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Hostel
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: People
- Hits: 818
And, I'm seldom here - to sleep, otherwise - like in Toronto - I'm roaming the streets, exploring.
When I am here there's a few things. The guy that's forever on his computer - doing what? I don't think he's left the building in 3 days. There are the people that share my room - 1 who seems to never go out, the other leaves early and is back around 4:00.
This sharing a room with men who's names I don't know, I find it despairing. It would be despairing if I did know there names - I'm merely a private person, and hate the commonality of shared sleeping or living arrangements.
Nonetheless, in the common area, reading my book, trying to ignore the euro-trash that accumulates in such places, the little Napoleon in the kitchen (short- French - with attitude to spare - although his cooking smells amazing), the perpetually drunk Brits and Aussies and various other slightly-more-respectable nationalities, sitting next to a couple of guys, they begin chatting to me. About their day, they'd woke up, dropped some acid, took some shrooms, headed on down to Stanley Park, were impressed by some drop-dead goddess of a woman that picked up the shit after her dog. For some reason it amused them greatly, they kept coming back to it, probably you had to be there. At the moment they were cracking open their umpteenth beer, rolling a joint on the table, telling me about their lives, then coming back to the woman who was beautiful - just gorgeous, and they watched her pick up her dog's shit - "just like that" - don't you know, a little gesture - I break for a cigarette. Outside, been drinking away with them, don't want to get too carried away or even try to keep up - these guys, clearly the pillars of their communities - really, I attract them. And I meet Tom, from Calgary, he's here - well, he doesn't say, works in geology in Calgary. And we're chatting and he's telling me he was doing Cocaine earlier and I'm incredulous - here? There's probably no real Cocaine for a few miles - what kind of shit was he snorting - he's not chewing his cheeks or grinding - none of the tells - and - before you know it he's telling me he's not feeling so well and does a nosedive into the pavement. Hits it hard, right on his head, before I can react or catch him. I sit him up and call 911.
8 minutes on hold.
8 fucking minutes on hold.
"We're experiencing higher than average call volumes..."
I hang up.
He's conscious - tells me he's feeling better, take him into a bar. Buy some nachos - can't leave him like this - don't want him just dying, out of the blue, and so sit with him, listen to the band, watch the people.
He's feeling fine, fine, and then - again - not so much, and he's more fortunate than I, he calls 911, gets through, the police are there in a minute, and he gets in with them to go to the hospital.
Never a dull moment.
Bill Bryson - In A Sunburned Country
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Books
- Hits: 1425
I enjoyed this. Not, perhaps, the "Travel Classic" the reviews made it out to be - but it's thorough, well researched, introduces you to a variety of places, people & histories that otherwise I might have had no interest in - so in this it succeeds.
And Australia's treatment of the Aboriginals rather mirrors our own failings with the Native Canadians.
Easy reading, thick book, lots to think about - only criticism that I wasn't enormously sympathetic to the authors' point of view - but that is a matter of our difference in personalities, not necessarily a flaw on his behalf. Personally, I would have liked a little more information on the Geology of it all...
A Notice about Picking Up Your Dog Shit
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Blog
- Hits: 919
Not far from East Hastings someone has posted a notice about picking up your dog shit, with a list of the illnesses that can be spread by dog feces.
And you look around, at the excrement that puddles and melts in the piss-washed streets, at the vomit and blood, phlegm, expectorate, discarded needles, trash and piles of discarded clothing and empty food containers, the aroma's, always ripe, and you think to yourself that maybe - just maybe - somebody is missing something...\
And then the penny drops. This "Pick up your dog shit" - it's the beginning of the gentrification of East Hastings.
The Good Soldier Schweik - Jaroslav Hašek
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Books
- Hits: 787
An amusing, satirical anti-war novel, written in 1921 about a brilliant idiot's enthusiastic adventures in the First World War.
Overly long, but on occasion laugh-out-loud funny. And, as with any good satire - its' not that the author has confabulated, it's merely that he has that ear for the absurdity of existence. This was - I strongly suspect - one of the principal inspirations behind "Catch-22".
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