godbecomeanimal

After squandering half a year, I've finally got my marching orders and will be shipping back up to the tar pits soon. Only Nausea Corporation resides in that foggy, forgotten hinterland somewhere between computer programmin' nerd and masochistic unskilled labour, and because of that, I cash cheques, fool!

     If I were a (cute) girl, I would absolutely one-hundred-percent get the Cutie Honey logo tattooed on my ass cheek. So if you're a girl and you're wondering what tattoo you should get, you're welcome.

     Loading this image into photobucket, I realized that the My Pictures directory on my laptop is full of pictures of Gustavo, the Mexican I sneaked across the border to whom I gave a ride to Chicago. Dozens of pictures of him, his family, and his friends. My only contribution to this directory is a dog with a Meatwad tattoo. Like yeah.

     I read on the internet today that marijuana "reduces an internal sense of emptiness and failure to participate in life" which really makes me wish I had some marijuana.

DISCLAIMER: WILLOW AND ROWAN THE AWESOME BABY ARE IN ANOTHER HOUSE ON THE OTHER SIDE OF TOWN KID



you might think i've been getting drunk a lot this summer, buit iv'e litteraly made AN LJ POST every time i've got drunk,a ll four times.

Fill: "I'm going to pee. Let's do the helicopter!"
Bouv: "Here I come!"
(Drunk, I pee all over the place. Fill's phone rings.)
"Who the hell could it be at this hour? Oh shit, it's Emily!" (our hostess)
"The call is coming from inside the house!"

     Via text message:
     Dude what are you doing tonight?
     We just watched Midnight Express and now I'm going to bed. There's not much fun to be had in this town.
     I'm in town. I'm coming to pick you up
     WE BE CLUBBIN

     And with that the evening began. We played hogs of the road, and then we went west. Jason was in town for his high school reunion. Mine was a few weeks ago, but my invitation appeared to have been lost in the mail.

     Because I had been listening to Giorgio Moroder (oh Billy!) I was sharpened up and ready for a bit of the old ultraviolence. But because it was Medicine Hat, there was no Giorgio to be found. We went a club called the Wynz, formerly the Medicine Hat Museum. I still recall my genuine disappointment as a child when, expecting dinosaurs and lunar landers, I found bison and Metis paraphanelia. Now it is the Wynz.

     "I like to be somewhere at least where you can see a few girls around once in a while, even if they're only scratching their arms or blowing their noses or even just giggling or something." - Holden Caulfield

     The sight was grotesque, and since it was already after midnight I had to drink double-time. I skipped Coronas in favour of screwdrivers until a good five or six shots were in me (Uh-oh, said I, I've got the rubber legs). Furthermore, I was a little grotesque myelf, having no haircut since March and no shave since May. I paid extra for something with Bombay Sapphire (thank you, mid 90s lounge craze) and Red Bull, and I didn't even get genuine Red Bull. No matter; the gin worked. Some skuzzy girl approached us at one point, but we'd have rather been injected with the STD and skipped the contact.

      As an aside, there is little to no fun to be had in Medicine Hat anymore. Everyone is married and has kids. I like you, baby Rowan, but all you know how to do is synthesize food into guacamole. Meanwhile Fill's baby growls and bonks its head all day until it gets a concussion and falls asleep. Is this any way to live? Quoth Fill:
      "What did you think, you'd come to Medicine Hat with your newlywed friends and their new babies and expect to have fun?"
      "God damn you, Fill, that's exactly what I thought!"
      Never mind the fact that he farts during sex, or has to put ointment on his chaffed balls. You have no idea. Jason and I  drank to prophylactics.

     "...that's essentially how I feel about life — full of loneliness, and misery, and suffering, and unhappiness — and it's all over much too quickly." - Woody Allen

     "This place is full of skanks." "And there aren't nearly enough of them!" - Jason and I

     I asked the DJ if he would play any Giorgio Moroder, and he was stupified. "If you don't have Moroder, your club could use some fixin!"

     Finally we ended up, again, at Humpty's. Originally placed at the outskirts, we asked to be moved near the more happenin' tables. We didn't come here for the food, I assured the waitress. The place was full of drunken horny assholes, and a phone book clogged the toilet in the men's room. Girls at an adjacent table told us the score:

     Where did everyone go tonight?
     Ralph's!
     Not the Wynz?
     Not unless you like Brits!

     But we can't stand that shitkicker music at Ralph's. Eventually Jason dropped me off at Torg's.

     Lately when my alarm clock rings, because I have no reason to get out of bed, I just turn it off, in my sleep. So I wired an external speaker jack to it so that I can leave the alarm clock proper by the door, but have the speaker next to my bed. Isn't that special?

     O youth! Ardent and melancholy youth!
     The flames of youth
     The ashes of youth
     The embers of youth

     Prologue: I returned from the Yucatan, with malaria pills, mosquito nets, and plans to head much further south, to Calgary for a few hours of bullshit work*. And so on, and so on, and on and on and you get it, you all get it. Posts written but not yet published.

     "If Edmonton is the City of Champions, surely Medicine Hat is a very fine town as well!"
     "I swear those girls are 16, if that."
     "It's a bar! They're 18, it's the law!"
          - two anonymous rapscallions

     I drifted to Medicine Hat, town of my youth. Because seemingly everyone I know in Medicine Hat is married and has kids, I despaired that never again would I have a night of debauchery. But tonight, Jason and I went to The Club**. Fill couldn't come because he had some kind of diarrhea disease, and Torg would rather spend the night with his wife and child. But not me, I've got nothing to live for!

     It happened to be Wet T-Shirt Night, but I was there on official business, an impartial observer, the Hans Blix of Wet T-Shirt Nights. While we were both old and creepy, I was delighted to see that we were neither the oldest nor the creepiest.

     It may have been miserable and decrepit, but God damn it, I was home. Nothing had changed, save for a couple of things. There were now gay men at The Club, and one particularly handsome specimen was the best dancer I have ever seen. During the Main Event, they no longer played Ginuwine's Pony, as they had for years. At no point during the evening did I hear Love Inc, but they did play the Vengaboys, which is pretty damn close.

     "You see that girl over there? She's 40, I used to sleep with her. She used to be a real estate agent, and now she's entering the wet t-shirt contest!"
     "Dude, it's a slow market!"

     Dudes still walked around with the same frightened looking-to-get-in-a-fight face, unless they were alone on the dance floor, where they would do retarded looking c-walks and assert themselves by pointing one finger in the air. The DJ, who we called DJ Screech, was the same guy from forever ago when I was last there. One could still find a gaggle of British soldiers from the nearby base, trained killers by day, lovers of larger, drunker women by night.

     Jason nursed his drink like a shark, but I couldn't sit in a corny place like that cold sober, and ten Coronas later, two busboys folded out a table and Wet T-Shirt Night proper began. There were only three contestants, which was pretty sad, and Her Majesty's finest armed with Super Soakers provided the wet. I didn't vote, because I'm trying to cut down on my misogyny, but it was a landslide in one girl's favour, and the purse of $100 was all hers. Jason's girl later came and talked to us, still dripping.

     Occasional fights broke out, because Medicine Hat will do that to you. The men's room sink overflowed with blood. Caught unawares, I was hit by a glass something-or-other containing coconut-smelling stuff that got launched when another fight broke out. This is Medicine Hat, to me.

     Later that night, as I picked the broken glass out of my arm, I couldn't help but think to myself with a smile and an air of reverence that it was fuckin' Wet T-Shirt Night.


     "He realized, of course, that he was a wash-out: but, when all was said, in this dancehall, at that table, among all those fellows who were also wash-outs, it did not seem to matter very much and was not at all unpleasant... Mathiew suddenly felt a kinship with all those creatures who would have done so much better to go home, but no longer had the power, and sat there smoking slender cigarettes, drinking steely-tasting compounds, smiling, as their ears oozed music, and dismally contemplating the wreckage of their destiny; he felt the discreet appeal of a humble and timorous happiness." - Sartre, The Age of Reason, which pre-Quebec I gave to my old friend Ron, who since married and concieved a child with an ex-lesbian, my old boss at the record store. What the fuck, Medicine Hat?


*I programmed in an easter egg whereby you click on a picture of my truck to see a random quote by some of my favourite philosophers.
**Ezzie's, from where I was Banned For Life, has long since burned to the ground, and after The Club I sauntered over there and triumphantly pissed where it used to stand.

     I was nervous at the Mexican border, but then again I was nervous the first time I crossed the American border. For twenty bucks, a Mexican took me to a shady mechanic who refilled my air conditioning for a mere 200 pesos. Even with the commission it was cheaper than having a reputable garage do it. I then resumed my journey, finding what I believe to be the worst highway I've ever driven.


     There are four types of highways in Mexico. In the cities, there are big multi-lane roads with no lines, that hold 3 to 6 lanes of traffic, depending on how people orient themselves. Then there are the nice highway roads, with only two lanes but generous shoulders that turn the centre of the road into a passing lane free-for-all. The only problem with these roads is that you have to watch your rear-view mirror so that if someone rolls up behind you, you can kindly drive in the shoulder with the shredded semi tires and other detritus while they pass you. There are the merciful cuota roads, where for a fee you can drive in an actual multi-lane highway roughly equivalent to a secondary highway in Canada. And there are the minor roads, with potholes and gravel, animals dead or alive, no shoulders, no lights, and a liberal sprinkling of the most sadistic traffic control device ever devised - the tope.

     Topes are giant speed bumps that appear with or without warning and come in clusters of one to twenty. They bear the scars of unlucky drivers who used to have oil pans and transmissions. In a touch of irony, the posted speed limit at topes is usually 20 km/hr. On roads where semi trucks pass you, around a blind curve on the side of a mountain with double yellow lines, at 120 km/hr when the posted speed limit is 60, the maximum safe speed to cross a tope seems to be between 0 and 5 km/hr, or about half-clutch in first gear after first rolling to a stop.

     I drove on and on, cursing the foul roads and the slow speeds, spoiled in my youth by a country where you can cruise between towns at a healthy 140 and get from prairies to ocean in a good 12 hours if you're quick. I tailgated semi trucks or, even better, ADO buses wherever possible, racing through the dark at 100km/hr trying to catch another one when the one I was following would finally pull over into one of the many truck-lined villages. I went through several army checkpoints - pitch black stretches of road suddenly lined by men with machine guns. I didn't speak their language, didn't understand any of the posted signs, and with my Alberta plates, right-hand-drive truck, and pasty Caucasian skin, I feared I may have been conspicuous.

     By 2 am I thought I was losing my mind. I tried to follow highway 180 but in Mexico highways are allowed to branch off but still keep the same number. I always had to know the next town in the proper direction so that I wouldn't accidentally follow the wrong 180 to a dead end in some little village. After making a wrong turn in the black hills of Tuxpan I was literally chased down the street by a pack of stray dogs, barking and leaping, past a parked police car. Finally I checked into...

( The Weirdest Motel I've Ever Seen In My Life )

     The A/C didn't work, but the toilet, shower, bed, and porn did, and I had weird and sinister dreams as animals shrieked outside.

     In the morning, as I pulled away I found myself stuck in traffic. There was a dead body on the road outside the hotel, and la policia were taking his picture.

     Texas is a big fucking state. After another night spent baking in my truck, I was beginning to cross the line from swarthy to just filthy. As I drove I could see the shadows of giant birds circling overhead. I took few pictures because my windshield was so buggy and I didn't want to stop.

     San Antonio was lush and green, a reprieve from the punishing heat I'd felt since California. It was here that I found the high point of the last few days:


     If hell is the Wal-Mart in Fort McMurray, surely heaven is the Panera Bread in San Antonio, all air conditioning, jazz, and wi-fi. And then to Brownsville, where I found another Motel 6 and planned my next move.

( Shutterbuggin' )

     I awoke, sweaty and delirious, in a gas station parking lot west of Phoenix. In Arizona, lizards skittered across the interstate and a prairie dog stood solemnly over the corpse of his squershed comrade. The heat was brutal - I could see the reflection of the sun in the sweat on my arm. Last fall when I had my radiator rebuilt they had to purge the a/c refridgerant and I never bothered to have it recharged. Luckily America sells Gatorade in two litre bottles. Any soda pop or soft drinks (or water) I bought had to be consumed immediately, because within minutes back on the road they became uncomfortably hot.

     Arizona gave way to New Mexico, but I was more interested in Mexico Classic. I crossed the Rio Grande - not quite as grande as the Colorado, thought I - and El Paso smelled hot and oily. I stopped in Van Horn, 500 miles from San Antonio. After refueling, I put my game face on and went back to work.

     At some point I realized I didn't eat anything that day. Fast food on the I-10 in Texas sucks. But it would all be forgotten during my next meal...

( Shutterbuggin' )

     Notes on America:
- Where the hell are the Panera Breads?
- Rush Limbaugh is angrier than I remember. He called Knut the Polar Bear an idiot. He pronounced it kuh-NOOT. Is Air America no longer broadcasting?
- Number of people to realize they were passing a wacky Canadian, look back, and smile: 2. A cute girl in an Acura and a crazy old lady. You still got it, old boy.

     Death Valley was where my happiness went to die. It was hot and boring.* And because it's called Death Valley and not Death Plains, there were more mountains on either side. I climbed 5000 feet in 10 miles (in third gear) and then descended below sea level in another 30 miles. Furthermore, in Death Valley the roads have no shoulders, so if your truck breaks down you just wait there with heatstroke until someone comes along and rear-ends you, putting you out of your misery. I'm not saying that crossing Death Valley in mid-afternoon sucked, but I have no desire to do it again.

     Because I fucked around in the desert all day, there was no time to have any fun in Las Vegas. After having my truck searched I crossed the Hoover Dam and ascended yet another mountain range, drinking my American-issue vanilla root beer, whilst Ashanti warbled about love over the radio. It should be about us, it should be about trust, babe.

( Shutterbuggin' )

*Send my Travel Journalist of the Year award to my storage locker in Calgary.