Preview

Yeah. I should have kept posting. I've seen sunshine, and I've seen rain, as we all seem to have seen, or something.
I was hired on full-time at my newspaper, then I was almost fired from the newspaper for getting the name of a girl who died, and the name of the mother of another girl who died wonderfully incorrect. Then I met a new girl--and that's got ramifications beyond your typical B-G situations. Mostly, I'm just saying I'm still awesome, but I can't really fuck around and write posts at work any more. Uhh... except this time. Not that anyone pays attention to me.

Whaaa? I'm the only non-sad sadface? Weird.

Hey kids,
Sorry to hear you all want to off yourselves. I will try to steer this catship in a more positive direction. First: Halloween. I went to the Rue Morgue partaaay with Mr. and Mrs. Alexander, the Tuckers and other such ne’er-do-wells. I must say it was quite the spooktacular affair: live snakes, hairless rats, gothy strippers, a woman who was actually pregnant who dressed up with blood all over her and a fake fetus hanging between her legs. Good times. Did I mention the crazy ass people who came dressed in armour and pressed circular saws against themselves sending sparks 20 feet in the air? They were cool, too. I didn't get a photo of Dave and Alan because I was drunk and retarded, but they had wicked ass costumes. Dave was the priest from The Exorcist and Alana was the possessed, vomit-covered little girl. I was, shockingly, a vampire.

RATS!!

Christie and Chris (He's Rosemarry from Rosemarry's Baby)

To celebrate the holiday, I was also on the cover of Dose, licking someone's face. To my suprise, Trevor didn't like this much, even though it was just a mask on a mongloid from production.

In other news, I interviewed Trent Reznor this week and can now die happy. I know what you're thinking: "Christ, Heather, no one has listened to NIN since they were 14 and 'angry' because they lived in the suburbs with fantastic parents." To that I say, "Fuck you, I'm still 14 on the inside." I've been promised tickets to go see them with QOTSA next week and if we're holding a contest for readers to win a chance to meet the bands. I've been told I'll get to bring the winners backstage, at which point I will turn to dust as my life will no longer have a purpose. It's sad, really. I know.

Over and out.

We're a depressing bunch, aren't we?

Well, as long as we're on a sad post role—Dave, I'm really sorry to hear about your uncle—I certainly don't want to be the one to brighten things up.

Anyway, as I have no job to complain about like the rest of you "grown-ups," I'll complain about school instead. I know, wah wah wah, life as an undergraduate is so hard, etc., etc., but it really kind of is. And I don't mean hard in the "man, I sure am struggling to get good grades" kind of way; I mean hard in the sense of "my life sure is lonely and meaningless right now." I went to the Gateway to pick up my bound edition today, and I couldn't help but feel a little nostalgic. It's not that I want to be working there anymore, not even remotely, but being around the office reminded me of a time when I was someone, doing something I was interested in. Sure, I hated it about 85 percent of the time, but that was because I cared, dammit. And you know what I don't care about? Getting an honours history degree.

My life these days consists of getting up, going to class, coming home, working for six or seven hours (and this is without even having started on my thesis yet—in fact, I totally changed my topic last week, which means I have to start over again from scratch), and then stumbling down the street to the Garneau or the Sugarbowl, having a couple drinks, going to bed, and then waking up and doing it all over again. And speaking of "home," it doesn't help that my apartment is getting progressively slummier by the day (I know, Heather, I didn't think it was possible either). Exhibit A: someone dropped a large jar of mayonnaise outside the entrance about a month ago now, and it's still there, broken glass, increasingly hard/yellow mayo, and all. Exhibit B: while I was in Montreal, someone puked both in the elevator and outside the door to my old apartment. While either they or Buddy (our affectionate name for our landlord) obviously made a half-hearted attempt to clean up the puke in the elevator, the puke in the hall is still there, approximately a week later. When I told someone about this they said, "At least you don't have cockroaches," but I think I'd honestly prefer cockroaches to dried puke. Guh. Too bad I signed a lease this time around, hey?

Anyway, like I said, wah wah wah. On the plus side, Montreal was rad in a strange, "only the French" kind of way (for those of you who don't know, Chris and I spent Thursday to Sunday there so he could cover La Grande Mascarade, a giant Halloween party in the heart of Vieux-Montreal). Here are some photos:

Notre Dame!



Rue de la Commune, the seedy, suitably atmospheric part of town most of the festivities were held in:



Oooooooohh (that's supposed to be a scary ghost sound) ... the grounds:



A staged "public execution," on Friday:



Some art by H.R. Giger, at the horror-themed ball:



Lizard man! (He spent most of the night creeping around this guy dressed up as the grim reaper, who was just kind of sitting there.)



Zombies!



At the same ball, there was a live "human sacrifice" involving a guy who looked suspiciously like Trevor. In the second photo, that transvestite is holding his heart on a plate:





And yes, Chris and I were forced to dress up. Zombies and vampires: together at last?





All in all, it was a strange yet good time. But I have homework to do (shockingly enough), so I'll let Chris elaborate for you guys.

Crappy Halloween

Frankly, it’s been a shit week. After a killer Rue Morgue Halloween party, which I’ll write about later, things went rapidly downhill as a massive hangover led to getting my first cold of the year. Of course, we’re in our last week of production with the mag, so it couldn’t come at a worse time. Regardless, I was getting ready to leave work early on Monday to crawl into bed when my brother called to say my Uncle Glen passed away. Although he’d been in poor health for some time – in and out of the hospital for something they never did diagnose for certain – it was still a shock. He’d turned 65 this September, which is way too young to shuffle off ye olde mortal coil these days. We have a small family and I was close to him, so I’ll be flying back to Edmonton on Saturday morning to be a pallbearer at the funeral on Monday.

I’m worried about by grandma, who’s creeping up on 90. She’s now outlived both her sons, as my dad was killed in a car accident in 1987, and I’ve been told she’s not handling it so well. I should've called her already, but I just don't know what to say. I guess that's not the point of calling, though, is it? And somehow I doubt she'll read this online.

It should be said that my uncle was a helluva guy. After my dad died he took my brother and I out to do dad-type things, like fire guns at the shooting range (there is no bigger thrill when you’re a preteen boy weaned on A-Team and G.I. Joe), go fishing, check out car shows, etc. He loved to tell stories – crazy stuff like making homemade rockets, going on dive searches for dead bodies and pulling up drowned Boy Scouts, having weird pets like squirrels and skunks, and even, if I recall correctly, finding a dead hermit in a shack in the woods during a hike (for real). Growing up without TV led to all kinds of Stand by Me-style adventures, and it always made me kinda jealous that his generation seemed to live the type of stuff my generation watches movies about.

I kept in touch with him and my Aunt Helen since moving to Toronto, and each time I called he sounded increasingly frail, like an old man had moved into his body and was gradually forcing him out. When I saw him in the summer for my cousin’s wedding, he seemed to have aged 20 years in a few months; his face was gaunt, his breath was short and walked with a cane. And on that I call bullshit.

He’d still perk up, though, if you could get him talking. In the last conversation I had with him in September he sounded like his usual self while telling me about the few years the family spent in Toronto. One of the highlights was the day a Toronto zookeeper let him pet a lion, which sounds a little Norman Rockwell, but hell, I’ve never hung with an animal that could eat me for lunch.

So, a quick salute to a good man and great storyteller. Other than that, I guess the point is that, even if I live decades longer than he did, I hope I’ll get a fraction of his life experience under my belt. Can’t really regale the grandkids with edgy accounts of watching DVDs, exploring the Xbox universe and adventuring to the bottom of a pint glass, y’know? Of course, that said, I've spent many a memorable night with good friends and bad beer, so I shouldn't complain.

But I wonder... Is it better to live 85 good years or 65 great ones? What would you pick, if you could?

Now I’ll leave Some Cats to you cats with more upbeat thoughts, and hopefully Halloween stories. Sorry to be a downer, but it was all I felt like writing about, and I felt like writing about something. There’ll be a more entertaining Halloween party post to come soon with embarrassing pics of myself. Promise.

Until then, thanks for the time, Uncle.

Hey, stupid!

Am I imagining that that was the name of an Alice Cooper song, or possibly even an album? Maybe it was Weird Al. No wait, that was "Dare to be Stupid." Man, in a different universe, perhaps those two might have called one another... "friend."

Fuck. Someone post something.