05.11.03
words can't describe how run off my feet i am lately. i've been burnin' it at both ends down at the studio prepping screens and printing orders, trying to get things ready for the in stock page and a slew of other christmas custom orders. hard work but i still enjoy it. more than ever, in fact. actually, spending so much time in my studio printing shirts, cutting rags and staining wood has afforded me a lot of time to think about some things. in fact, just the other day while i was pulling several hundred rusty staples out of a sticky, ink covered screen, i think i figured out why i can't seem to make a relationship work. i quite simply enjoy being single far too much to ever give it up for more than a month or two at a time. being single rules! you know, i spent a good chunk of my twenties unattached, and i think somewhere around 25 or 26 something in me changed and i truly stopped caring whether i had a girlfriend or not. of course, living in a place like vancouver, it's not like i had a choice anyway. but it was around this time that i also started really appreciating the finer points of the single life. you know when you're in one of those stifling, unhappy relationships and you start pining for those magical days when you were single? something in the back of your mind always seems to say "yeah, but it wasn't that great. look at me now- i have julie/isabel/beatrice in my life to tell me what to do and belittle my every move. i've never been happier." well, for me, being single is that great. i can do what i want when i want and i've been doing it for so long now that it's going to take something pretty big to change it. i'm nearly 34 and i think i may be slowly becoming what some people used to call a "confirmed bachelor" (though i don't know if having been married for 4 months disqualifies me), though forget about the nudge nudge wink wink. i do love women intensely- almost too much for my own good- but i can't live with them. it's kind of a weird paradox. no, i'm pretty set in me ways. unless you wanted to, you know, go see a porno with me or something...big update coming soon. first the new colors and sizes of shirts, then the long promised in stock page, featuring all screen printed gear, shipped in 24 hours or less. burn baby burn.

17.10.03
first off, a few storm aftermath pictures. lots of trees and broken stuff. a tim's sign on robie that was completely blown out, kind of a cool pic. life's pretty much back to normal now but we had another little storm the other day and i think more than a few people were getting nervous that it was all going to happen again. and i haven't even bothered to get flashlights for my battery yet...speaking of which, the first night the power went out i was in the middle of reorganizing an old box that held journals dating back some 25 odd years, so i wound up reading one at random by candlelight. it was from 1993- the year i moved out to vancouver and a pretty rough time in many ways. anyway, i had to laugh at this forgotten story about a drunken bus ride home one night. it really happened, folks. so from december 19th, 1993:

i wound up going to subway after the show then walking down granville then over to pender all the way to main. when i finally sat down at the bus stop this younger guy started talking to me. i noticed his face was bleeding. "yeah man," he said, " this fuckin' guy diddled my nephew, man. so me & my brother went out tonite to get the guy. he was a hard fucker to take down, big fuckin' hick with overalls & the whole bit, but we pretty much got him." "deserved it," i said. "doesn't even qualify as a fucking human being."
so we get on the 8, a little ways up main we transfer to the 19. and i'm standing there on the bus and i'm watching & listening to this guy talk about how he & his wife are from nova scotia blah blah blah obviously pretty tanked. after a minute i notice that he too has blood on his face and... he's wearing yellow overalls!! "the diddler," i think. sure enough the bloody brothers try stepping on the 19 and yellowbutt starts bitching, "just keep moving, you little punk." "better just get off, asshole" warns overall's ugly wife. the blood brothers wisely step off (overall was a pretty big guy). anyway the bus starts again & overall says "c'mon honey, let's join the party at the back of the bus" (everyone was singing & shit back there). so they head back & i guess overalls must've opened a window & lit a smoke. within moments this ticked off to no end this bearded guy near the front, who walked right up to overall's face & started screaming "PUT OUT YOUR FUCKING CIGARETTE, ASSHOLE, THIS IS A GODDAMN BUS!" "uh-oh" i thought. sure enough, overalls got extremely agitated, started pushing buddy, saying "what are you gonna do, kick me off?" but beard didn't back down, and next thing you know overalls SMOKES beardie in the face, beard goes flying backwards. i was standing right there. by now there was a third guy involved. overalls gave him a good shove then went for beardie. he had him down good and was about to just smoke him point blank in the face. luckily i was there. i grabbed his arm just in the nick of time. some other people helped me grab him and we tried to shove him out the doors. i even put my foot on his chest and tried to heave him out, but he kicked back so i backed off. he started jumping up and down saying "i'm the king of the bus! ha, ha! i'm not going anywhere!" my instinct of self-preservation kicked in at this point and i got off the bus and and walked home. good thing too, 'cos about 5 minutes later i saw the paddywagon heading for the bus.

hope you enjoyed that slice of sophisticated vancouver nightlife. long live the crazy 8, the main street drunk tank and the ivanhoe.....so by early november or so you will be seeing quite a change in selection of shirt colors in the visualiser. that's because i've finally decided to only buy canadian or us made product from now on. i have always tried to get domestically made stuff in the past, but i'll admit that a lot of the gildan shirts are actually made offshore, and after gildan's recent decision to close their only remaining canadian plant in montreal and move all of their production offshore, i thought it was finally time to make a firm decision about where i source my stuff from. so from now on we will be using only king out of calgary alberta for all of zbq's t-shirts, longsleeved shirts and hoods. i just got the first order of king tees in today actually and they are really damn nice- i'm very impressed. some colors and sizes will still be made by jerico out of toronto. all of the guys' baseball shirts and ringers will be made by fairline from vancouver, who have an incredible selection of colors and sizes. and of course for all ladies' shirts we will continue to use the beautiful clothing made by american apparel of los angeles california (by way of montreal). pretty much all styles will have a wider range of colors and sizes and i'm getting ready to start adding even more styles by the new year. as you can tell i'm going to be a pretty busy boy in the next little while. so i best get at it.

06.10.03
as of this writing i have just posted a new update, but it's an incomplete one: no new wutznu page as of yet, and there are more pieces to be added to the /art/store in the coming days. i've just been busting my hump trying to get this thing together, and i like to do a big update at the begininning of each month with lots of new stuff, but i've come to realize that that's just not happening this month. so it's better to post what i do have now and get to the other stuff when i can. things have been jumping down at the shop and it's hard to stay focussed on keeping this site semi-interesting. but what i do have today for all y'all is 19(!) spanky bum new pieces in the bouteek (sorry the bios aren't up yet- another thing i'll get to this week), a new graf n' corruption page and a new artist in the /art/store: one mr. justin kleiner who already has 2 designs in the shirt section. things promise to get even more insanely hectic in the next few weeks. i'll keep ya posted....

03.10.03
a little hurricane named juan swept through halifax on sunday night, ripping huge oak trees from the ground and flipping sidewalk tiles like graham crackers. from where i sat in my little apartment, it seemed pretty windy out there, but there was no way i could prepare for the carnage i beheld the next morning: trees everywhere, crushed cars, downed power lines and smashed in windows. every block in my neighborhood had at least a few trees down, and some streets literally looked like a jungle (and still do) because of all the downed foliage. what's more, over half of the city remains in darkness because of power outages caused by the storm. i myself only got my power back yesterday- i was one of the lucky ones. for some people, it could be a week or two more. by far the craziest story i've heard about the hurricane came from my sister. she lives in a place called sambro, up the coast aways. sambro happened to be where hurricane juan first hit nova scotia. and it hit hard. luckily, her place, though a little rattled, withstood the brunt of the storm. a tiny ancient fishing shack which had stood on their property since time immemorial, however, did not. in fact, at the height of the storm they looked down towards the beach to discover in shock and dismay that their tiny ancient fishing shack was simply no more. now, this was rather sad, because they had fixed up the shack, built a wharf on it and used it as a place to spend a summer's day. it was full of pictures of family and friends and lots of memorabilia from my sister and her husband's life. and it took about 5 seconds for juan to flick it into the ocean like an impudent child. so it's understandable that my sister & husband would be kind of upset about this. however, the next day while looking across the bay, they noticed something on the other side: what appeared to be the remains of one tiny ancient fishing shack smashed into the rocks with the contents thereof scattered in the wreckage. somehow the storm had transported the entire shack several hundred feet to the other side of the bay. naturally they wasted no time in making their way over there. once there they discovered that, yes toto, the fishing shack was completely demolished. but the first thing they noticed after that was that the deck that my brother in law had built onto the shack only last year was sitting perched on a rock in one piece, almost as if someone had built it there on purpose. and as they started to pick through the wreckage, it soon became apparent that most, if not all, of the contents of their former shack were not only there- they were in nearly immaculate condition. this after a night of up to 180 kph winds and driving rain, when almost all of the fishermen in the area lost their boats, their gear and even their wharves. guess someone was watching out for sis. i'll post some pictures of the aftermath in next couple of days...sometimes i think i must be fucking crazy to post some of the shit in here that i do. like my last entry for example. actually, i took it down for a couple of days then put it back up. took it down because i thought maybe i pushed a few envelopes a little too far, put it back because i thought maybe what i wrote on that day should stand, even if it does make me look like an idiot. something which i'm becoming more and more convinced that i'm slowly turning into. an idiot, that is.

28.09.03
so the ex-wife is trying to get us back together- a move that i think is fraught with danger and potential disaster. but i'm so damn horny that it's hard to think straight about it. i'm still very physically attracted to her, but i know that we're no good together. miss that sex though. though i do think that there's something else there- there has to be. i mean, the last girl i was with and i had incredible sex. marathon sex. we could have taught sex lessons i'm sure. but aside from that, there wasn't a lot going on there besides good conversation, music & food and a mutual love of cuddling. damn, why did i break up with her again? it's that "je ne sais quoi" that everyone looks for in a relationship. the glue that keeps you together. we didn't have it, and i always thought that my ex wife and i didn't either. so why do i keep thinking about her? well, again, i am pretty damn horned up and she's looking good these days. but i just can't believe that if we ever got back together again it would work out. she left me in the first place, and all i can think is that the same thing would just happen again. i mean, i'm just only lately coming out of the mental and emotional turmoil that put me through- 2 & 1/2 years later. so, no to getting back together. if i could only have sex with her without having to do anything else. unfortunately, she's too smart for that...however, i do have another potential partner cooking on the backburner over at my favorite personals site, nerve. what the site lacks in quantity it certainly makes up for in quality- i have met several really nice girls through it, and it even got me some hot action once or twice. now i'm going to try again. but i mean, really, all i want is some sex. typical fuckin' guy.

21.09.03
what an insane week. i had to print about 400 pieces for a local hip hop artist. they were supposed to be done by tuesday but thanks to various problems i didn't get the artwork until monday nite. i probably could have done them in 24 hours if it was a one-color, one-sided job. but there were 4 or 5 different designs, all with different colors, most double-sided. the motto around my shop is "set-up is a bitch". it's not so much the printing as the set-up- it can take up to 2 hours, sometimes longer, to properly set up a 2 to 4 color print job. and then there's additional clean-up time at the end. so anyway, it took me until early friday morning to finally finish the order, afer 2 incredibly late nights and finally one true all-nighter which lasted 12 hours. after which i had to immediately start on another order of 80 or so shirts for a local band who leaves for their tour any day. so i'm still pretty crushed from that amount of work in such a short period of time. i had to pretty much put my whole life on hold for 5 days and just plow through these orders. which is just a really long convoluted way for me to say that that's one of the reasons i haven't updated the site in a bit. one of many. anyway, more coming soon....what a fucking cold bastard i was in that last entry. sometimes i think i have no soul at all- just ice. what a way to really stick it to someone- the day after you break off from them (through e-mail i might add) you write this little piece in your blog about how the relationship was "off-balance" and "lopsided". i mean all of that stuff may be true, but knowing that the girl i was seeing reads this blog from time to time should have given me pause. just for the record- i did like her. quite a lot. in fact, i always like them- all the girls over the years that i've let go. why it happens is not for me to say. it's one of the saddest things in the world. sort of like strangling a baby kitten because you have a slight allergy. or burning a rose bush to the ground because it pricked your finger. sometimes i think i'm just scared to love.

12.09.03
this blogging thing is getting a little weird. i mean it was fun when i was just writing these entries and figuring there might be 5 or 6 people out there in, say, hawaii, philadelphia and nigeria reading them. but over the last several weeks i've become aware that quite a few people from around where i live read it as well. which, you know, can really be expected, seeing as i promote the site around halifax, and it's certainly not hard to find this page once you get here. but it's just a little weird. my ex wife read it a few weeks ago. i think her boyfriend may have read it. i know that at least one and possibly both of my sisters read it from time to time. and- horror of horrors- i think my mom may have even perused it once or twice. hey guys. and, i have to admit, knowing this now really makes me want to tone things down and i don't know if i'm going to be able to be as frank and open about some things. i would like to say that i will be, but of course it is having an effect. so go suck a donkey dick for satan...love fucking sucks. the word that always comes to mind when i'm stuck in a relationship is "lop-sided." don't even know if that's a word, and if it is it's a pretty ugly one to describe luv. but really, every single relationship i've been in in my life has been mismatched. by that i mean: either i was way too into her or she was way too into me. it's never an even match or, seemingly, even close. when it came close, as it did once, it lasted 4 years, but it was still a leaning mule, a shaky, wobbly thing. mismatched. so i find myself at the end of another of these messy relationship things, and again i wonder if it really was an uneven match, or am i just a selfish fucking asshole whose whims weren't catered to sufficiently? i've been down that road of guilt before though, and i know every turn. you really have to trust your instincts sometimes, and after you've been around the block a bit you realize that it's not always just cold feet: sometimes you really should get out. i've stayed with people i knew that i didn't really want to be with permanently out of a sense of guilt and fear of hurting someone's feelings, and what i discovered was that when you do that you ultimately hurt the person much, much more. you also wind up hurting yourself almost if not just as bad. neil sedaka said it best: breakin' up is hard to do. but it's something everyone has to buck up and do at some point in their lives....been spending a lot of time down at my space this week. mostly at night- after a year of almost always going in during the daytime, i'm finding the night a more relaxed, creative time. i've been going apeshit, cleaning and reorganizing the space. got a little lounge area near the front with a record player and tons of vinyl, and i'm really doing a lot to improve the shop and make it more efficient. i've been in there almost 4 years now. even lived in there for 6 months after the marriage thing. i still remember my landlord's face when he walked in one morning- i had stupidly left both doors unlocked- to find me laying in a bed, my space crammed to the gills with all my stuff....it's amazing how much more confident i am now with multicolor screenprinting. well, i broke my cherry on a lot of custom jobs over the last few years, and just lately i did 2 jobs, one a 3 color and one a 4 color, both of which i was really happy with (as were the customers). so i'm going forward with limited edition multi-color screenprinted zbq shirts. these will be printed in lots of 50 or 100 and will be limited edtions. i may even number them, if i can figure out some kind of method. anyway i'm starting with some graff art shirts from a few local writers- hopefully doing the first run of 50 within a week or so- and as i acquire more screens i hope to do screenprinted versions of some of my favorite zbq designs- i've got my eye on external combustion. and yes these shirts will be available on this site. anyway pretty stoked. yeah.

02.09.03
so i'm walking along with my son the other night, headed towards great ocean for some coffee and one of those organic pumpkin cake things, when i espy a little baggy on the sidewalk. the students are back in town and there are a lot of discarded couches, beer cans and empty pot baggies littering the streets lately: the detritus of higher learning i would surmise. except this li'l baggy was different- upon closer inspection, it was revealed to me that it actually contained about a half gram of pure green buddha. of course, my first impulse was to throw it away or give it to somebody. but that impulse lasted a much shorter time than i thought it would. within 2 hours (after the boy was safely back at his mother's, of course), i was smoking my first joint in about 9 months. and the scary part is, i actually liked it this time. quite a lot, in fact. so at this point i'm debating what, if anything, i should do about it. i like the idea of smoking it for a few weeks and then leaving it off again, but i also know that a few weeks could turn into a few months or a few years. however, being mostly straight for over a year has given me a lot of perspective and i don't know if i would allow myself to become as chronic as i once was. either way, i'm not doing anything about it right now. the pot is gone and i'm not in a big rush to get anymore. but it did bring back a lot of good things about it that i'd forgotten. hey, nothing's 100% evil...anyway, in my stoned stupor i did a lot of thinking, and one of the things i thought about was this blog. about how bad i feel that i've spent the last 6 weeks or so lying to all of you good people out there, solely in the interest of making my weblog more interesting and readable. especially where a few of you have actually written me in concern for my safety. folks, there never was a sexy, psychotic single mom. that story started being fabricated the minute she walked in the door at steve-o's (though the classified ad was real). yes, it's true: i'm a big fat liar. you know, i was just tired about always whining and writing about striking out with the ladies: things seemed to need a little spice. but maybe they got a little too spicy. shortly after writing about ms. psychopants, i actually met and started dating a very nice, honest-to-goodness real lady and we're still together. writing about being stalked and having my apartment ransacked enabled me to keep my fictional life interesting, but it was proving a little embarassing for my new friend: people she knew were telling her how i was cheating on her and that i was basically a sick fuck. but that's not why i'm coming clean. i just like to be honest, and i've found in the past and find again that fabricating the truth really isn't that much fun. in fact, it gives me a stomach ache. so i'm sorry.

23.08.03
my life is starting to feel like some badly-written soap opera lately. there hasn't been this much drama around since i starred in my high school's production of "flowers for algernon". dropped coltrane off at daycare the other morning and who did i see standing over by the playground equipment but little miss psycho herself. i quickly ushered coltrane inside to drop him off but when i came out she was still standing there. it was then that i noticed that her face was streaked with black mascara, evidently from prolonged crying. she was muttering something to herself while intensely staring at me and- get this- ripping up some kind of papers and tossing the bits on the ground as she did so. i didn't know whether to laugh my ass off or scream in terror- both reactions seemed appropriate, but to be honest i was leaning towards the latter. as freaked out as i was, i decided to try and talk to her, but as soon as i took one step towards her she quickly turned and walked away. this is getting weird. no, scratch that- this was already weird, now it's getting bone-chillingly disturbing. look girly- i'm really not worth all this. maybe you think i'm a super nice guy or something, but under all that shy exterior i'm like every other guy: i want to fuck a different woman every day for the rest of my life. although i don't like sports, i do like pizza and beer and i don't want to talk about my feelings. i'm not a catch, i'm just another pig in slightly fancier clothes. at least i'm honest about it. so get the hell over me and go stalk someone else. jesus.

19.08.03
i can't believe i got this bloody thing done today. i have been working round the clock to try and get this site converted to php by tonight- and tonight i actually did it. one more day and my host might have started indiscriminately deleting files off the server with no rhyme or reason- and that could be a very bad thing. the thing is, i was already in the process of converting the site anyway- i only started learning php about 5 weeks ago. so it worked out well. now i need to find a new host, because these guys are getting on my nerves. i've been with them for 5 years now, but there have been a lot of downtimes over the last several weeks and they haven't really satisfactorily explained to me why. "it's routine maintenance." "it will be over fairly soon." what the fuck is "fairly soon" supposed to mean , anyway? i'm now shopping for a new host. tell your mama...so i hope you like the fruits of my labor. i worked bloody hard on this thing and you better like it!! unfortunately i was unable to get some of the things in there i wanted, like multiple currencies, but that's only because i didn't have the time. those will be coming forthwith. and for those that are wondering, i did debate long and hard about whether or not the women's shirts should have nipples on them. but i'm a big fan of nipples, and i don't think they're particularly offensive in this day and age- they're nipples for christ's sakes, they're beautiful- so i kept them. if you don't like them, tough titties (sorry, i couldn't resist)...hell hath no wrath like a woman scorned. woke up the other day to discover the air had been let out of the tires on my bike. which really pissed me off because i really, really don't like to walk that much if i can help it. i had my suspicions about who might be responsible (take a guess) and i thought of it as more of a slightly malicious prank than anything. but that was nothing compared to what was in store later on. i spent the day at my space printing shirts, cleaning screens and listening to my new harry belafonte and modern jazz quartet albums. when i returned at about 2 in the afternoon i was unprepared for the carnage that awaited me. the first thing was a giant FUCK YOU smeared in dark red lipstick on my front door. this was no longer a joke- i felt the hair on the back of my neck stand on end as i realized my door was ajar and whoever had done this had somehow managed to get into my apartment. once inside, it soon became apparent that someone- again, i wonder who- had very quickly run through my place doing as much damage in as short a time as possible. things were overturned, there was some broken glass, food on the floor and another even more obscene message on my bathroom mirror which even i won't repeat here. so it appeared as if my little zblog kiss off had reached its intended audience. guess there really is a thin line between love and hate folks. well i won't give this person anymore airtime here, except to say that if she ever so much as looks at me again i will ensure she eats that whole tube of lipstick in front of me and then thanks me for it. all the same, noone got killed. the hot sex was definitely worth it. hell yeah.

10.08.03
gotta apologize for being so slack in the update department lately- this is my first blog entry in 2 weeks! i've been working on visualiser 4.0, which will be the php version of the zeroboutique shirt store, and i've kind of let it consume my existence. well, it didn't help that i got a little note from my host telling me that this here web site has ballooned up to nearly 600 MB, and where my hosting package only covers 150 megs, i need to get it down before the 19th of august or there won't be a christmas. so august 19th is consequently my projected launch date for the new vis, which will have lots of new bells and whistles and of course a bunch of new shirt designs too. and the nice thing is, i will be able to delete the 50,000-odd files it now takes to run this as an HTML site. here's to progress.....sugar mama came back the other day. she had bought me a brand new electric guitar and showed up at my door dressed to the nines and reeking of chanel no. 5. i of course smelled nothing but trouble. i reluctantly let her into my stinky apartment where she wasted no time in telling me that her life had been hell without me and how she just "had to" have me back. this after a week of sex in which we barely exchanged 20 words between us (if you don't count "fuck me!" and "harder!"). but i'm a nice guy and i felt sorry for her, so i humored her while she played with my zipper and i checked out her generous well-powdered cleavage. i wanted to kick her out there and then but you know what they say about the flesh being weak and all that, so pretty soon we were humping like monkeys again and i knew this was trouble. fun trouble though. anyway, we actually hung out for a while after the dirty deed was done and i found out that she'd been reading the zblog (yes, this zblog). i was kind of shocked- in the week we'd been together, she'd never really asked me too much about my "little t-shirt business" so i assumed it was safe to write about her here. but as it turns out she didn't mind at all- in fact she was a little turned on by the fact that i'd written about our sexual hijinks. and it's for this reason that i'm going to find it even harder to write what i'm about to write: it's over, baby. you can come get the guitar if you want but i'm not your houseboy anymore. the sex was nice but icing without no cake makes you sick after a while. but don't feel bad- many are called, but few are chosen...i've passed my one year anniversary for quitting pot and i feel pretty damn good about it. i look at my life over the last year and i see so many positive developments that it blows my mind. this site has grown by leaps and bounds. i actually have a social life and even get laid sometimes. and most important of all, i just feel so much better about myself and my life now than i have in years. every day i build on the foundation of the day before- whereas with pot, it was like i had to start from ground zero every single morning. there is a momentum and movement forward in my life now, and i've never felt so self-confident and sure of myself. not arrogant (okay, maybe a little arrogant), just comfortable in my own skin, aware of my abilities, limitations and potential and possessing the will and the mental and physical energy to make things happen. jesus christ, i sound like tony robbins over here. but suffice to say that a year without marijuana has convinced me that i have no need to ever let that stuff in my life again. i'm not saying it's 100% bad, it's just not for me. remember, i smoked it for 15 years almost every day- it's not like i tried it once, coughed a little and said "never again." brother, i have been there and i have done that. and now i'm going to do something else. i'm going to become a raging alcoholic!

27.07.03
so it's been a year today since the last time i worked for someone else. of course, when i woke up that morning i had no idea. i knew my time at apex industrial would be coming to a close very soon, but i figured i still had about 2 or 3 weeks before the axe would fall. now, i'm not a particularly hard person to get along with- i've had several employers tell me that i was one of the best workers they ever had. besides an unshakeable habit of always being 5-10 minutes late, i've always been pretty studious and, i think, fairly easygoing. but my boss at apex never even gave me a chance. he seemed to think that nothing i did was good enough and he was sure that i was always up to something. i'm not sure what put these ideas in his head, but i didn't take it too personally- nobody who worked there liked him, and he certainly didn't make much of an effort to be "one of the guys". he was there for one reason- get those numbers up and get his big bonus for being the best-selling apex location in atlantic canada. anyway, in the 3 short months i was there, things seemed to go steadily from bad to worse with s. first i got a parking ticket in the van when i was in my studio for 5 minutes one day. i should have paid the damn thing, but i let it slide, and then about 2 weeks later s called me into his office to confront me about it. the street where the ticket was issued was not one where any of our clients were, so he wanted to know why i had received one there. at this point i made a fatal mistake: i decided to tell him the truth. that i was running a business on the side and occasionally i made a 5 minute stop to check my mail or make a phone call. but since i had a half hour lunch every day i thought that this was reasonable. well, he didn't. s treated this as some kind of horrible breach of confidence. he couldn't have acted more outraged had i been caught fucking his wife doggy style in his office while his kids watched on the sidelines. "this is bad, jason," he said. "i'm going to be watching you." and maybe things could have improved, but after this his already low opinion of me seemed to drop daily, and it didn't help that i started doing incredibly stupid things, almost seemingly on purpose. there was the day i ran out of gas and had to walk over a half hour to the nearest gas station & then back. the day i got lost in cole harbour for 2 hours. or the coup de grace- the night i left some stuff in the van and it got broken into- over $900 worth of equipment stolen and the van door lock pried apart. i think he thought i was actually somehow involved in that one. i told him i would be leaving and he again acted shocked and horrified that he would have to find someone new (oh, what a pain in the ass), telling me a "2 week notice just won't do- i'll need at least 3 weeks." i told him 2 weeks was pretty standard, you couldn't expect me to tell a prospective employer to wait 3 weeks. i could sense that i was just about out of rope. then 1 year ago today i was driving my route when i got a call from s (he constantly called me on the road, tracking my whereabouts and timing my every move). i asked him if he was going to get the brake problem fixed in the van- for weeks it shook like a junkie every time i touched the brakes, and i had asked him politely many times to get it looked at. but today he was condescending about it -"it's not a real priority, jason." i had finally had enough of this asshole- the only reason i'd bitten my tongue for 3 months was to keep my job, but now we both knew i was leaving and i didn't care anymore. "well, scott," i said, "when these brakes fail, i just hope you pay for the cab and the tow truck, because they're ready to go any minute." maybe that doesn't sound too venomous, but to s this was high reason. when i got back to the shop i was informed that he wanted to see me in his office. it was short and sweet. "well, jason. i think our time is at an end here." i said "i think you're right." i blew some smoke up his ass about how i respected him and thanked him for the "opportunity" to be mentally abused for 3 months, and i was out of there. biked to a park and read the paper for about an hour, a huge stupid smile on my face. i had no idea what the future had in store, but all i knew was that it wouldn't involve apex industrial supply. and that was a very good thing.

21.07.03
right off the bat i wanted to thank klutch for the awesome picture on this week's intro page. show your gratitude by buying one of his paintings... so i'm in the process of converting this entire site over to php and i must say that it is a pretty diverse little language. this site will shrink from approximately 45,000 individual pages to somewhere in the neighborhood of 50, while actually running much more efficiently in the process. the great thing is that it's going to make adding new designs much easier, so i will probably get in the habit of adding new shirt designs on the fly instead of only every 2 months or so. in the process of changing everything over i'll be giving the visualiser a nice little makeover, adding some rad new designs and some other long-awaited bells and whistles such as the option to pay in canadian dollars, euros or of course us dollars. i'm pretty stoked. a true geek is only happy when he's coding. i haven't changed a stitch since i was that pathetic 11 year old tapping BASIC into my vic-20...ah, it's nice to be single again. sex is good but it never comes without a price, and if you're not really into the one you're with the price just ain't worth it. i'd rather hang out with giant white bunnies any day.

18.07.03
so my ass has been kicked to the curb already. as i suspected, this lady i've been engaging in mutual acts of lustful abandon with has been using me as a 80 inch sex toy, and when she got bored of me she threw me out like yesterday's douche. i made the mistake the other night of suggesting we do something different, like maybe go to her place, and she snapped at me. the rest of the evening was strained- we fucked like two rusty robots and when we were finished she told me not to wait for a call. well, boo freakin' hoo. i have now officially been used for sex- i guess i know what women go through on an almost constantly ongoing basis. i feel dirty. i feel cheap. i feel used up. i feel... hot. watch out erik estrada! there's a new boy toy in town! seriously, pure unadulterated sex for 7 straight days had its upsides, but it actually got boring pretty damn quick. when you don't really have an emotional connection with someeone, sex is just sex. once the novelty wears off, you might as well be brushing your damn teeth (or flossing them with pubic hair, like me). maybe i'm too old for this meaningless sex shit- to tell you the truth, it's a relief. "don't you want somebody to love? you better find somebody to love!" -jefferson airplane, 1969...hey i'll probably be heading up towards toronto and montreal in late august so this is an advance warning: if anyone in either of those towns wants to meet up with and party with me let me know, because i don't know a whole hell of a lot of people there and would love to meet some of my teeming fans. you are teeming, aren't you? good. well, even if you aren't quite teeming, i need someone to go get drunk with, especially in montreal. hopefully there will be a show or two to check out as well. write me if you're interested. latesies soul chillen....

13.07.03
i am a fuck toy. some call me the human dildo. i have had so much damn sex over the last 5 days of my life that i can hardly walk straight. this woman is insatiable. i guess it's true what they say about women hitting their sexual stride in their thirties because this lady's been striding, sliding and gliding all over my bedroom for several hours every day. so is there such thing as too much of a good thing? well, not so far. i've managed to rise to the occasion, so to speak, but my tongue is getting a little tired. yes, our lady likes to give, but damn if she don't like to receive a whole lot more. which is ok by me- i love to give a good tongue lashing almost as much as most women like to get one. i like the taste, i like the smell and i like being submissive to milady's carnal whims. but my tongue is getting cramped up just thinking about her. maybe tonight i will suggest taking a break from lapland- after all, if my tongue breaks, we'll never get to do it again and i won't be able to talk properly. "i thedd, my thum iss bwokum!" i must say though, going from a leisurely life of occasional masturbation to a daily sexual marathon is quite a leap to make all at once. maybe if i had seen this coming i could have done some training: 30 situps and 200 crotch thrusts every day for a month. drop and give me 20! we've been together for 5 days and already she's talking about strap-ons and dental dams. oh my achin' back....went out to see thesis, jesse d and toolshed last night at the marqueasy. for those of you who don't know, thesis is not only an accomplished visual artist but a pretty dope mc when the fancy takes him. i enjoyed his set but found it hard to relax, no matter how much i drank. for some reason all i could think about was sex. wonder why that is?

08.07.03
somehow another week has gone by without a blog entry. oh, how do you put up with me? aren't i just so very? i guess time flies when you're having fun, and jj doesn't write when things are going his way. you may recall from my last entry that there was a mystery lady who had placed an ad in the local weekly, wanting to become part of somebody's morning coffee ritual. i suspected it might be meant for me, and so i placed a reply ad in last week's edition challenging little miss demeanor to meet me at said coffee spot on friday or monday morning and we'd go from there. well, i waited on friday and no one showed up. to tell you the truth, i was a little relieved- i was nervous as hell and the pressure was getting to me. so on monday i wasn't really expecting anything to happen. as a matter of fact, i was just getting ready to leave when suddenly in walked in someone i recognized. a female someone. a tall, beautiful female someone i knew from my son's daycare, coming straight towards me with a big smile on her face. and sure enough, she said hello, told me to wait a minute while she got a coffee and within minutes we were engaged in a great conversation. to tell you the truth, i was blown away. i had wracked my brain to try & imagine who had placed that ad, and this woman hadn't even crossed my mind- for starters, because i'd assumed she was married for some reason, but also because she seemed way out of my league. she's about my age but in terms of class and maturity she far outranks me, and i'm still wondering what she sees in me. well, actually, it's not that big a mystery now. as we spoke i noticed that she was being very flirtatious in the way she looked at me, touching my hand and my knee in the course of conversation and lingering just a second longer than would be deemed friendly. before long the conversation inevitably turned towards our kids, and she mentioned that her son was getting bored with all of his toys. well, i'm not rich but for some reason my son has a surplus of toys, between hand-me-downs and overly generous grandparents, so i told her that i'd be happy to give her some of coltrane's unwanted playthings if she wanted to drop by sometime. at this her eyes lit up and the blood surged forth in my loins like a rushing river. well, she was free that afternoon, what would i think if she were to drop by after lunch? my face flushed with nerves and caffeine, i stammered out that that would be "great" and wrote down my address. she took the piece of paper and was on her way. now, this is not the type of thing that has ever happened to me before, so i was basically in a state of total denial. i tried to calm myself down (both literally and figuratively) and told myself that, for all i knew, this woman wasn't even interested in me. after all, we hadn't even mentioned the ad- wasn't it possible that she had just happened to run into me by chance? of course. i tried to still my racing heart and get some work done before heading home shortly before noon to shower, shave and brush my teeth 7 or 8 times. and when it got to be nearly 1:00, i thought "that's it- she's not even going to show up." but show up she did- and what a show. i found it hard to believe i had such an incredibly voluptuous, sensual woman in my little apartment and tried to keep the conversation focused on kids' toys as i led her into the bedroom where most of them were. as we sat on my bed going through a box of train set pieces, loose lego and various and sundry action figures, her hand again rested on my leg, but this time it didn't move. i looked at her and there was now no doubt in my mind what was going on here. within 10 minutes we were buck naked on the floor and she was calling out my name as she shoved my head between her legs. the world swam before my eyes- this was really too much to take in all at once, and i was having a hard time believing it was real. but i was in heaven. to go from a one year dry spell to something straight out of penthouse forum in one day was fucking unreal. or is that unreal fucking? an hour later i was kissing her goodbye at my door and making plans to get at those toys real soon. we're doing coffee again tomorrow.

01.07.03
happy canada day folks! i spent mine, for the most part, doing work, but i did go on a 3 hour biking/hiking/swimming odyssey. damn summer is good. i hope you people in california & florida appreciate it, because when you only get it for maybe 4 months out of the year every nice day is like gold...so my bike got stolen last week. woke up and went outside and there it wasn't. i suppose i should have locked it- my lock broke several months ago and i hadn't gotten around to picking up a new one. so i was pretty pissed, but then that afternoon i got a call from my friend mark who told me he found it! the funny thing was, he didn't even know it had been stolen. he saw a guy covered in tattoos and track marks on agricola with it who was like a foot shorter than me, and he knew right away something wasn't right. so he went right up to him, said "hey asshole, that's not your bike" and took it from him. the guy apparently didn't say a word, just walked away in the other direction. i guess i should get around to getting a lock one of these days...there was an ad in this week's coast (halifax's weekly entertainment listings paper) addressed to someone who drops their kid off at daycare and goes to steve-o-reno's (an excellent local cafe) every morning. which describes me. it's from a single mom and it says "despite the crush, i haven't been very encouraging. but i'd love to be a part of your morning ritual." so i'm still not sure if it's really meant for me, but i posted another ad for this week's issue urging little ms. mystery to meet me at steve-o's this friday. i have a sneaking suspicion who it may be. i'll let you know what happens...meanwhile, i got back from my sojourn with the elements today to discover that someone else had written me from nerve personals. a lady who was apparently so intrigued by my profile that she set up an account with nerve just to meet me. not only that, but she sounds scrumdelicious and she wrote me a very nice letter. hmmm, says i. i wrote her an equally nice letter back, but that was about 12 hours ago and i haven't heard back from her yet. she did say in her profile that she's looking for someone who doesn't have kids, but i made a point of telling her about coltrane, my 3 year old son. i hope that wasn't enough to make her lose interest, but at the same time, i don't want to be with someone who doesn't like kids. who knows? the unknown knows.