Return to Pluto: The Saga Continues...

All is right with the world.
Pluto is completely in line with all her other cosmic and karmetic allignments.
Turns out she had a wee touch of Ye Olde Grande Respitory Infection (Y.O.G.R.Y. - we call it "yogry" around these here parts) and it was nothin' a good ole fashioned dose of some anti-biotics, an I.V. of saline to rehydrate her kitty-body and some hypo-injected Odex couldn't handle.
Our own Miss Kitten (aka Pluto) has been bouncing around the house, giving nose-kisses and pooping healthy poops neatly in her litter box, like the lady she is slowly becoming.
She had a rough start, and is still recovering - one of her eyes is still a little water and she's still got a bit of the sniffles, but, that aside - she is one happy and hyper cat.
I'll be sure to post more in the near future about the adventures of Pluto and thank you to everyone who called us about the well-being of this pretty little feline.
Pluto thanks you as well.
Regards,
hearts, farts and meows...

dan
(p.s. - pictures of Pluto coming soon).

Pluto

Pluto is extremely sick. I am taking her in to the vet at 1 p.m. today - it's 9:49 a.m. right now. I'm terrified. I hate this.
She was doing great for the first day and a half with us. Loves to cuddle, loves to play with her little weird feather-toy on a string. Loves to sit on the couch and watch t.v. with us. She fit in perfect. Hopping up on counter tops, jumping into bed with us. Such a perfect, friendly little cat.
She had a wee little sneeze the day we took her home, but we assumed it was just from being in the nasty humane society with all those other animals (many of who were strays - and had god only knows what kind of sicknesses, poor things).
Anyway, we took her in to the vet on Saturday just to get her sneeze checked out. The vet said she had a bit of an upper respitory infection and may have a urinary tract infection so he gave her a shot of Odex and prescribed Clavamox, which we have been giving her.
As a side note - there is nothing more disturbing than giving an animal a pill. FUCK i hate sickness.
Anyway, Sunday she took a turn for the worse. She barely ate anything, hardly drank and she only went pee once.
She didn't really move much, and her eyes became kind of watery. We continued giving her the pills every twelve hours - but she seemed to only get worse.
There is a little bit of snot coming out of her nose when she breathes and her eyes are teary and watery, and a little unfocused. I've been trying to give her some water off my finger, because she won't drink. I'm really scared for her.
So today when we woke up (she still hadn't moved from last night) we noticed her breathing was even worse, eyes very watery and gummy and she still won't drink or move or eat or even go to the bathroom.
I'm pacing around right now. I have no idea what to do.
I wish the vet would take her right now. We are taking her to the Humane Society vet - because the vet knows some history of the cat.
However, she told me today that if she has to give the cat further treatment, we may have to relinquish our ownership back to the Humane Society because it is illegal for the vet to treat animals that are not owned by the Humane Society.
That was when I started bawling. I hate this. It's so sad. These poor things can't talk and tell us how they feel.
Like, you just sit there and see tears coming out of their eyes and try to talk to them but they can't tell you what's wrong or where it hurts.
It's so unbearably sad seeing a pet suffer and be sick. They do NOTHING wrong ever.
All they ever want is for you to love them and be nice to them and they are the most peaceful creatures on earth. The "baddest" things they ever do are hop up on a counter top or shred a piece of furniture. Big deal.
Nature is so cruel that living things still have to suffer and be sick.
Why can't nature evolve and find a way around suffering and sickness?
It fucking sucks. I'm a wreck. Having a pet is the greatest thing in the world but it's sheer torture to see them being so lathargic and sad and not themselves.
I'm a bit scared to bring her to the vet and relinquish ownership too. When you do that - it means they can do whatever they want. If they feel that cat is too sick and should just be put down - they can do it because they OWN the cat.
I'm not saying the Humane Society are a bunch of cat-killers -but they do put down their fair share of cats for many trivial reasons - much of the time just because no one wants a perfectly healthy cat.
So it won't be like they will fight tooth-and-nail for this poor cat.
I have faith in them that they will...but I have my doubts too.
Fuck I'm just terrified and I needed to write it down.
Maybe I'm just being a drama queen about it - but she is VERY sick. I just get soo attached to animals SOO fast and she's so loveable. It's impossible NOT to love this cat. I don't want to see anything bad happen to her.
Anyway, I'm gonna go sit with her and wait for 1 p.m.
dan

Our New Friend for Life

I'm really REALLY excited and super happy and thrilled to announce a new member to our little house in Walkerville:
PLUTO THE CAT!!!!!
We adopted her today from the humane society and we get to take her home tomorrow between 12 - 4:30.
I'm bursting with excitement!!!
Here's a little bit about her:
She's grey-ish/yellowish/smokeyish - a really pretty original hazy colour.
She is only one year old and she comes from a family who gave her up because their allergies were so bad.
She has been declawed (which after lots of research - I can't say is a procedure I would feel comfortable doing to a cat - but at least I can enjoy the perks of having a cat who won't scratch my furniture guilt-free since it wasn't me who declawed her) and she is also Spade which is a good thing.
There's is nothing more horrific and disturbing than listening to or watching a cat in heat.
She loves being brushed, is not afraid of storms or fireworks, she *sometimes* likes to be picked up, she likes a hooded litterbox with clumping sand, she is not harness trained, she IS okay with strangers, she has a habbit of hopping up on counter tops, she likes kids and is okay with dogs but does not like other cats. That's all the main info we have about her.
She also has a sister named Peanut who was already adopted and the little memo it says under "other helpful info" abou the cat: "She loves her sister Peanut."
I have to admit, I did cry a little bit when I read that part and had to choke back my tears and stop my voice from cracking when I was on the phone with Life Partner reading him all the info about the cat. He gets upset when I cry, and I can be a big baby - ESPECIALLY about cute cats who are lonely!! Her sister was already adopted so this cat was totally alone.
Until NOW!!
When we saw her, there really was something about her.
Just this little playful cat who wanted us to pet her. She was licking her little cage and reaching her paw out to us and meowing. She wanted to come home with us. For sure.
She looks like she could have a wild streak to her - but at the same time - looks very affectionate and cuddly. The people at the Humane Society thought she was a very sweet cat so I think we made the PERFECT decision.
The other cat who caught our eye - was Valentine.
A little black and white cat with a heart shape on her fur.
Beautiful. Two years old, with claws, not fixed. A nice cat too - pretty mellow - but I was a little weary about having to get her spade because I hate those operations - I hate an operation for anyone. And she's been around a while longer and she was a stray cat beforehand -not that I have anything against strays...Valentine would have made a fantastic friend for us too.
But something about Pluto...
Actually..I have to confess something...
Pluto's name is actually Pumpkin. That was the name she was given by her old owners who didn't keep her.
I am having a hard mental debate with myself over this issue.
We found this cat - or fate brought us to her - either way - and she already has the name Pumpkin.
Do we keep it? Is she Pumpkin? Or do we give her a new name? Start fresh?
Part of me loves the name Pluto....it totally suits her...
but - she was named Pumpkin when we found her for a reason as well.
What to do?
I would appreciate some feedback if anyone has any quams about the changing of her name. If it doesn't seem right - I think we should keep her name Pumpkin.
But Pluto is a COOL name for a cat - and she's pretty deserving of it.
I'm currently making a list from Petsmart.com of a bunch of fun things I want to buy her.
I know she's gonna be sooo cool! I can't wait! I wanna call in sick for work tomorrow and just not go so I can prepare the house.
I'm also cat proofing the house as we speak.
I wish I would have had my digi-cam with me - I would have taken a pic of her to post on here, but that's coming.
Anyway, I gotta get ready!! I'm SOOOOOOOO excited!! i just totally can't wait!!!

dan

Vomitorium.

Ever see the movie Stand By Me - about the young boys who venture off into the woods to find the dead body of another boy their age, and they learn all about the trials and tribulations of boyhood along the way?
It's like the ultimate in coming-of-age flicks - or a gay pedophile's wet dream come true.
Anyway, there is a scene in the movie in which one of the characters tells a story about a pie eating contest that turns into a pukefest barf-a-rama.
Well, ladies and gents and brothers and sisters - the events of last friday night would have made Lard-Ass himself a proud, proud man. I was involved in somewhat of a puke-fest.
We all ventured out to the Loop for a much overdue booze-o-rama festival. There were about eight of us at our table - another eight at another - various friends and familiar faces scattered about the bar - and a table of four 19 and 20 year olds I used to work with back in Waitress Hell.
The drunker I got, the more social I became.
From my back sprouted the glorious and gigantic wings of the social butterfly I was slowly pupating into and I felt the wit rip itself from my drunken gullet as I spewed forth one-liners and impressions to everyone.
Then, it was time to see my kids. Those young kids I used to work with. So great, so funny, so cute - I used to re-live my highschool years vicariously through the stories they'd tell me - and in return, I'd tell tales of long ago, what it was like to be sixteen when "grunge" came out and why it was important that Prince changed his name to a symbol back in 1992.
So I staggered over to the four of them, Ian, Sarah, Danielle and Riley - and sat down.
They were delighted to see me, we caught up - talked about work, etc.
Riley, the youngest of them - always used to ask me to come out drinking with him.
He said he could drink anyone under the table. Liked to do harsh shots. Loved strong, straight alcohol.
He excused himself from the table and made his way to the bar.
Five minutes later, he arrived with five shots of a clear, but yellowish liquid.
I took a whiff, and the scent was reminiscent of tequila, mixed with rubbing alcohol.
"Turpentine," slurred Riley and he grinned a wicked grin.
Now - I can drink with the best of them, but I wasn't sure if my stomach could handle this combo of vodka and gold tequila.
They raised their glasses and Riley proclaimed a toast:
"Here's to Dan coming over to sit with us!"
I was touched. Thoroughly touched.
With that I swung my head back and downed the poisonous shot, immediately chasing it with a more-than-generous and nearly desperate swig of my beer.
I hardly tatsed it. It wasn't bad. Nice, clean, no aftertaste.
Sarah and Danielle sat there, seemingly not bothered in the slightest by the shot we just did.
That's my girls!
Danielle is the sweetest woman in all of hostess-kind, and she looks fabulous. She lost a TON of weight, not that she even needed to - but she looks great. And I'm not kissing ass because she reads this either. She doesn't read it at all. She doesn't even know about this blog.
She really looks THAT good.
Sarah is just cool as hell. Never stressed - the perfect amount of sarcastic humour, this highschool grrrrrrl is a feminist who is beyond her years, and makes me proud - like a little Kathleen Hanna in training.
She reminds me of Kate Winslet and Kate Hudson - and she likes Liz Phair.
It's no surprise she did that shot like a true tramp. I mean, champ.
Way to go Sarah!
And I was kidding about the tramp part. She's the sweetest gal and I love her.
She doesn't read this either.
Riley and Ian however.
Not so good.
They sat there, quiet, eyes closed, head down, concentrating.
Riley had his fist over his mouth, and seemed to be deep in meditation.
"Hey - you okay man?" I asked.
No reply.
I reached out and tapped his shoulder with my hand...
"Riley..you look a little green....are you sure you're okay...."
"He's fine," Danielle interrupted. "He's just a little qu -"
Riley exploded.
EXPLODED.
KA-BOOM! SPLASH!BLASH!PLASH!
It all happened so fast - but I can replay it over in slow motion.
Riley slowly turned a pale green. It quickley developed into a dark sickly green.
His eyes opened briefly and appeared unfocused, watery, blurry, glassy.
Not there.
A burp whelled up from the pit of his intoxicated guts and he pursed his lips shut, trying to stifle it.
He pressed his fist to his lips harder as his shoulders hunched forward.
His throat muscles clenched and released, his cheeks ballooned out as they filled with the vomit that was rushing up his asophogus from his stomach at a pace that probably rivaled the speed of the devasting tsunami.
Had he bent down and puked under the table - all would have been fine.
But all was not fine.
All was very fucking FAR from fine.
Instead, he stayed at the table, sitting up - and the sheer force of his vomit coming up - combined with his clenched lips and fist blocking his mouth to keep it down - collided into one big clash of vomit - creating a spraying tidal wave of vomit which washed over the four of us innocent and unsuspecting bystanders who sat with him.
My legs and shirt were splashed with a tequila/vodka/beer/rev/bacardi breezer combo.
Ian had a thin misting of the spray on his forehead and cheeks, his eyes closed.
Sarah's arm was coated...but Danielle.
Oh dear, Danielle.
Her hair, shirt - face - eyes - pants - were drenched.
DRENCHED.
Her purse - which sat next to Riley - was DRIPPING with vomit.
We sat, silent.
In shock.
This all took place in a matter of 2 seconds.
One minute we were asking if Riley was okay - the next second:
Flash Flood.
Ker-Splash.
We called it a night. Riley needed to go home...and I didn't really feel like sitting there in vomit for the rest of the night.
But all in all - a fantastic night.
I highly recommend trying it - convert your favorite bar into a vomitorium some night.
You'll be glad you did!
Tootles!

hearts and farts,

dan

Happy St.Faddy's Day

Oi! Yar!
Me sittin' here drinkin' me green beer when low and behold - ye leprechaun waltzes by I, and says to me: "Danny boy! Why ye be drinkin' alone on dis fine, fine St.Patty's day?"
I farts in me pants and says in return:
"Go fuck yourself, you little fuckin green faggot."
Just kidding. That never happened.
But I am sitting here drinking a beer by myself, although it's not green.
The bottle is though, so that says something.
I did something today that I haven't done in years. Walked into a beer store and bought a case of beer.
Seems like a trivial enough action, especially for someone my age - but I honestly haven't done it for years.
OF course, being a rather festive day today with many a drunken memory of March seventeenths gone by, and the day - being absolutely beautiful...it brought back memories.
I thought of a lot of my friends who now live in the greater Toronto area.
Ian, Lisa, Karen - and I thought of my good buddy Ken - who lives in Chatham..and my other friend Wayne (not life partner) who still lives in Windsor (and who I just spoke with on messenger).
Buying beer by the case on fine, gloroius, festive days reminds me of all of them.
Party people that they are, I miss them all very much today.
I walked through a dollar store today (alone) looking for some green food colouring to put in my beer. I felt kinda dumb so I left.
Stupid I know, but they probably didn't have any anyway.
While I was in there, I eyed up St.Patrick's Day streamers, and green shamrock stickers and cutouts and thought it'd be funny to buy them and hang them up all over the house.
Then I thought better of it.
I guess it just feels like one of those days when you start drinking early on in the day...with one really great friend - and then later on more friends start joining you and before you know it - it's getting dark...then it's 8 p.m....then it's 10 p.m...then everyone is drunk and outside and walking around with beer bottles in our hands and laying down on the grass and staring up and it's super warm...and it turns into one of those magical nights.
A boy can only dream.
At least today anyway.
Oh yeah - I still didn't answer that little gay leprechaun's question.
Why AM I drinkin ye olde grand green beer alone on such a fine day?
My answer:
Because I'll be damned if I'm waiting till 5 p.m. when everyone else gets home.
My goal: to be sloshed by then, I'm talking Shane McGowan style.

hearts, farts and shamrocks,

dan

Tweety Bird Goes to Hell

Alright, you wanna talk about weird dreams?
Try this one on for size:
In my dream, I had Uma Thurman hair - like in Pulp Fiction - the black wig, severe bangs and the little Siouxsie Sioux flips.
Fashion, alterna-vamp hair.
Anyway, I was looking in the mirror, deciding whether or not I liked the new "look", when I noticed a thinning patch of hair directly on top of my head.
I was horrified.
I grabbed another hand held mirror and held it over my head so I could take a better look at the top of my head.
Sure enough - scalp city. I was loosing my hair.
I looked like a 40 year old Shakespearean actor, long hair on the side, nothing on top.
I wondered how long I had been going around with the top of my head exposed, how many people were talking about how bald I was getting.
How flat out horrific I looked.
So anyway, I start wandering around the city and this guy/girl kinda comes out of nowhere and asks if I would like a tour of different dimensions that we live right next to, but can't see.
When I say guy/girl - I mean - I couldn't tell if it was a male or female. He/She had aspects of both.
A little bit of both and not enough of neither, as Archie Bunker would say.
Anyway, of course I jumped at the chance to get this other-dimension tour.
So this tour guide walks me around the block, and all of a sudden, we're in some smog-ridden, city, over-run with factories and moving machines, robotic pedestrians and crazy spacey mechanisms doing various jobs right out on the street, on the sidewalk.
You could hardly walk.
Just a metropolis of moving mechanics and engineering, hydrolics instead of trees, metal screening and steel wool instead of grass - as if the entire world was transformed into one gigantic robotic production line.
My transgendered tour guide told me this was what was going on to keep our world running properly. That our whole world was mechanical, and this "other side" is kind of like opening up a television set and looking inside.
From the outside - we see the pretty picture the television puts forward.
But if you open a T.V. up - you see wires and picture tubes and just a chaos of mechanical shit.
Basically - he said this dimension is kinda like the INSIDE of the visually pleasing life that we all live in - the one we call reality.
It smelled like ozone - kinda like how a Radio Shack smells...like batteries and wires, so we left.
Then he/she took me to this barren, empty desert looking place - it kind of looked like the type of landscape those pictures of Mars look like. Red dirt, rock -nothing as far as the eye can see.
Burned out, gone - fruitless. Hopeless.
This was apparently the place of dead thoughts - were boredom - TRUE BOREDOM goes.
The reason we can't see anything - is because REAL boredom is NOTHING.
There IS NO BOREDOM - and if a thought or an energy is REALLY DEAD - then it "isn't" - so it goes here, with the rest of the "nothing" thoughts.
The guide explained the "nothing" thoughts that come here are probably the thoughts that go through our heads a billion times a day - the things we don't even THINK that we THINK of - the things we don't even acknowlege. The useless stuff - and I don't mean "trivial" things...because at least "trivial" is *something*.
These were the thoughts that meant absolutely NOTHING at all. And this was apparently the land they end up in - or come from. That wasn't clear.
Anyway, we move on to another - and this is like "evil land" - where every good thought we has dies.
I didn't really get it either. But it was like - where our good thoughts go to suffer and be tortured.
So who do I see to illustrate all of this?
Tweety-fuckin-bird.
Seriously. Like - Tweety Bird as in Bugs and Tweety. Tweety and Sylvestre the cat.
Yellow tweety.
In the dream I was thinking "Shit...is Tweety a boy or a girl??"
Yeah - nice trans-gendered motiff going on, eh?
First I have Uma Thurman hair, then I get a tour guide who is basically a hermaphrodite - and now I am questioning the sex of animated childhood icons.
Anyway, poor Tweety.
Tweety was tied up on a spit - like a pig and was being roasted over a camp fire by faceless creatures.
Big droplets of animated sweat were dripping off of Tweety's head and his/her cheeks were getting read.
Tweety's feathers were slowly starting to blacken, and one of the creatures was making a triangular incision in Tweety's side, and yanking out ropes of black and red intestine while Tweety squirmed.
Then all of a sudden - I was back infront of my medicine cabinet.
I was staring at my balding, Uma Thurman hair, and wondering how or why I never noticed how bald I was before.
I looked closer at the bald spot and noticed the scalp under my thinning hair was shiny, like plastic.
I poked at it and I didn't feel anything.
I noticed a seam, on my hair line, and I picked at it.
It started to come up, lift up - like I was wearing a wig.
I yanked harder on the wig - and sure enough, off it came to reveal my OWN head of hair that I had known all my life.
I woke up, relieved.
THE END.

Feel free to interpret. More to come. Gotta run - at work - and trash just walked in.

hearts and farts,
dan

I Think I Saw a Thing But I'm Not Sure What Thing I Thought I Saw.

Hello brothers and sisters.
Mysterious thing happened to me today.
First - some background.
Really fast.
When I was a kid - six years old - I caught a fever.
A really bad fever.
I sky rocketed to 106 degrees (I know, that can induce brain damage and seizures, but I handled it well).
They rushed me to the hospital and while I screamed and cried in agony as fever burned my body and white light blinded my eyes - the doctors and nurses wrapped me tightly in soaking wet, freezing gauze and buried me in ice.
I was in and out of consciousness. They didn't know what caused it.
The next day - the whites of my eyes turned red and blood ran down my cheeks like tears and I began to vomit violently.
My lungs filled with fluid and I couldn't hold so much as a glass of water or a gravol down without wretching it back up.
I was a skinny kid, and I dropped probably 15 - 20 pounds. I was skin and bones. I was bed-ridden and ill for months on end. My parents took me out of school and I stayed out for a total of three and a half months.
I kept busy with colouring and reading. I coloured all the little boys in my colouring books with bloody, red eyes - just like me, so I wouldn't feel like such a demonic looking freak.
My mom took down all the mirrors in the house so I wouldn't scare myself when I looked at my own reflection.
Anyway, it got bad. Death-bed bad.
The doctors admitted me in and out of the hospital - shot me up full of penicillan and anit-biotics - but I had no immune system.
I caught everything you could catch and couldn't get better, couldn't keep medicine down, and I kept getting fevers that were sky-rocketing. I should have been blinded and brain damaged.
Anyway, I started coughing up blood and puss and mucus, my ears started leaking liquid but my body was numb. I was just tired. Not in any pain. Just tired.
My doctor eventually shot me up full of placenta. Literally - placenta fluid from an invitro baby...they figured the nutrients in there might yank me out of the sickness...which was slowly but surely only leading up to one thing: My death.
That very night, after my placenta shot - I saw something in my room.
PLEASE keep in mind, that while I am jumpy and terrified - I am also very much a skeptic.
Sure, I love to think "what if" scenarios, and scare myself silly with tales of ghosts and goulies...but I don't REALLY believe in that kind of thing. When people tell me "oh I have a ghost in my house.." I roll my eyes and think "Yeah right."
Well - right now - I am telling you this with the MOST sincerity - I saw something that night.
I SAW SOMETHING.
You can brush me off as stupid, flakey - a total joke - a drama queen who likes attention and is making this up - I don't care.
I am standing by that sickly six year old boy that I once was and owning up to the truth that I KNOW I saw something.
Be it a hallucination caused by fever or medication - or something else - I don't know.
Here is what I saw:
I was laying in bed, not asleep. Wondering if I was going to die. For real. Wondering when the whites of my eyes would ever turn back to white. Wondering when I would stop coughing. When I would stop throwing up. When I would feel better.
And I saw it.
Her.
I saw this small woman...probably no more than...3 feet...dressed in a white veil - dancing slowly infront of my bed, hovering just above the floor.
I have goosebumps right now just thinking of it.
She was spinning. Slowly.
Like a doll on a pedestal - around and around, her veils flowing all around her like wings, like the white fins of a beta fish - underwater, moving around her.
Now - remember - I was the kind of kid who SCREAMED at anything. I screamed if a toy was looking at me at night. I screamed at the slightest sound. I had monsters in my closet, ghosts in my bed and burglers in my window. I was terrified of ghosts or even the thought that somethign else might be in my room with me.
But this time - I only stared. I remember trying to make sense of it. I remember staring at my curtains - which were also long-flowy veil, and thinking it might be them moving from the heat of the furnace...and I remember consciously noting that this ...person or whatever it was I was looking at was no where near my curtains. The furnace wasn't on. My curtains were straight against my wall.
For some unknown reason - I was NOT afraid.
I stared at her - watched her spinning slowly around like a beautiful, intricate...carousel.
I don't know.
I even remember thinking "I can't believe I'm not afraid right now."
I just wanted to stare. I stared and stared and stared until my eyes closed and I fell asleep.
I slept all night long, and woke up for the first time - without being drowned in a puddle of fever sweat.
My eyes were clearer. I was hungry. I ate.
I didn't throw up.
My cough loosened.
I was totally better.
I've told that story - FOR YEARS now.
YEARS. It has NEVER changed.
Maybe it was the placenta they shot me up with.
Maybe it was a last hurah fever, getting in one more hallucination before it left my six year old body.
Maybe it seriously WAS someone looking after me, comforting the sickness away.
I don't KNOW. I'm not religious. I'm not a ghost-freak-psycho-medium.
But so help me god - I would bet money on my own life and the life of my closest friends that I think I saw something that night - and for some reason - I wasn't afraid of it.
So the years went by - and I told people about this "maybe" angel I saw one night as a sick little boy - and how after that - I was better.
When I was six, and healed from that horrific viral pneumonia and immune disease - I went back to school after a few weeks. They were going to hold me back because I missed so many important classes (you learn to read and write in grade one) but, since I had kept up on my reading - I was up with the rest of the class.
The school had a small welcome-back party for me and as a special treat - they gave me a book that I had been on a waiting list for in the library before I got sick.
It was this book about a witch or something. I guess I was into witches.
But whatever, they gave it to me and I was so happy that I finally got to read it.
When I got home, my mom was so happy at how healthy I looked - that she took a picture of me.
"Danny's First Day Back".
I was so excited about the book - I wanted to pose with it in the picture.
Flash! SNAP!
Frozen in time.
Now...let's fast forward about twenty-one years down the road to today.
I hung out with my parents and we pulled out the photo albums. We got to that picture and I looked at the cover of the book and chuckled to myself, remember the day they gave that to me and why.
My mom pointed to something then - behind me.
In the mirror's reflection. She said she didn't know what it was, what it could be - but it appears in several different pictures of me, whenever I happened to be photographed near a mirror.
Behind me, as I posed excitedly with my book - is what looks like the blurry image of someone shrouded in a white veil.
A head, shoulders.
I blew the picture up on my computer - and I can use my imagination and make out eyes, nose and mouth, shoulders, dress line.
It's creepy, I admit. But at the same time - I am not creeped out.
I don't know what is in that photograph. A smear of light? A reflection gone array?
But it's in a few. All around that time of my life.
My parents can't explain it. I can't explain it - and I invite you - the reader - if it looks like it might be something - PLEASE tell me.
All we know is - there was NOTHING except a red couch against the wall that was reflected in that mirror. And the couch wouldn't have showed up in the reflection anyway.
But something did. And it just so happens it matches the description ALMOST PERFECTLY to the same "something" I had seen in my bedroom just a few weeks before that photo was taken.
The "something" I have been telling stories about to people - for YEARS.
I told the story last week to my boss over a few glasses of wine.
The picture is posted below. And I have a few more. One scanned and one at my parent's house, which is a little less clear, but an image of something in white all the same.
Call me a flake if you want - but this is MINE. This is real. I've seen supposed "ghost" or "spirit guide" pictures on Montel Williams - and rolled my eyes, dismissing them as doctored.
This was not doctored.
This sat in my photo album for YEARS and my mother raised an eyebrow to it now and then...but never said anything to me about it until today.
And I just feel compelled to share it with you guys.
So here it is. Whatever it is.
But regardless - I like to think of "It" as "Her".
Maybe even someone who might have helped me once.

Me - 1983.

Stink Attack Pt 2: STINKY GOES TO THE GYM.

I feel bad now, for the stinky man who I ridiculed and wretched over in my previous post.
I need to make amends.
Let me tell you about a time...a long, LONG LONG time ago - probably about a decade ago - when I used to actually *gasp!* attend a gym to do something that the kids nowadays call "work out".
I was seventeen and I was a regular patron of this particular steroid-infested workout gymnasium, and even back then, I used to impress myself at the number of cocktails I could swill back in a night without getting much of a hangover.
So, after a particularly rough night out of wildberry coolers, long island ice teas, vodka and cranberries and Kamakazees, I was up at 8:30 a.m. to make it out to the gym to sweat out my hangover and do my regular Saturday morning routine.
It consisted of - 35 - 45 minutes of cardio-vascular on the stairmaster, treadmill or bike, and another 25 - 35 minutes of machine and free weight training.
You'd never know it by looking at me, but I used to do this about four times a week for a period of about...oh...two months, back in the day.
Ring-a-ding-ding.
Anyway, I got there and the gym was empty, which is perfect because I hate it when big buff steroid cases work out next to me.
I feel inferior and intimidated.
I hate muscleheads. Even though I know they are just people too.
Anyway, I finished only 13 minutes of my cardio that day because I started to feel light-headed.
A trainer came by and said he noticed I was looking extremely pale, and that I should maybe sit out for a few minutes and get a drink of water.
Intimidated by this HOTTIE employee, I said I was fine - mentally reminding myself that the gym has strict policies about people coming in under the influence of alcohol - or on an empty stomach.
I was doing both.
I had to face it: I was still half in the bag and shouldn't have even driven down to the gym in the first place.
I started my free weights.
My stomach began to groan and do somersaults. My head began to throb.
I burped and tasted last night's booze creep its way up my asophogus, and slug back down again, to further aggravate my poor stummy.
Another hot young muscle beefcake baby was waiting behind me to use the machine I was using.
I cursed him in my head. He watched me do my reps.
It was a calve machine.
I got paranoid that I wouldn't be ABLE to finish my reps, that I would wimp out and he'd see me. "Precisely the fucking reason I come to the gym early, so creeps like this fuckwad won't be breathing down my neck so they can work off their roid-rage," I thought to myself, and shuddered as a wave of nausea and gastric unrest slapped my body.
I made eye contact with him as I turned around, stared deep into his baby blue eyes and ran my own eyes up and down the length of his perfect, stud-boy body, imagining him naked and oiled up with a red light shining on his chest while I ran my hands up and down his immaculate statuesque physique and thanked the high heavens AND the Greek Gods themselves for making such a perfect specimen for me to feast on.
And I exploded.
Well, I believe the correct term is - "I Farted".
I farted out a hang-over-hum-dinger that burned off the toxic cocktail of alcoholic ammunition I consumed the night before the way a forest fire feeds off trees.
It was silent. But HOT.
Boiling hot.
Like a blue-flame of gas licking out of my buttocks like a puff of swamp-dragon breath.
It filled the entire gym with this horrifically noxious alcohol-based methane gas that smelled like one part sulfur, two parts rotten egg and a wallopping punch of rotting, stagnant ass.
I immediately averted my eyes. A sweat broke out on my upper lip.
I tried to walk non-chalontley to the other side of the gym, but my rotting stench invaded that area as well.
My fart was everywhere, creeping into the crevices of the abdominators, seeping into tiny nooks and crannies of the thigh-master machines - even conquering the intimidating mass that is the Gravitron machine.
Now in a complete state of chaos and alcoholic panic - not without hot flashes - I ran from the gym towards the changing rooms, the smell of my disgusting gaseous outburst still clinging to my clothes and nose hairs.
It was following me, stalking me - it's invisible, smokey fingers wrapping themselves around my throat to slowly but surely choke me.
I barged into the change room and BARELY did a double-take at the naked hottie in the shower while I made my way to the bathroom stall.
The memory of my wretchedness still heavy in mind - I vomited full force an alcohol and bile combo the colour that looked like the contents of a twisted and psychotic tropical fish aquarium.
I simply THOUGHT about the smell of my fart - and emptied out bucket load after bucket load of vomit.
Never had I smelled anything that bad - especially something that came from my own body.
I limped out of the gym to my Mercury Topaz with my head banging out of my skull and my stomach a mere shadow of what it once was.
That was probably my last trip to the gym.
Ever.
So - I'm giving the stenchy old man from my previous post the benefit of the doubt.
This time.
We all have one moment - one day of grace when we can be a stink-bomb and get away with it.
That my friends - was my moment.
Lest we forget, but may it never happen again.

Hearts and farts,

dan

Tha Stank That Wouldn't Quit, Yo.

The other day I was all hung over at work, right?
So this one guy comes in, and he has like, total bed-head, a beer gut that looks he ate the entire keg - tin and all - a pair of jogging pants and a stained shirt that was too short for him.
But...it was his stank that shocked me.
This amazing, ridiculous, incredible stank-of-all-stanks that came out of this guy...was just...mind-bending.
Picture the stench of morning breath, but multiplied a hundred-thousand-gazillion-fabillion-majillion times over.
Then times it by one hundred.
On top of that - add a minimum of three week old body odour and caked on sweat and nastiness.
For the putrid cherry on this repugnant cake - imagine the funk of a rusty, public Tim Horton's toilet filled with seven months worth of human salsa-shits, and you'll BEGIN to understand the wallopping humdinger this dude packed in the aroma department.
He was asking me about his account, and I was mid-conversation answering him, my head pounding from seventeen drinks the night before, my stomach feeling like a mar-twoonie, shaken and stirred - when it hit me full force.
The stench overwhelmed me and my head began to spin. I couldn't completely hear what he was saying because I was concentrating so hard on breathing through my mouth so I couldn't smell his funkiness. My stomach began to girgle so loudly, I could hear it over his voice.
I was trying so hard to breath through my mouth, I started to think I could taste the disgust that seeped from his aura.
I excused myself mid-sentence and walked quickly to the backroom while my staff of alcoholic managers and stoned co-workers looked at me with raised eyebrows and looks of utter confusion on their faces.
I made it to the back room and wretched aloud, immediately hunching over and aiming my automatically opened mouth towards the spot on the floor where it would do the least damage.
Somehow, I didn't actually puke. But I was so close it was ridiculous.
I made it to a toilet and dry-heaved over it for another five minutes before my manager came knocking on the door, asking me what was going on.
I told him there was NO WAY I could go back out there without projectile-vomitting in that man's face.
He told me to stay in the back while they dealt with him.
I asked if they wanted to bring a face-mask or some Febreeze with them, for safety.
They didn't laugh.
I came out 15 minutes later and the entire showroom reeked of the stench - but masked with an overdose of air freshener.
For the rest of the day I sat there and tried to convince myself that I could NOT smell the man anymore - that it was all in my head.
But so help me god - his sour and rotten musk hung thick in the air like a mist of dense pea-soup-stink.
I got home and took a shower and three tylenol 3's washed down with a voddy on the rocks, to make me forget all about the kah-kah-pooh-poooh-stinky that the mean, bad man made.
THE END!

dan

How I Spent My Eight Day Hiatus from Blogville

I've missed you, brothers and sisters.
I'm sorry we haven't spoken in so long.
Many changes have taken place in the eight days since we last spoke.
No more mice as of yet. No kitty cats either.
As of yet.
My ring worm has long since dried up and slithered back into the secreted crevices that I like to call my pores. I'm clean.
I worked a 60 hour week.
I discovered the joys of Sloe Gin and have been smacking myself on the forehead constantly, asking myself over and over again - why - "WHY!!??! WHY!!! Has it taken me so long to discover this glorious jism of the gods??"
Lots of crazy things went down though.
I don't really know where to start.
Seriously.
I'm just gonna lay it all out on the line for you, and deal with it AS I write it.
As you read it.
I lost all my notebooks in a horrific fire. Gone. Depleted. Finished.
It was a storage unit where I was keeping some of my shit.
South side.
Burned down.
Along with my notebooks, I lost love letters from girlfriends and boyfriends gone by, three of my favorite guitars, a ton of old clothes that I hoped to one day be thin enough to fit into again and a leather hat my grandfather bought me and the only photograph ever of my first dog, Tippy.
Burned to a crisp, well-done. All of it.
Destroyed. Exterminated.
Oh, it gets better.
I have been diagnosed with water on the hip and I need surgery to drain the fluid that's built up inside my bones. I now have to pick a month for them to do it, and it gets worse the longer I wait. To drain it, they use a very long and thick phallic-like needle, insert it into my bone and suck out the juice that is making it hard for me to walk.
I won't be able to walk properly for almost a month.
Nice, eh?
Oh. It gets better.
Much fucking better.
I was poisoned by eating a piece of raw chicken.
Well, not even eating.
I hardly KISSED it.
I barely touched it to my lips.
My tongue MAY have grazed it.
As a joke, I put a piece of uncooked chickie-flesh to my lips and hung it out as if it were a pale, sickly tongue, to impress my friends.
I guess I thought it was cool.
Less than 24 hours later, I was farting oil and shitting out diarrhea that felt like an F5 cyclone Tornado.
Chicken poisoning = Danger.
But wait. There's more.
I sliced the side of my face on a cabinet door at work. Not that bad - but I look like I was either fag-bashed or like I failed my gang initiation and had to take the blade for my beloved posse.
Too bad it's not that exciting. A wooden cabinet crashed into me at work and cut me because I couldn't hold on to it properly.
Because of my firmly established status of "office weakling", I now look like little more than a sad outtake has-been actor who didn't quite make the cut for Fight Club.
Edward Norton, I am not.
To top it all off - I got really drunk a few nights ago - like - REALLy drunk and I blacked out - and when I came to, I was making out with some retarded guy.
I shouldn't say "retarded".
Mentally challenged.
Like "goo-goo-gah-gah".
But he smelled like bad breath and cheese-puke, and there I was:
Playing tonsil hockey with him like I was a grade schooler in love.
Just KIDDING!!!
HAHAAHAHAHAHA!
Totally joking! seriously! totally kidding!!
None of that stuff happened to me at all! I'm fine.
No chicken poison, no water on the hip, no fire, the pictures of my dog Tippy are fully intact, and for the record - I hardly knew my grandfathers, and they certainly never bought me any stupid hat.
Also - in now way did I ever want to offend anyone who is or has a mentally challenged or disabled person in their life. Seriously.
I just thought it was a nice touch. Some ideas seem good when you first think them...then you see what they look like on paper...the way they affect people...the little people..the people that count, and it hurts. And that's never my intention.
Picture me making out with anyone you want - retarded or not - and have a giggle.
That's all I really want.
No - I had a really boring week.
None of that stuff happened.
I just wanted to invoke pity for like, two seconds.
I'm totally fine.
Work is stressing me out a bit just because they do owe me a LOT of time off - I wasn't lying about the sixty hour week - and aside from maybe one or two nightmares, a stubbed toe and a really bad movie with what seemed like good intensions (Manchurian Candidate), I just worked a lot, and had a few quiet nights at home, drinking.
I did go to the faggit bar for Karaoke on Sunday with (of all people) my boss and his boyfriend.
I ended that night by singing Bob Dylan songs and ditching both of them with my beer tab.
Other than that...not all that much is new.
Except, I have missed writing to all of you, and I promise, I am back on track now.
Totally, 100%.
Expect Vagina Monologues and grizzly tales of public shitting. Expect lavish and epic stories about my own depravity and the desperate way I try to paint myself as a light-hearted, but deep-thinking office boy, destined for greatness but doomed for eternity in blogville.
With all of you.
And you know what, brothers and sisters?
That smells like heaven to me!
It's good to be back.

Hearts and farts,

dan