Thank God I'm so friggin' CUTE

Looking like Julie Andrews has so many perks.

So I went for round two of my Urban Outfitters heist the other day. I love to hate this place, and hate to love it. I mean, who doesn't? My first trip to UO was when I went to Lansing, Michigan at the tender age of 11-- Bright-eyed, bushy-tailed and before I had any orthodontics performed on my mug. This was a time in my life when I thought Michigan was the coolest place on earth, that Jesus was awesome, and that toe-socks we're the best thing since sliced bread.

My Mum bought me a pair of rainbow-bright toe socks (that I wore with my Old Navy flip-flops!) and a pink see-thru, lace and tie-dyed tank top, which conveniently revealed my innie.

Since that fateful spring day in 1998, many a trip have been made to Urban Outfitters.

My latest venture was with my roommate, Clara, who was looking to spice up her wardrobe. In the sale section sat a stack of floppy straw hats. I put one on, glanced in the mirror and Clara gasped in fright:

"My GOD do you ever look like Julie Andrews in the Sound of Music!"

I spun around, arms stretched out, nearly clocking a freshly tattooed punk princess and two twelve-year old, jersey-clad Westmount girls with their Tanerexic mothers in tow.

The hat is priced at a whopping $42. After taxes, this grass-mat-cum-hair-accessory will cost me a considerable fraction of my rent.

The opportunity to be an Austrian governess with killer vocal chords? Priceless.

As my dear friend Axel has gone many a time before me, walking out of stores wearing clear as day its unpaid-for merchandise, I sought to do the same.

We walked about the store, fingering acid-wash everything, while I planned to walk out casually with this massive hat atop my pixied little noggin.

I had checked that no cumbersome security tag was on it, while Clara and I made for the door as we chatted of flattering denim cuts.

I pass through the door, and wouldn't you know it, the alarm goes off. I turn around, mildly surprised, while a girl comes up to me. Puzzled, I reach atop my head, clearly enunciating each syllable as would Ms. Andrews:

"Oh my goodness!"

How could I have EVER forgotten to put this over-priced, Malaysian import back on the accessory table?

Beaming with shock, I handed the hat back to the clerk and apologized for my forgetfulness, then mentioned something about whiskers on kittens.

I guess that strategy only works at Simon's.

How've you been?

Dearest fans, oglers and devout readers...
I'm back with a degree and a fistful of dreams and I have two dimes to rub together, and another two bucks for bus fare, and that's about it.
The ranting, the insults, the self-deprecating humour that veils my self-aggrandizing method of communicating in cyberspace is back. It's all back.
I'm supposed to start interning for Vice and the senior editor has asked me to "send me some blog posts."
I swallowed hard and decided that I must resuscitate this blog of brilliance and get this starving-freelance-writer ball rolling.
More to come, and soon, je vous promets.

I attract flakes

My alleged friends do not return my phone calls.
I call, and they agree to call back. Or, I call and leave a message, and the answering machine of any particular flake assures me that my call will be returned as soon as possible.
Why is this so? Does everyone suffer from flaky friends in the digital era? Is it because I inevitably experience that When Harry Met Sally breach of contract with all of the boys and I steal the boyfriends of most of my sisters? Am I only worthy of flaky friends?
I bet Dolly doesn't have flaky friends.

Objective: To kiss your ass and those of your clients until payday

I'm trading in my flip flops for impractical shoes and will strut around Montreal for the better part of tomorrow in search of a new, likely drug-addicted and image-obsessed employer.
As you all know, my job provides me with financial independence, male attention and endless hours of postmodern yuppie-style laughs that have me addicted to it more than black coffee and Diet Coke combined. I've had enough of counting my pennies and watching my bank account deplete for four consecutive months, so tomorrow my tits, ass and I are off to the races to shake martinis until the corporate execs go back to the office.
Wish me luck!

I'm bringing blogging back

Lessons learned this summer:
1. I am awesome.
2. Russians are inhospitable but their cops are smarmily sexy.
3. My teeth are so white that Europeans find it distracting.
4. Mallory Bey can speak French?
5. Hitchhiking is cost-effective, fun and stupid.
6. Serbian drugs take five hours to kick in.
7. Don't get into cars with Mystics.
8. I like Dubstep. A lot.
9. I like medical students. Aspiring dentists are even sexier than Russian Militsia.
10. I am awesome.

No cops

So I am leaving Russia tomorrow and I didnt have a run-in with the cops. Laurence, my roommate got to hang with cops AND go to the hospital. I suck and am unexciting but will be making it up to myself soon...

Instead, I've been hanging out in hippie hell where no one uses utensils to eat their soy products and they moan meditatively and periodically throughout whatever it is they are doing... fucking, facebooking, peeling potatoes... I kid you not, dear readers, there are sporadic moaners in this buddha-blessed soviet housing unit and to cope I stuff bright orange sponges into my aural cavities. There are severe reprocussions to this act of resistance: ear wax build-up.

I'm going to give Soviet speed another try, and maybe if I'm short on cash and my fingerpaintings dont sell, I'll sell some of those to yound and umpressionable american tourists, of which there are so many EVERYWHERE I just don't know if I can resist the temptation.

Adventures in over-the-counter drugland

Vice magazine told me that Phenotropil was the cleanest speed the author had ever had. So, on Saturday evening I promptly sauntered over to the Apteka (Pharmacy) to see what the commotion was all about.

I care not to go in to extreme detail as I am technically not allowed to use the computer here chez my Soviet Hazaika (hostess), but I am pretty sure it was shit. I was unimpressed and awake all night, lost in the abyss of drunken St. Petersburg as Militsia told me on various occasions that the street I wished to pass along was 'zatkrit' (closed).

We are to try a higher dosage at a later date, and I shall not leave you in the dark.

With love and disappointments,

JACQ

Ew I fell in to a Soviet train toilet

Location: somewhere in between St. Petersburg and Moscow where the women haven't any teeth and the Kazakhs beside me don't dig footwear.

Behold: the Soviet Train. Everything is yellowed to the point where you are unsure if anything was every really white at all. The windows are like the lenses of pedophile glasses so everything is shit-tinted (as opposed to rose-tinted). The bench seats are made of burgundy vinyl and allergy-triggering roll-out mats are provided for a comfortable slumber in which you are to dream of hammers, sickles and food stamps.

I sit in this train, gazing out the window at dacha after dacha, careful not to direct my gaze in front of me where, on the left is a very fat man whose gut rests on his thighs. To his right, a small Asian boy sits quietly. They both sit silently and tinker away on their Blackberries for about four hours. The Kazakhs play cards and stare at my tits. I watch the fat man roll out his bed-mat on the lower bunk as the Asian man climbs spryly above the snoring oaf. I daydream, wishing it was Mister Gutface who had to climb up there to give his thighs a rest and transfer the pressure onto his chest. But alas, we are in Russia and not America.

I sketch some Sudokus and keep my Quebecois counterpart, Simon, awake for as long as possible. We eat Halva (THE GREATEST THING IN THE WORLD) and talk loudly and in English. We figure that our CCCP shirts make us fit in a little more, so our indecipherable and mysetrious Canadian accents won't give us away as tourists worth robbing.

Somewhere in between all of this, I stumble to the bathroom. First I must inform you that, in all toilets in Russia, there aren't any toilet seats. You hover or squat and at the same time pray to Stalin that you don't get hepatitis from this one. I have developed a method of holding on to the door handle of the stall and leaning back; it takes a lot of the pressure off of the quads. This time, however, I was pulling a little too hard, perhaps. So, in my golden shower of delight that I was granting to this steel bowl, I was holding on to the handle of the door and suddenly the door gave way and the bowl welcomed me with its hepatitis-infested gorge.

I am supposed to get the test results back from the pharmacy tomorrow, where I will subsequently try to ask for a moderately-sezed perscription of legal amphetamines for the final days of my love affair with Vladimir Putin.

Living in a Soviet Gangster's Paradise

So here I am, in the USSR. Some people like to call it Russia but I think that's a load of stuffwhitepeoplelike crap.
All of the men have mullets.
All of the women look like prostitutes from the late '80s.
No one knows what chickpeas are.

Being the scenester hound that I am, I have discovered Dacha, the indie hangout of St. Petersburg where they play Mambo #5 on the busy nights to get people really going. Here, I first inhale, drink and finally snort Sambuca with either gargantuan Russian men that are scary and oafy as fuck, or short, lithe Russian men who are creepy as, well, short and creepy Russians. Dacha is my house (or my 'cottage,' as that is what Dacha means in Russian) where vodka bottle service costs $20 and cigarette burns are free. From my tank top-sporting evening last night, I look like I have a sadist as a Cnoncop (Pronouncer 'sponsor,' this means Sugar Daddy or Sucre Pere in Russian).

Love!