They're hanging folks in Dublin for the wearin' of the green... (1 of a series)

My, my. I am prolific of late.

As if you didn't know this was coming. Now in all frankness, I'm Scottish inherently, but it's not like St Patrick's Day has ever really been about Ireland over wearing green and puking up green beer. People need social pressure valves with which to release all the pent up frustration at thundering mediocrity and hopelessness of the daily grind and what better way than to find another excuse to get drunk. It's like how Halloween evolves from trick-or-treating to fucking a drunken sorority girl dressed as Catwoman in a public bathroom whilst costumed as a police officer. Holidays evolve and mean different things to people depending on their age, status, and current situation in life (ever seen a singles Christmas party? My lord). But I'm digressing, here. When I originally put this up as a kind of way in which to feel like anything I decided to write was being published, only without all the rejection letters and death of hope, I did do something along the lines of promise my audience (AHAHA) drinking stories. So within this update shall be recounted the journey to Boston in the brave year 2010 for good old St-Patrick's.

This idea germinated, as most ideas related to alcohol, in the austere and absolute misery the 1RCR Battle Group underwent during work-up training in Fort Irwin, California. More often than not pre-deployment consists of undergoing temperatures around -50 degees Celcius (that's right, Yanks) in the winter wonderland of Alberta's own Wainwright training area, the irony of contracting frostbite while preparing to fight in in a featureless desert not lost on us in the slightest. So every so often, in coalition with the States, we send our forces on a little field trip down south for some more relevant desert warfare. The double irony of this being that the Canadian Forces war-machine seems to unfailingly drag its native weather with it wherever it goes. Skeptical?

Texas, Summer of '08

Ain't that a bitch. So of course, the Surfboard State was no different - and although none of us actually believed they were sending us to fucking sunny California for training (referring the upcoming exercise as Op California Dreamin' and readying our winter-whites for Wainwright), we would probably have been better off up north. Outside being less than adequately prepared for the weather (it's CALIFORNIA! Surf's up!), the Mojave desert broke it's 22-year tradition of drought to bring us Canucks snowfalls unheard of, sleet, torrential rain, sudden and plummeting drops in temperature, all of which culminating in state-wide flash-flooding which severely interrupted any counter-insurgency operations. 

 'Once more into the breach, dear friends...' 

All two months of California sucked, and I can't remember being more miserable in Afghanistan even during the lowest points of team morale. So of course we needed some form of escapism, and outside the duly practiced traditions of FOB(Forward Operating Base)-wide prankery (focusing on conversations played out exclusively in porta-potty limerick) doing something extravagant for everyone's favourite reason to get drunk played a sizable part in our perseverance. The decision was made on Boston, and like Tolkien's Fellowship, we would return home only to embark upon another journey. 

The trip 'to Boston' became an 'epic Road Trip' worthy of a National Lampoon movie, because when you have nothing to do but keep your feet dry and smoke cigarettes it becomes easier to build on something already long-established. By the time we set off, the journey would take us to Vermont, where we would (assumedly) drink Baileys from crystalline goblets in log-cabin hot tubs while ski-bunny goddesses dripped hot maple syrup down our nubile bodies and fed us helpings of the state's famous cheese- then, to two days in Boston and a Dropkick Murphy's concert, and unbeknown to us at the time, a final and belligerent stay in London, Ontario. We suited up - because no event and no occasion should mar a gentleman from dressing his finest - and entered the screenplay of a raunchy comedy (only with cleverer witticisms). 

Vermont, of course, was an absolute bust. 

This leg of the journey was orchestrated by Jeff. Jeff (I wish I had made-up monikers for the dramatis personae of characters who will probably never discover the online record of this journey) is an agent of chaos - and I don't mean the sort of chaos resplendent in the work of Douglas Adams, but the mathematical chaos that decrees by law all organized systems will break-down inevitably due to equally inevitable agents of change. Jeff is like the weather, as unpredictable now as ever and always will be, a man whose sole existence seems to exist beneath the skin of his peers, to find the cracks in armour, to light matches against the tar-soaked foundations of reality. To say he's an alcoholic would be a misnomer - he merely propagates his will into the more socially congested intersections of society - the alehouse. He will be understanding and accepting towards incredulity and awfulness, belligerent and unruly to provoke humane responses, say the most horrible but verbose things (with a kind of poetic vulgarity) to chase away and disgust outright, or act in a depraved and savage manner (or goad others into doing so) in order to shake the comfort zones of those who find themselves in his terrible gravity. He orchestrated this trip probably to tick another social experiment off the terrible, motivational machine which floats him through life. He is the kind of guy who publicly demeans anti-war protesters and shrieks "Babykiller!" into the faces of newly recruited soldiers to just revel in the resulting negative harmonic frequency. In any case, though I immortalize him on the page he is as easily dupeable as the rest of us, and so did we land at the Golden Eagle Resort in Stowe, Vermont. 

   

 A far cry from...

...what we expected.

We really should have taken the hint just driving through Stowe - a city (village) with an antique shop on every street corner and a population of fifty. Nevertheless, we'd booked the resort in advance - making the beds we'd all have to sleep in. After much accusatory verbal torture (directed towards Jeff) and public hysterics on my part (when the "resort", already looking more like a Christmasy bed-and-breakfast, was found to be filled with the elderly playing cribbage), we decided to capitalize on our collective losses by getting really, really drunk in our hotel rooms. Which we did, shot-gunning Coors and Bud by the crate and sloppily throwing on our suit-jackets and dress pants over dress-shirts and v-necked tees in a kind of sharp-casual mess which screamed of too-long inebriated motor-skill and coordination. After an increasingly ridiculous succession of drinking games the question remained as to what in the fuck we would do with our night which seemed all but squandered in the sleepy and probably fundamentalist community from which we thrust our hands through allegorically barred window-panes. 

"Bars?"

"Bars."

St-Patrick's of 2010 found itself hopelessly on a Wednesday, which meant of course that this new and exotic bar-scene we were trying to "quote-un-quote" hit-up would be revealing to us all the excitement and possibilities of an average Monday night. Now say what I will about the Golden Eagle (where fun goes to die), it has a pretty sweet local transit system consisting of a bus which makes its way around the local public distilleries. We stumbled out into winter darkness and eventually found ourself on the fucking sweetest bus ride ever. This was accentuated merely by the fact that our driver, a middle-aged black man with a kind of underlying contempt for his current station in life despite his very sociable personality and brilliantly jovial antics, was balls to the walls awesome. He laughed hysterically when we demanded carriage to the local pub-scene (like the word "scene" was so out of place in this sleepy graveyard of an interstate check-stop it had become a fairy-tale in itself) in slurred tones of voice and offered to ferry us about this 'winter wonderland' all for the sake of his personal amusement. Also because he very clearly had nothing else to fucking do - really the question "Slow-night?" would've probably drawn offense at this point. We discovered that Stowe really isn't such a sink-hole every day of the year, and in fact we'd missed the rush of "nubile and boozy females", who blow through the resorts and liquor-stores every year, with the early wane of winter. No skiing, no heartbeat. 

In that light (a stark and unforgiving one), he offered to drive us up to Burlington, where the college kids roam free-range through the wine-soaked gutters and hostels. Of course, Jeff and me stood up and mouthed yes with such mirth and solemnity we might have been Kirk Douglas in Spartacus - but this idea was quickly negated (and probably for good reason, although I still fail to see it) by our remaining group (who out-numbered us despite our winning personalities, those treacherous pigs). Now the secret to a solid road trip, I found, is a combination of personalities which can thrive and feed off each other or at the very least spur on the weaker iterations into tomfoolery. The three dominating forces of this particular example being Jeff and me, and Tim. Tim is a big (not even really big, mind you, but made out to be by defacto group-stereotyping) and boisterous Chris Farley of a man with a dream of Dulce-Gabbania and an illusion of class and sophistication so dramatic he postulated the "Smoke-and-Mirrors" theorem of bar-hopping - that despite your character flaws, financial moorings, and terrible habits, you can still be a social leader by disguising all of these in a finely tailored suit with minuscule, flashy accessories, sharp wit, or at the very least a larger-than-life personality. He is a man who is most often quoted as apologizing the next morning for something he did the night before. Tim is a leading personality, he is capable of commandeering the most socially awkward of personalities and dragging them through such alcohol-related adventures as to warp their perspectives on life entirely. The malformed and obnoxious gravities of us three would for the four days drawn so many into our orbit the number of lives partially affected by our savage debauchery is just nonsense. The argument, thus, was long and ferocious and drunk as all fuck but Tim managed to win out and we bid farewell to Burlington, crushed a few more tall-boys, and explored every nook and cranny in a town that seemed to be constructed of... well, nooks and crannies. 

Now the names of the bars escape this blogger. The names of people and the passage of events in many of these adventures is foggy at best and a blackout otherwise. We cruised through quite a few - some closed and almost boarded up, some vacant but for souls so crushed by factory work the beers they consumed after work and into the night kept them anesthetized though the following day, some but for the snowboard instructors and resort workers stuck in time dilation between then and the next snowfall - and some with some interesting characters indeed. Our driver stopped in for a brew or too as well, before heading home an hour or so away past the end of his shift. In any case, we quickly made friends and raised questions and drinks alike, and were eventually followed around by some of the board-jockeys whose Monday just got somewhat more interesting. We ended up at a meagre little pub where a couple of old boys were drinking and smoking and the occasional townie stopped by to say hello over a pint and a cigarettes. There we met two rather interesting characters - two older, both of whom had been on multiple tours of duty in Vietnam as part of the Marines and Engineers (I thinm) respectively and with whom we got right proper shit-faced, and if they ever stumble upon this - you boys made our fucking night.

Now all through the weeks leading up to and the road trip itself we were perfecting a sublime and exaggerated fallacy in which we would disguise ourselves for the sake of our personal entertainment. This was posing as deep sea bulldozers, a lie so polished its plausible deniability surpassed its stupidity. Combining the austere manliness of deep-sea diving and salvaging with a fabricated acceptable ratio of 'operational casualties' to rival the French Foreign Legion's, we took bits and pieces of roughnecking, submarining, and every other interesting job we could think of and began to create. Everything from hidden cultural references to alarm those with granules of intelligence (like naming our 'aquatic dozer' the HMCS Bellafonte from the Life Aquatic), to a fabricated slang language to grease our own comfort level (and thus, believability), to ancient post-Industrial schematics of hypothesized undersea machinery, to an outright insane hierarchy of crewing positions like 'first science officer' and 'skipper'. A 'dig' was an operation consisting of excavation on the ocean floor, a 'push' was removing debris, we were 'aqua-dozers' for short. We even fabricated a legend surrounding Jason's father, the 'greatest dozer' in the history of the job, who'd died rescuing Jeff from an accident that left him physically scarred (more on that later). 

This shit was eaten up with such eagerness it makes one somewhat misanthropic, but even if more than half those people didn't believe one bit of it, it was all in great, great fun.

Of course, we dropped this facade when we ran into the 'Nam vets, because it was quite simply more interesting talking with these guys than it was dragging along jockey after jockey on our insane lie. The highlight of the night was enduring one of the townie's swearing by 'the time he tried to join the army' and the reasons he wasn't able to, a story every enlisted man has heard a million fucking times by a million fucking slobs all trying to work their fingers into the cracks of a private conversation or simply to offer thanks for something of which they know absolutely nothing and understand even less. Raising his glass with an unstable arm, he toasted to the 'men who protect our freedom' or some such drivel while everyone else at the table kind of looked around uncomfortably and then, tuning in on the same vibration - a kind of frequency through which was communicated every feeling of alienation against the civilian world - one of the vets smiled, raised his glass and said 'Semper Fi, you hosers' to which we all cheered uproariously. 

Our trip through Stowe ended with the first of an increasingly painful chain of morning-afters, blasphemed by the rays of the sun and the noise with which it crept through our shuttered windows. I can't remember if we drank more when we got back to the hotel - although I think we staggered in unevenly one at a time from wherever we ended up - and for some reason (as inexplicable as the suddenness of an earthquake) Jeff had shit in my favorite hat and left it there as a testament to his individuality. Even I couldn't help but laugh.

We crammed into Cody's Ford and set off for Boston - ready to turn the city into our toilet. 

Stay tuned for the next entry, which will cover in detail the following morning and...   

Well

Actually that chicken was alright. Made dipping sauce out of mustard and Frank's Red. St Patty's Day tomorrow and I think within the next few I'll illustrate the kind of thing I usually do this special time of year, notably my 2010 trip to the city of Boston.

Damn Insuralife

There's  a somewhat marked difference between living on your own and living on your own, and it's really best differentiated by whether your parents are willing/capable to float you through University (and beyond if you're one of those) or not. I moved out west at the literal drop of a hat - without preamble or foresight, based entirely on the overpowering volition to get away and see something else than the bloody stagnant Ottawa valley. I had about 2, 000$ in my pocket, hadn't paid tuition beforehand and went to University as broke as can be expected from someone with the poor decision-making skills I seem to revel in. I worked three jobs, snuck onto Lethbridge's mediocre bus transportation system (or indeed, found marvelously brilliant ways in which to spend little-to-no money without ever shucking out the 600$ for a school-term bus pass - like dumping unfathomable amounts of change which in fact only amounted to like 65c), drank Black Label or the local college drinkery's patent-blended swill, knew every drink special of every day of the week, and hadn't even started smoking yet.

I can't help but look back on those halcyon days with a kind of gleeful enthusiasm, despite the gross financial miscalculations I made, and even though I am much less comfortable now it was probably still worth it, well, in the Jungian sense I guess. Actually, Carl Jung would probably fork the evil I at me from across the street in those days (I really just wanted to use the word Jungian, fuck it, nobody reads this). Well, fuck him, too. In order to finance (ha, finance) my way through post-secondary I took out a $10, 000 bank loan (a student loan) - OSAP was and is too inept and bloated a financial aid institution for me to rely on, since I had no money to speak of and needed rent money pronto). And well, this "get out of jail free" card sank me through enormous binges, fraternal initiatory ceremonies, groceries, and occasionally books. I ashamedly will admit I borrowed from my parents back then, but dammit, I was the only child gone away for an education and the next-up was wholly devoted to work-place alcoholism with the military on a full-time basis in Ottawa. Of course, in January I'd bled that vein dry, and had to take out another one. And then another.

I was never raised in a rich family, or even a comfortable one in that sense - the phantasms of debt, bankruptcy, and poverty stormed above our kitchen table like Mordorian thunderheads - putting my parents at ferocious odds with each other - especially on budget night, a word that became synonymous with divorce and foster-home on Webster's dictionary of "words kids hate overhearing". And yet, the littler things - like watching The Simpsons in its earliest inception on a 13-channel (and I mean 13 buttons people) television the width of my laptop computer screen, the Nintendo my aunt and uncle gave us, and the once-in-a-blue-moon trip to Macdonald's - seem brighter in colour by suns than the worst of times. I can't say I've ever been materialistic and probably never will be, I don't need a new car or tv or, well, really anything except books and something to write with to live in contentment. When I was formerly moving to Newfoundland I was overjoyed at the prospect of saving up enough money to make a down payment on a brightly-purple coloured shanty stacked on top of itself like a closet with four-walls and raising a kid in a cramped and cozy little swamp.

Still, $30, 000 of student debt for two years worth of university is awe-striking and imposing spectre to banish. It's also a fuck up. Had I properly saved money (or read The Wealthy Barber before I was chewing on my fucking belt) during my year-plus of work-up training I could've banished the shit out of it and then had my tour-money to play around with as I pleased.

Today I was about to leave buy myself lunch for the first time in two months, found out Insuralife had stricken $26 from my bank account, putting me into overdraft again. So in a half hour I'll be enjoying two unseasoned, expired chicken patties I'd forgotten about long-since in their corner of my minuscule freezer instead of a Reuben at the Arrow & Loon, which is my defacto pub due to its silly walking distance from my front door. Last night I managed to whip up canned beans and corn with steak spice. Things are somewhat.. different these days, and the options are scarcer. When I moved in to my little hovel in the Ottawa Glebe I had the foresight to do a disaster-grocery - we're talking underground bomb-shelter type food-stuffs and now I'm watching my supply of canned foods dwindle. I managed to cover last rent, and have since been ignoring the ringing of my phone and waiting for any income that can get me some bread.

Now granted, there are people who're far worst off than I am and have burned far more bridges, but this is a bitter spoonful and a bit of a learning experience which is why I'm ranting about it now. The worst I'd been off was a week in University where all I could afford to do was pushups and visit the food bank. The difference now is the horizon is much farther off these days, and other questions - like what I'm going to have to do to set myself back on track - are echoing a little louder. Me and my second-youngest brother (who's as bad at making decisions as yours truly) weren't doing much but smoking when we had 'em and waiting out the storm. I'll remember distinctly being stranded in Nepean with nothing after a job interview with Iron Horse security, where we had to sneak onto the 95 without being challenged lest we walk back my house near Lansdown at night through Ottawa's spectacularly shrieking winter. There's a point where your friends ask you to come out to the bar, try and guilt you even, and the anger sets in - because they don't seem to understand what you mean when you say I'm broke, the $20 they offer you for Jaegerbombs would be better spent on groceries, and there's something frightening about being that broke and hung-over.

Money's a god damned bitch. I'm at a point, post-Afghanistan, where I have no fucking idea what I want to do in life - and the only thing that feels right is going back to University. Crossing my fingers I'll be able to afford it.

Nuff said.

Just have to have one last..."

 . 

You know when I do actually get the motivation up to update this thing (bet you thought it would never happen, eh? Eh? Pff!) I do have to strain the working of my mind on what precisely I should write about. Booze, sex and smoking right? Still, I can stand to be a little more creative. I was going to write up a rather elaborate post about the nature of New Year's Eve, and just how virulently everyone's expectations seem to rise towards having a good time just this once to the point where the night's activities never really fill the void. Actually How I Met Your Mother does an excellent job in one particular episode illustrating just that. Actually the whole series does a particularly excellent job illustrating many of Life's ups, down, all-arounds and overwhelming realities and truths - whether it be specific to relationships, personal goals, or even career paths. Even touching on minute social phenomenon like the art of "winning a break-up" or quitting smoking manage to reflect periods of our lives with surprising solidity.

Having said that, I'm going to do precisely what I said I was trying not to and talk about smoking. I watched the latter episode with one of my younger brothers John, and we immediately afterwards went out, bought and pack, and shared a cigarette. Why? It's hard to say. There's a certain weight of social gratification which comes with the act of sharing a cigarette with someone - in some obscure way it makes weighty subject matter weightier when it must be done silhouetted in smoke or punctuated by long and solemn drags that break up the story or problem like brooding paragraph breaks. Ironically, the more the government and purists attempt to segregate and typecast smokers the more I'm inclined to have a cigarette just to- literally - blow smoke in their fat fucking faces. As a disclaimer, I'm aware of all the death toll statistics and tar measurements and cancer risks (moreso than most non-smokers I would go so far as to say), but right now I'm 22 and I really don't fucking care. I'm also aware cancer can just fucking happen whether you were following all the right healthy roads of not. The fact is I'm always going to know and I will eventually quit but by God it won't be now. It's all about moderation, I guess, or not, whatever, I've spent nights on spectacular drunks and have had my succeeding hangover hurt all the more compounded with the awe-striking realization that I smoked two whole packs that night (that's fifty, count 'em, I'm even forgoing good Canadian Press rules to illustrate the point).

It's hard to quit. Not in terms of "craving" the nicotine, but in walking outside and having a smoke with your buddies. I'm part of possibly the only institution which unwillingly but almost religiously promotes the act of smoking - the Canadian army, which proverbially runs off "cigarettes and coffee". All the long-standing cliches of yester-year stand proud and celebrated today. We smoke when we get orders, we smoke after a firefight (hell we smoke after emptying a mag), we smoke because we're scared shitless, we smoke because we're pissed, we smoke because sometimes it's hard to get everyone in one place any other way. Hell, sometimes you go off and have a smoke as an excuse to get away from your buddies. When someone looks at you and grins that grin and says "let's go hack butts" you grin right-the-fuck back and light up with all the eagerness of a toddler playing with his new toy. We're people, like the creatures we evolved from we're social animals. If there's one thing that will never disappear on this earth it will be smoking and alcohol because both are systematically ingrained in our consciousness as the simplest way to get people together. Hell, my mom starting smoking at the age of fifty - when me and my brother were on our way overseas, and that act alone drew the entire family into itself until the six of us would get up and leave together to all smoke and chat on the patio. It says something about our lack of communication when really that's what it took to bring us all that much closer together, but it still managed to.

The ironic part I guess is that I don't sit at home and want a smoke. I have no urge to have one right now, didn't yesterday, and probably won't until I see the boys again. Or someone asks me to go out for one. My roomate (thankfully) doesn't smoke so neither of us are dragging the other into it. But bars? My god. He hangs out in the smoking area just to pick up women. I don't want to make exaggerated and probably factually baseless statements like "smokers are more fun" or "smokers are happier", but smokers are more fun, dammit! At a crowded bar where the music is too loud, the cover band sucks too hard, or the guidos are trying too hard to swell outside their Tapout t-shirts, going out for a smoke is probably the most rewarding experience there. And whether it's suffering through the biting cold, the torrential rain, or just the asshole stares of those offended by your collective habits, everyone in the smoking area is brought ingeniously together as a loose-knit group of people ready to make friends. Bumming smokes, passing them out, refusing to take offered money, it's common ground less tumultuous than alcohol over which to meet people. And picking up women? We had a whole series of elaborate conversation-pieces revolving around the act of being professional "cigarette-lighters" on their first day wandering around lighting up smokes for the hottest babes. Or asking for a lighter to no avail only to light your and everyone else's cigarettes with the one you had all along. People reading this (women especially) probably think this "ruse" or whatever low-brow description might be used is offensive and unrealistic but the genuine fun-loving honesty of coming up to a group of girls and establishing conversation with a laugh is just outstanding fun at its best. It's all about being charming, and honest - and if you think lying isn't being honest, find me the person who actually believes any of the lies perpetrated by men in establishments of drinking on sex's direct behalf and I will snicker impolitely. If you aren't slightly amused by lavish and made-up careers like "deep-sea bulldozers" or "hot-air balloon pilot", you don't need to look around because you killed fun and you suck for it.

There's enough iconic movie images related to smoking out there that I could fill this post up with nothing but, and the irony is that anti-smokers will debase these as nothing but advertisements for the Tobacco giants when really the fact that you can't show people in smoking as often these days always struck me as unrealistic in itself. The Ghostbusters smoked because people smoke. Get over it. And if I ever find a copy of the movie where the cigarettes are airbrushed out I will fucking throw a pie.

Going off topic, you know I find it ironic that everything I love about being in the military has never been (at least to my knowledge) shown in cinema except by movies that.. well, aren't war movies. I mean, combat or psychological issues aside, you never get a really good glimpse of the sitting around the locker room shenanigans I'm trying to flesh out here. The tv series Rescue Me prevails not because of the scenes directly relating to firefighting - but through the in-house interactions (the smoking, natch) and kitchen-table conversation. In fact, scenes like this have always been the most powerful to me: the opening scene from Reservoir Dogs, the crew of the Nostromo gorging themselves at the dinner table over cigarettes and financial debate, Alec Baldwin and his crew huddling bleary-eyed and stressed over rolled-up shirt-sleeves and loosened ties trying to pierce Jack Nicholson's criminal empire in The Departed... (I'm going to omit the fact that most of these scenes involve smoking in some sense or another). All of these speak to an ideal kind of work-ethic in my mind. I was never and desk-jockey and don;t really have the chops to be. Despite taking English in university (and history, and archaeology, and that sort of thing) my calling has always been work work not customer service work. The scene in Ghostbusters that made every kid want to be a Ghostbuster (or even actually made them firemen, paramedics, soldiers, or even exterminators) is the scene when they walk out of the ballroom holding their captured ghost in its trap admiring out loud a whole slew of specifics meant to classify these different "vapours". The fact that they wearily drudge through their work-load in filthy overalls with used-up equipment and a lack of sleep just speaks to a kind of inborn respect for five-day-a-week labour. My work-load involve knocking walls down with sledgehammers, axes and ice-picks, trekking through ditches so pregnant with afternoon heat they baked the sweat from your forehead, processing local nationals, and firing my weapon empty at distant, amorphous enemies, all in a pair of combats so run-through with filth and sweat they could stand up on their own. And half that time? I had a smoke in my mouth, and so did everyone around me.

In any case, that's all I'm dropping. I'll try and put some outstanding stories of debauchery on paper the next time. I also hope no non-smoker lights up after reading this - although I do like the idea that a smoker just might.