In the Twilight of a Time, There Emerges a Need for Man to Comprehend His Own Bitter Fate

Finally Resigned to the Ineveitable beyond, He Searches the Ages, Desperate for Stories of Assurance, Redemption, and Hope

Such Tales Fill Page Upon Page With Enough Ink to Flood a Thousand Valleys, and Drown the Tallest Tree...

Desolate and Barren, Humanity is at a Crossroads,

the People have Retreated, Shuttering their Once Carefree Lives from Unseen Enemies which Seem to Plague Not Only the Physical Form...

but the Innermost Thought

Driven by Panic, Compelled by Dread, the Masses Begin to Devolve...

Choked with Suspicion and Fear, Voices do not Dare to Sing nor Fingers to Play. Imminent Defeat is All but Assured...

Word of Radical Acts, Disobedience, and Non-Compliance Spread Among the People, At First Fearful, then Defiant as the Legend Grows

Whispers Turn to Cries and the Cries into Screams

Now the Fire is Lit, Smouldering in the Belly of Humanity, It Cannot be Extinguished

For the Stories Endure

Messages, Dictations, Warnings....

Stories

Such as These:

Part 1a: Outsider Intro

Thanksgiving was decent. I enjoyed a great meal at my grandmother's house preceded and followed by nights of sweet LAN action at the Braj's. Basically that's all there was to it. There was a miniscule ammount of hanging out with Ellen and Blake.

There was also a hanging out with Eazy Motherfuckin E. However, our conversation in that regard was rather limited. It was less "hanging out" and more "me convoncing Eazy to get his act together". The particular act I was interested in was the "Going to Toronto to see DJ Shadow" matinee. My Favourite DJ Saviour had (has) recently released The Outsider, his latest studio album and was on tour promoting it. He was playing in the Big City that following Thursday (the 12th) and Eazy had purchased tickets for myself, tha biz, and Eazy's brother Will. We also had made plans by email with Will to stay at his place that night and have great times.

In fact, there was only one small problem (two if you count the fact that Ticketmaster hadn't sent Eazy the tickets yet): Eazy couldn't understand why arriving in TO at 7 for an 8 o'clock show made me worried.

Here's a synopsis of the conversation:

Him: High School is way too important for me to even miss a single day. I'll take the bus from Stratford to Toronto after school. I'll be there at 7.

Me: That leaves no time for anything to go wrong. It also leaves no time for dropping our stuff off at our brothers or finding dinner. Not to mention that the show is general admission, and the doors open at 8, so we'll be stuck at the back if we don't line up earlier.

Him: I'll look into it. I'll email you when I get it figured out.

That was Saturday night,

Sunday and Monday: No contact. Not a big deal, this is clearly because it was Thanksgiving and there was no school on Monday. No doubt he'll get on it on Tuesday and email me then.

Tuesday: No Contact.

Wednesday: No Conatct.

I realize that something is very wrong. I'm supposed to get on a bus for Toronto sometime during the next day. But I still don't know when I'm getting on, where I'm going when I get off, or if I even have tickets to get into the show I'm supposed to see.

I send Eazy an email expressing those concerns. To his credit he replies within 20 minutes and explains that due to massive spyware infestations, his computer wouldn't allow him to email me before. He explains that he no longer has any choice about missing the day of school due to a number of projects which are due, being completed in class, or being presented on Thusday. However, he has secured a ride to Kitchener which will allow him to catch a bus from there instead of from Stratford, cutting his Toronto ETA down to 6:30pm.

I debate. I ponder. I decide that Blake and I will go earlier, meet Will, drop off our things, and get into line at the venue. At 6:30, Will will get Eazy, drop him stuff off, and head over to the line, where they'll distribute our tickets and we'll all have a grand old time.

I issue an email to this effect to Eazy and to Will. In this email I include a precisely laid out schedule and my telephone number, with the instruction that they should email and leave voicemails for me in the event of an emergency/ change of plan.

By the end of the night Eazy has emailed me back again saying that that seems like a good idea, and that he's going to phone Will on Thursday morning before he goes to school to make sure he knows the plan.

Part 1b: Broken Levee Blues

Thursday came. I went to class, wrote a midterm, and went back home. No voice/emails form Eazy or Will. I called Blake and we firmed up our travel arrangements. I got to Blake's, and we went out to catch the city-bus which would take us to the terminal that the Greyhounds left from. Blake suggested one of the 4 (or more) regular busses which come past Laurier and eventually deposit patrons at the terminal. But I knew better. I decided that we would take the express bus. It comes every 15 minutes, and only makes 3 stops between Laurier and the terminal, giving it a 13 minute travel time between those points, which blows all the other busses out of the water. Except that it didn't come. We waited and waited, enough time passed for 2 express busses to have come and gone. Finally, just as Blake and I were walking to a different stop to get a regular bus, the express came and we boarded it.

We arrived and bought our tickets to Toronto with maybe 10 minutes to spare.

The bus ride was uneventful, but Blake let me read a Charles Bukowski novel called Pulp. I liked it very much. Coincidentally, it was the last thing Buk wrote. Apparently he died shortly after completeing it.

On a side-note: after spending my youth riding the train into Toronto, it's really neat to come in by bus. The train basically brings you in through the ghetto, while the bus takes you down by the water. There's lots of neat architecture around. I woke Blake up so that he could enjoy it, but he seemed less than impressed.

No one was waiting for us at the bus stop. This cramped my style a little bit. Blake said we should get a drink while we figured things out. Now, I didn't explicitly menion it earlier, but I have no idea where Will lives. None whatsoever. Nor do I know his phone number in Toronto. So there we were. It was 4:30, we were in Toronto, and we were all alone...

So, logically, we got down to business. First, we went outside and "looked for Will" (read "bought Street-Meat"). Then Blake suggested that we get a drink. Insisting that now wasn't the time for such frivolities, I used my credit card to check my voicemail. Or at least, I tried. Apparently when I try to check my voicemail from any phone that isn't my own, I need to enter my mailbox number on top of my PIN. Unfortunately, I have no idea what that number might be. So I was in the dark at that time as to whether or not Will had left me any illuminating messages.

Blake mentioned that a drink would be really good right then. I demured, and suggested he go to an ATM to get us some more operational funding. He did, and then suggested that we inject some of the cash into Toronto's flagging bus-terminal-alcohol-service industry, preferably on an R&C and a Screwdriver. However, I wasn't in the mood to squander operational funding before I knew what the operation was going to be.

I left him to call Ellen and leave her a voicemail detailing that we were in Toronto, alive, but totally unsupervised. I did a circuit of the terminal in a last-ditch search for Will. When I came back he wasn't at the payphones. He was in the bus terminal bar. I put on an angry face and pulled him out.

I was in favour of camping out the bus terminal until Will arrived. Presumeably he'd been delayed by something, and might still make an appearance. Luckily cooler (if still drinkless) heads prevailed, and Blake started us walking in the direction of Ryerson. The argument went thusly: Will wasn't there. Since I hadn't heard anything from him that morning, there was a good chance that a) he hadn't gotten the message or b) something had cropped up at the last second and he'd left a voice/email for me. So we needed to find a computer. By heading to the nearest centre of higher learning we increased dramatically our chances of finding a publicly accessable computer or someone we knew. As it happened, the latter occured.

"Hey, there's Davim Horsm*! Let's ask him for help!"

The man in question told us that he was just going to a class, but that we should meet him rght where we were now at 6 o'clock. Then he could take us to his residence room and let us get on the internet. Getting a computer was more important than getting a look into my voicemail at this point, since Vonage automatically sends me an email with the phone number of the caller if a person leaves a voicemail on my phone.

That left us with about 45 minutes to waste.

Now that we had a good objective in sight and we could safely say that we weren't going to need all of our money, I let Blake follow his nose to the nearest bar, The Ram in the Rye. Get it? It's the Ryerson campus bar, and much like Stratord Central, all their sports mascotts are rams (And here I was thinking that St. Mikes was so cheap copying all of our sports teams from the University of Waterloo). We had a drink. Then left. Blake had a cigarette, and we walked all over the Ryerson quadrangle thing looking half-heartedly for Ellen.

When the time came, Davim was waiting for us. However, we'd already decided on a different course of action. We thanked him for his gracious intent to assist us, and then parted ways. We went back to the bus terminal and were there by 6:20. In ten minutes, Eazy's bus should have been arriving. Even if he hadn't shown up to meet us, Will would be there to meet his brother. So we looked around. No Will. We waited anyway. If Will wasn't there, then Eazy must know how to get to his house.

We wait.

At 6:30 a bus pulls into the station. Eazy isn't on it. Luckily it's a bus from Niagra, so it's OK that he's not on it.

Ditto the next 4 busses, from Hamilton, 2 places in the North (because it was a different bus line), and somewhere else unimportant.

The Kitchener bus finally pulls in at 7. Eazy isn't on it. Needless to say, this made me slightly uncomfortable.

I made credit card call to my roommate and asked her if there were any new voicemails. There weren't any.

We called Ellen (just getting out of class) and left her a voicemail telling her to meet us in front of the ILLK, which is a studpidly named residence building at Ryerson.

I worked. We went to her house and consolidated our knowlege base. On the way there, much vitriol was exuded on my part, and Blake got sour and said that he didn't want to sleep at Will's any more. When we got there Blake dropped his bag on the floor and hungrily eyed the 1.5 litre bottle of wine on the counter.

None of of us knew Will's phone number, but Ellen knew people who knew, and we got on their case.

Finally, we were able to get the information and call Will. We got his address and toured. Halfway here Blake decided that he actually did want to stay at Will's.

"Liam, do you want co come bacl to Ellen's with my after the show so that I can get my bag"

"No. Try not being retarded next time. There's no way in hell I'm walking back through this ghetto until the light of dawn is on my face."

We arrived. Eazy was there (having gotten off of the bus at the Royal York Hotel instead of the bus terminal) and explained that the bus was so late because it had hit a pedestrian in Guelph.

Other mysteries were revealed: Will hadn't gotten my emails. Apparently the earlier exchange of email relating to sleeping at his house was done over his roommate's computer. He hadn't had access to it at all.

Blake, Eazy, and myself headed out the door. Will was playing a hunch that the venue was going to delay DJ Shadow's entry onto the stage in order to sell more drinks, and decided to stay at home and do some work for an hour.

Part 1c: You Made It

The show was amazing. I couldn't believe it. It was more than worth all the trouble we'd gone to to get there, although Will missed the first three songs because of his prediction about Kool Haus wanting to sell drinks. In fact, he would have missed almost half an hour more if Eazy hadn't gotten one of the bouncers to let him use his cell phone to call Will and get him moving. We stood at the back, and were blown away. That being said, In Tune and On Time (Dj Shadow's live CD) was better. Shadow used the "live" versions of tracks from In Tune in this set, instead of coming up with different takes on those songs, although there were new versions of other songs not covered on In Tune.

Part of the reason for this might have been that Shadow was trying to showcase his new material from The Outsider, which was much harder to cut up and remix live due to its inclusion of actual vocalists on many of the tracks.

My favourite highlight of the show:
Shadow talking about his dedication to his music in spite of lukewarm critical response to The Outsider: "I never played Dungeons and Dragons. I don't sit in my basement all day reading blogs..."

Yeah, DJ Shadow hates me. And here I am writing about how The Outsider, while totally listenable, just doesn't rub me the way his earlier work has. I'm not trying to bring the man down, he's a great musician and he can make any kind of music that he wants. It's like the Beastie Boys. To The Five Burroughs is not a good album. When set against the backdrop of Hello Nasty, one if forced to wonder what the Boys did for 6 years between the two.

Anyway, I have The Outsider playing right now, and anyone who's heard it knows that I stole my little intro and all of my chapter titles from the album. I like it. But I honestly don't know if I would actually buy it. The intro is amazing, and would go perfectly with any of his earlier work. And it is human nature to compare what comes today with what came yesterday. All in all, the album doesn't electrify me like his other work has. That's all I can really say.

Part 1d: 3 Freaks (Feat Will, Julian, and Yours Truly)

After the show Blake suckered Eazy into making the trip back through the ghetto warzone to Ellen's house to get his shit. Will and I trod back to his house to meet Julian. On the way we stopped at Mr. Tasty. This was possibly the greatest idea that has ever had a direct effect on my life, including procreation, sliced bread, and hexagonal war gaming. The food was unbelievable, and I'm pretty sure that they have free delivery. If you live in Toronto you have no excuse not to eat their food. The guys should sell meal plans to Universities. They'd make an absolute killing.

We went to Will's and Julian showed up with some bed-warmer. I was worried that I'd have to put up with her drivel in order for Julian to get laid, but she was actually really cool. They cracked open a 24 of Carling (or something), and eventually we walked back over to Mr. Tasty (yeah, it was that good). When we left the house we noticed that Julian had brought a huge old printer/fax machine thing with him from some garbage pile he found on his way to Will's. A hefty round of shit-kicking later, we got on the way. Repeat in reverse for coming back to Will's house, only this time Julian took a full garbage can and slammed it into the printer, showering the surroundings with garbage in the process. A decent time was had by all.

We kicked around for about another hour, and I'm not gonna lie, I was fuckin tired. Then Blake and Eazy finally came back to Will's. They were hammed already. Now, let me get some things straight:

1) I was tired. When I get tired, I want to sleep. I would go as far as to assert that that is a perfectly normal impulse.
2) Further, I had to write a chemistry lab report for 2:30 the following afternoon. I would have gladly sunk into the fray, and had emailed myself the portion of the lab which I had already written in order to be able to use it if I had any down-time in Toronto. However, without the internet I couldn't use Will's computer. My plan at that point was to be on a bus at 8:30 bound for Kitchener's beautiful Charles St. Terminal.
3) Will is in a very intensive drama program at a prestigeous Toronto college. Unlike those enrolled in regular Arts programs at institutions of higher learning, he has many hours of class every day. His next one was at 8:30 Friday morning.
4) It was probably around 2 or 3 already.

And yet, what ended up happening was:
-Blake and Eazy not giving a shit
-Will playing the devil's advocate by bitching about how early he had to be up one second and then getting Blake and Eazy more beers the next
- Me being a grumpy-puss, which degenerated into
- Rampant abuse of Blake, basically only coming from me and Julian

I'm not gonna lie, Blake, in his drunken stupour, took a whole lot of abuse. But to be fair, he wasn't exactly ingratiating himself with anyone at that point. There were Julian, Bed-Warmer, and myself all trying to sleep on the floor, Will alternating between the kitchen where Blake and Eazy were, the living room where me and the other sleepers were, and his room. Here's a helpful map to illustrate how hard that was for him:

So, yeah. It's not like we were getting a lot of sleep in with the drunken wonders right there beside us "in another room". So, then, Blake would get really angry and storm outside with eazy and smoke for 45 minutes, coming back in to be loud again when he was done. Newsflash: We can't go to sleep when you're outside, unless you want to sleep on the lawn!

And so, eventually, we all bedded down on Will's living room floor, Will included. But he brought out two alarm clocks first so that he would get up. He was sleeping in the middle of the room, so he placed the alarms in opposite corners so that he'd have to get up and move to turn them off. One went beside Julian and Co, while the other was supposed to go by me, but he couldn't find a plug. So really there was only one alarm.

And we slept. I actually didn't wake up at all until the alarm went off.

For 2 seconds.

Before Julian's arm shot out and silenced it.

Luckily, it still worked its magic on me. I sat up. No one else did. I considered my situation: Had the alarm gone off by accident? It was light outside, but maybe Will had set the alarm early... I could really use some more sleep.........

But, for better or for worse, I'm not that retarded. I looked over at Will and saw one of the funniest things I've ever seen: Eazy was sleeping beside him, but they weren't even. Eazy's face was at the level of Will's ass. It was turned towards Will's ass. And about 10 seconds after I began to observe this little scene, Eazy shifted in his sleep, and began shoving his face right into Will's ass. I nearly lost it laughing, and whispered to Julian to wake up and enjoy the moment. However, like Blake and the Toronto architecture, Julian just didn't appreciate my little attempt to share my experiences.

I sat on the floor and pondered. Will was clearly not awake. It was debateable as to whether or not he'd heard the alarm. I pondered what I should do for about 10 minutes in my sleepy state of mind. Eventually I stood, woke Will, woke Blake, and got on the road.

It was so cold. I couldn't believe it. I'd worn only a sweater (as opposed to my normal stylish sweater/bomber jacket combination) and my scarf and gloves in order not to be carrying around my jacket all over the show. However, that night I hadn't been cold at all. This was unbearable cold. It cut through my sweater as if it weren't there. It was unreal. I walked all the way to the bus terminal with Blake unable to contain my shivering frame. It was the same when we got off the bus in Kitchener. I had to borrow a sweater from Blake in order to make it home on the Yellow Bastard (which I'd stored in his room when we went to get the bus).

Then I went home, wrote my report, and went to my lab. I actually managed to perform it gracefully, without lighting myself or either of my lab partners in fire. Not even once.

But wait! That's not all! That's only the end of Part 1! Aren't you excited???

Part 2a: The boring part

Nothing interesting happens during this part....

That Saturday I recovered from my Thursday and Friday (I spent all day Friday awake instead of sleeping like Blake, Eazy, Julian, and the Bed-Warmer).

Sunday I pissed around all morning and then began studing for my biomechanics mid-term. I also put up a post appologising for my lack of posting, I expect nothing but kind sentiment and soothing reassurance from my readship.

Monday I went to class, went to tutorials, and then wrote a lab report for Physiology/ studied for biomechanics. And responded to snarky commentary on my latest post. Also, thanks to Ben's commentary over on the Blog'o Blake, I download a BitTorrent client and get to work on the Rurouni Kenshin OVAs. ETA for those has hovered around 24 days every day afterwards, given that I can only achieve a connection speed for that file of roughly 1Kb/s.

Tuesday I wrote the biomechanics midterm, went home, and finished the Physiology report/ began studying for the Organic Chemistry midterm. And responded to further acidic commentary from my loving friends.

Wednesday I went to class, handed in my Physiology lab, took a quiz in Biomechanics lab (not related to the midterm, the prof just didn't plan the class very well, and admitted to such in lecture the week before), went home, pissed around, and studied some more for Organic Chem. I also dropped some more commentary-based bombs on my detractors.

Thursday I went to class, wrote the last practice midterm for chem right before the actual midterm, took the midterm, and then went home.

Now for the good part.

Part 2b: I am the Dancing Queen

My initial plan was: Go home, shower, go to the bank to deposit some cheques, come home, piss around, go out to dinner, see sexual hynotist, get drunk at bar.

This got edited to go home, piss around, go out to dinner, see sexual hypnotist, stay sober at anoying dance bar.

In full:

I returned home from class feeling good. I'm pretty sure I kicked the Organic midterm right in the balls. It was awsome. I was actually really worried about it. The midterm was only an hour long, and in order to make sure that time wasn't an issue, it was only 20 questions. Multiple Choice. Each question was 1% of my final grade. I was scared out of my mind. However, the midterms from the last 5 years were all posted online with annotated answers, and I made good use of them. Luckily, the format was exactly the same, so I got a feel for what sorts of questions were going to be asked (when you only have 20 questions to test half a term's worth of material you need to stick 2 or 3 things into 1 question to cover them all) and what I'd need to be able to do to answer them. Luckily, one thing that I didn't need to do was spend $30 on a molecular modelling kit.

Organic chemistry looks into a lot of detail at the real shapes and configurations of molecules. Since the molecules are 3 dimensional, a lot of people buy small modelling kits to gain a better understanding of how the molecules look instead of writing out stupid 2-d representations of them. This allows them to answer questions faster, which theoretically allows them to succeed more easily. However, I didn't need one. Which was good news given that I didn't actually have $30 in cash lying around. The reason that I didn't need one? I dunno. Seriously, I'm just that good. It wasn't that hard for me to visualize the molecules interacting in my head, so I didn't have to waste any time piecing together little models.

Sidenote:I noticed that ability in myself for the first time during my Psychomotor Behaviour course last year. One day the prof put up a bunch of questions of the following format: you had 1 shape made up of cubes stuck together. Then she put up 6 other shapes and asked which one was a view of the original shape from a different angle. I answered every question correctly and I was the first or second person to have my hand up every time.

So, yeah, I killed Orgo. I think. We'll see next week.

Now, it was time to celebrate. I'd been invited out to a birthday celebration, and it was like the light at the end of Organic Chemistry all week long. The basic idea was:

- Gather at Julim*(the birthday girl)'s house in order to drop off my booze and the Yellow Bastard.
- Proceed to East Side Mario's and eat exhaustively large ammounts of free bread and salad before consuming exhaustive ammounts of whatever we ordered.
- Go back to Julie's and consume moderate ammounts of alcohol quickly in order to make it to the show on time
- Get to the show. It's at Laurier
- Enjoy show immensely
- Head to bar to finish the night in a cacophany of alcohol consumption and... dance

Everything went swimmingly up until I left the house. I biked all the way to Julim's, and got very sweaty on the way. I entered her house through the backyard and attempted to park the Yellow Bastard in her garage. Except that the backdoor of the garage is locked. So I had to climb over a fence, walk around her garage, go in the front, and discover that I'm on crack because the doorhandle isn't even close to locked, and opens immediately.

I got to the door, knocked, and told Julim I was sorry I was late. Then she told me that the reservation got pushed back by half an hour. Then I realized that I'd forgotten my liquior, and biked back home to get it.

Upon returning to Julim's I sat on the couch while she and her friends made themselves pretty. My chemistry lab partner from last year was there ahead of me. Something happened then which I always find amusing. It usually only happens when I'm sitting alone with a really big extrovert. There I was, watching Gilmore Girls or whatever tripe the W Network was showing, Brandom* peppering me with inane questions every 20 seconds. Don't get me wrong, I like the guy, he's awsome. We just didn't really have anything to talk about. "How was your summer?" "What classes are you taking?" "I get, like, 200 channels at home. I can't believe this TV" etc, etc, etc. Why do these people need to talk all the time?

We got to the restaurant. Our reservation was for 10, but we ended up having 15 show up. The wait staff loved us, but I'm assuming that it was the kitchen that got really passionate. Whatever. I didn't see any obvious spit in my food, and I really can't ask for anything more. Unfortunately, it did take a good hour to get the food ready. We'd planned on being at the show by 8:30 in order to get good spots in line. As 8:00 rolled around with no bill-paying in sight, I began to worry about my ability to pre-drink for this show.

I was right. I managed to get down a mug of vodka in Julim's kitchen while the girls changed to go to the show. Then we were off. Unfortunately, that mug didn't get very far in my belly, which already contained 4 loaves of bread, 4 bowls of salad, and half a rack of ribs (A big rack, I might add. I was told that I should split it with another person instead of ordering one for myself).

The lineup was terrible. We were there 45 minutes early (the doors opened late) and the line was already 2 stories below the actual event. Basically this part of the story involves a lot of waiting................

When we finally got into the place - Wait. I'm forgetting: We almost didn't get in. "WLUSU [We Love Underage Students Undressed] Guest Policies IN EFFECT" was printed boldly on the ticket. That means that there needs to be 1 Laurier student for every 2 Waterloo studens. And... um... we didn't have that. We were with 1 Laurier student (Julim's roommate) who said that we'd be fine and that she could sign us all in. Then we got to the door and the bouncers shat all over that one pretty quickly. Luckily I used my good looks and charm to get a random girl to sign me in. But it was touch and go for a while.

Anyway, once we got inside it was another 40 minutes before the show started (If only Will was here and he needed to do some homework). However, the show was absolutely awsome. Not as fun as Dj Shadow, but I don't think that the Shadow could get guys to eat whipped cream out of each other's asses onstage. I won't bore you with the details. Go see it yourself. The guy's name is Tony Lee, but I'm sure there are others in his line of work.

After that we hit the bar. Unfortunately, the classier (and believe me, if that term were used any more loosely it'd fall right off the damn page) one had a lineup around the side of the building. Instead we went to Fubar. Fubar is a place where the bartenders wear corsets. There are no lights that aren't black or strobing furiously. It costs $2 to get in, and you recieve a beautiful stamp on the unerside of your right wrist. The bar only takes cash. This = sobriety for the rest of the evening. Sobriety wouldn't be that much of a black mark, except that fully half of Fubar is one big dance floor. And, unfortunately, Liam "Dead Fish" McKenna is no longer listed in Waterloo's "100 people most excited to be dancing right now".

To make matters worse, our group had dwindled significantly. From the 15 at dinner and (which became a slightly different 15 at the show) to 7. There were Julim, Tylem*, Willim*, Willim's roommate Cartem*, Julim's roommate Jesm*, and her friend Sabrinm*. Everyone else seemed to be really into dancing, although Willim and Cartem seemed to gain strength by double fisting the whole time. It didn't help that by then I was so tired that the strobes were actually making me light-headed.

The only highlights from this dark time are me smoking Willim in the face about 10 times with the beak of my Yngwie Malmsteen hat and my tying with Jesm in an attempt to "bounce the lowest" on the floor. However, the number of compliments I recieved from men after that were slightly unsettling. And that's another thing! There were too many men touching my ass on that dancefloor. Most of them were trying to move me out of the way so that they could get by, but seriously! Stop touching my ass! The shittiest part is that while I was playing grab-ass with half the men in this bar, Jesm was making money. Or at least, some sleazy euro-trash guys were sticking it in her pockets. But come on! She got $20!

Oh, here's a final little image for you: Near the end of the night, Cartem offered me $100 to make out with this intensely fugly girl. I told him he could keep his money. About 30 seconds later, said girl was grinding with a guy right beside us. This was disgusting enough, but then his friend joined in from the opposite side. I quickly pointed this out to Willim and Cartem, and hilarity ensued. But on a serious note, the mental images I'm left with easily rank 9.85 collar pulls out of 10.

The place started dying down about 20 minutes after last call. We left and went to the Pita Factory. It's a pretty decent place, but I was stll too full from dinner to order anything. Tylem and I sit down at a table and wait for Julim, Willim, and Cartem. Jesm and Sabrinm were getting pizza and meeting us there.

Now, who walks into the restaurant but the euro-trash from Fubar! They walk in with some dude wearing a popped collar and shit-eater grin. But before I go any further, let me flesh out the euro-trash for you: One of them had a faux-hawk, and the other just had his hair tousled dramatically. They were both wearing bum-length beige trenchcoats, white shirts, dress pants, and dress shoes that were really cool in 1940 (you know, the ones with the outlandushly pointed toes that still look like men's shoes. Kind of like these). One pair was black, the other white. Whatever they were going for, I'm not saying they pulled it off, but they still managed to effectively convey what they were: Rich idiots who thought they looked cool when they stuffed money into girls' waistbands. They got into a fight about whose cell-phones were tougher, so they threw them around the store. Basically, I wouldnt have been unhappy seeing these guys get smashed up a little bit. One of them walked over with his phone in his hand. He offered it to us saying that it was broken. I was pretty interested, purely from the standpoint of cracking itopen and seeing what was inside. Jesm was also interested. She held out her hand and smiled (I haven't mentioned it, but Jesm is one hot broadski) the guy turned to her put his hand out, and then pulled it back with the practiced ease of a greasy asshole. At this point they had crossed the line from assholes to assholes that I probably would have called out there and then if I was Ben.

But I'm not Ben. Also, the guy went back to his friends after that. They only laughed for a few moments and then their attention went elsewhere. This is good, because a confrontation might have precipitated there and then, and really, even with Tylem, Willim, and Cartem, I definately would have been injured. That being said, they were the ones that took the heat off quickly. When I said he had the skill of a greased asshole I wasn't joking. They stopped just before someone would have been forced to call them on their bullshit, which probably means that, like many assholes (and especially those with money), they were really huge pussies, which might have played out in our favour.

A few minutes later, a guy pulled up in a cab, got out, and ordered a pita. The cab was idling outside waiting for him. As he walked in Julim said hello to him. Apparently his name was Mam* and he played for the men's Rugby team. He said hi back and went about his business at the checkout.

However, Euro trash #1 must have said something, because by the time I looked back, Max was rght in the guy's face explaining that he'd never done anything to him, so why was he saying shit? It began to look like they were inches from a fight. Mam was a pretty solid looking guy, and I felt that we owed him a little help. 3 on 4 was too much for those guys (even though, and I don't like to admit it, they had us seriously out-gunned), but they didn't seem to have as much of a problem with 3 on 1. Willim was blocking me into the booth, so I suggested that he go over to Mam and give him some assistance verbally. He (being pretty drunk at this point) obliged me. I slid to the edge of the booth and waited. Now, at this point, Willim and Mam were facing me with the douchebag-3 looking at them. I began to contemplate how best to pit my strengths (steel toes, brains, and the scrawny kid's lack of compunctions about fighting dirty) against their weaknesses (basically only that they weren't facing me). I didn't come up with much. A solid kick to the back of the knee would only help if we were running away, and any other useful targets were too high for me to reach. And there simply weren't any objects (blunt or not), aside from half-finished pitas, lying around for me to employ. I didn't fancy my chances with a sucker punch either, given that I've never punched anyone in my life.

And then it came, more yelling, followed by a resounding punch to the face from Euro to Mam. The adrenaline surged up, and then the two were being pushed apart, and Euro ran out the door. He actually beat it so fast that I thought he was going for a weapon stashed in a car somewhere in the parking lot. But he never came back. However, his friends stayed outside the front of the restaurant with a few other guys they seemed to know who happened to show up at the same time. Mam still had to get in his cab, so we weren't sure what was going to happen when he left. However, I had time to really think about it while Mam spent 15 minutes in the bathroom trying to figure out if the guy had broken his face.

When it was all said and done, Tylem and Julim walked him out to the cab. There was no trouble, and Euro #1 never came back.

We left the restaurant shortly thereafter. A debate ensued: Tylem and Willim mentioned that Euro had sucker punched Mam. Now, I didn't quite agree. They were both facing each other, Euro wound back, and punched Mam full force in the face. My basic argument was that Mam would have had to be blind not to see it coming, and I'd always thought that a sucker punch was employed when the person a) couldn't possibly see you (such as when you are behind them) or b) weren't looking (perhaps due to some distracttion). Tylem and Willim maintained that until they both stepped back and raised their fists, anything at all was "sucker".

We went back to Julim's. Tylem and Julim were waiting for everyone to go to away so that they could fuck like bunnies. Cartem and Jesm had been drawing closer and closer since the end of the Fubar experience, so I assumed that they were also waiting for an opportune moment to go away unnoticed. Willim probably had an equal chance of hooking up with Sabrinm or passing out on Julim's couch. All at once I had the highly oppressive feeling of being the seventh wheel, and beat a hasty retreat out of there.

Part 3: Don't worry, the end is near.

I woke up for class on Friday feeling like hell. It was actually painful to concentrate on taking notes in my classes. Comprehension was certainly out of the question. However, after being up for 5 hours I cou;dn't go back to sleep. I went over to Willim's and we jammed a couple of songs. I came home, heard a message from the faj, and phoned him back. I ended up talking to my mom for an hour, and then loafed around for the rest of the day. I started writing this post around 6. I saved the draft and went to bed around midnight.

Saturday morning:
As I try to kill off this monster, I take frequent breaks to check the BitTorrent, play Dawn of War, and Stumble around. The only worthwhile thing that any of those have produced this morning is this. And maybe this.

Later on my Dad came over and we went shopping. he also dropped off posters for his upcoming Guitarathon. It's 12 straight hours of awsome guitar music with confirmed appearances by Jay Holdsworth and Calder McKenna, as well as a rumoured few chords from Blake, along with 11 and-a-half other hours of mind-blowing guitar from all my Dad's friends and students. It's going down on Monday the 30th, and you're more than welcome to sleep on my floor if you feel like coming down! Just be sure to donate something. The Guitarathon is a fundraiser for the KW Symphony Orchestra, which is gonna go bankrupt if they don't raise some pretty steep funds by November. So come. Or I'll get angry.

So, yeah. I'm caught up now, I think. I also think that I'm gonna go to bed. I mighr even leave my computer on and see how Bit Torrent handles overnight.

Insert pithy sign-off here

Holy christ. This is 7200 words long...

*Names changed drastically to allow Blake to munch my scrotum