FACT ONE.

While I talk a lot about Montreal, I didn’t actually grow up here. I was born in Strathroy, Ontario in 1984, and lived near there for two years. My dad is a Presbyterian minister, so we lived in a church manse. While I lived there, I was dive-bombed in my crib by a bat. This house was old. Since I was twelve months old, and had not heard of bats, I thought it was a giant fly. I would continue to be scared of flies and other flying insects until I was about twelve YEARS old. We moved from Strathroy to grand valley for 4 years, where the river would flood our poorly built home annually. Once, a thick fog enveloped our town and I got lost. My parents searched for me through the soupy mist like the victims of a Lovecraftian short story, only to find me eating soil near a chemical dump. At age 6, we moved to Tiverton, on Lake Huron. We lived there until I was 13. Then we moved to Ottawa. When I graduated high school, I wasted a few years of my life, then got work in Montreal testing video games. Now I am a marketing manager for a small online gaming company. I suppose that was more than one fun fact; I should pace myself.

FACT TWO.

As a Canadian with barely any experience being in the USA, there are a lot of normal American things I have yet to experience. Some day, and by some day, I mean within the next 3 years, I intend to drive route 66. At some point, when apparently drunk, I wrote myself this mysterious note on my phone. This is it in its entirety:

THINGS TO LEARN IN USA
Ihop
Sizzler
Bumber shoot

FACT THREE.

My daily commute, from St. Urbain and Rachel to Hymus and Des Sources, clocks in at a staggering combined 2.5 hours. My coworkers ask me, why haven’t you bought a car? Well, they don’t pay me nearly enough. Why haven’t I moved out to the industrial park cum suburb of Pointe Claire? Well, I’m not ready to want to die every day of my life yet. The commute sucks, but my life of living a kilometre from downtown Montreal and working for a job where I can relax and check my websites whenever is worth it until I get into school. In fact, I wrote most of this blog entry on my cell phone while riding the metro, for an absolute lack of better things to do. It destroyed my wrist.

FACT FOUR.

Part of my master plan moving to Montreal was to gain residency and go to school here. I am going to get a BCom at John Molson School of Business in entrepreneurship, and get investors to invest in an indie game dev. Then I will create an empire. School will cost me under 4 large a year because Quebec is awesome. Speaking of awesome, my apartment, which I share with3 other dudes, is 1104 Canadian a month. I pay 287 a month for the master bedroom. It is massive and I love it even though there’s a streetlight that shines right into my degrading, massive front window and ruins my sleep.

FACT FIVE.

My first game console was an Atari 2600. I had Mario Bros, Donkey Kong, and Ms. Pac-Man. We had this because it was super cheap and my family couldn’t afford nice things like the already aging NES. I had no other console until I was 12, when I got a used snes, which my mom had to buy from her boss who was getting rid of it to give her kids an N64. I think I got a better deal than her whiny’ spoiled shit-brats did. My first rpg was chrono trigger, which I bought while on vacation in upstate NY for $20. When I was 13, I took a flyer route and earned 20 a week for 5 hours work. I saved all my money and got a ps1. I later got a ps2 and an xbox 360, but that’s boring stuff because those jobs paid minimum wage and I wasn’t 13.

FACT SIX.

It is entirely possible that, given the chance, I would eat nothing but avocados and tabouli until I turned green and died.

FACT SEVEN.

I went with untreated ADD until I was about 20 years old. I almost flunked out of high school and could barely even do things I enjoyed, like play video games, on bad days. I had a habit for drawing on things I wasn’t supposed to draw on, even until I was 18. I was diagnosed with adult ADD soon after, and wish they had caught it sooner, because I’d annihilate a high school math class now.

FACT EIGHT.

My first girlfriend, and first kiss, was a girl named Lindsay. We broke up because I saw her kissing on a boy named Dave. She is now engaged to Dave’s cousin. It’s worth noting that this happened when I lived In the city of Ottawa, not when I lived in any of the small towns mentioned above. If you’re reading, Lindsay, thanks for breaking my negative stereotypes of small towns by proving such things happen in big cities.

FACT NINE.

I love ESG, Joy Division, The Knife, The Monks, Boards of Canada and Joanna Newsom. Maybe too much. I’ve proven to myself over the past few years that these are bands I am absolutely incapable of ever getting sick of. In fact, Music Has The Right to Children is probably the record I’ve listened to the most times in my life, surely dozens of times in 2001 when I discovered it, and at least one every month or two since. Deep Cuts got a similar amount of play when I found it in 2004 after Stylus Magazine (R.I.P.) ran a review on it, and continues to be a favorite.

FACT TEN.

These stories are all true and only slightly embellished, if at all. However, I am much less interesting than the sum of my parts, I promise.