On Canada Day, a couple friends and I stopped in at a place called TJ’s Pizza. I was still on something of an observer’s high from being out at the fireworks, where I had ceaselessly commented on the sheer amount of “penises and anuses and vaginas” that had accompanied their humans into Diefenbaker Park to watch the festivities. I have always been fascinated by the unbridled sexuality of Canada Day, and this year was no exception. However, I suddenly came down from my scurrilous high when I stepped into the pizza place – here I laid eyes upon the business’s promotional materials and felt an immediate sad tightness in my chest. Here I was, staring at the funky little guy who was apparently the TJ’s Pizza mascot (hereafter referred to as TJ; to get to a gallery of these photos click here), smiling so genuine, so fervent because of the pizza he represented, and all at once I was convinced that I was a horrible human being.

Viewing these pictures of the TJ’s pizza mascot, wherein a sugary corporate mascot bears an unchanging smile from picture to picture, reawakened a familiar constellation of emotions from my past. That is, the sense of tragedy and folly of existence that smiling corporate mascots always invoke within me – how can any character be this unfailingly happy when there is suffering in the world? Children starve, women are raped, young bucks fist-fight aimlessly over meaningless squabbles, war in Iraq, I’m sure you could fill the rest of the list quite adequately yourself. And on a personal level, I had just appeared in a hip-hop show the previous Friday in which I had performed songs concerning such topics as hooking up with transvestites and demanding violent hand-jobs. Sure they were tongue in cheek, but they didn’t skimp on the blue language, describing sexual experiences that innocent TJ didn’t even look capable of conceiving of. In this case the feelings are particularly egregious, as I cannot simply pass off the character as an evil corporate demon in disguise, as in the case of the perpetually grinning pan-sexual happy-face of Wal-Mart, or the discomforting Ronald McDonald and the rest of the McDonald’s ship-of-fools (though even defaming the latter engenders a certain degree of self-loathing in yours truly). The TJ’s Pizza guy is so tragic because TJ’s Pizza is a tiny company which was founded in Saskatchewan, where it has remained entirely localized, with only five outlets in total. I cannot pass off his unfailing smile as latent evil. In this case we simply have a hopelessly positive character, single-mindedly gratified by the joy his pizza apparently brings to people and seemingly not needing anything else to get by. The drawings on the website show him in many scenarios – playing baseball, snowboarding, at some kind of Neo-Woodstock decked out in hippy garb making the peace sign. In each picture, the steaming pizza and the wide-mouthed smile are consistent. I find myself wondering if he would bear the same smile were he depicted riding a nuclear warhead ala Dr. Strangelove, or being fellated by some diseased prostitute...

Now have you seen what has happened here? My mind has slipped down the dark path that perhaps characterizes the mind of all men, and if not that certainly more than just some men, and a few women too. This is the pornographic impulse, the same one which led so many artists of various ability throughout the ages to depict their surroundings – animals, friends, clergy, etcetera, etcetera in sexual acts in every permutation and combination, more often than not toward the ostentatious variety. It is this same instinct which has been indulged to no small degree on the internet, when we see beloved cartoon characters from Homer Simpson to Bugs Bunny to the less endearing Peter Griffin in over-the-top sexual scenarios with other characters from cartoon land. These have always elicited a headshake, as if I were asking myself, what were these artists thinking, though I know damn well I’ve had the same thoughts – I just can’t draw worth shit. Perhaps human nature would bear a space in its jagged line of teeth were we not to have such depictions. They answer for us the burning question, what it would look like if those two (or three or four as in one picture of Lara Croft I happed upon) got it on. Moreover, such depictions assure us that even our sacred characters, whatever bastions of innocence we have left, are still at the core sexual. The crude vehemence with which their throbbing organs are reassures the average internet nihilist that yes, even these innocent characters who we regard almost solely for the pleasure they give us, can be reduced to cock and cunt. And when they let the dirty bits do the work, they do it as nasty as they possibly can.

But we must return to the matter at hand, if it matters at all, the familiar feelings invoked in your author when he looked upon the TJ’s Pizza mascot. I was immediately reminded of my own first encounter with something like the tree of knowledge in the Garden of Eden, though much less glamorous than that mythical garden. This was the ramshackle hut two of my male cousins built out in the bush adjacent to my grandparent's farm. I was seven years old when the place was first erected. It was here that my cousins had hoarded up a modest collection of wrinkled old pornographic magazines they had plucked from garbage cans. At twelve years old as they were, such a private stash is nothing short of sacred, a testament to the inevitability of manhood, worth another essay in itself. And so, my cousins, ever the good hosts, allowed me to indulge in their stash. Of course, at this point, I wasn’t precisely certain of what exactly I was indulging in. Sure, I’d stumbled upon my father’s own collection of Playboy magazines, though that was certainly nothing in comparison to what these pages encrusted by something entirely different than gold revealed. At first, the tableau of an awestruck male pushing his mammoth member in the mouth of some dozy-eyed female did not even register on my virgin eyes, still uninitiated to seventh grade lifestyles and the Sunday Night Sex Show. It took several seconds to come into focus, this new system of meaning, where all appellations for the thing between my legs suddenly became replete with meanings – no longer was it to be simply a “pee-er”, as I believe I once referred to it. And the crux of the event, the real tragedy, was not learning about sex or pornography (because one need not necessarily inform the other), but it was returning to my parent’s abode afterward and casting these eyes of mine upon the toys with which I was surrounded – the GI Joes, the stuffed animals, most notably the Pooch Patrols, for each of whom I had invented voices. Suddenly their big exaggerated eyes seemed not cute and appealing but rather forlorn and knowing. Here they were, meaningless stuff, literally, incorrigibly cute in a world full of magazines where the f-word was something you did to someone and people their giant genitals in the hole that poop came out of. And I need not even get into my initial reactions to vagina, lest I piss off the feminists – though I will say the sheer vividness of the pink disturbed me (I’m not saying that vagina is inherently ugly – I’m just saying it’s comparable to Quebec beer – on the whole delightful but containing some ingredients near the bottom which shouldn’t be consumed). Sure, Pooch Patrols weren’t total pushovers – sure they could bear their teeth and scare off whatever beasties and spectres passed through a child’s imagination, but let’s face it: they didn’t stand a chance against those primary phallic and yonic impressions.

I remember revisiting these feelings when I was fourteen, in my first year of high school. First sexual experience, you ask? I should have been so lucky! But no. It was actually Christmas holidays, 1997, which some will remember as the year when “Sleepy Time Ernie” was the hot ticket. When you squeezed his hand, Ernie would launch into a touching rendition of “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star”, at the end of which he would finally succumb to sleep. Everyone wanted one for their kid. Although I openly admit to keeping company with stuffed animals until an extremely late age, I was not particularly caught up in the Ernie hype, having been addicted to Goldeneye, which was also big at the time. However, my father has always been one to whimsically approach social trends, and so as a somewhat offbeat present, he bought one of the last Ernies in stock and gave it to my mother and I. When we asked why he said something along the lines of “just because”, though I think it may have been an acknowledgment of the fact that I was growing up, a reminder or else as self-assurance that no matter how vicious Christmas consumerism was getting, there were still some things pure and simple and good. And so I appreciated this gift. What made the gift so much more meaningful and difficult was the fact that my best friend at the time, Adam (not a pseudonym) had gotten a computer for Christmas. What bothered me even more than the jealousy of my friend getting a better computer than I was the sheer volume of porn sites he showed me that first day he introduced me to his new toy. Here we were, viewing all matter of penetrations, all so matter-of-factly, to the point where it became completely devoid of all erotic power. Later that day my parents and I drove out of town to see some relatives, packed snugly in the car with all the gifts. I was in close proximity to the Ernie doll my father had given me. And for the whole ride, every time I looked over at Ernie with his contented smile and pyjamas and tried to enjoy it for what it was, the image of some anonymous cock climbing into some anonymous vagina or anus kept flashing in my field of vision. Did this make me a bad person? Of course, I was not so conditioned by conservative morality to believe that sex and sexual thoughts were bad things, but I knew that there were higher common denominators on the sexual scale than hardcore porn (i.e. those blue movies on Super Channel that at least made the simulated sex look classy). That was among the saddest car-rides of my life.

So I guess that these lingering thoughts about the adorable TJ’s Pizza mascot are simply the latest iteration in this life-long series of mental wrestling matches between the cute and the invasive, the mild, timid and weak versus the powerful lusts. In this case, the juxtaposition is on a larger scale – not simply the cute versus the pornographic, but the innocent and naive versus broad concepts like suffering, conflict, alienation, and so forth. After all, any pornographic material save for rape films should not be viewed as inherently bad, as it brings joy to loyal perverts across the globe and apparently to couples (as John Holmes claimed). And it certainly helps sperm donors, who in turn bring joy to the sterile and impotent. Sure TJ is smiling so incessantly that it may give the appearance that his happiness is that of ignorance, the happiness that the Buddha warned so sternly against. But perhaps it is actually the happiness of knowledge – perhaps he realizes that we live in a realm of suffering, but that with his pizzas and his smiling face he can get individuals to look deeper into the world around them. Maybe then they will realize that suffering and happiness are the same. After all, we eat the pizza as a result of the cravings which characterize the cycle of Mara, but once it is inside us, we are contented. The taste may make us happy, at least for a while, and so the happiness and suffering are part and parcel. And with opposites dissolving as such, I am reminded of the tenth chapter of the Bhagavad Gita, where Lord Krishna lists off the many great things he is a part of, as well as the greatest of the not so great, of which he is also fully and completely. He reminds us that he is everything, and as such, that everything reflects him. Some things merely reflect his essence brighter. And so I am reminded that whether Ernie or Bert, Pooch Patrol or Porno mag or Porn star, all things are reflections of the divine, different wavelengths cast out of a prism, some brighter than others. And so I end this excursion by assuring myself and the reader too that TJ’s smile actually shines with the light of god.

Last night I lost my virginity. Twenty-four years of living oblivious to the pangs, the pressures, and the oh-so ubiquitous pop culture references, I stepped forth into manhood from my much-prolonged stay of ignorance and into the light. It is at this point I wish to staunch the tease and tell you forthright I will not proceed to tell you any details of my sex life, for that is not at all the purview of this paragraph. The virginity which was lost was indeed not of the sexual variety, but arguably one even more pathetic, considering it all centered around an act totally of my own volition. That is, last night I watched Star Wars for the very first time. Yes, the only cherry that was popped was that of virtually all pop culture itself, and finally I, the self-thought "cultural critic", finally learned a thing or two about what makes the world of facetious entertainment go round. All my life I had heard virtually every one of my male friends and relative allude ceaselessly to their favourite (and remarkably flat, I might add) characters: Luke, Han Solo, Chewie, etcetera, etcetera, and of course I had absorbed by osmosis such pivotal plot turns as "Luke, I am your father," however, it was last night that my eyes were first graced by all of the above. I can see now just to what extent the lives of my friends and family have been shaped by this film and the two which followed, as with pop culture itself. Indeed, it is a tired cliche (which I am now appreciating full-force) that Star Wars indeed forms the bedrock of almost all contemporary man-child culture. Case in point: upon seeing this movie, I now get at least two jokes in the Family Guy movie which I could not appreciate before, and will of course never appreciate fully having missed them the first time. Knowledge of Star Wars, it seems, is just a default assumption for the twenty-something, thirty something male, to the extent of being somewhat pathetic. Now I feel I am somewhat closer to the masses, a feeling toward which, as an only-child, I have been somewhat suspicious. It is at this point I might even be so conveniently self-serving (as is appropriate for the nature of blogs) to say that my delayed entrance into the world of the Star Wars initiated might have been a possible blessing. After all, modern man children (and some actual men) have, by consuming Star Wars from an infantile stage, ostensibly received lessons in Joseph Campbell's monomyth straight from the can, packaged and processed nicely so that it was accessible for the most plebian mind. Deprived of Star Wars as I was (due mostly to a parental apathy for bright lights and big explosions), I have struggled with the hero myth much later in life, as an adolescent writer and then as young intellectual and now as a wannabe scholar clutching tight my copy of Hero of a Thousand Faces. Thankfully, learning these mythological lessons engrained in the human psyche left me with a stack of short stories on my desk, and while most of them are crappy, they are worth a lot more, I'd say, than the millions of hours young boys everywhere spent in front of their parent's VCR's and DVD's getting them the easy way. Elitism? Not entirely. It might have been nice to absorbed the hero myth unconsciously via Luke and Darth and those perfunctory stormtroopers, rather than as a jaded, hyper-critical proto-academic. But in this grossly approximate intellectualization I am talking around my experience of the movie. You ask if it was good for me, and I'd respond, yeah, it was okay. But, like so many other first times, it had it's disappointments, its awkward moments, its continual footnotes referring back to the inadequacies of the participant. For instance, the DVD started skipping and pausing stochastically during chapter 26, that would be scene culminating in the explosion of the Death Star. While I did not see this climactic event, I must thank the pop culture gods that I was with a caring, understanding person when the skipping started. So thanks as well to James, who diligently informed me as to what had happened in the scene after we skipped past it, and promply reassured me I'd get to experience it for myself "next time". And of course, it was over so much sooner than I had anticipated. I had expected some grandiose, three hour romp, and so when Luke found the sweet spot just under two hours into the movie and the credits rolled thereafter, I felt mildly let down. "So that was Star Wars", I said to myself, laying my head back down on my pillow, then added a mental "Huh". So it was fine, I'll tell myself, though I surely hope it's better the next time.

I apologize for the fact that I have not written since the third night of this pilgrimage to Montreal. I wanted to keep a running tab of my easterly progress, but my pen was silenced first by the laziness of some of the days following, which provided me with little of any meaning to write about. The Ontario landscape does that to a person, I suppose. After that it was the craziness of Montreal that provided far too much stimuli to process into a few paragraphs. All of the new experiences had to be rarefied over a number of days and then recorded in abbreviated form as such.

August 23 was grey, hot, sultry; and so we did not leave camp and hit the road until almost noon. At this point we emerged from the bush and back onto the highway which cleaved it into two deep halves. Soon enough we were out of Wisconsin and then we were into Michigan. This is the tenth state I've been in this year between this trip and the one to Vegas two months ago, which makes 20% of the American states if you do the math. We travelled on through a number of indistinguishable burgs which may have been cities or may have been towns; it is very much indecipherable in this nation since every single pocket of civilization seems to have an A&W no matter what it's population. Unfortunatly, it has been Taco Bell at which I had been wishing to eat a meal throughout the trip, with little luck finding these places. Finally in Marquette, Michigan we found the squat building with the yellow gyprock siding, purple awning and of course the sign which states so confidently in block letters TACO BELL, and I instantly perked up in the passenger seat. "There it is! There it is!" I was saying as I pointed. Ray may have been skeptical of the institution, as he often is when I get so excited about what are for all intents and purposes utterly meaningless things, but he was soon to be enlightened to the way of the Bell. I ordered eight bean burritos, since they are dirt cheap and meatless. Ray ate two and was contented; I had four with the fire sauce and, with my stomach feeling ever so slightly gurglesome, I decided to save two for the night. They were even better cold, as it turns out.

As we drove deeper into Michigan, the land and the lifestyle began to change again as we approached the great lakes area. Suddenly the epic Lake Superior was beside us, stretching out into the sky, which was coloured an equal gray and so the two seemed to merge. Freshwater to infinity, it seemed. Along with the land the mode of life had begun to change as well. Now the little towns and cities we passed through bore a distinctly nautical feel. Thin, squat houses lined the shores beside us, and the roads through town weave along with shore line. The sky stayed grey and the A&W's advertise whitefish. That night we are camped between two towns something like this, Musisting and Wetmore, with the Canadian border eighty or ninety miles ahead of us. Brief interludes of rain sprinkled the roof and canvass as I fell asleep in the poptop bunk of this old VW.

We left the United States on August 24, 2007. Approximatley 20 miles before we reached the border we stopped at a gas station in no particularly significant location. Soon after Ray got out of the van a vehicle pulled up, basically an SUV, but distinguished by the words BORDER PATROL written on the side, along with DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY. At this point, a tall guy dressed in green fatigues, who was for all intents and purposes an army man, climbed out of the driver's seat with the slow, deliberate grandiosity of a wild west Sheriff climbing off his horse. He eyed our license plate. Ray looked at him for a while and finally said "Hello".

"Hello sir," the guy replied in this archetypal gym teacher voice, "how are you."

"Good," Ray said.

And then the guy walked in toward the store, while various individuals who must have been locals said hello to him with a loving twang, and he appended "sir" to the end of every reply in kind. I suppose these were all rather innocuous exchanges, though the real pathos was embodied in what happened every so quietly while the crossing guard was inside the store. During this time, the squat, fat man in the SUV which was filling up at the pump next to us, the one with the curiously contrasting bumper stickers on the bumper (HOMELAND SECURITY: PROTECTING OUR BORDER FROM TERRORISTS SINCE 1792 and THE EARTH DOES NOT BELONG TO US, WE BELONG TO THE EARTH), takes out his camera in the driver's seat and starts filming the border control vehicle parked just a few feet away. He probably got a good three good minutes of footage. I reckon he was either some kind of spy in the disguise of an indistinguishable slothful American, or else, -- and this is the more likely explanation as pathetic as it may be -- he was just so overcome with pride and admiration having seen one of the good old American boys protecting the homeland, that he had to record it on tape so he could relive that feeling of pride over and over again.

With that incident in mind, by the time we got to the border I was ready to leave America, in spite of all my ruminations as to its beauty in the previous four days. After one last meal at Taco Bell, where Ray and I chowed down on these beautiful Cheese Bean and Rice half-pound Burritos which were only 99 cents, we drove to the international bridge which leads to the Canadian side of Sault Ste. Marie and drove across. During this drive we observed the line, probably 100 cars deep, consisting of people entering into the United States, which was backed up all the way to land on the other side of the bridge. There was not nearly so many cars waiting to get into Canada, which is understandable, as the Canadian guard asked as but two or three questions then let us through. We drove on through the busy roads of Soo and out into the country, and made camp at a KOA near Spragge Ontario which seemed to be full of nothing but chatty old German people with painfully thick accents, every one of whom wanted to gobble on about the van.

The days between the twentifith and thirty-first of August have pretty much blended together as one. Saturday, the twentififth, was marked by heavy rains all through Ontario through which we continued. We travelled past Sudbury and North Bay, somewhat embittered by the rain and the roadside urinals which could hardly be called private, all the while listening to the ocean-like slosh of rainwater which had accumulated behind the dashboard. We must thank the gods for a sustaining vegetarian pizza we got at some Ontario town around supper time which provided us with the modicum of morale we needed to continue the trip.

Sunday the twenty-sixth began as another day of driving, in which we planned to hang around in Ottawa awhile then make camp in the far reaches of Ontario. Ottawa was inspiring: after weaving through labrynthine streets and finally parking in proximity to downtown, we perhaps felt somewhat alienated as the lone Saskatchewanese in proximity. However, once we came upon the grandeur of the parliament buildings and immersed ourselves in the swarms of tourists, we felt undeniably at home. After that we headed out of Ottawa toward Montreal, though my map-reading was apparently inadequate, as I instructed Ray to exit onto the road which read MONTREAL/CORNWALL, the 417, as opposed to the 174, another eastward bound highway, much smaller, that he had wanted to take. Ray may have swore up a storm, although it turned out the 417 had us travelling a lot faster and was only a few miles further to the same destination. We decided to set out course for Vaudreil, a suburb sleeping town outside of Montreal, but after exiting into the dark town and discovering the unconceivable fact that the campground there closed at 6 pm on Sundays, we were left with no other choice but to drive all the way to Montreal. After Ray spat another series of obscenities, we drove into Montreal in the darkness.

If I had expected to suddenly see the city that will be my home for the next eight months appear in all its street-lit majesty over the night horizon, such a sight was not to be. Rather, we had the anticlimatic task of navigating through the many highly commercial suburbs, and then into the heart of the city thanks to some rather haphazard use of the exits. While Ray commandeered the vehicle, I read the map by flashlight, and together we manuevered down the thin nighttime streets, congested as they were thick with all varieties of humanity. Finally, we found Rue Sherbrooke, which has proved to be the main vein to and through the heart of Montreal, off of which we found the turn to University Drive and there we were, bounding past the tall, crammed buildings which stood like giant exotic animals on their haunches. We hooked a right at Prince Arthur, having memorized the route in advance, and found almost instantly the sign marked Lorne Crescent, the location of my new home. Quickly we found my new place and sized it up, not unimpressed by its eight stories and 1970's architectural sensibility, which sat in contrast to all the interchangeable 2 story turn-of-the-century domiciles by which we were surrounded. With that in place, we walked rather aimlessly down to a strange and exotic street which we now know by the name of Parc Avenue, looking for a hotel or an eating place and of course and looking like total dilletantes. But what option do you have during your first hours in a new city? Eventually we found the Second Cup coffee shop near the end of the street where it turns onto Milton, where so many busied intellectuals sat leaning into their laptops and math texts and calculators. Here we drank some Earl Gray tea, not knowing what else to order when faced with so many exotic coffee beverages written in French. After regaining our bearings, we decided that our best option was to make camp on the very street in which we were parked, within the quiet student ghetto. Our sleep was brief, as the party-goers had started with their whoop-whoops and insecure chortles in the streets, undeterred by the fact it was Sunday evening. Nonetheless, we each musted a few hours of sleep with the bed put down in the back of the van.

That morning we awoke before seven, trying to get out of our space before it became a no park zone at 9:30 lundi. We shopped around aimlessly, and in the meantime got a hotel room, while we waited to try again and get a hold of the guy from whom I would be assuming the lease. We finally accomplished this task by the evening, and slept without difficulty. The next morning we finally got around to seeing the apartment and I moved the majority of my stuff in while Ray waited in the no-parking zone in front of the place with the van's blinkers on. After performing numerous clerical tasks on the stately McGill campus, I paid a visit to Birks Hall, wherein the religious studies department is contained. The interior is dark and austere, a building not so much beautiful but at the very least remarkable on the basis of its age alone. The second floor reading room/library is particularly auspicious, with a sign on the door which explains to all those about to enter that they must remove their shoes, due to the sheer age of the hardwood floor. I have not yet seen the beauty of this room for myself, however, as the sign on the door was enough to convince me that this was the kind of room which commanded a grand and therefore pre-scheduled entry.

Thursday the thirtieth was spent mostly in the process of orientation along with the other grad students, during which we met our venerable professors. After all this academic ooga booga talk, we the grad students went out for beers at Thomson Hall, which I am told is the place for people such as ourselves. It was refreshing talking to someone other than Ray, and about something other than mileage or the banality of Ontario. I also came to the assurance of my classmates that, even as a lowly qualifying year student, I am indeed considered a graduate student nonetheless.

Yesterday, just as today, have been set aside as days of rest, or at least I hope they have. Having fulfilled all of our clerical duties, last night Ray and I traipsed into the stream of people on St. Catherines and took in a movie. It was this morning, 4:10 to be precise, that the fire alarm went off in the building, which was evacuated. We stood in the cold morning air along with the rest of the sallow-faced tenants while the fire trucks arrived, and the firemen which operated them hurried off of them, and back on, when they came to the conclusion that this disturbance was no more than a false alarm. This was hardly a surprise. Montreal seems to falling apart, as every day since I've had the TV hooked up the nightly news has reported some crumbling metro station, some water mane break, some closed street, and some Six Flags park dumping its raw sewage in the St. Lawrence seaway. The city is falling apart.

Regardless of the impeded sleep last night, this morning I have finally taken the time to compile a record of these previous three days. The diary without some critical commentary, however, is merely functional and prosaic at best, thus, I should offer some commentary on the spirit of Montreal, having already decried its infrastructure. The city itself is always uninterested, not aggressively so as in Toronto, but out of respect, rather. French is of course ubiquitous, but the English is not hidden by any means, and most every local we have come into contact with has been willing to flip over and speak en englais so long as we append the word "hello" to "bonjour." There are no vile stares cast our way when Ray and I talk, in effective quelling the stereotype of the ever eye-rolling separatist, disgusted by the coarse tones of English.

I suppose I should also provide some commentary on the McGill campus. Although I was impressed with Birks Hall, as I was impressed generally by the sheer age of the buildings of campus, I am suspicioius of fawning over the grounds so soon. Not only do I want to abstain from such Romanticizations at this point, but my McGill experience has also been taken somewhat aback by the volume of beer, noise and party that has characterized this first week. Of course, it has to be Frosh week here, wherein dozens of scantly clad co-eds, from whom a thousand slasher flick casts could be culled, drink themselves stupid and reduce themselves to an utterly child-like state. Would you believe they even had one of those inflatable children's slides set up in the main yard? The noise echoes up the streets each night, pub-crawlers on their perpetual street-walks, shirtless or in togas screaming "OLE, OLE OLE O-OLAY" through all hours of the night. Drinking is the sport, the measuring stick by which the college experience is measured for these roustabouts. I thought I could escape this aspect of college life to some degree by distancing myself from cow-colleges like the University of Saskatchewan, where the concentration of Plebian proto-alchoholics unconcerned with intellectual progression seemed decidedly greater. Despite McGill's reputation, this type of student seems to be in no short supply. Although this will never go away, from Frosh week to Finals, it will surely decrease in its intensity; and otherwise, I'm sure the various beauties of this campus will unravel themselves as the term goes on.

Speaking of beauty, I am not adverse to wagering a comment on the women of this campus and this city at large. Montreal must be at least a Medina for stunning women, if not the Mecca itself. And Montreal is an ass town, by my best estimation. This city is sure to satisfy those who are drawn from their less licentious thoughts by beautiful backsides, whether they be of the taut or delightfully shapely variety. An endless supply of girls pace these sidewalks, dressed not in jeans or sweaters or other masculine vestments as they are back home, but rather in dresses and skirts and short-shorts and skin-tight leggings. The tights, oh god the tights, clinging to ever curve and crevass like they were naked from the waist down. Those tight little pants, into which only so much of their beautiful buttocks, which is never in short supply, can be tucked -- and so these asses jiggle and juggle with such unfettered sweetness. So many of these women stride by, gripping a hand-bag, their skin, hair, and eyes so dark, the latter so often invisible and mysterious but so obviously beautiful behind shades. They are always preoccupied so they never look directly at you -- the preoccupation is the sexiest. God bless Montreal women -- the pilgrimage is complete!

Two days ago my father and I left home on our fantastic journey to Montreal, in which I will begin my tenure of graduate studies at McGill University (or something like it -- they want me to do a qualifying year first). Regardless, this is probably the single largest development in my twenty-three years on this earth, and so the departure was met with no shortage of emotion. The last goodbyes were of course touching; I believe I had a tear welling in my eye as I posed for one last picture with Big Kitty, and the little animal actually showed some affection by licking my nose, as if to know. Finally we got out of town and Ray, once perturbed, was eased of all his tensions. We drove through the usually banal prairies, which seemed less prosaic this last time around, now imbued with a sentimentality which I steadily projected upon them as they flew by and "Freebird" by Skynyrd cycled through my head. My last trip through Saskatchewan for a while was punctuated in the South when Ray and I suddenly came upon a familiar looking entrance to a town. I quickly looked to the stalwart elevator which stood there and saw that it read Dog River. Suddenly the archetypal gas station on the corner proved to be the Corner Gas, and as we came closer, its obvious Hollywood sheen stood out from the usual Saskatchewan corner store fare. Ray stopped and captured a few minutes of film. Then we headed into town, seeing the Dog River Municipal Police Station, the Dog River bar, and the modest arena in which the Dog River River Dogs play. This town of Rouleau, smack dab in the middle of flat prairie and by all indications the apotheosis of Saskatchewan life, was perhaps the best possible memory I could leave Saskatchewan with: a reminder that our lives are indeed of some significance, albeit humorous, to the rest of the country at the very least. We drove on through Weyburn and Estevan, and reached the North Portal border crossing to the States at about 6:25. The portal guy -- would he be considered a Crossing Guard?-- was actually fairly decent: he talked of Volkswagen vans and checked our identification, then took an effortless peek in the cupboards and the fridge of the van, I suppose fearing the citrus fruits we hippies would be carrying as opposed to the more serious forms of international terrorism. Our story checked out (I say that because one really has to think like a criminal to get into America now), and we were soon rolling down the smooth highway 52 of North Dakota.

We wound up at a place called Kenmare, delightfully small town. As we drove to the town center to find a phone to call up Biff back home, we found that the downtown was not one street per se, but instead a square bordered by four. It was beautiful, festooned all around the perimeter with small, bright bulbs, and was home to many trees with a well-lit windmill at the center. I also heard music. Rolling down my window, belting out loud and clear from speakers positioned around the town square were tunes from the 30's and 40's it seemed, loud, yes, but relaxing. When Ray went into the bar to ask some people where we could find a phone, he came back claiming that the people incorrigibly nice, a factoid that did not surprise me at all. Here we have all that is good about America: well-preened streets and town square, nice people and quiet, content houses. The only downside to all these niceties is the fact that they are probably informed by conservative thinking. Ask any of these polite, slow-talking townies about gay marriage or gun control, and you'd probably see the ugly side. Regardless, we stayed at the campground near the highway, which was at times noisy, but we were sufficiently tired from the 372 miles we made during the day, and slept soundly nonetheless.

Yesterday, the twenty-first, we continued on, of course, through the remainder of Eastern North Dakota and eventually into Minnesota. The angelic voice of the well-grooved concrete North Dakota highways had me on the verge of sleep in the passenger's seat more than a few times. We have talked to several Americans along the way, all of whom have been courteous and conversational. In a place called Rugby, for example, the gas station attendant, a paunchy forty-something man, commented very politely on our van and the good shape in which it was in. As we pulled away from the gas station, Ray mused as to whether or not "these people try harder because we're Canadian or if they're just genuinely nice." Accordingly, I've found so far that the stereotypes prefiguring Americans to be ignorant rednecks is highly exaggerated. In fact, the people in these parts are marked by unmatched veracity and grace. Perhaps this is simply a function of their more sparse population in the Northern United States and the sheer simplicity of life here. Regardless, the courtesy came to a head last night when after we'd cruised into Fosston, Minnesota, the quiet town of 1575 in which we camped and are now about to leave. Searching for a pay phone to provide Biff with her nightly call, we asked a filling station attendant if he had a payphone or knew of where we could find one. He informed us that there were none in town at that time of night, but, in the wake of this unfortunate news, he offered that we use his cell phone. We informed him that it was a long-distance call we wanted to make, though this did not perturb him, for he claimed too have "more minutes" than he could ever need. Our call failed to connect, however, he took a message saying Ray and I were doing fine just in case Biff were to call back. This kind of courtesy cannot be manufactured, and I believe one would be hard-pressed to find it in Saskatchewan and certainly not in Alberta. Perhaps we the Canadians are the truly angry ones.

Today we descended deeper in the cottage country of Minnesota, a bushy area replete with tourists and citizens alike old and dressed to the nines in their hunting caps and camouflage vests. Ready for the kill, I suppose. Now we have come to see some of the dark, reactionary side of America that we hear so much about in the "liberal media". I have measured this devolution in courtesy by way of the stickers in the windows and on the bumpers of the cars which pass us on the highway so frequently. Some of my favorites are: WORK HARDER, MILLIONS ON WELFARE ARE DEPENDING ON YOU and BOYCOT FRANCE. One truck bore a sticker on the back of a old Dodge read: Guns, Ducks, Bucks and Trucks, which I think sums up the four sustaining elements of the redneck lifestyle quite adequately. And then there are the pro-life billboards, which seem to spring up every mile in this perpetual metropolitan freeway of Minnesota, reminding us when a heart first starts beating in utero; when a smile first forms upon the fetal face. One pair of signs we saw upon entering Wisconsin was particularly amusing. The first read PRAY FOR OUR TROOPS; the next, like an afterthought, added AND THERE FAMILIES TOO. I find this delightful misspelling cute, quite frankly, considering the depths of irrationality and desperation the simple act of prayer entails in the context of aiding an entire nation in escaping a disastrous war effort with its dignity. Thankfully, there are some more astute sign-bearers out there. One Duluth resident had placed a delightful IMPEACH BUSH sign on his front lawn, which brought a small but reassured smile to my face.

We stopped numerous times on the road today, twice so that Ray could get a stimulating beverage in order to provide him with the fortitude to deal with the single-lane highway which weaves through the woodlands of Minnesota and Wisconsin, as well as one other instance in which I needed forty winks. We find ourselves camped tonight at a lake resort just outside of Iron River, Wisconsin. Unfortunately, I am hungry, as our only food stops today came at rest stops, where we consumed paltry meals of cheese, bread, pickles and pudding. Ray shopped once today whille I napped and came back with little more than potato salad, which I abstained from eating, as I consider it one of the lowest forms of edible material -- a culinary cop-out which does as little good for my stomach as it does for my taste buds. Regardless, this campsite is comfortable and equipped with the wireless internet, so what more can I ask for. God Bless America.

Last night I was dragged out to the local theatre by some friends to see the sneak preview of Transformers. As could be expected, the theatre was packed row on row with nerds -- the droopy-chested, slab-thighed, four-eyed miscreants with burgeoning guts and bad facial hair. Naturally, I felt right at home. However, as is common, I was disconcerted by this crowd; what disconcerted me the most was the fact most of these men were in their twenties. Obviously men of large imagination and procedural intellect with little in the way of social graces, as can be expected, here to watch in large CGI grandiosity the heroic toys of their youths. Certainly this was an activity in whimsy for each of these nerds, or so I thought. After all, malleable metallic lifeforms must seem passe to the developed male intellect.

Apparently this is not so, and I was corrected quite quickly. At one point I turned to one of my cronies in order to make one of my trademark mid-movie glib remarks, in these case attempting to comment upon Optimus Prime's huge metal package, I was greeted with a harsh "SHHHHH" from my buddy. He did not even take his eyes off the screen. I suppose the monolithic granduer of Optimus Prime's gigantic junk was too captivating for the eye of the overgrown child.

In the aftermath of my failed comment, I took the time to look around the theatre. And there they were, the heads of man-children, row after row, their mouths agape, their unevenly mustachioed lips held taught, still and straight as if transfixed in meditation upon the miraculous appearance of an ancient diety. This was no jocular retrospective upon the worn-out toys of childhood -- this was the sad reality of all we have left to worship in an increasingly secular, technocratic society. The amorphous mass of explosion and colour on the screen was nothing less than celluloid syrup, perhaps medicinal, providing a brief soothing reprieve for each and every one of these overgrown children, pulling them away from lives that have long been meaningless, the happiness therein measured by the amount of days until the next archetypal cartoon of their more and more distant childhood is released on the big screen

At this point I was reminded of something Gandhi's right-hand man Vinoba Bhave once wrote: "Instead of going out into the open air at night, and looking up at the moon and the stars in the sky, and enjoying the holy peace of Nature, why do people get cooped up in theaters and watch and applaud the dance of these fiery figures?...why is man so joyless? The poor fellow finds some sort of pleasure in these lifeless figures. When there is no joy in life, people go in for such artificial amusements."

I think this lengthy quotation sums up escapist fictions such as Transformers quite adequately. When the nerd -- the over-grown child -- realizes, probably unconsciously, the waning importance of life in a world which grows more and more overpopulated, he regresses back to his pre-pubescent childhood, the last time he could ever claim any genuine significance in another's life (I say he because this level of hopelessness is reserved invariably for the male nerd). So he passively puts his faith in lifeless figures of the false idols of his youth, Optimus Prime, Megatron and so on, and gets his pleasure from something utterly empty, that is, the memory of his childhood. All the while, realities (or the closest things we have to reality) such as art, literature, and of course, relationships, pass him by in the midst of his regression. However, there will always be the statuesque two-dimensional image of Optimus Prime (along with his truly breathtaking steel banana-hammock) to inspire the nerd with a feeling of place and meaning.