On Wednesday I had a sore internet for most of the day and couldn’t
upload a photo to my blog until well into the afternoon.
At around 11:00 I
went to the food bank and found no line-up at all. As I turned into the
driveway, Joe, the manager was coming out of the door, walking with a cane and
looking old. As I was locking my bike, he was investigating some rolled up
carpets that had been tossed out, and then he swung the aluminium cane down on
one of them and gave it a whack. If one
is stuck with a cane for a while, one might as well hit stuff with it. Inside,
the receptionist knew my first name, but not my birth date. Instead of a paper
ticket, she gave me the number 25 written on a little square piece of thin
pressboard, like the kind that goes on the backs of cabinets, with a small hole
drilled in the corner. As I left, Joe and another volunteer were smoking out on
the sidewalk and far from the door.
I went down the
street to the No Frills to buy coffee milk, but realized that I should have
waited and come back after I’d picked up my provisions from the food bank
because that way I’d know which needed items were missing or which needed to be
complimented with something else.
I went home and
struggled with a slow internet connection while trying to upload my blog. I was
online but the signal wasn’t strong enough to add a photograph. Waiting made me
tired, so I went to bed for fourty-five minutes, dreaming about chatting with a
middle aged British woman with short hair about a movie that we both wanted to
see, though I have no idea what movie we were talking about.
Back at the food
bank, I found a moderately smoke free space to stand.
A tall, thin,
nervous young man was telling someone about a job in which he’d had to wear
gloves while handling splintered wood or else he’d be spending all day with
tweezers, pulling little pieces out of his hands. Then he seemed to get angry
just from talking about it and walked away, saying, “Fuck that!”
Someone else was
complaining about lending money to someone and never getting it back.
A piece of a large
loaf of ring bread was lying on the ground behind the garbage bins, looking
like a dead animal. I didn’t see any birds.
The still-green
Christmas tree that had been up the week before was lying forlornly on its side
on top of the discarded carpets.
The broken
octagonal picnic table that is usually sitting at the inner end of the row of
blue garbage bins was upside down at the far end of the driveway.
My number was
called and then called again by Bruce shortly after I sat down inside. I took
some Jell-O, because I suddenly had the idea that the gelatine might be good
for me. There were a couple of the Campbell’s gourmet soups that are pretty
good and a bag of boxless cereal that looked like Shreddies. Bruce said,
“Behind you, you will find the lovely Sue!” She had a mock scowl on her face
and Bruce added, “Don’t be scared of her!” She gave me two slices of banana
bread, two small chocolate Silk soymilk drinks and a two-litre container of So
Nice almond coconut milk. In the bread section there wasn’t much variety. I
took a package of tortillas. The vegetable lady was back after taking a couple
of weeks off. After she gave me some yams and a few other things, I noticed she
was wearing crocks.
I went back to No
Frills. The only thing I needed after the food bank was meat. They had some
discount steaks but I was cautious about meat with grey patches, so I just
bought a package of four eye of round steaks that worked out to about $2.50 a
steak.
After going home, I
finally got my photo uploaded to my blog, but only after closing Bit Torrent
for a while. It was still slow after that but there was just that extra bit of
strength in the connection it seems.
I cleaned the
crisper in my fridge and the area underneath it. In addition to the usual
accumulation of old onion skins; the dark, withered, wormlike corpses of unused
carrots; and various collected and after several months, unrecognizable
spillings; a couple of weeks earlier about a half a litre of milk had spilled
in there but I hadn’t bothered to clean it up, I’m ashamed to say. I got it all
cleaned up and put the solid waste in the garbage, but the smell seemed to be
still there. It’s possible though that it’s because the garbage can is next to
the fridge and so when I open the door and bend down to smell, my nose is
fairly close to the garbage.
I went to sleep for
an hour.
Since I’d already
been out a couple of times, I didn’t take a bike ride. I did go out to the LCBO
though to buy a can of Creemore to have with dinner. The Black woman in front
of me was struggling to get her card out of her tight new wallet. She turned to
me and said, “You’re the artist aren’t you?” I said, “Sort of. I’m a writer.”
She said that I looked like the artist that lives on Cowan who keeps a lot of
his artwork out on his balcony. I knew the guy she was talking about. His work
is very colourful, especially using the colour red, with simple carnivalesque
designs. I told her that I didn’t think I looked like the guy but I knew what
she meant. He’s a big, blondish sort of guy. After she left, the cashier said
to me that there are a lot of different face types out there. On my way out I
almost almost walked into the wrong half of the automatic door again, causing
me to conclude that it wasn’t just a dumb mistake on my part the first time but
it has something to do with the layout. I’ll bet I’m not the only one.
I noticed as I
passed the Capital Espresso on the corner, that the homeless lady who pushes
her cart around while screaming, had made a bed on the bench outside the café
after it had closed. She had her mountainous cart pushed up against the bench
sideways and she had herself covered up in blankets. She looked as cozy as a
person sleeping outside on a hard bench could be, but it’s a good thing it
wasn’t a cold night.
I watched two more
episodes of the latest season of South Park. The last three episodes pull the
whole season together into one bigger story.
In the 8th
and 9th episodes, Jimmy, the disabled, stuttering, occasionally
appearing character is the editor of the school paper. PC Principal calls him
into his office to tell him that he can’t allow his contributors to use the
word “retarded” in reference to the food in the cafeteria. Jimmy shocks the
principal by refusing to comply. Normally the PC Principal just threatens to
break the legs of able-bodied and non-minority students, but he doesn’t know
how to deal with Jimmy. He finally tells him that he can’t distribute the paper
in the school unless it passes his approval, so Jimmy sidesteps him and begins
to deliver it to everyone in South Park. It becomes a hit with all the adults
as well because it has no ads. Jimmy receives a visit from a representative of
Geico Insurance who says he’ll give him 26 million dollars to run ads in his
paper. Jimmy tells him to shove the money up his ass. The salesman pulls a gun
on Jimmy but he is stopped from firing when he is killed by a bullet to the
head from Officer Barbrady, who then takes Jimmy to see some people who reveal
a conspiracy that threatens to take over the world. Advertisements have
evolved. They’ve become smarter than us and have even started to create ads
that look just like people. Meanwhile, Mr Garrison is running for president on
a platform of being crazy and extremely right wing, with Caitlyn Jenner as his
running mate. He is informed of the ad conspiracy and so he and Caitlyn return
to South Park to try to put a stop to it.
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