Colour Him Lucky

If you laid all out the plastic
Evel Kneivel Stuntcycle toys
sold during X-Mas 1976 end-to-end,
they'd stretch clear across Idaho’s Snake River Canyon.
Clear across that Magic Valley and back again.
Dressed in his clean white leathers,
his shoulder-cape and his star-spangled crash-helmet,
Robert Craig “Evel” Kneivel Jr. always looked to me like
some kind of a real-life honest-to-goodness American superhero.
A kind of Elvis meets Liberace meets
Gary Cooper meets Superman. On a Harley Davidson.
As a child, I watched in awe as he jumped
a succession of cars, cargo vans, mountain lions,
Mack trucks, London routemasters and Greyhound buses.
All fuelled by true-grit chutzpah and Wild Turkey 101.
As a child I watched him fracture
his jaw and his skull
and his sternum and his pelvis.
And both his arms. And both his ankles.
And both of his clavicles too.
I watched him break his lower and his upper back.
I watched him break his knees and his shins
and his hips and his femurs
and his nose and his toes and,
at one time or another, all 24 of his crazy cockamamie ribs.
For Evel’s was a life of casts, comas and blood-transfusions.
His battered body rattled with pins and plates.
In my time, I’ve never so much as suffered a dislocated finger.
But then, I never tried strapping rocket engines
to the side of my Raleigh Tomahawk Mark 2 neither.
And that’s why Robert Craig Kneivel
will always be the Daredevil’s Daredevil,
and why I’m destined to be just
another hairdresser’s son from North Oxfordshire.

Cut the stargazin yo. MOVE SOMETHIN!

The French are risqué, so they say... I guess that's why they are so frank when trying to make a point. The risqué saaaay in a risqué waaaaay...

"Vous devez watch it avec ton risqué behaviour!"

















Franchement!

Unless you live in a cave, you're aware that we are in the midst of AIDS Awareness Week.

Wednesday marked the unveiling of the 60-second HIV test in Montreal. As some of you know, 3 weeks is a really long time to wait when you're worried. 3 weeks leaves a lot of time for thinking and sometimes tears too. So 60 seconds is wild and wonderful. It's about as long as it takes to put on a condom and get ready to go. It could take 3 minutes to tear open the damn package if you're drunk or full of cocaine. But those aren't the best times for doing it anyway, now are they?

"It seemed like a good idea at the time..."




















The government of Ontario has invested in kits for anonymous testing at clinics. These will set them back $10 per kit. Quebec hasn't bought any. And by saying 'set back', I'm trying to be ironic and clever. Quebec will get with it soon enough, but their slow-pokedness makes Wednesday's 'unveiling' somewhat bittersweet.



















Mmmmm cake...overwhelmingly erotic, isn't it? Doing it can be also but it's easy to get caught up in the moment.






















Anyways you guys, stay alert and stay safe and try and channel your inner rabbit.



















"Why a rabbit you ask? ....Because if you watch a rabbit very carefully you will notice that in times of uncertainty he will stand very still with his ears up and whiskers twitching. He's on the look out for possible trouble -- cats, dogs or maybe even people.

At Stay Alert...Stay Safe we would like you to learn to be like a rabbit. By being alert and ready for danger, you can learn to avoid it. That's right -- and just like a rabbit you can run away, or even sniff out trouble before it happens. So if something does not feel right, get away fast. Just like a rabbit!"
[source: http://www.sass.ca/rabbits2.htm]


And see THESE?











Don't fuck around with them.














Or you might end up like this lady.
















Looking sexy in a sexy bathing suit on the cover of supersexy Cosmopolitan magazine?

Not exactly. Gia Carangi died of AIDS at 26. Angelina Jolie gave what is arguably her best performance in the biopic, Gia. It's really sad and it might make you cry. But you should still watch it if you never have before.

I like this one better than the sexy bathing suit shot. It is sad to see someone that was free as a bird looking free as a bird and knowing they are no longer.















Makes you think, doesn't it?

THINK ABOUT IT.






















ALL OF IT.

And don't forget to think about people in faraway places SUCH AS AFRICA, who don't have the oppurtunity to make the choices we are lucky enough to be faced with.

THINK THINK THINK. And do something, silly!

LOVE,
NICOLA

Dirty-Stop-Out

She tells me she didn’t sleep too well.
I know how precious the night is for her
and her fellow followers of The Path Of The Pollen.
I worry that her visit to the Dreamtime may have been disrupted
by my presence beside her in the fold-down hideaway bed.
But she tells me it wasn’t that. That I wasn’t to blame.
That, infact, I was a very unostentatious sleeper.
That I didn’t snore. Or steal the sheets. Or catch her with any stray elbows.
Apparently, I was very quiet and still all the night through.
So quiet and still infact, that at one point
She felt compelled to put her ear to my chest
to check whether or not I was still drawing breath.
Like mothers do with newborns.
“I only have soya milk”, She says. “That’s okay,” I reply.
“Is Rooibos alright?” She asks. “Rooibos is fine”, I reply.
“Do you have any honey?” I enquire.
“Honey”, She replies; “is not a problem. Honey I have plenty of.”
It’s been a long long time since anyone’s made me a cup of tea in bed.
And let me tell you this; it tastes like sweet hot Manna From Heaven.

CHECKING OUT SIX IN THE MORNING.

Highly probably that I will leave the Concordia library as the sun rises.





















My essay is long enough but now I have to PIMP IT. But it's HARD out here for a pimp at CON-U in the library at an ungodly hour.

ARE YOU THERE GOD?

I'm almost there.


















When I reach the top, it will be exciting.

















Exciting and romantic.






















Then I will relax.





















Throw out my notes. AND TAKE BIG TOKES!























HAIL MARY, FULL OF GRACE.















I'MMA TAKE IT!




















AND THAT TOO!



















BECAUSE IT'S GETTING COLD OUT THERE FOR A ME, FEEL ME?

I LOVE RAP MUSIC.


















AND MY BRAIN HURTS.














OH BABY I CAN'T WAIT.























AND HERE ARE SOME UNRELATED VEGETABLES AND STUFF THAT ARE ACTUALLY ENTIRELY UNAROUSING.






















SO IN CONTRAST, HERE IS TRUE LOVE FOREVER aka TRU LUV 4EVA.

















PERSONALLY I THINK THAT IT WOULD BE MORE EMBARASSING TO BE CAUGHT AT WORK LOOKING AT THE ABOVE VEGETABLES THAN IT WOULD BE TO BE CAUGHT LOOKING AT NAKED PICTURES OF DIORA BAIRD.



















DON'T GET ME WRONG, I PREFER HER NAKED ALSO BUT I'M TRYING NOT TO GET CARRIED AWAY HERE, I'M ACTUALLY TRYING TO FINISH MY ESSAY.

LOVE,
NICOLA

WE GOT ROOM KEYS.

WHAT'S UP TEAM.

The month from hell is coming to a close.

I hereby propose a toast to my boys Nathaniel Heaney, Ted Mirsky aka Todd Marsky and my girl Hillary Dort, the coolest hot new 23 year olds of the week by far.























I was fortunate enough to ring in the new year with Ted this weekend in Toronto and I look forward to our young adult book club meetings coming up in December, almost as much as I look forward to the journey that is young adulthood.
















Some may say I ate too many of Ted's peanut-free lemon rasperry cupcakes on Saturday but those fuckers can go jump in the pool because I hadn't had dinners yet and I didn't want to get TOO SILLY from ALL THE WINE AND SPIRITS on an EMPTY STOMACH.

Here's a lone girly cupcake for Hillary because today is HER ACTUAL BIRTHDAY. HAPPY BIRTHDAY HILLARY!






















Hillary is FROM Halifax and my sister Hilary LIVES in Halifax. It's like they traded places. Cool. I met Hillary in the spring on a night when we were both more enamoured with silly boys than with one another. At least we didn't pay for anything that night but boy are boys silly. Rumour has it I met her a month or so earlier but as far as I'm concerned, Plastic Little was the night Lindsay Lohan took over my body and anything that happened that night is as good as month-old Us Weekly (read: completely irrelevant in the grand scheme of things). As far as I'm concerned, life is much more fun these days in the age of exploring feminine wiles over fancy chocolates and espresso. GOD WE ARE A CLASSY BUNCH.

















Here are some imaginary chocolates for Hillary Dort.

















It was a joy to see my old friends I never see when I was in Toronto. I had a lovely brie and avocado and tomato sandwich on Sunday afternoon with my girl Mansa and we talked about our lives, loves, hopes, fears and dreams and that's always fun. Mansa is fed up with law school applications and give her a Christmas bonus too or you might as well "STEP!"

















PICK MANSA! And there in the background is my special friend Devin Atherton, with whom I spent a lovely 3 days last week beginning with his arrival just in time for waffles, latkes and new slang Scrabble on Sunday afternoon. Ben Verdicchio and Devin made up some really great new words. But that was LAST WEEK'S NEWS and if you weren't there, well then you'll be speaking THE KING'S ENGLISH and everyone will be bored to death.

Anyway, THIS PAST Saturday night after Ted's birthday celebration, I met up with my girl PJ and her boy/my boy (but not like how he is her boy) Tom and it was a Christmas party.






















PJ had a very shiny nose. It was apparently sponsored by Red Bull although I never saw any but I found this really fun Christmas vest from REGAL and I put it on over my houndstooth coat when the cops came and it looked TERRIBLE/TOTALLY TOTALLY AWESOME and I also defaced the walls for some SUPER DINOSAUR PARAPHERNALIA and I got some dirty looks as I took it but I didn't care because I have not been studying prehistoric lizard remains with such fervour all these years to give a flying fuck about your diry looks...BIATCH.

Doesn't this guy look like such a nice guy?






















I think he definitely looks like a really nice guy.

Word on the street tells me Mardi McFly is coming to a close this Tuesday at Korova and soon Nick/Mike will join forces with Paul/Adam on Mondays at Blizzarts and I don't know what they're going to do with a name like Mardi McFly but I suggest they copyright it and put it in the archives as it might be worth something someday. Someday that is not a Monday (Lundi en FRANCAIS, les gars!).

So Tuesday kids...it's the end of an era. I haven't been in awhile as I've been spending a lot of time with this doll I ordered over the internet that satisfies me in all kinds of ways real live boys never really do...but tommorow I will make an exception.

Tonight is M.I.A. and I'm not going because I GOTS A PAPES TO WRITE but maybe I will go to Blizzarts later because if you're not going to bed at midnight, you should probably go peep Paul and Adam's shit because it's more often than not BANGIN, TOTALLY BANGIN.






















M.I.A. AFTER-JAMAZOID! You should go (to Blizzarts).

CHOCLAIR COMING DOWN WITH THE NORTHERN TOUCH.

The rumours are true. I'm leaving Montreal.

Relax, it's just for a few days! I'm going to the land of berets, baguette, brie and turning up your nose. That's right kids, I'm going to FRANCE!




















By that I mean my dad's car. Meaning Toronto actually. But that pretty much describes my dad's car except he has Miss Vickie's instead of baguette and that is not his fault and if you ever meet my dad you should ask him to do the bit about the Miss Vickies calling his name because it's bloody hilarious and can only be rivaled by when he plays the bag-pipes with his nose. Or if you asked him to do the Miss Vickie's bit in a Scottish accent that would suffice.









































I'm going to Toronto very soon. By this time tommorow I will be there. I am currently writing a paper on multiculturalism and identity politics in relation to Jin-mi Yoon's A Group of Sixty-Seven. I hear that Toronto is multicultural. I hear that they have pizza in Toronto, and roti and sushi and samosas and movie stars and sometimes spicy eggplant sandwiches ALL IN THE SAME BLOCK and you can eat a big meal like Rita MacNeil and who said vintage jokes can't be as chic as vintage alligator-skin clutches?? Not Karl Lagerfeld and he used to eat big meals also.
















[SIDENOTE: I actually dreamt about REASONABLE ACCOMODATION last night...it's probably because I didn't go to my Issues in Ethnocultural Art Histories class for two weeks so I got punished with relevant shit in the time that is normally reserved for Pamela Anderson and if I'm lucky, Yasmin Bleeth.]



















That was mean. It's like I'm TRYING to give myself nightmares...























I haven't been to Toronto in nearly 4 years. Alym and I drove down to see The Roots in May 2004 in his sister's car and I met his dad and his dad fed us and we stayed at my cousin Mike's apartment and slept in the same bed but that's it I swear and Mike's then-girlfriend showed me 'their' miniature chihuahua's (read: HER miniature chihuahua's??) wardrobe which included a hand-knit sweater with skulls on it, which is wild because skulls are still happening apparently, as Dane(GERUS...) of TOP TEN WEIRDO IN CURRENT NIGHTLIFE MAGAZINE fame was showing me his new fun fashion fare earlier this evening which includes fun potato sackesque satchels with embroidered skulls and stars of David (sweatshirts and wallets also)and he's wondering if they're going to fly at the craft sale in two weeks and I'm not sure but I'll tell you where and when and you can decide for yourself and Dane gave me some fudge he brought back from New Brunswick that his mom made and it was really really tasty, thanks Dane.

Back to the chihuahua. She even had dog clothes made by the designer that dressed Reese Witherspoon's chiuahuahua in Legally Blonde...which totally blew my mind in both directions.






















When I saw Mike at Erica's wedding in April he had a new lady friend and he called me Hilary which would have been unacceptable considering he's like 29 years old, but he was wearing a plaid suit so I didn't make a fuss, nor did I bring up the designer chihuahua of days gone by....






















So I guess now is as good time as any to have pancakes for the 3rd time since I woke up 19 hours ago and carry on with my essay.



















In conclusion....

















Not really. I don't judge (often/much).

Right so anyway, the crux of it is this...

















I can't wait to get to multicultural Toronto!














SO LONG/FAREWELL/AU-WEIDERSEIN/GOODBYE!













AU-REVOIR/SAYONARA/ARRIVEDERCI/SEE YOU IN HELL!