Lemonkid's Non-sequitur Game.

Whomever posts in this journal will receive a return post that is a complete non-sequitur from whatever you posted. It will be a random bit of whatever is on my mind at the time.

What have I been up to?

Well Ophelie and her friend Laure-Helene have been visiting from Paris, so we've been hanging out, drinking and dining in the M-T-L and generally going 'round breakin' young girls' hearts.. wooo.

I've been recently seduced by the world of lomography, and I've joined their cheap zany ranks.. keep an eye of for some fisheye photography in the weeks to come.

Otherwise I've been fantasizing about when to go quit my job and go on some world travels.. decisions, decisions, pilgrimage to the Compostela del Santiago in Spain, learning to surf in Melbourne or Sydney, possibly doing a few months of intensive tango in Buenos Aires? The possibilities are endless. I'm looking into the possibility of working in the adventure travel field, which I think would go well with my bizarre skillset.

Thanks largely to the massively inspiring TED Talks (which I encourage everyone to watch immediately - either through podcasting or using it as a TV substitute) and a few inspirational books I've been reading lately I'm also thinking of getting back into NGO/charity work that I cut my teeth on in my teens. It's kind of weird having jetset highschool years improving the world and then stalling out in your 20s.. but part of that has to do with the strange politics of the child's rights movement in Canada.
I was a teenage UNCRC superstar. hahaha.

That is all. Time for my daily bathing.

If you're on my friends list I know you, I ... trust you even (unless you're drunk, then I know you're probably up to no good) that's why I go to you for my needs, my request, my recommendations.

Needs like.. recommend me some excellent vegetarian cookbooks. Anticlimatic you say? Perhaps.

Fearful of a potential about turn where I've decide to renege on my meat-eating ways?

This is doubtful. (although I know you vegetarians are getting dewy-mouthed with the thought of adding another to your ranks, and my meat eating friends are already sharpening their knives)

I'm merely deciding to cut down on animal intake as I feel it's to a large degree contributing to the destruction of our planet. I will still consume meats in a variety of all their delicious ways - especially those special meats that lay very near to (and are probably clogging) my heart - bacon, and seafood. But I'm cutting down to rare occasions. Well such is the desire.

So recommend me your vegetarian cookbooks! (I'm aware of the Moosewood series, Re/Bar, How it all Vegan, etc already.. so anything other than that if you please).

My meat budget instead will go towards making elegant cocktails. Gracis.

This entry has been brought to you by point form and the letter Gee, whiz!

- back in Argentinian tango classes- this time, finally, with a partner, an extremely cute Chinese girl with excellent taste in film

- had an amazing Syrian dinner with my ex-gf followed by a mediocre vernissage (no free booze?!?) but still had an amazing time because we always have an awesome time together

- picked up a new tennis racket so I can kill on the courts, despite the fact I haven't played tennis in forever

- upcoming concerts include M.I.A., Raconteurs, Leonard Cohen, Nick Cave

- finally have some confirmed plans to go whitewater rafting in some class 5 rapids next month

- trading poker lessons from a former pro with homecooked meals

- paid off a student loan (note this reads "a" and not "all")

- went to several barbecues and talked disco and debauchery

- need to pick up a new bicycle

- mild obsessions with goal-setting, financial management, personal fitness

- discovered an excellent Your Money or Your Life personal hack worthy of 43 folders

- selling my Wii to purchase a mind machine

How about you?

This is a minor experiment in perception and inspiration.

Some of you know me, some of you know me very well, others just through my delicious online persona, but you all have a certain perception of me in varying degrees based on personal meetings, photos, blog entries, et cetera.

So if you were to take my personality and what you know of it, from extremely limited to all the dirty dirty details, if you imagine me in a career, job, volunteer position, venture, or adventure, what would that be?

Don't factor in what you think I would think, but merely what you think my ideal job would be based on how you know me.

I'm looking for ideas, but I'm also interested in how I come across. If you want to throw down some adjectives on me based on your reasoning, that's cool.

Invention, my dear friends, is 93% perspiration, 6% electricity, 4% evaporation, and 2% butterscotch ripple.

Haven't been up to too much that's exciting.

Played some poker, read some books, paid off a loan, yadda yadda yadda.

Nothing to see here.

Well my birthday was a fairly successful venture.

I woke up next to a pretty girl, made myself some black coffee and oatmeal (my new default breakfast), taught one of my roommates rummy and had discussions about hormones, psychotherapy and horse cock with my other roommate.

The girl woke up and we got another friend and had a fine lunch at M sur Masson. I had oysters Rockefeller, this amazing crab dish, the cheese plate and a fantastic bison gratin. Red wine all around.

After that I hit the flotation tanks and a pulsar mind machine session for maximum relaxation.

Then off to whiskey cafe to down an improbably expensive 25 year old scotch, meet up with some friends and see a circus burlesque show / dance party that a friend of mine was putting on.

You know when you know someone and they're throwing an event, but you've never been to anything of theirs and you have no idea if it's going to rock or suck or whatever? This was my experience going in.

I was BLOWN AWAY. This underground venue called the Pound, my friend organized this fantastic circus burlesque show.. it was.. really great.

By the end of the evening I had

- my tie re-tied by this cute guy who looked like a cross between Buddy Holly & Pee-Wee Herman
- convinced a relatively sedate blond girl from Georgia she should go wild
- had my face covered in strange paint
- slapped and was slapped (in a good way)
- danced my ass off on stage
- made this acrobat who'd wrapped himself in chains hanging from the ceiling realize that he could have slept with anyone in the room after his performance (how many performers don't realize this sometimes surprised me)

I also saw the most beautiful woman ever.

Like ever ever.

Oh girls with shaved heads that spin fire speak gutterpunk French patois and make me dream of panthers.

I've just finished reading Luke Rhinehart's "the Dice Man" which in the vein of "Illuminatus!" is an intellectually stimulating (but still filled with tons of sex, humor and ontological revolution) novel of the 70s.

The primary two focuses of the book, which happen to be intense interests of mine as well, are chance and psychotherapy. The protagonist is a disaffected psychotherapist who realizes that he's making minor to no change with all his patients and that much of his field is a complete fraud. In a moment of inspiration he turns to
- dice.

He decides to make his decisions based on the rolls of the dice - you pick the options, but it's best to include some good, some bad, and some ugly. This allows all aspects of the personality to be explored as eventually through chance you'll hit upon everything. It's an oddly compelling, and strangely liberating idea.. so naturally.. I'm exploring it.

A fascinating pairing in terms of reading would actually be this novel coupled with James Carse's excellent - Finite and Infinite Games, the idea of the "Dice Man" being what Carse would term an infinite game, as the purpose is to keep playing (not to win) and the rules are certainly always changing.

So if you see me rolling dice - it may be due to an experiment in possibility, possibly insanity. But when the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.

Side note -

I'm a terrible romantic. People don't seem to believe it. Is it because I'm a gutter filthy bastard with sexual lexicon more befitting a scurvied deep-sea pirate, who spends his spare time getting his kicks in Bangkok opium dens and with the nomadic yurts of the Mongolian horde?

Personally I see no incongruity with being jaw-droppingly libertine and Don Juaningly romantic in the same sentence.

But I'm a bad, strange man haunted by the same refrain; the things you make us do, the things you make us do Mr. Jones. But always with the same wicked smile.

Sweet sweet sweet sweet bulbs grow in m' lady's garden
Warm warm warm warm warm sun fingers wave
In m' lady's garden
Flowers dance their faces brave
Come talk freely in the garden of m' lady

My experiment taking smart drugs for one month begins...


now.