Merry Christmas

It's time! Christmastime, which for me marks the end of my extended world procrastination tour. I'm not sure what it marks for you, and frankly, we'll stick with topics of importance here. We all know the true meaning of Christmas, no matter how hard religious lobbies and the cartoon industry try to force their sentimentalist borderline-socialist interpretation of the holidays down our throat. The true meaning of Christmas is to get sweet stuff showing people how much you love them. The bigger and more expensive the stuff, the more you obviously love someone. On that note, my lovelies, here is an up-to-date list on things that can buy my affection, or at least my attention:


-A condo in downtown Vancouver (at least 600 sq. ft., w/ view of North Shore mountains preferred)
-Round trip flight to Saigon.
-A Lotus Evora S (White)
-Tickets to the 2011 Heritage Classic
-Membership at a slightly-less-than-reputable massage parlor
-A Hu Ming original http://www1.hu-ming.com/all_list/08/list_2008.html
-Lessons in any of the following (Mandarin, French, piano, voice, scam artistry)
-A job
-Hang out with me on New Year's


Don't be shy, whether we've been friends for years or merely high-school acquaintances, it will never be considered inappropriate to share your holiday spirit with me. Merry Christmas to everybody, may next year be even more ridiculous than this one. 

Memories

Taken from the first pages of my Europe notebook:

"The point is to make it easy, to work smarter, make it difficult to fail. It's easy to get the girl if she's attracted to you. Carry the book on you and you will write. Write and you will remember. Remember and you will have access to all those intriguing moments, the exciting bits, the things that drive you. Write and you will succeed."

I guess it works, reading back through that bit I remember the scene in Berlin that surrounded me. I remember the Igor Hofbauer book that I leafed through right afterward. Most importantly, I remembered that drive I felt in the moment, "the exciting bit". Turns out that notebooks in your back pocket aren't just for adding some extra hipster flair to your dry denim.

Wanted: Sugarmama

Single young buck looking for a sugarmama. If you've got too much cash and too little satisfaction, I have what you need. Need something to spice up your Mexican vacation? Dinner at Gotham by yourself is getting lonely? Whether you're looking for a handsome, rakish young thing to parade in front of the bitches at your staff Christmas party or a regular pleasure acquaintance to help you feel good when you want to be bad, I'm here. All I ask in return for my invaluable services is a well-appointed living quarters in the Gastown/Chinatown area.  


My living space should include both en suite laundry and a dishwasher. Bedding should be at bare minimum queen sized, we all know that size matters, the bigger the better. Weekly maid service is preferred. The stainless steel fridge will be refilled daily to contain a minimum:
-1 750ml. Alberta Springs rye whisky
-12 cans Old Style Pilsner 
-1 pack Double Stuffed Oreos
-1 4 liter Chocolate milk (2% please


I'm disease free (with the exception of an occasional tinea versicolour outbreak) and possess very little moral fiber. Though my personality is large there is a limited quantity of me. Applications are already pouring in, so drop me a line telling me why you are the best sugarmama for me.


Those interested in having a permanent Shotgun addition to their life are now in luck. For a limited time only, Shotgun is available for breeding stock. Choose between our freeze-dried serum, for your convenience, or, for the natural types, our direct injection solutions. In lieu of money, payment with fine dining, vacations, and automobiles will be considered. 

A Long Way Home

As the plane descended into Fort St. John airport the only thing passing through my mind was "what the fuck have I done?" Fort St. John's landscape at this time of year, for those who've never been, is a dead wasteland. Dead nature waiting for its naked ugliness to be hidden by snow. Oil leases and gas plants and fallow fields and a river. The idea was to relax in a neutral place and come up with a strategy for attacking the next step in my life. Lock myself up in a cabin on the lake, read by the fire, eat my mom's food, dream a little dream under the Northern Lights.

Coming back to my birthplace always brings to mind the morals parents tell their children about money not buying happiness. It seems the crowd here is more divided on the matter. Fort St. John is an easy money town, where there seems never to be a shortage of jobs, where an F-350 is considered an appropriate daily driver, where you go to the bar and meet people from places like Newfoundland, Saskatchewan, and Quebec, places where the money isn't so easy. I can't imagine that all of the people here left their homes to work and be unhappy with their stacks of money. I know that money can buy me happiness, the thing is that my happiness lies outside of Fort St. John. One thing I learned very early is that it doesn't matter how rich you are when you've got wet feet and it's -30, you aren't going to be happy.

In the taxi from the airport it seemed like nothing has changed in the 5 months since I was last here, no new buildings, no people walking the streets, barren. My 'rents weren't home so I had a mandarin orange and sat by the fireplace. The only comfort winter has for me is relaxing by a fireplace, I may even prefer it to sitting on a beach, you get to wrap yourself in blankets and you don't get sand in your crotchital regions. I had a feeling that I was going to be spending a lot of time in front of the fire. Time spent doing nothing. Time spent thinking about girls. Have you seen the girls in Fort St. John? Fuck.

Je vais enculer ta soeur.

Walking around in life after five months of unintended chastity I often reflect on girls of the past. Possibilities. What could have happened. What I did to fuck up. Whether they dislike me a little less and would reply to booty calls, or even coffee date invitations, with civility. I wonder about girls, ones that I had sex with, or wanted to, wonder if they think about me with any fondness or nostalgia.

I imagine that thinking about these women is parallel with how I will think about my youth when I am an old man. Happy moments that I can't quite feel anymore, would like to reach out to but can't. The past remains a ghost and memories of these women remain ethereal spirits, haunting my mind with their laughs and smiles. Even the sad and angry moments shine with some kind of romance. I am reminded of the Moody Blues song "Your Wildest Dreams".

I'm starting to think that horniness and nostalgia are in direct correlation (it would explain why Italians are so concerned with the old times as well as being extra greasy). As I become more sex-deprived the bile that I've felt towards some women mellows, and I start to think, "maybe".

Maybe we'll see how locking myself in a cabin on Charlie Lake allows me to end the long drought and restore my sanity, maybe. Maybe I'll punch myself in the face and yell, "what the hell were you thinking?" Maybe my man bits will shrivel up in dejection and rebel against me, their captor, for imprisoning them in red jeans and preventing them from doing their god-given duty. Maybe.

Options...

-Lock myself up in a cabin until I've mastered guitar, singing, drawing, writing, and any other skills I need to acquire.
-Run away to Taiwan, learn Mandarin, marry some broad and have a bunch of kids.
-Save rock & roll.
-Go back to university and drop out a third time.
-Write a screenplay, become your next favourite reclusive writer.
-Start a drug manufacturing/smuggling organization.
-Arts school.


All viable options for what to do with my near future. Just need to find a venue; Vancouver, Chicago, Montreal, Taipei? These decisions can't be made while hungover.

Being Awkward Doesn't Help With the Whores

Last night in the Philippines. Rachelle and I are going out to check out a club with a Team Canada hockey jersey after grabbing some sinigang from the local bar we've been frequenting (home of the innocent Filipina I've been hitting on for the past week). Said girl had stood me up on a date the day before, however, the sinigang is super good and I wanted to say goodbye to the bartenders I'd befriended.
At the bar, she opened up conversation with Rachelle and I and we got to talking about what we would do on our last night. Once she heard our plans she made us promise to come pick her and her barmates up to join us in our revelry. So it starts.
Things are normal, go to bar, there are ladyboys, there is me, there is disco disco. Dance. Dance. Finish with the drinking, go to Andok's (AKA: The greatest fast food joint in the mooniverse) and grab some fried chicken (read: yum). Rachelle and girly-cutey-tiny Filipina head home, my main man bartender and I head to a karaoke bar (3AM).
We arrive at karaoke hovel. Planks for walls. Planks for roof. Planks for tables. Nothing but girls. Interesting.
My bartender sits me down on a bench next to a girl and in front of two others, I'm not completely oblivious to what's going on. "Choose which one you want to sit with". I choose the one already sitting next to me, I don't really want to make her move, and besides, she's the cutest girl I can see with my half-cut vision. "I'm Rose"
"I'm Anthony"
I find out it's her first night on the job and she's never spoken with a foreigner before, still not exactly sure what her job is. Turns out, I'm supposed to buy her beers in return for her hanging off of me and singing karaoke in my direction, good thing beers are cheap. We sing and awkwardly hold on to eachother through songs like "Take on Me" and "White Christmas". At 6AM she says it's time to go and asks me "what do you want?". After about 2 weeks being connected to a San Miguel IV drip I have about the smooth of 90 grit.
"I want to have sex with you".
"Are you sure?"
"I don't know." I say, what is this some kind of trick question? Am I going to end up in Philippine prison for being overly hormone driven?
"Are you sure?"
She speaks in Tagalog with some of the other girls around the shack. We are all told to leave as it is 6AM and the shack is closing, stepping through the door the light is almost blinding. Once outside I am surrounded by the girls, most of them about chin level with me.
"You want something?" They're badgering me, I can't handle it, I barely managed to start talking to the other girl about her business and now I'm surrounded by little fireballs demanding to know exactly what I want to do.
"To go to sleep."
On the tricycle ride home I find out that the going rate is about 1500 Piso (35C$)
I don't think I can handle the whores.
Back at the resort I find a note from Rachelle telling me to meet the innocent girl for fried chicken at 8AM, about an hour and a half away.
I don't think I can handle Filipinas.

Hanging out in the Mall of Asia

It's raining. The streetlight, in a romantic mood, takes to shining particularly beautifully on the falling drops, holding on to some for , a moment before allowing them to fall slow motion into the black. There's a typhoon nearby named Juan, he seems out to inconvenience rather than anything else.
I think of women, and I think of myself, looking for the key somewhere in my conscious to connect me effortlessly, without risk, to any female I choose. Some magic combination of words, gestures, and clothes, to awaken the ultimate ladykiller I know lies somewhere slumbering inside me. By connection, of course, I mean physically, me prodding, her prodded. Connecting intellectually is too much to ask for, one must keep one's fantasies from growing delusional.
I draw a woman, naked, kneeling, face on the floor, arms stretched forward, black straight hair, back curved. So hot. Favourite position.
Rachelle is drinking her green tea across the table while filling out her travel journal for the past few days. There's something comfortable about having a female around, sets things at ease. I show her my picture pointing, to a girl walking by with her boyfriend, and telling her, "that's what she looks like naked".
"Gross".
I make an exaggerated pelvic thrust and grunt.
Attention shifts to a family, skinny husband, fat wife, two daughters, one in a Winnie the Pooh push car, the other in her mother's arms. Intolerably cute, like every filipino child seems to be. The husband walks into a store leaving the cart, mother, and kids. Mom, sits on the Pooh Bear cart, almost right on top of her daughter who squirms trying to find breathing space. Mom ignores her child's weaseling and gasping behind her. After a minute or so, the confined daughter finally makes it out of her cart, freed from her corpulent assailer/progenitor just in time for dad to return from the store. Tubby stands up.
"She wasn't always like that," I say, "she was probably pretty and thin before they got married and he got strapped to her with two living, painfully cute, anchors".
"Probably" says Rachelle.
All I can think of is, "marriage is risky".

Harry Haller's Wandering Book Club

While I was rolling around Europe I carried a giant stack of books with me. Thinking that it would be wasting energy for me to continue carrying the books after I finished them I decided that I'd abandon each book after I'd finished it. However, it seemed impersonal to me to just abandon the books never to hear from them again. In order to keep a connection with each book and whoever's hands they happened to fall into I inscribed my name and e-mail address in each one along with the instructions:


1. Read the book.
2. Write your name.
3. Abandon the book in a public place.


All under the title of "Harry Haller's Wandering Book Club". Now I have only to sit and wait and hope that whoever finds "The Crying of Lot 49", "Les Miserables", "The Way of All Flesh", or any of the other books I left behind as a literary trail of my travels, and see if anybody actually steps up to be part of the club. Until then, I'll keep reading and trailing books behind me, hoping that somewhere somebody picks up where I left off. Soon "The Iliad" will be lying somewhere in Makati, and somebody else will be wondering why the hell Achilles is such a wimp and why he won't just man up.

Hey bitches!

So, here's the deal, I'm in Hong Kong, and the final verdict is: Asia is the best.

Food is better in Asia, it's busy, buildings are ambitious (read: not the same thing that they've been building for the last 1500 years) and Rachelle is here.

Anyways, I'm up on a bar in Central Honk Kong, admiring the skyline, drinking a Leffe, thinking that life is good, it might only be better if I couldn't smell the harbour. I've seen a lot on my way to this place, I've been picked up and thrown by multiple dudes, some I knew, some I didn't. For some reason Asia just feels like home, stepping off the plane and breathing in the humid polluted air was one of the most pleasant experiences in recent memory.

To many more buzzed evenings in Asian metropolises (metropoli?).

 Lang Kwai Fong meet shotgun's dance moves

 Would you fuck me, I'd fuck me, I'd fuck me hard

 Side trip to Japan

 Communicating with you, my people

Drinking on God's day, as per da use.

Cheers,

A.

A special thanks to Rachelle, Joey, Joey's dad, and Melvin

P.S. Pocari Sweat fucking RULEZZZ!!!

All the best things are French

If you have time for 1500 pages, I'd recommend "Les Miserables", you'll probably be heartbroken but come out of it with a little better idea of what it means to be a human.

Other good books on the trip have been:

The Crying of Lot 49

The Master and Margerita

The Way of All Flesh

Over und out,

A.

Europe, Nutshell

Goodbye Europe: Best & Worst of

After traveling for 3 months around Europe, I feel as though I am entitled to judge everything about every country, city, and culture that I experienced. From Switzerland, which I drove through in a day, to Rome, where I camped out for 2 weeks. With the knowledge I have acquired I feel that I can give all of you guys at home a fair synopsis of what is good and what is not so that you will not even have to worry about crossing an ocean to see what is on the other side, and, if you do, you can skip the shit. So, without further adieu I bring you the Europe best & worst of list.

Best place to get picked up and thrown by an angry dude: Svilengrad, Bulgaria

Worst place to feel like going out and partying in: Rome, Italy

Best place to urinate in public: Vienna, Austria

Best place to fulfill your grandma fetish: Romania

Worst place to drive politely: Italy

Worst national treasure: Bran Castle, Romania

Worst avant-garde toilet concept: shelf toilet (Turkey) Runner up: slide toilet (Italy)

Best Doner Kebab: Germany

Worst Doner Kebab: Everywhere else

Worst place to go if you like happiness: Czech Republic

Worst public transit system: Rome, Italy

Best place to go bankrupt eating terrible food: Barcelona, Spain

Best food: Lyons, France

Best duo: Romanian George Clooney & The Town Rapist, Gogosu, Romania

Worst song to be played 3 zillion times: We No Speak Americano

Worst place to have a nap: Turkey

Best super touristy thing: Eiffel Tower

Best place to get run over by a cyclist and then get yelled at: Amsterdam, Netherlands

Best deal on a case of beer: Germany

Best place to get attacked by dogs: Romania

Best drunk food: Langos, Hungary

Best clubs: Budapest, Hungary

Most beautiful women: France

Best place to stay up until 6am dancing: Rekyjavik, Iceland

Worst language: Lurky Lurk Runner up: Italian

Best Country: France

Best tunnel radio stations: Switzerland

Best place to be exsanguinated: The Mosquito Farm, Slovakia

That's it, I'm done with Europe, now that that's out of my system I'll be free to get to other good stuff. Talk at you later.

A.