They run crayola too

Hipsters and their skinny jeans, hipsters and their bad mustaches, hipsters and their trust funds and cute "accessories" and other things that make me jealous, bitch, bitch, bitch.

I actually don't spend a lot of time thinking about hipsters, except for when they've completed their meticulously casual looks by leaving an (artsy!) bandanna dangling from their back pockets, unwittingly flagging who-knows-which particular perv.

Witnessing a bored-strut parade of tattooed, hipless sourpusses—sourpi?—with flawless vintage ensembles is so much more entertaining when they're also advertising things like "take a dump on my chest" or "I want to lick your armpits" (see: magenta).

As for the code itself, leave it to the gays to come up with a system in which one must distinguish between "gray" and "charcoal"; mauve, chamois, and kelly green.

Also, apparently Paul Bunyan is into fisting, and at some point during the seventies everyone in the village was walking around with a doily hanging out of his pocket.

"An actual doily."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handkerchief_code

Seducing Michael Cera

I have lots of twisted sort-of sex dreams about unlikely characters. I woke up from this latest and wrote it right out. It's like it was pre-narrated on my brain. Weird, because I almost never remember dreams. After, I spent awhile browsing Google Image Search results for Michael Cera, asking myself: really?

He looked different than on TV. His hair was darker, his nose was arched. He looked like a real grown man. I remember how he first kissed me. Just my lip; he stretched it far back and sucked. I kissed him back, there was no rush. I stopped him:

“I have to pee.”

As soon as I left the room he yelled something down the hall. Something about it being dark, something about elbows; a “be careful,” maybe. I ran back to him and narrowed my eyes.

“Are you Jewish?”

“Oh, totally.”

“I could tell," I said, grinning. "I knew it when you yelled to me from across the house.”

I peed, checking myself to make sure I was in fact peeing in a toilet, that I wasn't so stoned I'd fallen asleep and started peeing in the bed: a pot-paranoid compulsion. We had smoked weed, hadn't we? I thought so, but I wasn't sure. I attempted a consciousness-check. As if focusing your eyes hard and cataloging your surroundings could provide some satisfying proof of real-life existence. In the darkness to my left I noticed a movement; it was a door, and not the one I had come through. It opened and I produced an “oh!”

“I didn't see there was another door here--” I started. A female head popped in and took a dry look at me, perched on the toilet and clutching toilet paper in my hand.

“Excuse me,” said the head, bored and annoyed. It withdrew.

When I got back to Michael he was sitting upright in the bathtub, his chest straight and long and pale. (His room had a tub, but no toilet.) He threw some fresh blueberries into the water with him. I liked the excess, and I got in and sat down. Stretching out my arm, I wet the necks of a small fat lizard and a miniature toad that were dozing on the vanity. They grumbled happily, wagging their heads, and I sampled a blueberry, which was sweet and soapy from my fingers. It reminded me of the lifesavers my mom would store in her purse along with her perfume samples.

Soon a disposable razor appeared in my hand, and I began to shave thick black mats of hair from the insides of my thighs. They looked like fake seventies sideburns, only much wider, like little black golf greens. I had never noticed them before; it must have been the lighting. In any case they were so ridiculous I wasn't distressed. The shaved-off fuzz disappeared in the water.

Michael and I sat in the tub together awhile before I asked him what I could do to make him want to sleep with me. He beamed like a teenager and said it could probably be arranged. He motioned for me to come with him, and I stood up, dropping the squished blueberry I'd been rolling between my thumb and middle finger. We wrapped ourselves in plush orange towels and ran wet-footed down the oak-paneled hall—to another bedroom?—but before we could make it we were drawn into the bustle of the sitting area.

All the overhead lights were on full-blast, and I squinted to make sense of the bright blur of activity before me. I didn't understand the frenzy of his sisters and father as they fussed over the state of the room. It was very late; too late, I was sure, to worry about housekeeping. Under cover of darkness you can make a mess with impunity; it's morning that demands order.

“Shut the blinds!” a female voice ordered the air around me.

I went to pull the shades down. They were fancy and I wasn't sure how they worked. I tugged and they slid down their tracks, but I had a hard time arranging all three of them so that the frills on the bottom aligned. The sisters would expect the shades to be perfectly straight. Who can't pull down shades properly? I felt woefully out of place.

Michael sensed my frustration.

“Who are these queens?” he asked playfully, apologetically.

I met his gaze and answered flatly: “your sisters.”

The loud wheeze of a vacuum cleaner had made me mostly deaf to conversation, but from the words I caught, Michael's father was unhappy about his having company. Now that the lights were on, the disarray of my stuff in the other room was uncomfortably conspicuous. Still wrapped in a towel, my cheeks flushed as I ran back to Michael's bed-and-bathroom where I bent to pick up my two pairs of shoes, my clothes, and my bag that had been thrown to the middle of the floor. I even cleaned the blueberry guts from the tub.

A creeping knowledge fogged my head with pressure. I did not belong here. I could not explain my presence; I had not even been introduced. I did not even know my own name. I longed for Michael to pull me back to his bed and suck on my lip, pick up where we had left off.

The doorbell rang and my face muscles tensed. The vacuum wound down to a squeal and died, and a male voice asked for Gwendolyn. That was me, I was sure of it. I felt suddenly mortified, as if the existence of my father, as if my own name confirmed that my presence there was a mistake. That I belonged to a chintzier, more literal world.

“Just a second,” I yelled from the other room, getting dressed.

When I reentered the living room my father's vague plaid flannel figure was already several paces ahead, and I hurried to follow it out the door and into the daylight, exquisitely disappointed and utterly relieved.

Michael Cera is not Jewish

Homework. I had to explain to the class what a "rent boy" was.

Show Us Your Titsh! -- Saint Patrick's Day in Montreal

They say that, on Saint Patrick's Day, everyone is Irish.

Apparently the Irish are a bunch of drunks, because on the third Tuesday this March, everyone in Montreal who's ever sprouted a shred of pubic hair will be out and roaming the streets with a beer in his or her (possibly very small) fist.

In this libertine city of la belle province, there are several holidays that exist chiefly to celebrate the consumption of mood-altering substances, and Saint Patrick's Day is right up there with New Year's Eve and Easter.

Like any holiday, Saint Patrick's Day in Montreal is celebrated with a European joie de vivre coupled with a very Quebecois je ne sais pas pantoutte. Irish pride, sure. But Montrealers keep their priorities straight; March 17th in Montreal is first and foremost an homage to alcohol—something that nearly all Montrealers have in common—and it is feted with proportional vigor.

While the sun is still out, most of the city will stagger downtown, sipping at cans of Guinness or handles of cheap whiskey, or both (“a bird can't fly on one wing”). There they will shift from foot to foot, straining to focus their glazed eyes on the annual parade which features floats for nearly every major ethnic group in the city: Irish, yes, but also Native Canadians, Ukrainians—even Italians. Only the local Hasidic community is unimpressed; they prefer much harder drugs. Seriously, have you ever been to one of their parties? No?

As the sun begins to sink behind the cross at the top of Mount Royal, the hipsters of Plateau will blink back their hangovers and wake up early to roll joints, light cigarettes, and bike to the bars, where they start drinking Pabst at four pm and pretend as if this isn't what they do every day. None will deign to wear green, unless of course they're being ironic.

On Rue Crescent, drunk girls in short skirts will shiver like nervous chihuahuas, tottering on their too-high heels up the same narrow bar stairs that in three hours' time will see them wipe out, legs everywhere in anticipation of rescue by concerned and equally hammered friends.

Rue Sainte Catherine, as usual, will be packed with Dave-Matthews-listening frat boys from the States, who exit Supersex wearing white baseball caps and smelling of stripper sweat. Drunk, but charmingly thorough, they are careful to yell “show us your titsh!” at anything with long hair. In the village, rent boys on roller skates glide by in green daisy dukes, invoking images of ninja turtles with their fluttering bandannas and broad chests sprinkled with emerald body glitter.

By the next morning the streets downtown will smell of Bailey's and vomit. Faces are verdant and breakfast is a stiff glass of regret for the excesses of the night before. Teeth dulled with green food coloring will be diligently whitened with trays of bleach, and campus clinics will see a spike in appointments. Countless guys will be crushed to learn that the phone numbers they got were fake. No one gives a thought to the snakes in Ireland.

Morning-after regrets notwithstanding, Saint Patrick's Day is, perhaps, the second most wonderful time of the year. For Montrealers, it is a desperately-needed herald of warmer times to come. After months of frozen nose hairs and numb toes, there are buds on the trees, the girls ditch their leggings for patterned tights, and everyone is getting horny. Soon the snow with melt and all the dog shit of winter will thaw, perfuming the air with the hopeful aroma of springtime in Montreal.

Choose your own adventure

Broken Black and Decker Blender . . . (Montreal)

---

Reply to: sale-1037233074@craigslist.org ^[?]
Date: 2009-02-16, 2:37PM EST

Brand New Black and Decker Blender - used once, the cord became wet and I broke a wooden spoon in it. If you can fix it, it's yours . . .
Colour: White with dark blue green buttons . . .

• Location: Montreal
• it's NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests

PostingID: 1037233074

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Cigarettes and Milk says (9:39 PM):
i'm still trying to piece it together

Marc says (9:41 PM):
Wow, stupid people buy blenders.

Cigarettes and Milk says (9:41 PM):
like, oh shit I got the cord wet...maybe I should jam a wooden spoon in the blades?

Cigarettes and Milk says (9:41 PM):
or, crap I broke my wooden spoon in the blades, better soak it all in water to clean it out?

Marc says (9:42 PM):
Since when does wetting the cord break it, anyway? Unless you pour water on the plug when it's in the wall.

Cigarettes and Milk says (9:43 PM):
maybe she (I'm taking a leap, here) broke the spoon in the actual cord?

Cigarettes and Milk says (9:43 PM):
trying to, I don't know, dry it off?

Highlights

• Weekend starts with a good friend's thirtieth birthday party at the local scummy coke-front bar. Free cigarettes in a stand by the door, smoking inside. Also, bar mix with sunchips and cheetos.
  

• Mile-end loft party. Live bands first, followed by a big drunken dance party. You can bring your own or buy from the bar.

• Lots of hipster boys with caved-in chests and striped t-shirts dancing trying to jam to dance hall unironically. Their bandanna-ends whip back and forth.

• Cops come, hang out in the doorway for fifteen minutes talking to the host, leave.

• I get hit on by the brother of a boy I once slept with. I don't think he knows I did it with his twin. Either way, I'm not interested. Awkward.

• A short French guy all gangsta'd out keeps rubbing up on me from behind, trying to dance. I keep moving away and he keeps following. When he finally gets the hint he complains that my hair was in his face. I say “move, then” and he pushes me. I walk away. I wish I could have kicked the shit out of him.

• Very cute boy from Newfoundland, a sous-chef at L'Inconnu, buys me a beer. I let him even though I have Pabst in my bag. He tells me it's a pleasure to meet a nice American, and a pretty girl at that. It's a weak line, but I don't care. He talks about putting two pounds of butter in his beurre blanc. He asks me if I have a boyfriend. I leave him to go to the bathroom and return to see him being dragged out of the party by an angry-faced girl. Fuck.

• Two fist fights.

• 4:30am, lose track of my friends, walk home alone.

Don't even ask about the Spanish lessons I agreed to

The Backbone

I've been "freelance writing" lately, which pretty means writing bullshit articles for SEO.

Dream a dream.

While it's pretty mindless—all I do is write vaguely purchase-positive copy with X number of mentions for each keyword—I do relish having the authority to make ridiculous proclamations like this :

Perhaps only those familiar with home design truly appreciate the sink basin’s role in completing a bathroom. Basins create harmony. They tie the room together, synthesizing all the disparate elements of a bathroom—toilet, tub, tile—into a unified whole. The basin is the backbone of your bathroom.

It is? Sure! Why? Because I said so. Glorious.

Call me drunk with power, but for the moment anyway I'm plenty happy getting paid to write with conviction about stuff I care nothing about. At least it's something I can talk about at the dinner table.

Love is passe, beauty is overdone, and truth is for hacks. I write my poems to the gods of wall-mounted vanity units, semi-recessed sinks, and "adult" dating sites and I defy you to read them with dry eyes.

Maybe it's all the Joy Division

You know you need to get out more when your roommate sends you this:

http://montreal.en.craigslist.ca/etc/993049444.html