Flaming hell in Toronto

"You better radio someone because my friend is in there pissing all over your theatre"

Wow, you tuned in to read one blog and another one popped up! Good lord! It's like a two for one deal, although the "one" is free, so the deal doesn't really matter. Err.. so, the last one was well overdue, this one is right about on time. What's been going on? Well if I'm honest, since I've got back from my jaunt away, things have been sort of insane. Even the littlest things I've seen and heard have been totally nuts. I knew Toronto was slightly nutbar from the moment I saw a hobo defecating onto a church, but recently the insanity ratio has stepped up a notch.

The first thing that happened was that my netbook was slaughtered by some nasty spyware, leaving me with no internet in my house apart from the old PC downstairs. I tried for a couple of weeks to fix it in various ways with various people's help, but to no avail and have only recently splashed out on a new one. At the same time, there was some drama in my house with one of my housemates and the landlord (not involving me) which led to a very tense atmosphere and didn't really make me want to use said PC downstairs. At the same time Toronto decided to be 30 degrees everyday in May. At the same time as that there's a horrible smell in my room, probably due to a rat dying in my room. At the same time the TTC decides to do a load of work on the subway making it annoying at best to get downtown. And at the same time as that, there were things in my social life that were completely nuts.

There's also been some crazy incidents that have left me completely confused, for example, an old man telling me off on the street for wearing camo shorts, saying I was a fascist. I was wearing a Dead Kennedys shirt at the time. Jesus. A few days later I witnessed the Toronto police pulling up beside a hobo fight and slamming them against cars in a very unfriendly way. Almost makes me want to burn my "fascist" camo shorts. Around that time I also witnessed a man SMOKING on the subway, OH MY GOD!!!!111

So all in all, May was insanity and it looks like June has quietened down a bit - new netbook, rain, less drama, smell almost gone (ok, I covered the vent with a plastic bag). Work is one of the things that has predictably stayed pretty non-nuts, but shifts have been pretty sparse due to my cinema not getting any big films. Luckily, money wise I've been ok, and only just recently paid off my last rent, as July has already been paid for thanks to my first and last. But I'm currently trying to save for a last-gasp trek somewhere at the end of July/early August (probably either Algonquin Park or potentially another jaunt to the States), so hopefully shifts will pick up in the next few weeks and I don't blow my now pretty much disposable income (I'll just keep denying I have an overdraft to pay off at home).

The fact that I'm going home soon hasn't really sunk in yet, but becomes apparent with things like paying last rent and when people around you start going home, and I'm looking forward to it as much as I am feeling sad about it. And what am I going back to? A cross-breed government who are going to "push unemployment to three million". Aww man. Well, at least I'm going back to a Leeds United in the Championship.

But I've still go plenty of stuff to do and look at and hell, have been doing. A few weeks ago we went to Scarborough Bluffs, which is not really like the real Scarborough at home, well err.. there's less.. chips - they're basically big cliffs, but it's very nice and another example of how you can travel a short distance within Toronto and it's another world. I also hope to go the AGO (art place) and Canada's Wonderland (theme park) and maybe even the Ontario Science Centre in the next few weeks, to get my brownie points as a good tourist.

The World bloody Cup starts on Friday as well, which I'm totally excited about, and surprisingly, I think a lot of Toronto is too, due to the variety of neighbourhoods in the city. CBC are showing every single game, which deserves a big pat on the back and everyone in my area seems to be wearing a Portugal shirt, probably because the area is Portugese. England aren't gonna win it, but I'm hella-looking forward to throwing a chair through a bar's window when we don't win (Ironically, one of the things I like about bars here is that they have frame-less fronts when it's warm so you can be outside.. inside).

So yeah, I'm looking forward to doing some new things, having some nice times and hanging out to the max, seeing some nice people off, watching a fuck load of football and hopefully planning a trip for right before I go home. So tune in next time for rapes and japes and cape...rs. Bye!