in the coming months... just as soon as we scout out another location.

Damn, those crickets are loud

2009-10-21T20:37:00Z

Fuck me! It’s been a while since I posted here, eh.

That’s because I had a little epiphany that made me decide to be more ‘in the present’. Yes, blogging relates to that. How? Think of it as the text-based equivalent of a camera: to take a photo, you have to have enough foresight to have the camera out; or walk around with the camera in hand, ready to pounce on any picture moment. So the blogging equivalent is walking round seeing everything through the eye of the blog instead of my own. As in, when doing something, I’d think about how it would fit into my blog – rather than actually doing it. It sounds retarded, because surely I could just do whatever and just happen to write about it later, but I don’t work like that. The blog would be sitting on my shoulder the whole time, whispering about how cool whatever I was thinking about doing would write up. So I wouldn’t feel like I owned any particular thought.

Why this in mind, then, you may wonder why I decided to embark on a Twitter crusade last week. Isn’t that, oh, exactly the same thing? Turns out: yes.

For a week, I pledged to make a daily tweet to see if there was something about the service I was missing that could only be garnered by regular usage of the micro-blogging service.

There’s not, but I did take a major positive away from the experience: I should blog more. Not this micro-blogging crap, but proper full size blogging. If only due to the fact that I’m not doing a hell of a lot of paid work, so I should keep on my literary toes.

So I’ll be doing my best to post more often, and have a list of blog topics I will mine through over the next few days to bring this puppy up to speed – so you can be in my present, too.

Getting hit by a car: one year on

2009-09-11T21:28:00Z

One of my loose “rules” about my working holiday here in Canada is that I’m not telling anyone about my accident. A lot of the reason I left home was to escape the adversity of surviving my accident; as in, I felt I wouldn’t be able anything without it being in the shadow of the accident. So, even though I absolutely acknowledge that it did happen and it had a profound impact on my life, I’m not readily volunteering the story to people I meet. I’m just not keen on it becoming part of my ongoing dialogue here. However, I can’t let the anniversary pass by uncommented.

Almost exactly year ago (give or take time zone differences) – September 11 – I was excitedly preparing to move houses the next day. Confirming the moving truck, making sure my electricity was going to be connected – you know, standard moving guff. Then I went home and started packing my excess belongings in the car. Of course, that’s when it happened. Technically, right about now (9:49am in Canada, so 11:49pm in Australia) I was entering what would become my two-week coma, which preceded my stint in rehab.

In fact, my rehab centre (Epworth) recently noted the anniversary also and sent a letter asking me to make an appointment for an annual check up along with a questionnaire for me to complete ahead of the appointment to help their studies. My mum had to call them and apologise because I couldn’t make an appointment as I’m now living quite independently in Canada. By all reports, they had a joyous fit and are now desperate for this questionnaire to be completed. (The term “rehab success story” was bandied around, but I don’t know if they said it or just my mum did.) I don’t know what they were expecting – an unemployed slob eating bag after bag of Cheetos while watching Foxtel, perhaps – but apparently moving on and doing something that’s not mediocre is something not oft accomplished with my fellow patients.

It’ll be interesting for me to complete the survey though, because it’ll make me acknowledge areas I’ve made gains. For example: you may remember that I was told not to drink or do drugs for 12 months following the accident. (Did I just hear a “ha” in the audience?!) So in my head, that has been warped to: after 12 months, you’re pretty much back to normal. I’m noticing – or distorting reality in my memory to fit my conclusion or whatever – that my memory has improved. It was pretty bad to begin with, but the “blessing” of the proprietary nature of memory problems is I just don’t remember the worst of it. In actuality, it turned out to be forgetting stupid little things like whether I’ve mentioned something in conversation I’d been meaning to. That seems to have dropped off a lot recently, so I guess it’s an ongoing area of improvement.

I haven’t quite left behind the mental scarring of the accident. I get stupid and persistent worries or thoughts that I attribute to the lingering fear – like, if I’m using an escalator I might think about my foot getting caught between the steps and being ripped off; or at other times I’ll think my spinal cord could be ripped out by something sharp passing behind me. They’re just thoughts that randomly pop in and out of my head and pass just as quickly as they come, but I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be thinking them if I hadn’t been through major trauma.

Besides my minor ongoing quibbles, I’ve done a pretty good job of moving on and forgetting about the accident. Not so much the people around me.

A few weeks ago, I was crossing a road with the lights at a pedestrian crossing, and a skateboarder sorta ran the red sorta crossed, didn’t see and took me out. We both hit the bitumen. I thought it was a funny coincidence, like a dry ‘hey look what happens when I cross roads’, so posted it on my Facebook. To be met with a flurry of people telling me to be careful when crossing the road. These weren’t standard ‘look both ways’ responses; these were ‘you are obviously have severe issues crossing ordinary streets’ messages. In the end, I had to comment and say that all the “concern” was very sweet, but absolutely unwarranted. What I didn’t say is that it was pretty condescending. I don’t have a predisposition to getting hit by things. I got hit by a car, once. Although the outcome was pretty serious, it’s not indicative of any behaviour that results in me colliding with vehicles.

If there were any doubts about not mentioning it to Canadians I met, there wereren’t after that. So after going out for a commemorative drink tonight to mark the fact I didn’t die a year earlier, I’m hoping to put the whole episode to bed and eventually only vaguely recall ‘something’ that happened to me with a car ‘once’, ‘years ago’.

I’ll finally see the sunshine after being in this damn shadow for so long.

Picking a Canadian pad

2009-08-18T03:02:06Z

Our method for picking a Canadian residence was about as meticulous as the method we used to choose the hostel: haphazard.

In total, we saw three places. The first was generously described as a “loft”. There’s obviously some cultural difference with the use of the word, as I would have thought “loft” meant like a nice mezzanine level or something. You know, like a New York loft. No, apparently “loft” here basically means “attic”.

So Bree and I were shown these bedrooms that more than gently reminded us of Anne Frank’s last residence. The first bedroom was of an OK size, but no window. The second room was much better, but… accessible only via a door in the first bedroom.

“Would you like it?” the realtor asked. “We’d need to figure out the many, many privacy issues,” was the reply – because hey, we just started looking and that might’ve been the best out there.

The second was a bit of a distance out of the city. To clarify, it was a subway to a station called Ossington, and then a 15-minute bus ride north. Beautiful, beautiful house – turns out the landlord is a renovator by trade, and had been living in the house and doing it up for a good while. But, his work needed him Downtown often so he was moving closer. With five bedrooms and a decent backyard, it was a very good-looking place. We were being shown the kitchen when this dude walked in from the backyard and put on his shoes. We assumed he was a tenant, and said hey.

“Hey!” he said, before he joined us and was shown the rest of the house. Because he was just inspecting as well, but had managed to talk his way into taking his shoes off in the backyard. His name was Neil, and he was a little too excitable; telling us that you just don’t get places like this, and hastily and excitedly agreeing with everything we said.

The landlord was telling us about the past tenants he’d had, including the ones that didn’t really work out – like the older person that was going to clown college full time. “Oh, I went to clown college,” Bree said flatly. With the perfect pitch and timing that two people who have been spending too much time together get, I pointed at the clothes she was wearing and said, “She even kept the outfit.”

Neil. Was. In. Stitches. And it wasn’t really that funny, it was just my standard level of funny.

We caught the bus back and checked out our third and final place. This one had been confusing to arrange: the emails were signed off Terrence, but the email address came up as Country Alex. And one room was in one house, and the other room was in the house next door – which belonged to someone else entirely but Terrence was filling them for conveniences sake. Following? It didn’t really matter in the end, because the rooms had kitchen sinks in them and looked like abodes that would be perfectly set as the backdrop to every slasher flick ever. You know, creaky floorboards, that sorta thing.

We chose the middle (“renovated”) house, despite its location, for a few reasons:

- We were offered a trial month, so if it didn’t work out we could just walk away.

- The rooms are really nice.

- It’s fairly cheap – a month here costs each of us less than the two weeks did at the hostel.

- There’s a backyard.

- It’s honestly not that far once you know where you’re going.

- It’s furnished and set up for travelers and students – everyone has their own separate fridge and locks on their bedroom doors.

- Neil was rejected for being a try hard with no input from us. Go landlord.

We are not backpackers

2009-07-27T03:59:00Z

Since we arrived here a little under two weeks ago, we’ve been living at a backpackers’ hostel while looking for a permanent place to live.

We had a meticulous method for choosing the hostel: a couple of months before departure, Bree and I Googled “Toronto hostels” and stumbled across the site for the Canadiana Backpackers Inn.

We saw “free pancake breakfast”. We saw “free wi-fi”. We booked.

The next time we got together, we had a rare frank moment and said hey, we only booked because we saw free pancakes and free wi-fi… we should look around. We did, and it seemed like the best thing going. Plus, we were already booked, so… meh.

We arrived at 11pm on a Tuesday, about 30-odd hours after leaving Melbourne’s Tullamarine airport. Imagine how tired we were. Go on, give it a shot. Yeah… tired. So we got to the hostel and quietly reported to the front desk, and they then showed us to our room.

I’m sorry, did I say room? I meant cupboard. Showed us to our cupboard.

Reasons Bree is awesome #1: she needed the toilet shortly after putting down our bags. I could hear her laughing hysterically in the loo. She came back and reported delirium had set in with jet lag and the tiny size of this room was hysterical.

It’s true, I told her: I had pictured our bunk beds in one corner, and a wide enough girth left to, oh I don’t know, unzip our bags and have them act as living cupboards for the couple of weeks. We barely had enough room to even stand our bags up. Even then, they had to be relocated to open the door.

The next day, we approached reception to ask if there was some kind of shelving solution they could offer, because we packed our lives into our suitcases and need ready access to them. (Apparently, we are courteous to a fault.) After a brief discussion, they figured out the subtext was “we’re not happy with the cupboard”, and moved us to another room – which was much bigger.

How both rooms are the same price, when one room has a desk and two set of drawers and the other has… floor and air, is a mystery to me. But this room is much, much better.

I’m perhaps a little too comfortable in this room, as the other day I was playing music through my iPhone speakers (thanks for the going away present, friends!) – at what I’d consider a moderate volume, but that is obviously subjective – when I heard a very loud rapping on the door. So I answered it.

“Hey guys!”, a hostel worker beamed.

“Oh, it’s just me,” I replied.

“Oh, really? Because I figured there MUST BE A PARTY GOING ON.”

In stripper fantasies, this is the part when the chick walks into the room and makes a helicopter with her bra. But, no. She was just being a total bitch while telling me to turn down my music. Fair enough to tell me to turn it down, but she was carrying the angst of a million noise complaints before me, forgetting that this is my first “offence” and she hasn’t told me to turn it down umpteen times before. Her loud knocking was clearly audible over the music, but her diatribe went on for a good five minutes; banging on about how there are students in the building. All I needed to hear was, “Can you turn it down?”

That night, at 11:30pm or so, we were sleeping. Or, trying to. Some backpacker chicks from some foreign country decided against this however, and were – at a guess – playing horse race in the corridor, making gallivanting noises on the way back to their rooms. Where was bitch face then, huh?

Their inadvertent mission to ensure I didn’t feel comfortable in the room carried on the next day. I’d just returned from my shower and was still in my towel while checking something on my laptop. The door opened and a random dude came in.

Need to reiterate here: there was no “loud” music playing, and there was no knocking. Just me, in a towel. On my laptop. Luckily this was momentarily before I whipped it all out to put my undies on. “Sorry!” the Mexican cheerfully said, as he emptied my bin and carried on his day.

As for the free pancakes and wi-fi: the wi-fi is the bomb. Bree and I use it almost constantly. But the Canadiana’s wi-fi is a bit shit, so my laptop always picks up a wi-fi signal called ‘dlink’, which is an unsecured network that is better than their one and mustn’t be very far away.

The pancakes are served at 9am promptly, so Bree is never here to get them (she leaves for work around 8am). I’ve been a couple of times, and the point they fail to mention is that you will be forced to eat with backpackers. At a backpackers’ inn! I KNOW, RIGHT? Oh, and the pancakes are kind of… sub par.

For those not paying full attention, here’s the recap:

- we booked at a place called Backpackers’ Inn, yet have a thing against backpackers.

- we booked for the free wi-fi, yet use a neighbour’s unsecured network.

- we booked for the free pancakes for breakfast, yet only one of us eats them (and they’re rubbish).

We can’t wait to move out on Tuesday.