Is it me or was it really mean-looking today?

The morning started out normal enough. Ever the early bird eater, Oliver chided me awake for neglecting my blogging duties. And his litter. He’s a real hard-ass, but keeps me motivated:

By the afternoon, it was obvious that Environment Canada were up top their usual hijinx. With a batting average of about fifty percent, this week’s forecast had reliably managed to misinform almost all my umbrella decisions. Thank the darkened heavens I decided to forego it today and simply poke my head out the window:

The downpour didn’t last very long, but it brought down a lot of water. Typically this wouldn’t be a bad thing, but with the War going the way it’s been going, the water now serves to help detention centre run-off seep into the ground. This is hardly desirable under good circumstances, but with the advent of chemical warfare, especially in the urban theatre, it’s much more serious.

A swelling grass-roots movement is trying hard to reverse this. Today they held a candle-lit vigil in Moss Park to shine a light on this under-reported consequence of the War:

The underground movement’s savvy organizers appear to be keenly aware that the War is not only fought on the ground, but also in the mind. While General Miller and the 416/79 leadership seem to have abandoned public relations, the people who pulled this little shindig together did just the opposite:

That’s Francis D’Souza in the fancy threads. He swept in out of a parked Citytv SUV like a mother hawk with hungry chicks spotting the first meal of the day; split-second reflexes at the ready for the live six o’clock feed.

“What should we do?”, asked the demonstrators while the TV crew was setting up. “Don’t you worry none”, responded Francis in a John Wayne drawl, “you just stand there ‘n I’ll do the reportin’, little missy.” He was actually talking to a man, but that’s how certain Francis is of his own rugged masculinity. Who could blame him?

The report was over in seconds.

With a gunpowder cloud still hanging in the air, he thrust the microphone into it’s low-slung hip holster and sauntered back toward the waiting car, spurs marking out his confident gait at regular intervals. It was only when someone cried out “Francis!” that he stopped. “Francis!”, came the pleading voice again, “what did you say about the four-one-six?”

He swaggered back toward the group. “Here’s what I know”, he said. “If’n that four-one-six gang don’t get their comeuppance by midnight Sundy, they’re fixin’ to walk away from the table.”

That wasn’t what anyone wanted to hear. The group thanked Francis who, with the tip of his Stetson, rode into the dying sunset, his shadow grown tall on the street behind him in the shape of his true self.

(He’s actually a lot smaller than he looks on TV. And he’s not a cowboy. It just seems appropriate to describe him like that.)

To punctuate the grim news, the suggestion was offered that this action may signal the need for binding arbitration; the beginning of the end. Wouldn’t that be something?

As I was preparing to leave myself, I spotted a couple of the brightly-shirted gentlemen I’d been meaning to speak to for the past few days. You may recall they were, contrary to all detention centre reports, actually helping people schlep trash from the trunks of their cars. To assuage my curiosity, I asked them if they were associated with the union. No, they said, they were not. They were management staff and had never left their post.

Management doing the hard work. What a crazy, topsy-turvy war this is.

Every Saturday(ish) as I sit in my favourite breakfast joints gobbling up artery-hardening goodness and flipping through the comics section, I remember how much I’d been wanting to write about the Toronto Star.  I do like to link to this paper so I guess it’s no secret, I think it’s the bee’s knees.

The outstanding feature of this city stalwart is how it seems to maintain that great journalistic root of hit-the-pavement reporting. It has the fewest misleading or indeterminate headlines of any of the major dailies, probably even fewer than this blog. And they’re not afraid to go where the action is.

Today, for example, I discovered an article by a brave front-line journalist named Jack Lakey. In it, he recounts a horrific scene of utter devastation; a forgotten mound of burnt wood, broken cinder blocks, smoked glass, and protruding hunks of dangerous metal; remnants of an iconic bicycle store. And garbage:

It doesn’t get any more raw than that. A salute, Mr. Lakey.

For obvious reasons, I didn’t want to stick around too long. The overcast sky was bringing an early evening and soon the crack-heads would be rising from their graves, hungering for human brains. Brains on crack. *shiver*

By the time I regained my composure, I was already halfway up Spadina in CHINATOWN! I hazily remembered the last time I’d been here; it was only day two of the tactical strike and already the troops were taking a beating. The memories of that day were like dark, hellish, black-and-white photographs. I didn’t even want to imagine how the area had ended up.

And as it ended up, I couldn’t even have imagined:

Clean streets and empty garbage bags, even in Chinatown; who’d ‘ve thunk it?

I’m actually starting to feel a little sorry for the 416/79 command. A sizeable number of their strikers have hoisted the white flag and requested to defect to our side. I believe they have seen the error of their ways and should be afforded clemency and dignity. We must eliminate this savage brutality; that wanton barbarism; those angry little picketers with their bashy smashy little placards. Take it easy, lady!

We can all still emerge from this with a little humanity. A little understanding. A little peace.

Dream of magic and unicorns, sweet prince. Or winning the lottery.

(Click on that link, I promise the story’s interesting – it’s the Star!)

My diving into the deep waters of the interweb today fished out an odd little Toronto blog in which the author prescribes dumping garbage into store parking lots because, I guess, the businesses owe us for something or other. He also believes that the 416/79 legion are “setting the bar” for society and that their tactical strike should be supported.

So I ranted. For a long time.

Later on, I started to wonder if he was playing the contrarian just to bait me. I mean, is it even possible that the 416/79 have any supporters left?

Take that, CUPE!

They must know that they’re taking a bit of a beating right now. People are refusing to put up with their style of guerilla warfare:

As my own small contribution to the struggle, I was recently mulling around the tactic of generating income for the city, to be used for private waste disposal, from unsolicited city posters. I realized soon after that there was a fatal flaw in the plan; if the removal guys are collecting fines, who’s removing the posters?

Today I received an answer:

They remove themselves!

Can victory really be that far off? For the final push, General Miller must mobilize all troops, especially those in public relations. Because right now, both sides are being described as exceedingly bratty kids, the kind that make you want to go in there and just clip ‘em both behind the ears a few times. They can’t even sit in the same room together!

Maybe they need to see the real situation on the ground; see which way the pendulum is swinging. Some districts are not coping as well as others, but there are increasingly more oases of so-clean-you-can-eat-off-it serenity:

Dear reader, I hope you trust that all of my accounts are true as far as I know them to be. I have been witness to this war from the very first day, and the simple reality is that most of Toronto doesn’t suck as badly as the 416/79 would like it to. In fact, most of it doesn’t suck at all.

I’m going to look up that blog again to insinuate inserting my digital boot up his binary ass for trying to suckify the city. Especially when blending is such a clear and easy answer.

That’s what I’d like to know!

Well, I guess by the title you’ve already guessed that the offensive is still in full swing. I really do wish I had something more to report but the War has either moved into ultra-secret territory, or both sides are sitting on their thumbs. Something I read stated that this could potentially lead to a large increase in the rat/mouse population. According to the exterminator that was being interviewed.

But I think the implications go much deeper than a few extra rodents. Garbage on the streets has now become commonplace, so much so that many people don’t think twice about just tossing stuff to the ground. Even I find myself struggling to find that line that separates garbage from, umm, not garbage:

Ah, blessed gaudy stars, rusty segues into my next encounter, another television shoot somewhere on Victoria Street. Here I was cautiously approached by two police officers who asked if it wouldn’t be a better idea if I asked before taking a photo. I explained to them that I really just wanted a quick snap of the “ambiance”, and verified that this was considered a public location and was I within my rights?. “Yes”, said the Asian officer, ”but it would be nice.” And then, he asked if he would like me to have him ask the crew on my behalf. No trouble. “That’s quite alright, officer”, I replied, and moved on:

A few steps up the street, the other officer (right) caught up with me. “Don’t worry”, he assured me, “I’m not following you. Just on an unrelated errand. Nothing to do with you and I don’t want you to feel alarmed.”

I reassured him that I was as cool as a cucumber and that it hadn’t even crossed my mind. And it’s true.

So had I come across as that much of a dick? Skittish, maybe? An over-informed citizen with a hard-on for litigation?

Now, to pull a final segue out of my pants, I think it’s safe to say that we are all a little curious to know if the guy clocked at 140 kilometers an hour (87 miles), on the 401 this morning, while awash in portable DVD pr0n, had both hands on the wheel.  Ha ha! The wacky things people do behind the wheel. Precious.

Ah, weekends; two days to remind you of how good life could be.

It’s not that I think Mondays are bad, per se. They’ve simply been relegated to being the first days to shatter happiness and joy, to be the harbingers of pain and sorrow. And so on.

The gosh-durn WordPress update never seems to go smoothly (it’s always one plugin after another, isn’t it?) and, well, the weekend was so interesting, I almost forgot that the War still lurked just around the corner — with a bat and a belief I owed it some money.

Sadly, our own local detention center has now moved off-court onto (I believe) wood-chip-covered earth:

Can you believe that it’s been almost a month now?

But luckily there’s a curious twist at this point, otherwise I’d just be regurgitating the same old war stories again. That’s gross.

If you look at the photo again, right at the back on the left are two guys in DayGlo-yellow shirts. They’re actually taking trash from people’s cars and hauling it in here themselves. Somehow, the 416/79 cavalry have managed to miss my little enclave; these guys were actually helping people get their trash in. Most excellent service too, if I may say. I’ll definitely have to ask more questions tomorrow.

But you know that even if they were strikers, which they were not (?!), it wouldn’t stop some kind of festival from happening. With genuine regret, I managed to completely miss the Festival of India parade, but at least managed to fill my crowd quota for the day with the big balls of Just for Laughs:

All the comics must’ve been on their smoke breaks because everyone there was definitely not funny. Well, there was this one funny part where a gymnast flew dangerously off course, and oh-so-close to the audience:

The look on his face as he lifted himself off the canvas was a masterpiece of raw human emotion; disbelief, horror, embarrassment, relief, self-doubt, and anger; the kind of face you make when you’re in the privy trying, grimly, to eject a particularly unrealistic log. OH, C’MON! WE’VE ALL BEEN THERE!

Anyway, it was funny.

Funnier than cleaning my sofa when I got back to my place:

Eureka, leave a comment and I’ll contact you about where you can send the royalty cheques. What? You didn’t think it’d be just one, did you? Just like foxes, you are.

Now, dear reader, before you berate me for the frequency of my house-keeping, I would like to point out that this is a week’s worth of collected Ollie hair and open-window city exposure.

Plus, we’re in the middle of a war! A dusty, dusty war.

Toronto, the city that never sleeps. No, wait, I’m confusing that with another city. The city of Lesbos. Or is that an archipelago?

This is the second too-long day of a second too-short night. This time it was the tail end of the Copper film for which they were shooting night scenes. Late night scenes.

In contrast to last night’s festivities, the crew were as quiet as very polite mice. Their lighting, however, was quite loud:

Right into the bedroom window. Clean, straight line. Living room too. And that’s pretty much my entire place.

At around 2 a.m., they packed up their trucks, pointed their New York license plates south, and quietly rolled out. Not only had they crept out with a whisper, but they’d also left my neighbourhood cleaner than it was before. Aside from two strips of gaffer’s tape marking out an “L” on the sidewalk, the place was impeccable.

They were still sweeping the left-over bits of trash  from the location house this morning. The front lawn looked well-trodden but the house looked better than it had. They made it out to look like a real hussy, didn’t they?

I guess cops have to fight crime somewhere; might as well be in a nearby crack house. Or maybe it’s an abstract film where the cops stare and occasionally shout at a pear sitting on a blue plate for exactly forty-one minutes (with a midget dancing backwards in the background); those curtains are for the really-fuck-the-audience’s-mind effect. Does David Lynch still make movies?

Either way, I guess that’s fairly realistic, because danger really can lurk behind any shadowy corner:

One mistake and it’s all over. Your windshield. With open windows, your sleeve. Kid in the back gets banana peel in the schnoz. And who gets the half-drunk bubble tea cup in the frontal area? Maybe you, maybe me. And no one deserves that. It’s just not something you’d wish on your fellow human beings.

I think it’s a sign of desperation; a cry for help. Children are now being employed to produce impassioned pleas for an end to the savagery. I’m sure Walter Cronkite would have approved, and with a respectful doff of the cap, we thank him.

So under slightly more gray skies we find ourselves at the end of the week. As the tide of war waxes and wanes like a poorly thought-out metaphor (or simile?), more casualties are inevitable:

I guess it never gets easier.

It probably shouldn’t.

Well, maybe with a good night’s sleep it could.