scratch that

OK! It's 8:30, the boss has left, and it's time to blog!

How's the job going, anyway?...Need you ask?

It's week three, they've paid me—one of those cheques that reads "casual labour" in the re: line, which means no nasty deductions (or Canada Pension savings contributions), and my first salsa class begins tommorrrow: so far so good.

Uh, on another note, I just read my last posting for the first time, and it's really insulting! So, sorry Jer, Andrew and assorted company. If you read the post it sounds like I'm completely disowning you, in fact, I just had a few too many beers and got carried away picking apart dinner formalities. Well, hopefully nobody's actually read it (the most likely scenario) and I can do a little re-write. But, judging by the vehemence of a recent email from Jer, I don't think that's the case.

17/01/08

Nothing much to report here: still plugging away... Christmas fairly-well flew by, as did New Years. In fact, I can happily say that I had more fun this New Year's than I ever have, which is not saying particularly anything. For me, New Year's is a notoriously big let down. I usually end up at some terrible, boring party with people I don't like, or wandering the streets freezing my ass off in search of a drink and a warm place, and, since my financial resources have not as yet caught up with my taste in champagne, I'm stuck drinking things like Irish Car Bombs and Labatt's.

*OK, this is where I went off on a rant about dinner etiquette when I originally posted this, unfairly taking a jab at my best friends and basically being a jerk.

So, what I meant to say was that this year somebody (Andrew, I think?) had the brilliant idea of just getting together for a meal, drinking a bunch, and bringing-in the new year the old-fashioned way: no grandiose expectations, no big let-downs, no cheezy bars or cougars, simple, cheap, intimate. Cool! Great idea!

It was nice to be all together again with my buddies from high school (minus Chris, who's off in Scotland studying) and get completely canned in the basement. My friends are a quiet bunch, on the whole, but I'm used to that, and as far as I can remember we had a bashing good time, mostly singing a lot and spilling beer on Jer's carpet. We had a few good conversations too, stepping out occassionally into the still, snowy night to smoke a joint or knock back another Irish Car Bomb.

Why the vicious-sounding rant I posted earlier? I guess I just found it a bit strange my friends had already started dinner without me—along with a few other friends I rather uncharitably tagged as "people we like to describe as 'acquaintances' (ie. people we know of but don't really like enough to become real friends with)." I suppose that description still holds though. I don't want to completely censor myself. Besides, I think it's kinda funny.

Also, call me old-fashioned and stubborn, but in my experience, dinner is served after the guests arrive (hence the cocktail, which conveniently fills the before dinner gap). I'm not sure why I insisted on mentioning this, and didn't mean for the criticism to be insulting, although I can see how it is. (I was late, after all). I guess I just couldn't help connecting it to something else I'd read recently in The Rebel Sell, about "a noticable decline in civility" in our society, and I probably just read too much into an insignifant event not worthy of commenting on. Why would I do that? I suppose I agree with that assessment and...I read too much into insignificant events not worth commenting on. Like I said, we had a great time.

Highlights of the night:
80's Karaoke
Guitar Hero
Irish Car Bombs
Christian's dad's tortellini

Let's see, what else has happened to me lately...not much: still shovelling snow, which I did both on New Year's Eve and hungover on New Year's Day, still playing hockey three times a week, and still thinking of heading back to Spain while I huddle inside away from the cold.

I guess that's good. I'm still alive and looking forward to another year, unlike John O'Keefe, who was shot dead after leaving the very bar in which Jeremy, Andrew and I were celebrating my birthday.

That's the kind of thing that just makes you despair, it would also turn you fascist pretty quickly, if you didn't resist the temptation. I'm referring here to what I'll tentatively call the "send 'em back to Jamaica" complex—even though in this case, and in many others, these were not blacks—as well as such eternally appealing measures as mass sterilization and forced labour camps. I'm sorry, but that's what comes to mind when two losers kill an innocent man on his way home to his girlfriend and son after a Friday pint with friends and as I open the Toronto Star website and read that another innocent victim has been shot again on our city streets.