Flip Flop Flying

I came to Toronto thinking that because I’d be living in a new city, hopefully having fun, enjoying working on the book, that it would mean I’d have a lot to blog about. I don’t keep a diary, so if I don’t do this, it’ll be tough to remember the sort of stuff I got up to. Obviously, I decided to have a break a couple of months ago. And it was nice to not think about it; just throw a few drawings up now and again. But I’m wanting to make notes again, and I seem not to be able to do that unless they are here. Wonder why that is. Truth be told, part of the reason that I decided on the break was because of the situation when I moved the blog from using Blogger to WordPress. Blogger decided to stop doing FTP support, I started the process of changing, decided to do it later, then found myself unable to get back into where the original stuff was. So when I finally moved to WordPress, there was no way of doing an RSS note to let people know it was moving. A very large proportion of readers used that RSS feed, so without being able to tell them that the blog was moving and they should change the RSS feed, the blog’s readership plummeted. My ego started pouting, and continued to pout until it decided to have a break. Sometimes I wish I had the nerve to turn commenting off. Then I’d not be checking every ten minutes to see if anybody has left a comment about the latest post. But my ego likes comments. My ego is a dick.

Last night I chipped a tooth. Just a tiny bit, a couple of millimetres in length, of what the Internet tells me is called my left mandibular central incisor. I’d been drinking at my local bar, Squirly’s, and was planning on getting some food on the way home. It was around 10pm, thought it’d be a civilised evening, a few beers, some Thai food or something. I walked right past the Thai place, and instead of turning around, I kept on walking to see if something else took my fancy. I kept walking and walking, and about 20 minutes later I was a fair few blocks away from home. So I decided to go have a beer somewhere else. On my way there, I was biting one of my finger nails and got a tiny piece of nail lodged between my teeth. I tried to poke it free with my tongue. I tried to suck it out, too. Then I put my thumb nail in there and tried to root it out that way. I obviously have very strong thumbnails, cos that’s how I chipped a bit of my tooth off. I sat in the bar, watching sports scores scroll across the bottom of an ESPN Classic boxing match, got slowly drunker, smiled at the pretty barmaid, and kept tonguing the sharp edge of my tooth. I drank some more. I eventually did eat something, but it was at the end of a long night’s solo drinking. And it was from McDonald’s. I rounded off the evening by falling over on the stairs when I went down to get a glass of water. I didn’t turn the light on, and thought I had reached the bottom, but there was still one stair to go. I’ve got a nice raw red mark on my knee now. When I woke up this morning, though, I remembered that I’d kept the tooth chip in my back pocket. Aquí:

I’ve been drinking too much since I’ve been here. Way exceeding those recommended limits. And it’s not really a cheap hobby, either. For one thing, buying a six-pack is a pain in the arse. The Ontario government runs things. You can’t just go to a corner store and buy a beer. You have to go to something called, rather matter-of-fact-ly, The Beer Store. If you want anything harder than beer, you’ve gotta go to the Liquor Control Board of Ontario (LCBO). If I, for example, wanna buy some vodka, I’ve gotta trudge over to the LCBO. You want some vodka after 9pm? Fuck you, buddy. Same deal at The Beer Store. And they just have pictures of the labels and the prices in tiny numbers on the wall. It’s like Soviet China or somefink, I tells ya.

While we’re on the topic of stuff that fucks you up, and while I know the majority of you don’t care about cigarette prices, this has been an interesting quirk. They’re not cheap here either, but that’s kinda the same everywhere in the Western World these days, I guess. But one thing that seems consistent in other countries is that cigarettes are pretty much exactly the same price in every store (unless you’re trying to buy them in central London after midnight). When I bought a pack in Berlin, they were €4.90 in every store. In the three corner stores that are within five minutes walk from where I’m living here, one store charges $9.15, another charges $9.50, and the third charges $10.50. The guy in the cheapest store always seems surprised that right behind him, there are racks of cigarettes, like he’s never heard of such a thing before or like they crept up on him. The second cheapest store has a really chirpy friendly guy, and a woman who always seems to be eating and tells me the price with her mouth full of food which makes me want to pull out a machete and chop off her head. The most expensive store has the most miserable shopkeeper I’ve ever seen. The look of disgust on his face when I asked for Camel Lights, interrupting him eating a Danish pastry, was the look I would normally reserve for seeing a dog eating human vomit off the street. (But not as bad as the look of disgust I’d have if I saw a human eating dog vomit off the street.) Without wiping the sticky off his hands, he grabbed the cigarettes and flung them across the counter at me. He wears a green waistcoat, though, which suits him. But being a complete fucking psychopath, I’ve been back in there a couple of drunken times specifically to ask for cigarettes, watch him get them, listen to him tell me they are $10.50, and then tell him that they are too expensive, and go to the cheap store like I’d planned all along. It’s a shitty game, but it’s a game that makes me grin like I’m wearing an Aphex Twin mask.

I’ve been working on my book. It’s more-or-less finished now. Still gotta do the cover, and I’m currently up to my neck changing every hyphen in the graphics to an en dash or em dash. Oh how I wish I knew the correct usage before I’d begun the book. The tentative title is “Flip Flop Fly Ball: An Infographic Baseball Adventure.” It’s been hard work, it’s driven me a wee bit insane, but it’s been a lot of fun, too. Especially because my editor Pete and I get along really well, and spend every day chatting over email about all sorts of baseball-y crap. And from my bedroom window, I can see the garages out of the back of all the houses on the street, the garages which grey and black squirrels scamper across. Late at night, there are often racoons on the roofs, too. I can face to face with a few of them last night actually. A mama and three kids were rooting through a neighbour’s bins. I wouldn’t like to get too close, but they really are cute-looking creatures.

I’m still pronouncing the name of this city with two Ts. Toronto. Everyone else says Toronno, or ever Tronno. I feel self-consciously English when I hear the word coming out of my mouth. I don’t have the same thing, though, when I say Atlanna if I’m talking about Atlanta.

Things that are in no way connected plopped into a paragraph: The electricity lines buzz a lot here. I’ve never seen as many people on motorised wheelchairs as I have in this city. Most of the beggars here have “funny” signs. They’re not funny. Yesterday, I saw a blind man with a woman. She sniffing a menu/flyer she’d been by a Chinese man on the street. Nothing spectacular about that, but it was just an interesting thing to see happening. No matter what time of day it is, the Canadian coffee/restaurant chain Tim Hortons always seems to be packed. I’ve not eaten anything from there, but should you ever be visiting Canada and want to drink some coffee, I’d recommend not going to Tim Hortons. It is quite the most horrible coffee this side of McDonald’s. I wonder what it is about the human brain that compels us to pluck a leaf from a hedge when we walk by one. While we’re on the topic of hedges, the older I get, the more I like watching old men trimming their hedges. And I mean their hedges; it’s not a pubic hair euphemism. A guy around the corner has been painting the wood columns and other bits on his porch recently. He was painting them white, he highlighted bits in a rather nice dark green. When I walked by today, he was painting the stone squares at the bottom of the columns silver. Metallic silver. A bold choice. Same journey, I was walking on the kerbside of the pavement, walking along walking along. Woman, mid-twenties, huge sunglasses, deliberately walked diagonally across the pavement so she was right in front of me. Being vaguely gentlemanly, I moved aside as she kinda started me out. I turned my head to kinda just take the weirdness in, and she’d instantly returned to the side of the pavement farthest from the kerb. On the way back from Starbucks, a guy probably late teens, surf-y shorts, mirrored shades was sauntering in a vague diagonal. Was the same thing gonna happen again? I behaved like a twat: I put my head down and walked in a completely straight line. Fuck you, mirror boy. But he’d already crossed the street before could collide. I really like potato salad. I always feel disgusted with myself after eating potato salad. I’ve considered getting a tattoo once again, and once again decided against it. Something that I liked on Marc Maron’s WTF podcast today: “If I can get to the point where I’m actually pursuing happiness as opposed to relief, that would be the next phase.” That sounds like good advice to me.

Same again, but going through my Twitter to see if anything of interest needs writing down in longer form since last we spoke: I would like to go up to employees at American Apparel and tell them, “It really is okay to enjoy life. You don’t have to look so bored. Eat an apple. Pull a silly face. There’s more to life than The XX album.” The World Cup was excellent in Toronto. I’d kind of anticipated the interest here being minimal, but the internationalism of the city made it utterly fantastic. Supporters of more or less all the teams around. I’d vowed to myself not to care about England, but damn those roots, they dragged me back in. I was kind of glad they got knocked out though (although I’d much rather it had not been done by the Germans), cos that meant I could just enjoy the rest of the football. Frank Sidebottom‘s creator Chris Sievey died which made me really really really sad. I received a spam email which said, “LOL if you see someone drowning in bacon.” The Queen came to visit Canada but didn’t drop by to say hello, sadly. I’d assumed all Britishers living abroad would get a visit when she was in town. I’ve fallen in love with the Canadian national anthem. It’s a very beautiful song. And I’ve seen a crapload of baseball: 23 Blue Jays games and a massive 73 home runs (52 by the Jays, 21 by the visitors).

Oh, something of interest did happen. Somebody alerted me to this article in the Winston-Salem Journal titled “Book, in error, got judged by its cover.” Apparently a library staff member picked up nine copies of my Atlas, Schmatlas book to give as gifts to children. If you’ve read the book, you’ll know there’s quite a liberal smattering of curse words in the book. Full article here.

Kraig my friend from Portland came to visit three weeks ago, which was nice. I’d been saving up tourist-y stuff to do. We went up the CN Tower which is very high indeed. There’s a bit with a glass floor. There were kids and adults all milling around. I took a tentative step onto the glass, took a photo, felt incredibly queasy, and walked away.

And we rented a car and took a day trip to Niagara Falls. The falls themselves are excellent. Really quite beautiful. Lots of people, not sure why I wasn’t anticipating that. I was as close to the United States as their immigration people would let me be, too. So I paid tribute to their decision-making process in the only way I could:

Once you move away from the falls, though, the town is nuts. For some reason, when people had told me that it was a bit tacky, I was envisaging “English seaside” not “low rent Vegas.” It’s all well and good, but the experience of the falls was kinda blunted by the crassness of the town’s touristy main drag. It was like drinking a really nice glass of wine and washing it down with a pint of ketchup.

Anyway, next month I will be celebrating (…?) my 40th birthday. I’m not in the market for a Harley Davidson, but I am considering something a bit life changing. I’m seriously thinking about getting contact lenses. I’ve worn glasses since I was in junior school, so I kinda fancy a change. I keep taking photos of myself without my specs on so I can try and get used to what I will look like (being short-sighted means that I can’t really see myself properly in a mirror unless I get pimple-squeezingly close). So, what do you think? Specs or contacts? (Yes, I have a lazy eye. Bone idle, in fact.)

Right, time to kick off my flip-flops, fire up Good Will Hunting (never seen it before), and eat some tamari almonds cos they are fucking delicious.

Brief conversations between sea-based creatures and their land-based namesakes.

SEA HORSE: You’re quite a majestic creature. I am happy we share a name.
HORSE: Yep, me too, actually. You’re very pretty.

SEA LION: You’re the king of the jungle, right? Awesome! I am happy we share a name, although I think you might be a tad disappointed with me.
LION: Well, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a wee bit perplexed, but you seem nice enough.

SEA URCHIN: You’re a bit dirty. Maybe you’d smell nicer if you had a wash, young man.
URCHIN: Cor blimey, guv’nor, if it ain’t a talkin’ spikey thing! Spare us a shilling?

CAT FISH: I’ve seen you on the Internet, you’re funny. You can has cheezburger! LOL!
CAT: Oh shush, you damn fool, I’m trying to take a nap.

SEA CUCUMBER: Really? A fucking vegetable?
CUCUMBER: Well actually, I taste marvellous in a fancy English sandwich at afternoon tea.

SEA OTTER: Oh, we kinda look the same. I can see why we’ve got the same name. So what’s the deal? You don’t like salt?
OTTER: Watching my sodium, dude.

SPERM WHALE: Yeah, right. It’s all a big joke to you, isn’t it? Arty beardy speccy-four-eyes man writing crap about animals on his bloody Web site, thinking it’s all a great big joke… What, not got any baseball to watch today, you boring fucking nerdy loser?

Drawn using Brushes application on the iPod touch/iPhone. More of my finger painting in the Much Fuck It’s Drawing section.

Drawn using Brushes application on the iPod touch/iPhone. More of my finger painting in the Much Fuck It’s Drawing section.

Sadly I spent too much time changing the settings on my camera and missed a good deal of the chasing that was going on. The bird kept flying out of reach, but then coming back to continue. I caught the tail end of them playing, and a whole lot more of the squirrel amusing him/herself.

Here’s a wee story. Wrote most of it last summer, but got around to finishing it this morning after waking up at six bloody thirty. I’ve put it all up here rather than making you click on over to the main site, but it is over there too at www.flipflopflyin.com/lamppost. This recent spurt of stuff is mainly down to being nearly done with the Flip Flop Fly Ball book. All the graphics and text are done. All that needs doing now is some editing, tinkering, and a cover.

Just a lamppost, at the junction at the top of the street. Cassius, a four or five or six year old cat that Jeremy got from the animal rescue place, is missing. Jeremy knocked up an A4 flyer in Word, all caps, 72pt Times New Roman, dropped in a photograph of Cassius, put his cell phone number ten times vertically at the bottom of the layout, printed it, made twenty copies, took a roll of Scotch tape from Julie’s desk with a wink and a smile, and on his way home, taped the copies to lampposts, traffic light poles, bus shelters, and finally, the lamppost at the top of the street near his apartment.

Cassius’ flyer was taped over a similarly knocked-up-in-Microsoft-Word piece of A4 paper advertising a mountain bike for sale. Three of the phone number tabs have been pulled off and the paper was a bit bumpy from being rained on. Around the pole, above and beneath Cassius’ flyer were more and more flyers. Missing cats, found cats, missing dogs, found dogs, TV cabinet for sale, reggae night at a local bar (ladies get in free), dog walker services, cleaning services, clothes mending and alteration services, free-yourself-from-debt services, Lucy! call me! I lost your #!!!

Cassius never was found. Jeremy wanted to think someone had found him and taken him in and given him premium quality cat food and a saucer of full fat milk, given him a new name, and had just not seen Jeremy’s flyer. But, whenever he thought about it, Cassius always ended up lying dead in the road after being hit by a car at 3 a.m. Still, lifeless until rush hour, then being squished into an unrecognisable blood and fur mess.

Other flyers covered Cassius’. And others covered those. Again and again, more and more flyers covered more and more missing pets and services for hire. Spring turned to summer, autumn and winter. The flyers faded and crinkled, the ink ran, new bicycles were for sale, and a watch was found. And like a man who drinks a bit too much beer, eats a bit too much pizza, and drives instead of walking to the store, slowly the lamppost got fatter.

Someone selling a pair of tickets for Jeff Beck concert, a yoga teacher, non-smoking room for rent, baby clothes for sale, CDs and DVDs bought and sold, fridge for sale. The posters made it so that between knee height and the head height of an NBA player, the lamppost wasn’t visible. It bulged out, a foot in diameter with layers of paper, layers of flutter, holding up its own weight with rolls and rolls-worth of hastliy-applied Scotch tape. It was a fragile structure but it would take a not insignificant effort to dismantle it. But nobody did. The men in fluorescent jackets and trousers who cleaned the streets, picked up trash, fixed the broken street lights didn’t touch it. Other less-used lampposts were periodically cleared of the flyers. But not this one. It looked like a project. Someone at the department of whoever-does-these-sort-of-things must’ve decided to do an experiment.

It outlasted Jeremy, who moved away with his new cat Sonny to take a new job down south. More cats and winters, dogs and summers passed. (Cassius would go missing again, although this time it was “Tibbles” that was missing, and he was nearly a teenager.) The lamppost got thicker and thicker. Swollen like an ankle. To tape a flyer on the lamppost selling your hi-fi or stroller was to more-or-less guarantee a prompt sale. Unlike other lamppost flyers, where people would only pay attention should a word on the flyer and their own immediate needs coincide, passers-by stopped to read the flyers. People read them all. The lamppost was well known in the neighbourhood. People looking for a room mate would concoct beautifully-worded advertisments to show due respect to the lampposts place in the neighbourhood. Local comic artists would post A4 cartoon strips and their Facebook addresses.

Some local people grew annoyed that the bargains they’d often pick up from calling a number on the lamppost would be gone too quickly, such was the shop window the lamppost afforded its sellers. Yet it grew and grew, flaring out further and further, tapering from a couple of feet wide at the top to eight feet or so at its base. It never reached down to the ground, though. People had tried putting flyers for children’s toys down at the bottom, but nobody ever took the phone numbers when they were wet and smelly with dog piss. Dogs loved the lamppost. Especially in the summer. The dog of the owner of the grocery store next to the lamppost often spent hours shading under the skirt, watching life go by, and occasionally licking a child’s foot.

At Christmas, locals hooked up some lights and turned the lamppost into a Christmas tree. At Easter, the grocery store owner hid tiny chocolate eggs under the flyers. During the World Cup, little paper flags were added. The lamppost was added to the list of quirky things to see in the city’s Rough Gulde. Postcards of the lamppost were available in the tourist shops next to the city’s more well-established landmarks. It grew and grew. Spanish lessons. Qi Gong. It expanded until the pavement was unusable, the council made the street one way so it could be narrowed to allow for further growth. Visitors came to take photographs stood next to the lamppost. Some climbed onto the spread of flyers. A couple left big dents when the paper gave way. Cats fought on top of the mass, rats scrambled around underneath, dogs pissed around the edges. Drunk men ran across it in the early hours of the morning.

On and on it went, eventually blocking off the street completely. It was now a ten minute walk to the grocery store that was a stone’s throw away. School buses had to be rerouted. Houses near the lamppost went up in value, and down in value. Several houses could no longer use their front doors, only entering through the back alley. Frankly, it had became a right pain in the arse.

Another new thing today.
After spending most of the year working on a book about baseball, I have a bit of a One track mind.

Click here to see full image.

Drawn using Brushes application on the iPod touch/iPhone. More of my finger painting in the Much Fuck It’s Drawing section.

Drawn using Brushes application on the iPod touch/iPhone. More of my finger painting in the Much Fuck It’s Drawing section.

I’m gonna take a break from this for a while. It’s not much fun, really. Ever since the move over from Blogger to WordPress, it’s not felt the same. Nothing permanent, just a break for a few weeks, maybe a month, maybe six months, so I can want to do it again because at the moment there seems very little point.

Went out to a comedy club called Yuk Yuk’s last night, to see the wonderful Marc Maron. Funny man. Drank beer, got hungry, thus, had some poutine on the way home. For those of you who’ve not seen poutine before, I thought I’d take a photo for you.

The box is about 4 x 4 inches, and about 2 inches deep, packed full of chips covered in beef gravy and cheese curds. I really have no idea what a cheese curd actually is, but it kinda tastes like a more cheddar-y, squeakier version of mozzarella. It’s really really tasty, very filling, and apparently my local place, Smoke’s Poutinerie is one of the good places to buy it. As comfort food goes, I’m fairly sure this is pretty close to the top of the heap.

Last night, I made a wonderful sandwich. So wonderful, in fact, that I made it again for lunch. Some of you are going to find this a disgusting idea, but, y’know, some of you might be salivating thinking about. First, you take the bread. Then put peanut butter on one slice, and strawberry jam on the other slice.

You’ve pretty much got a PB & J going on there. But then, you make it a PB & J & J by adding… jalapeño.

Slap ‘em together, and get eatin’.

Burp. Clean plate.

I know what you’re thinking: I am as good a chef as Gordon Ramsay. Seriously, it may sound disgusting to add jalapeño, but it’s really nice having something hot in there combined with the nutty and fruity flavours.

I just Googled “PB & J jalapeño” and found this place in Seattle called The Shelter Lounge that serves – my oh my – PB & J jalapeño poppers. Drool. I wish I’d know about this place when I was there last year.

I like Douglas Coupland. I like most of his books, he seems like an incredibly interesting fellow, and I think he comes across as a nice guy. So when I arrived in Toronto, one of things I wanted to see the most was Toronto Park, a park that he recently designed that opened in September last year. Before I got there, though, and just a five minute walk away, there’s a Coupland sculpture, “Monument to the War of 1812.” I know nothing about the War of 1812, but apparently the Brits won. So, y’know, yay! Here’s the Wikipedia article about that war, should you give a monkeys.

The first thing I noticed about Toronto Park was the canoe. You can see the canoe on top of a raised bit of land from the big road that runs along one side of the park.

These things are pretty, too. I assume they are fishing floats. Or maybe I’m wrong. I dunno…

But the best and most interesting thing about the park is the route around the edge with big pictures and plaques all about Terry Fox. Two laps of the park equals one mile, what they have called the Terry Fox Miracle Mile. Slight tangent: you may remember that Terry was the person I chose to do as the 1,000th Minipop last year. I won’t write any more, except to say, it’s a really nice little park with people walking around, picnicking, playing soccer, walking the dog; but most of all, it’s interesting which is something that can’t often be said about new public spaces these days. Here’s some more photos.

After getting up early, doing some work on my book, going downtown to do some research, I felt justified in having a few afternoon beers. So that’s what I did. And I drew the Toronto Blue Jays’ stadium, Skydome, from memory while I was at it. There’s a couple of errors and omissions, but not bad considering.

So, Toronto. Getting here began by dragging a rucksack, backpack, and big-ass suitcase from Barnet (at the northern edge of London), to Gatwick airport (south of London). A fairly harmless journey apart from the bit where I had to change from the Northern Line to the Victoria Line on the Tube. Trains came and went and were uniformly packed full of people. People who were waiting to get on the trains avoided my gaze; the gaze that was trying to say, “C’mon chaps, gimme a break, I know I’m gonna take up the space of three people but I kinda do need to get somewhere just like you do.” Eventually, I just did what the other people did: thought about myself. Positioned myself right in front of where a door would be and launched myself on there.

Here’s a piece of advice, which I wish I’d looked into before choosing to fly with Air Transat: check the baggage allowance before booking what seems like a reasonably-priced flight. My excess baggage more-or-less doubled the price of the flight. But it left on time, arrived on time, and I had an aisle seat to stretch out in.

Getting into Canada, though, was a piece of piss compared to the nation to its south. Just a couple of questions about why I was visiting and if I had any meat or vegetables with me, and I was in. A cab ride later and I’m opening the door to my friend Scott’s place, my home for the next three months. And within two hours of that, I was doing what I’d been looking forward to for quite some time: sitting, drinking a beer at a baseball game.

The Toronto Blue Jays beat the Texas Rangers 16-10, Scott, his (and my) house mate Kevin, and I went for a couple of beers in a local bar, then ate the food that has made my saliva glands overproduce ever since Scott described it to me. I’d not heard of poutine before, but it’s essentially chips and gravy with cheese curds in it. Mag. Nif. I. Cent. I’m glad I went for the small, though. It’s very, very filling.

Saturday, I was up early, out to get coffee, and for a walk. About ten minutes away is a wonderful area called Kensington Market. Good fruit and veg, grocery stores, some clothes shops, plenty of cafes and bars of many nationalities. I’ve been back there most days so far, partly because there’s a pleasant bar with a not-unattractive waitress working there and I’ve been enjoying an afternoon pint now and then, but mostly because there’s all these enticing looking places to eat that need to be tried out.

Another baseball game on Saturday afternoon (this time a 6-0 win for the Jays), followed in the evening by going to hang out with a bunch of Scott’s pals who get together now and then to draw. Essentially, it’s friends hanging out, having a beer, but with everyone doodling away at the same time. Naturally, after forgetting everyone’s name within moments of shaking their hands, I sat down and stared at a blank page for a good half hour. I’m not used to this public drawing. And even if I do draw in public, like in a cafe or something, I tend to hunch over my notebook so nobody can see what I’m doing. Mostly because I spend my time drawing giant flaming swastikas.

Sunday – oh yes, we’re going day by day – and I tag along with Kevin when he goes out to do a bit of shopping. A “quick pint” at lunch time turns into a good eight hour long crawl, which I justified quite easily: I’m getting to know Toronto. Something I repeated, mostly alone, on Tuesday. I’d been at another Blue Jays game (an 11-2 victory over the Minnesota Twins). I’d intended not to drink at all. It was a 12.30pm start, so I imagined it’d be easy to stay away from the booze. When I arrived at the Skydome (it’s current name is Rogers Centre, but that’s a horrible corporate name compared to the lovely futuristic Skydome), there was that unmistakable sound of thousands of children. Understandable, really, that on a midweek afternoon game, the Blue Jays should do some sort of deal with schools to get a ton of kids to come out and buy fizzy drinks and popcorn, but for the adult customer, well, it very literally drove me to drink. I went to the same beer stand each time I bought one, and the first time, had a little chat with the two ladies serving. They asked about my accent, I told them I’d lived in Germany, one of them told me her best friend was studying in Mönchengladbach. Very pleasant interaction. Next time I went back, they said hello in that way that acknowledges we’ve spoken before, and one of the women asks for my ID again. Each of the four times I went to buy a beer she asked to see my ID. I began to think she was stood underneath a security camera, a bit like a casino worker, constantly being watched by the Blue Jays’ Beer Police. Those four afternoon pints ended up being a good, solid twelve hours of drinking. I need to slow down a bit, really.

The last couple of days, I’ve been trying to do a bit of work on the book, but it’s not really been that easy. There’s a big, wonderful-seeming city out there to be explored. Today, though, I’m determined not to explore; to sit in front of my computer and try and have a normal day. Even typing those words, I can feel my willpower draining away.

Finally, in Tic Tac news, not only do Canadian fresh mint flavour (menthe fraîcheur, if you must) have “More Enjoyable Freshness”; they also have an interesting lid flap that I’ve not seen in Tic Tacs elsewhere. It’s got a kinda plug thing. I’m guessing that helps keep the Tic Tacs’ freshness intact.

Title of this blog post translates as “toasted flakes of corn.” It’s what’s written on the pack of Corn Flakes on the table.

Aaaah, it feels fantastic to see live baseball again. Went to see two games within my first 24 hours here, the Blue Jays winning both of them, and another one tomorrow. And it’s sunny too. Sweet!

I’m not a religious man in any way. I believe in God as whole heartedly as I believe in the Tooth Fairy. I find it all rather ridiculous. (I’m not gonna get all militant atheist on you, don’t worry.) I don’t think we need any holy texts to guide us to be moral, partly because if you accept that premise, then we must also accept that slavery, amongst other things, is an acceptable thing to be involved in. Without doing any research, I’d say if you asked people about morals in the Bible, at some point, most of them would mention those things mentioned in God’s hit parade, the Ten Commandments. I’m quite sure most of you can name several of them off the top of your head.

Off the top of my head: don’t murder anyone, don’t adulter, something about false idols, don’t work on the Sabbath, don’t covet your neighbours stuff, or look down your neighbour’s wife’s top.

Oh yes, there’s also one about not stealing. Which brings me to the Harper Collins edition of the Good News Bible. Now, depending on how you define stealing, it might be interesting to compare my Lollipops drawings to the cover of the Harper Collins Good News Bible.

While it’s not stealing as such, I would say the “influence” is fairly obvious. Having experienced this sort of stuff before, because the work isn’t directly stolen, it’d be actually quite difficult to sue God or Rupert Murdoch (Harper Collins is owned by News Corporation). But I am very cross at both of those people and whoever did the illustrations. Surely two thousand years ago, I’d have at least been allowed to chuck a few rocks at their heads, right? I’m sure somewhere in the Bible it would say that’s okay.

Thanks to Mark for letting me know about this.

Drawn using Brushes application on the iPod touch/iPhone. More of my finger painting in the Much Fuck It’s Drawing section.

Drawn using Brushes application on the iPod touch/iPhone. More of my finger painting in the Much Fuck It’s Drawing section.