The Artsaypunk

One night, back in the residence years, a few of us were sitting around in my room having a few beers. Suddenly my door flew open and a guy we had never seen before walked into the room. His head swiveled from side to side, and his eyes seemed glazed. He seemed lost but then [...]

Back when we were doing our Masters at Queen’s my classmates and I partied quite a bit. It was an interesting year like that. I had arrived full of idealism for the world of post-secondary education, ready to push through until I had a Ph.D. After three weeks I had already decided that academia was [...]

A friend of mine messaged me the other day from Lahore to report that she had just seen a motorcycle pizza delivery type guy. That’s just great I thought, thanks for the update. But apparently the name of the Pizzeria is Big Slice and their slogan is “Experience the Complete Canadian Pizza Experience!” I didn’t [...]

Friday night I realized quite suddenly that it was Canada Day. Being so far outside the Canadian context, it had completely slipped my mind. Not that I ever really need an excuse to drink, but this seemed like a good one to me. Subaru Kazoo and I loaded up the laptop with the Tragically Hip [...]

That last post reminded me indirectly of a story. This would have been back during my first year in Calgary. I’d only been in the city for a few months, so I was still looking for full time work. I signed up for a temp agency since I can type like a demon fiddles in [...]

One summer, many moons ago, I planned out a canoe-camping trip with my girlfriend of the time. I planned to canoe from the town of St. Stephen, down the St. Croix river, out into the bay, around the peninsula where the resort town St. Andrews sits in all its quaint, touristic hypocrisy, and then through [...]

My friend Frank grew up in Niagara Falls (the city, not the cataract), which strikes me as a little unfortunate. I mean, Niagara Falls is a great place to visit but I think that actually living there would have me over the falls in a barrel quicker than you can say “Thundering Waters.” I understand [...]

3:00 AM …So this crazy chick keeps insisting that I have a lisp. The other girl, equally as crazy, is laughing her head off and nodding. I’m quite adamant that I do not have a lisp. I mean seriously, I think someone would have mentioned this fact to me at some point growing up. “No, [...]

You know what the funny thing about Pakistan is? It’s the little differences. Like the mosquitoes. I’m actually thinking back fondly of the mosquitoes at home. Can you believe that? Yes, those Canadian mosquitoes were almost cute in their polite attempts to bite me. Not like over here, where every mosquito is the insect spawn [...]

I’ve never been a hat person. Not that I have anything against hats. In fact, some hats I quite like… just not on me. Hats look terrible on me. Which, I think, is due, in part, to my gigantic head. I’m serious, my head is the size of a small watermellon (or maybe a large [...]