Big Brother is Probably Watching Porn

            After the food bank on Saturday I took my food home, put it away and then headed out again. On my way to the supermarket I stopped at Vina Pharmacy to see if they’d gotten a renewal of my prescriptions from Dr. Shechtman. They said they’d called but didn’t get the prescriptions. I was told that I could go to a drop-in clinic and ask them to write a prescription for me, but that would be time consuming and it wasn’t an emergency anyway. I just wanted to know whether they would be calling the doctor on Tuesday or whether I would. The person behind the counter seemed to think I didn’t understand all of my options and started explaining them to me like I was a child. Finally I got her to say they would call Shechtman on Tuesday.

            At the No Frills I bought blueberries, cherries, an Ontario watermelon and a pack of chicken legs.

            I rode along King and up Dunn Avenue. I heard someone shout “Hey you!” and it was Mo, who was talking to some people in a park. I said hi but I didn’t stop because conversations with Mo are very time consuming and they’re easier to deal with when I’m already trapped in a food bank line-up.

            For lunch I heated up one of the sandwiches that my upstairs neighbour David had left at my door the day before. It was a big meatball sandwich and so I just ate half the bread and all of the meat.

            In the late afternoon I took a bike ride. Although my thigh hurt while walking I didn't notice any problem while pedalling my velo, even when climbing hills. I rode up Birchmount, went east on Zenith and then took Silvio up to Dunlop and explored all the streets between Dunlop and Zenith until Dunlop ended at Hubert, just north of Danforth Rd. In my last few trips to this area north of Danforth Rd, east of Birchmount, west of Kennedy and south of St Clair, I’ve noticed that 90% of the houses are almost identical, little single story red brick homes that look like they were all built in the 1970s.

I took Danforth Rd back down to Danforth Avenue.
            For the first time in a long time I didn’t feel a strong urge to stop and use the washroom on the way back.

            I watched an episode of Mike Hammer, Private Eye. In this story a former hotshot investigative reporter named Pete who's been living in a halfway house to treat his alcoholism calls Hammer about something he is working on. When Hammer gets there he finds Pete dead from an apparent suicide and stinking of booze. Hammer doesn't think it was suicide because of the nature of the gunshot and because it wasn’t Pete's brand of booze. Hammer hears from another resident named Fishman that Pete had been doing a lot of writing and keeping it in a backpack that he never let out of his sight. The backpack is missing. Hammer gets in touch with Pete’s sister Gaby who says that Pete was working on a story about Big Brother watching. She shows him a notebook that Pete sent to her and it has he name Lucinda Casher in it. Hammer gets from Fishman an envelope of satellite photos that he'd been hiding for Pete, who had gotten them from someone named Trevor Berkeley. Later in Hammer’s elevator a “blind” man pulls a cyanide filled syringe out of his cane and tries to kill hammer with it. Hammer fights him off but he gets hit in the head and knocked out before the guy runs away. Hammer has a clandestine meeting with Jerry Airs, the only person he knows that might understand what the meaning is behind Pete’s photos. He tells Hammer that the photos are of a chemical weapons lab and tanks. When Hammer asks the location, Jerry says, “You don’t want to know.” Hammer goes back to the halfway house and talks to Pete’s friend Susan. She tells him that she stole the photos from her boyfriend George and gave them to Pete. Hammer goes to see Trevor Berkeley who is the CEO of an intelligence research company. Berkeley knows everything about Hammer from his childhood till now. On the way out of Berkeley’s office Hammer meets Lucinda, whose name was in Pete’s notebook. When Hammer goes back to the halfway house Susan is dead. Hammer finds out from Jerry that a company named Global Systems is the source of the photos and that’s Berkeley’s company. When Velda is going through Pete’s belongings from storage she finds a zip-drive cartridge that contains the entire story Pete had written. Hammer finds out that Susan’s ex-boyfriend George is also ex-FBI. He goes to see him and sees that George had been the guy that had attacked him in the elevator. He admits to killing Susan. He gives Hammer a key and seconds later he is blown up in his car. Hammer goes to Berkeley, who pulls a gun on Hammer but Lucinda shoots him. It turns out Lucinda killed Pete and she is about to kill Hammer but Berkeley kills her just before he dies.

            The story is pretty vague on exactly who is watching us with satellites. My big brother was an asshole but he was too drunk most of the time to be watching. I suppose some people are being watched but less than conspiracy theorists think.

            Gaby was played by stand-up comedian Jann Karam.