Welcome to My Brain: Me, Myself & I

I'm Easy

2007-07-31T20:58:00.000-04:00

Family Pride

2006-08-21T22:08:00.000-04:00

All right. I keep saying I have a lot of cousins. Here's a quick lowdown: My dad is an only child and the only close family I have (had actually) on his side are his parents. Both passed now. But on my mom's side, there's lots of people! She's the second of six kids. Their dad died in 1964 (when my mom was 13) after which my grandmother (whom I consider a true saint) raised all of them on her own, the youngest was only three. This made the six of them very close to this day. Between all them, my mom and her siblings have had 22 kids of their own (now, just imagine the chaos when they're all in the same house!) and it's only very recently that we can confidently say that it's over. Note: This also goes a long way toward explaining the tendency we have of speaking very loudly such that outsiders often think we're arguing or fighting when, to us, we're just having an interesting conversation or discussion ...but I digress.

Between 1971 and 1976, my mom and her older brother Alfred had five kids, (of which I was the first) these are often refered to in my family as "the first batch" because of the short lull that followed us in births; the next one came in 1980. At many moments in my childhood, all five of us actually lived together in the same home. And so that also made us very close. This post is about the youngest two of the first batch, my cousins Marianne and Pascale.

I was at a family gathering yesterday (My Grandma's 85th B-Day) and suddenly realized that their carreers implied a "web presence" and that I could shamelessly plug them in my blog and say how proud I am of them. So here goes.

My cousin Pascale is a young professional photographer who is just starting out in her career. This is her web site where you will find pictures like this:

or this:

or this:

or this:

The model in the first picture is her older sister Marianne who is becoming quite the accomplished actress... as a quick look at her IMDB entry reveals. (and it doesn't mention all the stuff she did on french tv or the numerous commercials she's been in so far)

She was the female lead in this vampish horror film. The newly successful Québec movie industry's first attempt at the genre. Quite a shock for me to see my little Marianne in a hot, steamy sex scene!!! Guess I'll have to get use to it, because she's hot!

So that's it. I just wanted to post links to their stuff and say how proud I am of them and how much I wish them all the best in whatever is to come in their careers.

d'Artagnan's "I shoulda bought that gorram A/C unit when I had the money" recipe for surviving a heat wave.

2006-08-01T23:39:00.000-04:00

"feels like" 46°C they tell me...

It's not the HEAT
It's the HUMIDITY
they say...

All I know is I can't stop sweating!

Here's a solution:

Ingredients:

A large bucket or pair of buckets ...or kitchen pots or anything that your feet can fit in (the more spacious the better). Personnally, I use a large 10" high Rubbermade® container that I usually use for the laundry.
One or more towels
A comfortable sitting place (couch, lazy boy, whatever suits your fancy)
Remote control ...or a good book, your choice
Ice
One bottle of Ernest & Julio Gallo White Zinfandel rosé wine - chilled (yeah, yeah, I know, it's not really a rosé... Whatever.)

Recipe:

Fill large container or pair of containers with cold water and set in front of comfortable sitting place where feet would usually be if one were sitting normally (Yeah, I know it's hard work and you're already sweating like crazy just sitting down but trust me, it'll be worth it)
Set towels next to or around containers
Pour E&J Gallo into a tall glass filled with ice. (you can substitute with your own favourite poison but man! that white zimfandel stuff is great in the heat!)
Take off shoes and socks - If you're not already stripped to your underwear in this heat! (If it wasn't for the neighbors, I'd be naked)
Sit down in designated comfortable place and place feet in water.

Voilà!

No more sweat.
Enjoy drink and use remote or book to entertain yourself (Try to avoid
methods of self entertainment that may bring about renewed sweating;
move as little as possible)
Take feet out periodically to avoid getting wrinkly feet.
Use towel to wipe feet and avoid getting floor wet

Repeat as needed

I'm not kidding, this really works.

To Post or Not To Post

2006-07-27T05:50:00.000-04:00

All right, I’ve been internally debating to what extent I would talk about myself and whether or not to post any soul searching deep personal and private thoughts in this blog (like everyone else seems to be doing) rather than just stick to pointing to and commenting on things that are influencing my thought process (or just things I think are cool), as I have mostly done so far.

I have never understood the urge to reveal one’s inner thoughts where they might be stumbled upon by some who should never know them… It used to be girls kept their diary locked away in a secret place where they hoped no one would find it, now they post it on MySpace!

But as I prepare to get back in the “Internet Dating” thing for the third (and a half) time in my life, I have all kinds of thoughts about women, love, relationships and sex running around in my head (some of them new and confusing) and it feels like an attempt to put them on paper (so to speak) might help to make sense of them… or at least help frame them more clearly. And in some weird way that I don’t fully understand, I know that if it wasn’t for the fact that I’m posting this, I wouldn’t bother with the exercise and would instead just keep running them in circles in my head.

So this is it, I’ve become one of those crazy people who bears his soul on the internet. Not only that, but I’m about to do it about the most intimate thing I can think of; my sexuality and my affective relationship to women. I must’ve really lost it!

But before I get to what’s really on my mind, you should know this about me first.

A Drop in the Ocean

2006-05-28T23:56:00.000-04:00

Hello, I am an anonymous thirtysomething male from Montreal, Canada and this is my tiny and likely futile contribution to the World Wide Web.

I have only recently started this thing and there is currently not much material yet. I lead a busy life (though obviously not busy enough to prevent my contemplating dedicating time to this web site idea) but as time allows, I plan to fill this blog with what will likely become a chaotic mish-mash of things that interest me and that I think are worth posting on the web. The overwhelming majority of which, I am certain will not be by me. I don't have any illusions that anyone will ever read this but it is also a personal exercise, an attempt to explore and organize my thoughts and my ideas. Plus, I am looking for a way to archive and reference some of the interesting things I come across and that I always regret forgetting. As in "Damn! I remember reading something about that [very interesting subject] on the web, if only I could remember where."

I had started doing this in a blog but I found the chronological format to be too restrictive in terms of organizing the things I wanted to post. I then tried to create and host my own web application that would look like what I imagined but quickly gave up when I realized the amount of work involved. (There is a limit to the time I'm willing/able to put into this) So I finally decided to compromise and simply split everything into separate blogs that represent the topics that interest me - i.e. the different parts of my brain.

Read the original version of this post if you really have a lot of time to waste