Mississauga grows up, starts behaving like a real city

Zamboola once referred to Mississauga as Mississausage- ironic, since there is nothing funny about the place. It is a sprawling faux-city to the west of Toronto. Basically, it is a large parking lot.

Things may be changing, though. A condo deleveloper has thrown a design competition for their new development. The finalists are above. I like. But really, there is no chance of me ever living in Mississausage, so apart from maybe driving by it on my way to Niagara I'm unlikely to ever see the thing.

Ich bin torn

I spent some time in Berlin a few years back and had a bad time. I was sick, the people seemed mean and everyone was using the subway to kill themselves whenever I tried to go somewhere. Berlin is also so enormous, that I think you really need a local to point you in the right direction. Plus, some random Turkish girl went totally mental on me and my heritage for very mysterious reasons. All in all, not a highlight.


Anyhow, I decided at that time that Germany and I weren't friends. But I am listening to a deutsch album at the moment and suddenly Germany is sleeping with me. Peeps, Kompakt is a tasty label. Nevertheless, the colour combo on their flag is just stupid.

And, the problem is...?

Some right-wing nerd from the States wrote an article claiming that Canadians are too liberal and hedonistic. Oh, and he rather hilariously called us "cultural Marxists".

Sorry, bucko, but last time I checked us immoral Canadians were doing pretty well for ourselves, despite our sinful ways.

Forgive me, but how are these two traits negative? It may be an adolescent cliché, but this guy needs to get laid. Sure, hedonism can get out of control, but it is delicious in doses.

While we are more liberal, the hedonistic comment does confuse me. Obviously, we don't have the same American Puritanism Problem, but we're not exactly a nation spun out on coke, gang-banging on every corner. I think in general we are more adult when it comes to sex and do have a different cultural climate that may be considered more "refined", but I for one haven't been to a rave in ages so hedonism seems to be the wrong word. Perhaps he meant that we are too mature, open-minded and psychologically healthy? If hedonistic means treating gays and lesbians equally, allowing women to control their bodies and futures, and trusting that adults are grown up enough to have an orgy if they so desire, then I fully concur.

What a boring, bitter little life this man must lead...

HRONIA POLLA, SAUSAGE!!!

I miss you and love you like crazy... Filakia!

The Plateau

No, I'm not refering to the area in Montréal, but something I am afflicted with once a season. It is a time of emotional numbness and disinterest in everything. I try to rouse emotions by cutting my elbows with exacto-knives- just joking. Or am I...? It's usually more benign, like starting random arguments, trying in vain to watch films or listen to music I usually love, that kind of thing. Basically, it is profound boredom and I find it difficult to shake. So, instead, I sleep lots! I think about sleeping all day long! I have even mastered a napping pose at work where I keep my hands on the keyboard and look toward the computer and just close my eyes. Moments later, I may look like I'm simply concentrating, but really, I'm deep into a dream about this guy at the office and I falling in love, humping and doing exciting things.

Then I wake up and start typing this pile of shit.

"The Bohemian"

Apparently, a gay developer is gayly developing a gay community in the increasingly homo fringes of central Toronto, to be called 'The Bohemian'. Of course, fag-loving straights are welcome too

Yes, Toronto is rapidly becoming the gayest city ever and I think it's good. First 24-hour XXX all-gay channel, first gay marriage in North America, first all-gay radio station, first all-gay TV station and now this. But the subway ads for gay chatlines seemed to me the most radical development in a strange way. Gay has become so normal here that one forgets one is gay in a way... well, perhaps not always. Toronto is full on post-modern, peeps... 'tis true.

Not sure if I would want to live in a gay condo, but I like that the option is out there. Plus, think of the possiblilities for cheesy scenarios... will the leather daddies vacate the pool for the twinks, or will they have to fist them first? When you borrow a cup of sugar from the circuit boy next door will it in fact be crystal meth? Finally, an alternative to the infamous Vaseline Towers of Church+Wellesley.

Annoyed, not annoyed

Well, the election could have been much worse. There seems to be a decent balance of power, the Liberals got slapped but not pummeled and they're thankfully getting a new leader. Not bad. I am curious to see if Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver will get punished for shutting the Cons out or if they will try to court us with violins, truffles and hustlers. Only time will tell...

More annoying today has been condescending treatment by an accounting turd at work. This guy is generally OK, but he sometimes gets under my skin- especially when he cops an attitude over the most tedious things. I want to set him on fire.

Happy Erection Day

I voted this morning. Now, we wait. I noticed that a couple of people had rejected their ballots... interesting... Click above for an article from the Globe and Mail that somewhat put my mind at ease.

For some reason, my interest in the outcome has waned, only to be replaced by intense horniness. On that note, I will sign off and try to solve this problem...

INDULGE ME, PLEASE... YOU'LL THANK ME

OK. I know very little about Finland. I like a director from there (Kaurismäki) and I know that my favourite cellphones (Nokia) are from there, the language is apparently difficult to learn and they have a crazily high suicide rate. Regardless, nothing could explain the beauty of this. In my head, I have fucked everyone on this set incessantly since 1976. Nothing can make me happier than this video... EVER. Screw love, screw friendship. It's all about brilliantly choreographed Finnish disco variety shows from now on.

I stand corrected

The election campaign hasn't been dull at all. At least not this month. Many things I did not expect to happen did, mostly to the detriment of my hopes. Perhaps I am naive, but despite the expected result of the election, I have faith in the public to keep government in check in one way or another. My greatest fear about the Conservatives is that they will attempt to turn the clock back- and this is coming from someone who has zero desire to get same-sex married. The courts would get involved again and I have confidence that this is pretty much of a done deal with the public. Beyond that, the subtle difference of political ethos between the Grits and Tories is still real and I think the Liberals failed in explaining this constructively. However, this encompasses everything from daycare to missile-defense. Also, Martin came across as a weak leader (sometimes, he looked like a weird Bay Street bimbo) of a party that had no real "vision" or coherent platform (ie: the Red Book).

The campaign was dictated by the Conservatives which obviously meant that the Liberals were constantly playing catch-up. This meant that the Conservative platform was being responded to rather than engaged with or countered, often resulting in an overly simplified and juvenile catch-up reaction. In a savvy move, Harper and friends focused on what they were going to do during the early stages of the campaign when many, including me, expected tired rhetoric about Gomery.

I always think it's dangerous to vote for change for its sake alone. Harper may have become the current It Girl, but he's going to bring a bunch of MPs with him as well and that's where things get complex. For all his mismanagement and hyperbole, Martin has a point when he says that Conservative values are still unclear and that mixed messages have been sent.

Alas, poor Jack... He kept the government together and delivered a progressive budget. And really, he played the least politics in the minority government and idealistically tried to get things accomplished. But he's in a tough place. So many citizens seem to gravitate towards his platform and policies but doubt the ability of the NDP to gain any real power. And any votes for him could embolden the Tories. That is a fucked up situation to negotiate.

I have a thing about wanting to fuck right-wing politicians to reveal to them their latent homosexuality and Harper is still on the top of my list. But I do have to admit that he organized a slick and professional campaign, much to my chagrin. Hopefully, I can have my way with him before Monday and cause a huge scandal and re-evaluation of his party's platform, resulting in an NDP majority.

Now, the left is divided, Québec is coyly chatting up Harpster while essentially ensuring it will remain powerless in cabinet, Alberta "rocks" and a robot is probably going to be our PM. All in all, I think I can assume that Toronto is somewhat fucked if this is the outcome on Monday. Expect a lasso to pull down the CN Tower and raging herds of cattle to trample all 5 million of us. Hopefully a minority government will save us from such an eventuality.

Blah

I'm not really in the mood to post today, so I'll transcribe some excellent lyrics courtesy of Jem and the Holograms...

Twilight in Paris
(Twilight in Paris)
The city of lights
(City of lights)
It's everything I hoped it would be
Twilight in Paris
(Twilight in Paris)
The Eiffel Tower
(The Eiffel Tower)
But your face is the only thing I see
(The only thing I see...)

I visit Montmarte, but I'm lost in a dream
And you're the one I'm dreamin' of
(The one I dream of)
I must be in love

Twilight in Paris
(Twilight in Paris)
The city of lights
(City of lights)
It's everything I hoped it would be
Twilight in Paris
(Twilight in Paris)
The Eiffel Tower
(The Eiffel Tower)
But your face is the only thing I see
(The only thing I see...)

I visit Montmarte, but I'm lost in a dream
And you're the one I'm dreamin' of
(The one I dream of)
I must be in love

Twilight in Paris
(Twilight in Paris)
It's beautiful when you're in love
(Beautiful when you're in love)

Yoda Injures Herself

Yoda (my mother) decided to bust a move and broke her wrist. The wrist on her right hand. She is right handed. Therefore, she is an invalid.

This of course means that apart from sporadic help from Tenis and an aunt of mine, I will have to do basically everything in the house for about 8 weeks.

She looks so cute and helpless- until she wants something done and then she becomes a one-handed monster and uses her cast as a club to beat you. I also worry that now she is going to become even more bored and depressed since she's almost totally dependent.

What pisses me off is that she decided to venture out during a freezing rain storm while she refuses to go out when it's sunny and 10 degrees. Tip to Yoda: next you're going to have a deathwish or are seeking attention or are just annoyingly stubborn, make the outcome less dramatic.

I hang left

It appears that the Harpster is going to be PM, especially given his recent surge in Québec. As long as it's a minority government, I can accept that. Grudgingly, of course. What surprises me though, is the virtual disappearance of the NDP. It seems that the left is now divided, which could be good for renewal, but who knows what will happen.

Did you know that you can refuse a ballot? I learned this today. You can tell the official at the polling station that you do not want to vote. The benefit of this over spoiling a ballot is that it gets recorded.

I wonder what would happen if you used your ballot as a dildo in the polling station? I'm still tired from this weekend, so forgive my vulgarity.

Kaka weekend

I'm exhausted. This weekend sucked something fierce. I'm not happy today.

Athinorama

Perhaps we Greeks have too much history to collectively deal with. How else can you explain the weirdness of Athens? It's as though having a turbulent and ancient past has made Greeks slightly mad. That and straddling both East and West. Or, perhaps modern Greeks are rebelling against the tradition of rational thinking fostered by the ancients by being incredibly random.

Take this photo for example. I snapped this while in Athens with Sausage in 2004. This sight is quite normal for Athens, which is one of the reasons why I love that city so much.

More Barcelona memories...

I hung out at a bar called Padam-Padam (story to follow at a later date, this is more about the hotel) and when it closed I would go over to another bar called Dicken's. Dicken's was owned by a very gruff, older French man who I befriended. As I'm sitting there, a straight couple walk in looking for a late night drink. Later, while in the washroom, the "straight" guy grabs my cock and starts kissing me. All I could hear was him whispering "I leave grill", which translates to "I'm going to drop my girlfriend at home... what hotel are you staying at?"

Flash-forward 3 hours later: The bed in the cheap-ass hotel has broken while we were bumping uglies, the floor is drenched in wine and the guy tells me that he's a professional clown in a circus. Then he has a sexual identity crisis and starts crying. When he asked me for advice, I simply told him that I could not believe that this sad creature was, in actual fact, a clown. That didn't help. I thanked him for the hump and told him to go home to his grill.

Hola

This makes me want to go back to Spain.

I am reminded of a tranny I befriended in Barcelona. She lived in a flat across the street from my hotel and we would have a daily chat from each other's windows. At the time, she had a particular hate-on for Australians, so we would ask people passing on the street if they had fucked an Australian... if the response was yes, we would scream "ew! you fucked a kangaroo!". Very strange. She was lovely though.

My next-door neighbour at the hotel I was staying at was another fave. Bear in mind, this hotel was totally dodgy and random transients lived there. Anyhow, I came back to the room at 5am and was greeted by the strains of an oboe being played by my neighbour. I banged on the wall for him to stop, which he did. Then, an oboe appeared outside my window. The neighbour passed it to me and insisted that I play. I did, and when finished I passed it back to him and went to bed.

Big up to east end T-Dot

I live in east-end Toronto, very close to the intersection of Lawrence and Victoria Park. While I work and socialize downtown for the most part, I have lived in the same hood all my life. Much to my surprise, there was a magazine devoted to Lawrence East called '54east', a reference to the bus line that runs along Lawrence.

In many ways, the area can be quite dismal. Walking distances are measured in what seem like light-years and architecturally it is on the boring side of a Soviet apartment block. Despite this, as the magazine captures, there is a weird energy to the neighbourhood that I have felt in many parts of Toronto. I think we take it for granted, but it is nice to live in a city where a halal pizza joint opens up where a fast-food mega-chain once stood. Lawrence east of VP is what a Middle Eastern bazaar would be if it they had strip malls in Amman. I also enjoy the working class element as there is quite the number of Canada's most endangered species- the urban hoser. It is simultaneously amusing and heartening to see a trashy tavern full of drunks eating hot hamburgers right beside an Islamic bookstore and having the patrons of each befriend eachother... Maybe they don't hump, but they do communicate. I, as a homo, feel totally comfortable to greet the Boyf with a kiss when he comes to meet me at my local, a boring little sports bar that thankfully has a smoking room. The area may be gross from a design point-of-view, but it is lived in and evolving.

So, peeps... although the centre of the city will always be the centre of my world, don't forget that the universe doesn't end at Bloor St.

CityTV/Sun Type Headline: The debate did not de-bait me

Well, that debate last night was useless. Really though, they usually are.

A lot of people are complimenting Duceppe on his performance, which I can understand. But in reality, who was the guy even speaking to? The English debates are essentially a cakewalk for him since the Bloc doesn't field candidates outside of Québec and the majority of Bloc supporters are francophone. Really, he could probably go up there and just start saying "Stephen Harper, I'm going to snort coke off your back after I ram your ass with my uncut Catholic cock" and I doubt it would make a difference to his performance on election day (actually, given Boisclair's recent victory, it may help his chances). His audience last night means very little for him, so he didn't have to prepare much nor did he have to feel nervous. Actually... why did he even bother showing up? Perhaps he may want to make the idea of a seperatist more palatable to anglos? The whole 'well, he's not so bad after all...' kind of thing...? Seems possible, non?

As for me, I tune him out because he can never form a government and even if he was involved in a minority coalition, seperatists are notoriously left-wing, so that's fine with me. When you think about it, though, it speaks to the dearth of leadership in English Canada when a seperatist comes away from the English debate with (albeit reluctant) glowing reviews.

Introducing...

This is my friend and pet turtle, Kitso. He comes from Athens. Isn't he adorable? He's quite the swimmer.

I love Kitso.

Urinal v Elderly Hammer-Wielding Artist

A 77 year old performance artist attacked one the various versions of Fountain (above) by Marcel Duchamp at a Dada exhibition in Paris. His age is unimportant, I just find the image of an old man attacking a urinal with a hammer funny. DadaMan 2006 claims that Duchamp would have approved of his ninja moves as a piece of performance art. He may have a point, since the Dada movement was associated with an anti-art and nihilistic ethos.

Many people are still baffled as to why a signed urinal that is renamed Fountain is considered an artwork. It's almost been 100 years, people... are you joking me? The work questions the nature of art- something that was revolutionary in 1917, but is pretty pedestrian aujourd'hui. As Duchamp himself said, he had "taken an everyday article, made its usual significance disappear with a new name, and - from that point of view - created a new and entirely aesthetic meaning for this object". I suspect that many of the people that dismiss Fountain would also consider Mariah Carey to be the Beethoven of our generation. Or find Paris Hilton interesting. Or make a special trip with the girls to Starbucks once a month to 'treat' themselves to a European beverage. I could go on.

By the way, DadaMan 2006 also pissed in another one of the Fountains floating around museums around the world. I think he's either obsessed, has a very narrow focus or a limited imagination.

Tasteless, immature and possibly mean observation

Isn't it creepily ironic that bird flu is becoming a growing problem in... Turkey? Take that, Alanis.

Addendum

The poor thing... I start these contrived arguments with him all the time and he always falls for it. JR's comment to the previous post, however, refers to an incident that was quite real. I was trying to send a text message to Sausage who speaks Fraunch and I couldn't remember the correct way of using the word 'tordu' (twisted) in a certain sentence. For the next half-hour, the ExBoyf was bombarded with me screaming "Get on the interweb and pull up a translation matrix, now! I need to know how to use tordu!" He had no idea what I was on about, which I clearly was aware of but I gave no clarification. All I could see were his chunky man-hands typing away frantically, trying to decode what I was saying. He had the most adorable, confused, trying to please look on his face... I totally didn't have the heart to tell him that the text message was to say: "I'm with the ExBoyf and right now I feel that his twisted penis is too much work for me".

I'm not always like this. Trust me, that little fucker has his moments, too. Like the time he was getting all melodramatic and pensive for no reason. When asked what was wrong with him, he practically burst into (fake) tears and said that he really wished that he was a VCR so that he could rewind and re-record his life. This was quickly followed by a demand that I create an ice-sculpture float at Gay Pride that would faithfully recreate his life as it would have been if he lived in Atlantis.

Genet starts a fight

Went over to the Unsure-About-Our-Status-Ex(?) Boyf's place last night and had a typically boring/comfortable evening. After having been asleep for a week, I could have used some excitement, but at the same time, I couldn't really be bothered. So I killed him... with my eyes.

In an attempt to rouse some controversy, I started a random argument that went like this:

Genet: What did you tell people when we sort of broke up?
ExBoyf: I have no friends.

OK, I made that up... here's the reality:

ExBoyf: That we were working things out. You?
G: Pretty much the same, I guess... It's funny though...
ExB: What?
G: Just that I was told that you said to Tammi that you were going to throw me into the dryer until I shrunk and morphed into a "cock-sock".
ExB: What?
G: Forget it.
ExB: Who's Tammi?
G: I don't need this right now.
ExB: ... What are you talking about?
G: Just forget it. I know it was a strange time for both of us, so I forgive you. Let it go.
ExB: But that never happened...
G: Are you going to watch the Opening Ceremonies of the Turin Olympics with me?
ExB: What? Fine. Yeah. Sure.
G: They're on CBC.
ExB: So what?
G: You're attitude fucking sucks. Gimme a kiss!


He was completely baffled... and I was pleased.

I heart my PVR

I recently got a Personal Video Recorder, which functions much like the infamous TiVo. I now never have to miss Degrassi or any of the nerdy documentaries I love. It's win-win.

An unexpected benefit of the PVR, however, is my new favourite hobby. I discovered this hobby during my back injury which largely confined me to the couch in front of the TV. The three features of the PVR that are so exhilarating are:

• the ability to pause live TV
• the ability to rewind live TV
• the ease with which one can record/edit to a VCR

Now, I'm not a fan of stage-set glamour porn at all, and often find the most sexually charged imagery to be the casual, banal, everyday slice-o-life variety. Therefore, I often get turned on watching documentaries, seeing attractive extras in the background or while watching interviews with random people on the street. Many, many other things turn me on as well, such as a quick glimpse of a pair meaty calves, for example. Now, with my super-duper PVR, I can pause, rewind and record these previously fleeting moments! I like to think of it as 'found chubby-inducers"'. I was thinking of calling it 'found porn', but it isn't really porn. And the word 'erotica' seems to make me nauseous in two ways. For one, it makes me think of a housewife with track pants on her ass and Starbucks in her hand, rifling through the Harlequin Romance section at Chapters. Then there is the idea I have that erotica implies a dressing up and "artification" of something that I prefer to be more authentically dirty.

Anyhow, numerous random men from around the world can now be found on my January 2006 cassette, doing their own thing, sometimes freeze-framed but always being unknowingly visually violated by me. Their beauty helped me through my injury. Technology can be wondrous.

Ow

In Greek lore, the way the beginning of the new year goes dictates what kind of year you are going to have. According to this, 2006 will be painful and comatose.

I fucked up my back somehow and the medication my doc gave me has given me stomach issues and the uncontrollable desire to sleep 24/7. How fun.

2006, why are you not co-operating with me? If this is what our relationship is going to be like, we need to break up now...