CITY OF GLASS, KIDS ARE ON THE GO -- PART OF THE WHOLE TRUTH

the internet had been inspired by the successes of vancouver's municipal strikes and wasn't providing even basic services for the first three days of the month. non-canadians couldn't get access, anyway. at first i thought that perhaps i'd offended the city's sense of territorial and intellectual independence with my fervor for searching out foreign authors at its used book stores without much of an eye to local writers (maureen medved teaches at ubc, but the tracey fragments was done in toronto). but, after (re)reading the first twenty pages of hey nostradamus! i remembered that i had in fact read the entire novel, my copy of which i was given by a friend of a friend on my first visit to vancouver after asking for suggestions on sampling native literature. so i had read douglas coupland, but i must not have thought much of hey nostradamus! -- which is to say that, although i do now remember that i've read it, i don't at all remember my reaction and i don't plan to finish it again. maybe, then, that doesn't count as putting in the effort, and that's why i was penalized. at any rate, the internet was down at castle vancouver for anyone without a canadian mobile contract.

offended or not, it's also possible that vancouver wanted me to take a different look at it this time around, to experience it without a digital filter, in which case the city was itself at odds with the visions of mr. coupland. embracing that, i understood that vancouver could, indeed, be different, and i only wish that i'd not been so shocked by the disruption of my recent habits of production as to forget to keep a notebook in my pocket. (alas, i hadn't brought a bag other than my weekender.) as a result, i'm left still experiencing a gradual yet uneven -- and, worst, unrecorded -- flow of recollections from my trip. and hence, the "details" i would have liked to have already described might not come back to me until after the most effective framework for their description has already been used and published, although other descriptions will certainly have been influenced by even unrecollected details, while whim and imagination will have worked their magics on the entire lot.

it came to light on the night before our arrival in canada that caroline had allowed herself to fall into a marriage contract without once having experienced the unique delights of a pig in a blanket. things were bound to escalate from there. although she herself wasn't necessarily hungry for a piggy, she couldn't help but continue to share her story the more it met with disbelief, which in turn continued to drive the excitement of her listeners. she wasn't necessarily hungry for a piggy -- none of us were, necessarily -- but her story definitely got us thinking. the rest of the residents of the city seemed to be experiencing something similar but under the more general influence of a spring fever, so it was (albeit a bit ironically, because that's where everyone else was) lucky that we conducted our affairs in town, because the rules are different, and differently binding, at the campsite. (everyone knows that, but the allusion to the detail of a joke about camping should conjure an at least humorous mental possibility for pigs in blankets.)

not directly, but as a result of the lingering effect of caroline's story, a later conversation turned to the subject of certain tandem activities, which after the application of slur, delirium and frustration produced the phrase that won saturday night. it was no surprise that the night ended with two chairs on top of the trashcan fire, and although quoting the phrase will completely misrepresent what happened in the hours before the chairs met their ends, it did humorously resonate with mine and caroline's experience at elysian coffee where we stopped for decaf americanos before leaving vancouver on sunday. we'd hoped to see a certain barista. unfortunately, the coffee pullers working that day were not one of them anyone we recognized. we did, however, see the employee that greeted us at the alibi room the afternoon before (and well before the phrase). a date with the parents. two dicks, one mouth. can i say that on television?