September 2005 Archives

Dear Mother Nature,

I know it's been a long time since I've written, and I haven't come to visit you since the whole 'Raining Men' thing (which was a HUGE hit by the way) and on the whole I'm just a bad friend. Let's be honest though; you're busy training your protégé and I'm busy doing boys. I'm sure my life is much more enjoyable than yours right now, but I digress. I've noticed you've been giving your protégé more control and that's great because it's about time you retire to your summer home in the Caymans and surround yourself with all those men you had rain down. Recently though, there have been some complaints and I think it's time we address them, because really, the weather is just out of whack right now.

I'm not talking about the hurricanes and typhoons, or the earthquakes and tsunamis or the tornadoes. It's important for a young budding Mother Nature to know what she's capable of, and Daughter Nature was always timid so it's nice to see her coming out of her shell. Although, you may want to tell her that she need not use so much force the next time she decides to send a tsunami flying at a bunch of third world island nations. Tell her that two powerful hurricanes hitting New Orleans in a month is redundant and not friendly, and that she really needs to get over the whole Mardi Gras fiasco. On the whole though, she's been doing what I would consider a bang up job and I've never had any complains (although she may want to check on the artic ice cap, since it's in need of some serious lovin'). That is until today.

I was driving to work today, just like I always do. You know, cutting it far to close time wise for my liking but dealing with it because it's that or mono again Sister and the last time you had mono you flattened a small island. So you can see why I'm dealing with the sleep, It was chilly out, but a nice respite from Daughter Nature's need to keep everything hot and toasty so she can maintain her tan. It was cloudy to the north, sunny to the south and there was the tiniest bit of drizzle that broke out into a huge rainbow when you looked at the right angle. It was nice. Then I noticed the form of precipitation coming down. That was not nice.

Now, I'm sure it wasn't your fault. There's a lot of training and work required in having a protégé so I can see how it could slip your mind. That said, snow before my birthday is just NOT ACCEPTABLE. My birthday, being seated in the latter end of November, gives us plenty of time to enjoy autumn. SNOW BEFORE OCTOBER DOESN'T! Snow at the end of September will always result in disappointed letters being written. So please, for the sake of all the letter writers out there, let's try and talk to Daughter Nature to rectify this problem.

Much love,
Mike Haddad

My gay ass is broke. That’s broke, the adjective referring to the objects horrible financial situation, not to be confused with broken, the adjective referring to the objects state of being and the fact that it is no longer intact compared to its original form. That would be different, and lame, and TOTALLY NOT BLOG APPROPRIATE. As much as I’m proud to display the fact that I get pon bed, pon floor, against wall on a regular occasion, don’t expect to be getting regular updates on the state of my ass, which by the way, is in amazing condition. Damn I’m fine.

My co-op position is starting to upset me. Don’t get me wrong, I love my placement. Where else can I talk about my street cred to women who are the same age as my mother (and occasionally refer to themselves as my work mothers)? It is hurting my wallet though. I’ve maxed out my credit card on gas for my mother’s stupid van. The only consolation is the fact that I’ve almost officially claimed the van as mine until they get rid of it. Maxing out my card on gas wouldn’t even regularly be a problem, if I hadn’t just gotten what can only be called a pay cut. While not an official pay cut in the sense of things, it has definitely lowered my expected weekly income. We’re talking $350 a week lowered, already down a previous $400. See why I’m a little depressed about it? Let’s add in the fact that I have an $800 order for shoes coming in because my wardrobe is in desperate need of an update. Cancel the shopping trip to Mexx and Parasuco boys, I might need OSAP. I’m on paragraph away from sending out a list of my desired birthday presents.

That would be a foolish thing to do. Let’s be honest, it’s a catch 22, and on each end I’m offending people. So I’m just going to take the middle route and offend everyone equally for everything. My friends are poor. Hell, their financial situations are worse than mine. I was lucky enough to be able to try and mooch off my parents until they cut me off recently. Hell, even if their financial situations weren’t bad, they’d still pretend they were. I have the cheapest group of friends, and I love every bit of them for it. For this reason, birthday presents and other presents in general were never really a big thing at Trinity. The fact that a nice shirt will cost you a minimum of $30 might have had something to do with that. Unless you were someone’s significant other, or you were getting a present from Ashleigh Cook (because that girl had money falling around her left, right and center), presents weren’t a big deal. Not to say we didn’t get presents. CDs make awesome presents, at an affordable price now. God bless $13.99 CDs at Best Buy. Unfortunately, asian CDs are not $13.99 at Best Buy. They're more like $25.99 and a trip to Pacific Mall. Thank god I have Kaitie and Mel for Asian CD Quality Control Goodness. Aside from that, don’t expect presents from any of us. We’re cheap and damn proud. Thank god Jess has good taste in clothing though. That girl needs to steal Paris Hilton’s credit card and go shopping for me. She can even shop at Guess. That would be ironic, and hot all rolled into multiple bags of sweet clothes for me.

Last night I ventured downtown to assume my place as an Olympic Superstar. Or at least that's what I'd like to tell people. There was a fundraiser for the Canadian Olympic Associate and I scored tickets at work for being youthful, attractive, bright and all around perfect. Or so they tell me.

I had to sit in traffic for two hours so solidifying my hatred for all things sports event related, and leaving me questioning the intelligence of the person who scheduled two sports events on the SAME NIGHT, in a city where daily rush hour is on par with New York and Los Angeles. Yes, that's right. We have big cities too you crazy (southern) Americans. So rush hour is bad, but doable. What's a little more hectic is regular rush hour plus two stadiums worth of traffic (because everyone is far to stupid or lazy to understand how GO transit works) all crammed on one expressway. Toronto wants to tear the Gardiner down to open up access to the waterfront downtown? Please pass me whatever they are popping. Cut and partially cover me a new 10 lane expressway, tear down the old elevated 6 way one and build roads and pedestrian crossings over at grade. Then cover as pedestrian and regular traffic or winter weather requires. It could work, I swear.

We finally made it to the Olympic building at 8:00pm, two hours after they had opened their doors but swimmingly ahead of schedule if you're on Paris Hilton time. Paris time, which by the way I totally plan on using from now on, is just amazing because what good is stressing over being on time when you can show up whenever you want and be SO HOT while you do it? Rob and I skipped out on the movie in the basement of the building because we felt bad having to make the girl play it for just us, and I totally knew that I was already pushing my luck having Rob go in the first place and didn't need to feel any worse about taking up his Thursday night.

On the second floor they had set up tables to gamble at and had a silent auction and bar set up along the side. It was definitely not the party that Kristy and I had expected it to be. It was a very suit and tie crowd that had obviously just left their highly paid executive corner offices and decided to make an appearance. We were four hot, young, fashionable adults. Did I mention that everyone was old? Well they were, and I mean old with a capital OLD. Kristy even said that she felt young in there, so you can just imagine how I felt considering that Kristy definitely has six years on me. There was a bit of awkward conversation down there and even more awkward silent until we went up stairs. Then we did what any four hot, young, fashionable adults (so weird to consider myself adult) would have done. We made our own party.

On the third and fourth floors there were stations simulating Olympic events; third floor for the winter games and fourth floor for the summer games. The first even was the biathlon which just happened to be an even where my years of being a semi fit video game loser paid off. I stood watching people do target practice before someone offered me a gun. My inner monologue screamed something like "OMG Ima pwnz0rz sum n00bz!!1!eleventyone-seven!!" completely with 1337 speak and exclamation markage, because I've been fluent in 1337 since it was d00dspeak, back when people still spelt it 'dude' and it was only 'omg' and 'own', never mind 'pmg' and 'pwn'. It totally scored me a 98% on my grade 12 English final too.

So there I was in all my geeky glory, completely owning the targets, while making a complete dork of myself in front of my three hot well dressed companions. Hello Rock and Republic? However I totally didn't mind because I OWNED! I don't mean to blow my own horn (Figuratively, because I'm far too much of a princess to do it physically. Well, that and I couldn't reach anyways.), but I was all like "Witness my street cred, bitches! Brap brap! Then I proceeded to be completely destroyed by Kristy in curling.

By 9:30 they were closing up the Olympic Floors and I was ready to go. I hadn't eaten and the headache I had earned at work breaking three computers had turned into The Headache of DOOM that eats little kittens and wraps me up in their fur so that I can also have a killer allergic reaction too. Nothing says fun like sneezing while your head feels like it's being used as a tennis ball by Serena and Venus. Suffice to that the yelling and the screaming and the LOUD NOISES that followed our human cargo home was enough to make me cranky. By the time we got to Shopper's Drugmart I just wanted to crawl into a hole and die. Luckily Robert is way too observant for his own good and wouldn't let me leave the radio on while I drove him home. So the ride was therapeutic, and when I got home I flipped off my server-to-be and went to bed. That's right! Bed! Ask any Olympic Superstar and they'll tell you that if you're not going to get rest so you can be physically active, you should still get your beauty sleep. I, ladies and gentlemen, am no exception.

Since everybody is going to be talking about it sooner or later, I figured I might as well get the ball rolling. Hurricane Rita promises to send gas prices "through the roof" even if it doesn't completely obliterate Texas and all the home schooled children of the south. Not that I have anything against Texas, or home schooling, and not that I have no heart to feel compassion for all the suffering that is bound to happen when a Level 5 hurricane goes all PMS on us. I've just had some rather interesting experiences that will forever taint the already not so good names of home schooling and the south.

My mother called while I was at work demanding I drop everything I was doing and go fill up on gas before it goes up to the rumored C$2.00/L later today. She was even so kind as to pay off a chunk of my credit card bill so that I could do it. Score! I'm sure that high gas prices will be breaking wallets everywhere, but I find it hard to pity anyone, Especially in the case of Suburbia where it's mostly our own doing.

Take my family for example. What the hell did we need a Windstar for? We only number five. We got rid of the cottage a long time ago. We stopped driving friends everywhere. While it did prove useful on the rare occasion that I had it for school, I could have made due at lunch with a car. Moving into residence? It could have told me that I was bringing way too much. Common sense and foresight would have told us that a car was a much better choice. Now we have a car, and the can is ready to go. If I could only get my brother to stop being a lazy ass and walk to and from school we'd be set. Well more the 'to' than the 'from', since he has football practice or some nonsense and will most likely be too tired for walking. I did it everyday until I got fed up of waking up early so I could walk only to see him being dropped off right before the bell rang, or being picked up halfway home because my mother had picked my brother up.

It's a major problem with suburban society: on top of being incredibly wasteful, we're all lazy as fuck. We have 'Drive Through' everything now. (Yes I'm going to spell the 'through' because 'thru' is not correct unless you're an idiot, or lazy, or both). Sure it's nice to be able to lean out the window of my car to the point where I might fall over and smash my brain all over the bank machine I'm trying to access, but isn't it a little much? What about all the gas that I'm wasting idling there doing my business, never mind waiting in line. Oh my poor gas tank. Starting to see why I find it hard to pity people?

Since I'm only a coop student and I'm not yet bitter or jaded about life, you won't hear me complain about the taxes on gas either. I have more concern for the provincial government than the federal; the feds already take our money away and waste it on the other useless provinces or Ottawa's public transit. It would be nice to see Ontario having a tiny bit of the money that the rest of Canada saps from it. (This doesn't include the natives who I will refuse to call Canadians because it is my government given right as a taxpayer, you collectively lazy and manipulative group of people. If that 8 year old had been foolish enough to try and tell me that I stole his land, he would have been shoved into the freezer full of illegally killed Canadian Geese before he finished the word 'bitch'. Please. My families immigrated at some point or another and they alone contribute more to society than you could, instead of just leeching off of it).

You also won't hear me complain about less people wasting their vote on the Green Party of Canada now. This is more of an added bonus for me. Not that there's anything wrong with the Green Party, I swear. None of the real parties (Liberal, Conservative, NDP) will actually cut the gas tax. They might promise to cut it when election time rolls around, but none of them would actually do it. But no one is going to seriously consider voting for a party that wants to raise the tax on gas. (Except for maybe the Toronto Public Space Committee, but they're a bunch of poor communist hippies who get incredibly jealous of how hot people tend to carry iPods. Rest in peace, Spadina LRT iPod ads). Don't get me wrong, I'm all for a better environment and all that jazz, but why risk economic recession/depression when I can get months worth of entertainment watching up everyone cry as they fill up their gas guzzling vans and SUVs. Ok, so I might just be a heartless bitch after all but it's just too good to not enjoy.

My weekend was so filled with awesome that I can't even comprehend the fact that people plan on trying to top it. It is going to take a lot because by the end of the night, $100 worth of Grey Goose and a limo to the hop later, I was content in my ability to mentally handle anything that Windows 2000 thought it would throw at me when I went back to work. Let me take you back to the beginning of the weekend and the start of the awesomeness, which unlike regular weekends started on a Thursday night instead of a Friday night.

Phil had scheduled me for what I was afraid would become The Dinner of Doom and leave a huge crater on Church after we had both exploded. I actually went downtown unsure of what to expect, because in our history of friendship we've had weekends where Friday we hated each other, Saturday we we're best friends in the world and Sunday we hated each other again. Well, I have to say that I thoroughly enjoyed the whole evening with all its 'flirting with hot Asian chick' and 'random humping of Phil's friend/Amazing BSB fan'. Adam showed up afterwards and the night was all around good times. Even thought I vetoed plans for the bar that I HAD MADE when I realized that I needed to get my ass home lest I die overexerting myself as I try to crawl into bed at the end of the night.

Friday was a joyous day, what with the crazy weekend to come and the newly reestablished friendship between Phil and me, which was well over due. I mean, how many people out there are capable of understanding the awesomeness that is Lower Bay, never mind be secure enough in his hotness to ride the subway just because he can. That, ladies and gentlemen, is a friendship worth fighting or. So we went downtown to meet Phil and celebrated the beginning of Rob's birthday weekend. That meant Woody's because we are oh so predictable. Unfortunately I was driving and that gave Adam the excuse (rightfully) to cut me off. It meant much wandering around Toronto trying to fix problems that are none of my business and leaving me frustrated to no end because I was trying very hard to respect those boundaries even though I can't stand when people are upset and I'm not doing anything to help. Really though, the world should just bend over and accept my will. However after being mean to some people at U of T outside Chestnut I cheered up and we survived the rest of the night. Adam is totally a bad text message influence and it's going to come back and bite me in the ass one day. I went home, and slept, and it was good.

When I woke up it was Saturday. Not just any Saturday though. As I was quickly reminded by the one who held on to the pound puppy all night as if his life depended on it, it was Robert's birthday. It was also well into the afternoon meaning I had let sleep get the better of me and wasted precious birthday time. For shame Mike! For Shame! I was quick to make up for it. You know, in the 'showered and drinking by 6:00pm' sense. That wasn't before I made the appropriate appearances first. I showered, and we ran to the mall to buy accessories; I needed a belt and one of the 'SPEAK' dog tags from Aldo because what says hotter than supported a Youth AIDS charity? Then it was off to Waterdown just so we could make up for it in the 'showered and drinking by 6:00pm' sense. Adam and I were well on our way to drunk by the time the first of what would be MANY HOT BITCHES arrived. Sweet Jay-Z, Robert's friends are HOT. It was just one after the other all night.

By the time we were able to leave, the limo was packed with four hot boys and ten REALLY HOT girls. Everyone else was jealous, and rightfully so. I spent most of the night escorting the girls around excursions on Toronto, but it was totally worth it. We got looks and comments left, right and center. Never mind the fact that the hop was awesome on its own. I got lost from the group trying to find a bathroom after we left the limo two blocks over (one way streets suck), and when I finally found the club I ran right smack into Brian and Mike. Only Phil and Adam can fully appreciate the pure amusement that causes for me, but I do have to say that they need to start carrying mints around again. However Brian and Mike took care of my drunken ass, so it was all good.

I'd comment on the music, but the great thing is that I totally can't. I was too drunk to remember. I know that Samson performed a Hilary duff song, and that the girls didn't believe me when I told them that the coke-head doing N'Sync was a drag king. I know that I have a large number of comments about how I dance really well, and how everyone is jealous. I know I was definitely a slut with Adam and Phil, and Roger, and Brian and Mike all on separate occasions. I know I didn't even dance with Rob, but it's all good. But I totally can't comment on the music because I just don't remember. And that alone is the perfect sign for me that it was a good weekend, and I need to party more.

And a good reason not to type a coverletter at 3AM and never look at it again:

I have great organizational, problem-solving and interpersonal skills which I feel would be an asset in almost any work environment. I have experience helping others trouble shoot computer problems with computers, and upgrade operating systems. I also have excellent oral and written communication skills, and I am quick to learn. I hope that this would make me a great addition to your team.

The irony is far too great for me to handle right now.

This weekend was supposed to be awesome. Correction, this weekend is going to be awesome. We've just had some minor glitches in our weekend plans. Unfortunately, none of us (Robert, Adam and I) had enough foresight or common sense to realize that there's a little thing called the Film Festival going on in Toronto right now. Not that you can really call it little since it brings us things like Madonna and Guy eating at restaurants surrounded by ten security guards, and Keanu Reeves making appearances on Much Music. It also means that you can't get a decent hotel anywhere in the city, unless you feel like spending $600 for one double bed. As opposed to $99 for two double beds regularly. Fuck.

Adam decided to break this news to me while I was totally pon bed, pon floor, against wall, but I knew that only he would call me tonight, and he would only call me if it was important because he was completely aware that I was going to end up being pon bed, pon floor or against wall even if I didn't plan on being when I left; which I didn't. However, the news was broken to me and I had to figure out what the hell we were going to do for Saturday. I still haven't exactly figured out anything concrete. So far we've considered finding places for the girls to stay, riding around on a streetcar or bus, and getting chauffeured home. The problem with having a group of 13+ people is that it gets to be a pain to move them around.

However, in blog goodness news, Google launched a new Blog Search Tool that will allow me to say "Eff you, Technorati" because I've had nothing but trouble with that piece of crap site. Google Blog Search returns about 45 results if you search The Mike Haddad Show, returning some recent posts from here, as well as posts from The Mike Haddad Show Livejournal Community and some random other sites that load RSS feeds from blogs. This alone has completely made up for the fact that I have no idea what I'm doing with my weekend anymore. I'm such a loser.

Over the past few months I've been chronicling all the drama at the local American Eagle. Mentally of course, because some of the information was G14 classified, and sharing it would have meant more than certain death for me; a painful death too. But now, the gloves are off and I'm free to out everyone from the drama closet with only marginal bitching to fear.

Once upon a time at American Eagle there was a boy, and for this story's sake we shall call this boy Adrian. After some serious fast food workage, Adrian decided it was time to up and leave the fast food industry once and for all and claim his rightful place as a retail slave. For this story Adrian is also a flaming homosexual. But that was ok with Adrian, and me, which meant it was ok with everyone else because if it wasn't I'd send them angry text messages saying things like 'I'ma cut you like you've never been cut before!' It was also fine with American Eagle because like most retail stores, American Eagle is a haven for boys who like boys. And boy were there boys who like boys.

In fact, most of the boys who worked at American Eagle just happened to like boys. 'Excellent!' you might think, 'Adrian, who likes boys, will be able to have his pick from all the other pretty boys who like boys that work with him.' Wrong! Wrong, wrong, wrong! Hasn't anyone ever told you that dating a coworker is a very bad idea. All the kinky change room/back room/side room/ possibilities will never ever be able to make up for all the drama that you are bound to suffer through. Lucky for Adrian, he already knew this. Lucky for us, the other boys who liked boys didn't.

There are three other boys that we're going to concern ourselves with in this story, who we will call Matt, Ryan and Steve, but not Shamus because who the fuck names their kid Shamus anymore. No sorry, that brown guy doesn't count. Shamus is an Irish name, and brown people are definitely not Irish. So, as you can guess, Matt, Ryan and Steve all work at this American Eagle with Adrian. They also happened to be boys who liked boys, but I think we've established that. I just figured I'd make sure incase you didn’t get it the first million times.

So for the first little bit, Adrian got along just fine with the AE boys. Not to say that he doesn't get along with them now (although they might give him a free 1 million punches to the face if they read this), things are just different now. True to his nature (or maybe sexual orientation) Adrian became friends with each of these boys separately. The problem was that he couldn't be openly very close with each of these boys, because unlike Adrian who was very secure in the fact that he was a boy who liked boys, the others didn’t feel the same way and we're trying to hide the obvious from everyone else as if we were all delusional, blind, or just plain stupid.

So each of these boys worked, tried their best to hide there dirty little secret, and had very little interaction with me because, like Adrian, I'm very loud about what I am and there's no reason for them to be interacting with me because they don't work with me. Never mind the fact that they go to the homo clubs every week. Or the fact that they have some of the largest collections of sex toys since they filmed Euro Trip. Or the fact that they were all secretly DOING EACH OTHER behind each others backs. No, they couldn't risk being seen with me because I would blow all of their precious cover. However, this story is not about me so let's get back to the main topic. This, as I not so tactfully threw out in the open, is the fact that each of these boys was secretly doing each other behind everyone else's backs.

I'd like to say now that to the best of my knowledge Adrian never actually slept around with any of the other boys, but then again he's a sneaky little bitch when he wants to be and even thought I love him with all my heart I'm sure he's getting more action than he leads us to believe. It gets better though. Not only were each of the three boys doing each other, and bringing their drama down (Steve is in it for the sex, Ryan has crushes and Matt never calls anyone back), I'm going to now throw you all a curveball. There's a straight girl. Not only is there a straight girl, but the straight girl has a crush on one of the boys and the boy leads her on for the better part of a year. O.C., eat your heart out.

So over the course of a year you have the straight girl who likes the homo, who happens to be enjoying a friendly no-strings-attached-kinky-wild-sex-all-day-every-day relationship with another boy, who happens to decide he's just going to up and break it off when all the while he's been doing the same thing to the third boy who gets the same treatment. Could you follow all of that? It was a lot to take in, and one big run-on sentence, but I thought it would be the best way to emphasis the American Eagle Sex Triangle + 1. It was all working out nicely too; at least for the first little while.

Now I have to say this: if you thought that it would all work out nicely forever, you need to get your head checked. That kind of drama just isn't good enough for me to spend an hour trying to compile when I could be doing much more enjoyable things like sleeping. No, this is much more than just a love triangle + 1. This is the love triangle + 1 falling apart. After some time, it becomes obvious to more and more people that things aren't as they seem. The two boys who got dropped like it was hot consoled each other with a night of hot passionate forest sex. Ok, not really, I like to exaggerate. I'm sure they did something close though. Then, the straight girl finds out that her boy like boys, just like her! Amusing? Yes. Horribly heart breaking? Also yes. Similar to the 'Justin just got told by Brian that he was just a fuck and has his heart broken, and you simultaneously feel bad and want to jump him at the same damn time' thing that you get watching the Queer As Folk US Pilot.

Shortly afterwards, the boy who has been ditching all the other boys accidentally (or maybe not so much) outs himself while drunk off his ass because he had his heartbroken, all while having a conversation with Adrian leaving the third boy to drive awkwardly in silence with a carload of coworkers. Needless to say that he was soon out to the straight girl spilling all of her secrets anyways. Like I said: O.C. eat your heart out. I always told people that my life could be a show. Now with the orbital drama, it's really coming true. Expect to see me on US weekly soon, along with every other scandalous magazine out there. And you just know that I'll be loving every minute of it.

Saturday night meant The Backstreet Boys concert in Kitchener, which in turn meant spending the night with Jess and Mel in Kitchener surrounded by people who have trouble dressing themselves, partying with people who by all logical thought processing should not have 13 year old girls still screaming over them but do anyways. All in all it was an awesome day.

From the beginning it meant sleeping in until almost 2:00, giving my body some much needed catch-up sleep. When I woke up I decided that I would just loaf around until Jess arrived and it was time to go. Some 3 and a half hours later it was time, and I jumped into the Incredibly Hot Green Van and drove across town to pick her up. After being idiots outside of her house, we got back into the Incredibly Hot Green Van and started to make our way to Waterloo. Traffic was shitty, so I made the executive decision to try and take the 6 up to the 401 instead of doubling back and going up Trafalgar. That decision alone made for some interesting happenings on the drive. Especially since Jess and I decided that the Spice Girls and then Gwen Stefani were better than any conversation that we could ever provide. There's something that's just so special about driving by some shitty, broken down car from the 30's while Gwen is yelling about how her shit is bananas.

When we finally did get to Waterloo, we were getting close to dangerously low on gas and cutting it extremely close to the concert since we weren't sure if there was going to be an opening act or not. We got Mel, and with a quick scream and hug for both Jess and I, the three of us were back in the Incredibly Hot Green Van once again and driving down oh-so-boring Phillip St to get to the plaza and feed ourselves. After waiting what was almost literally (but obviously not) forever, we were finally able to take our subs and I got to hand a Big Red to the boy behind the counter to get myself some change (a Green, a Purple and some coinage). Then it was a display of my incredibly awesome driving talents throughout Waterloo and Kitchener as I had a sub in one hand, a drink either in-between my legs or in the other, and was forced to occasionally steer with my knees.

Trouble arose when we couldn't find the side street the directions told us to turn onto to get to the concert. What was upsetting is that as we drove down Weber, I saw the auditorium and specifically asked if we had passed the street. No, there was no street sign saying we had driven past Stirling St and our destination, so we continued. Then Weber turned into King St, and my brain said "hey idiot, you're going to wind up in Cambridge soon, you've clearly gone too far." My sub starting dripping on me, I had a fit and threw it in a bag, and then pulled a sweet u-turn in the Incredibly Hot Green Van to try and get us back on course.

10 minutes was spent franticly bitching about how we had not passed a visible Stirling St, how we were now well past the 7:30 start time, and the Kitchener Memorial Auditorium was no where to be found. As we drove up to where I saw the Auditorium when we drove down, I checked the street sign to see East St, which happened to be the street that Stirling was supposed to take us to. With a loud "Oh, fuck that!" I turned and got us to the concert. We bypassed the security guard at the permit parking because we were so hot, and got one of the closest possible spots. Then we were running into the Auditorium to try and find out seats. The music playing let us know that unless the Backstreet Boys suddenly started really sounding like a girl, there was at least one opening show to buy us time. We sat down as the random girl was finishing and prepped ourselves for the show of a lifetime.

To our surprise there was an official opening act. A banner for The Click Five was hoisted up and the girls went nuts. Now, I have to tell you now. I had prepped myself for girls screaming but I promised myself that I, Mike Haddad, would not crack and start screaming like all the little school girls I was surrounded by, especially for some random opening band. I was fine for their first song too. It wasn't their one single (which I don't enjoy that much anyways), so I sat through it and talked to Jess as we figured out camera difficulties (my battery was dead, but the camera was better so we worked out switching batteries). Then they pulled out the big guns and said "What did the five fingers say to the face? SLAP!" It was my face they slapped too. I couldn’t place it right away, but as soon as they started singing I realized that it was a cover of Tiffany's 'I Think We're Alone Now!' and then I was screaming louder than any of those horribly dressed school girls. I don't think Mel or Jess thought I was capable of screaming so loudly.

That meant that the gloves were off when the boys came on stage. I can't even begin to describe how awesome the whole experience was. I didn't know the lyrics to a grand total of four of the songs; three from 'Never Gone' that I haven't learned yet, and one from the older albums that I forgot the words too. It was grade 8 memories over and over again as they played their older stuff. Some of the songs we would sing through until the chorus, knowing all the lyrics but not being able to remember what song it was. It was great. I have to say, they put on a great show too.

Nick has gained a ridiculous amount of weight, and it was visible even from our seats up in the top of the small auditorium. It was a little disheartening to see, but I have to say now just for the recorded that I would still do him; him and Brian, because they were always the hot ones. AJ was too greasy for me, Kevin was too weird and Howie was obviously just there to make it five. Although AJ has a voice on him that can knock the girls into fits of orgasm. The thought of Brian and Nick in a threesome was enough to make me swerve off the road, and Jess is a horrible person for putting that thought in my head.

Boy, could they still dance though. Even after all these years, and even if it was basic two steps for the most part, they could still move. When they tried to do something more advanced? Well all I can say is wow. They still sound amazing too. So amazing that even the horrible sound system in the Kitchener Memorial Auditorium couldn't ruin it for us, and when we walked out when the concert was over and our ears were pounding and ringing, I was in overload somewhere between melting on the spot and screaming "oh my god, do me now!"

I've had one of the longest fucking weeks in my life. At least, that's the way I feel right now. I'm not even sure if I'm justified in calling what I've done all week 'long'. It was the same typical cycle of "work all day, party all night, die when you get home", and my body is now killing me for it. I feel as if I had spent all night partying way too hard and popped way too many times. I was shaking earlier as I sat at my computer.

Since I can't really formulate thoughts that are coherent enough to make up something decent, I've decided that I'm going to share some amusing moments from my life over the past week.

Walking by Alex's don's door, attached to which is a large envelope filled with condoms and lube with a sign in large letters that reads "Free condoms and lube. Please take only what you need." I helped myself to a handful of what I thought was a large amount of lube and a larger amount of condoms. (As it turns out I grabbed a handful of condoms and only two packets of lube. Oh well.) When we were leaving to go home, we had to walk by her don's door. I think what had happened was I pointed out the don's door which brought it to Alex's mom's attention. This is what happened:

Alex's mom: Oh look at that, that's sweet!
Alex: Those are condoms.
Mike and Alex's dad: Bahahhahahah.

Alex's mom turned bright red, and I laughed about it the whole way down the stairs from the fourth floor, out to the courtyard so Alex could buy her frosh package, and then out to the cars. She also banned me from telling anyone what had happened, to which I started laughing even more and Alex gave me a knowing look and said: "This is SO going on your site isn't it?"

I totally fell on my ass while I was showering. It wasn't at all pleasant. I was attempting to formulate thoughts for this, but gave up and washed the rest of my hair while sitting on the floor before I attempted to stand up again. Eugene reopened a little dose of (e). I like the look, and the guest blogging idea that he has going on there. He wanted me to implement something similar on my site, but we were unable to compromise on how to get it done. In the end, I think it will work out more this way. He's already managed to get his hits up; way up. All he needs to do now is figure out what to blog about.

I've gotten past a lot of my "What to blog about?" issues. Right now my issues are more of the "How do I get the CSS to do what I want it to, and properly?" variety. I have a lot of good blogging material, ranging from "I helped my dad set up a gmail account, much hilarity did ensue" to "How to make a boy hate you." I just don't have the time to do it all, because time is a cold hearted bitch that hasn't gotten along with me ever since I told everyone he was bad in bed. So once I get all the drama with time worked out, expect some good reads. Like good eats; hot eats, cool treats – all I need is a ridiculous price mark up and you can call me Dariy Queen. Just not THE Dairy Queen, because that was and forever will be Adam Steczkiewicz (spelling = owned).

I ran out of available stuff to do with about an hour left to go at work today. Then, I did something that went against all the established rules regarding blogs and work – I starting blog hopping. I know, give me a free one million punches to the face. I’m not sure how it happened. It started with me just reading Google News as I waited for the computer I was supposed to be installing new software on to become free again. (The problem with having your main task be upgrade all the software on computers is that people tend to forget that those computers are in use for the whole time that I’m here, unless I’m lucky enough to have the user be away for a day. I would be so much more productive if no one was here.) Then I some how found myself at Learn Movable Type, which just happens to host tutorials on a large number of things I've decided to implement (and answered a lot of the small technical detail questions that I had). It was all downhill from there. Movalog, kottke.org, plasticbag.org, boingboing.net, a little dose of (e) and then finally, the mother load: dooce. And I completely and totally expect to be dooced extremely soon.

I'd like to take this chance to apologize to any of The Mike Haddad Show viewers out there who have noticed the disgusting lack of anything recently. Not that I count this as a valid excuse (because in my opinion there is no valid excuse for this sort of slacking, everyone should churn out good entries with Korean-like proficiency), but I would like to share what a typical day has been like for the last two weeks. It goes something like this: morning, wake up; 9ish-5ish, work; 5ish-7ish, tweak web stuff, read blogs, finish extra work; 7ish-11ish, chill time with Robert and Adam, generally involving a lot of driving (which, for those of you who don't drive and wouldn't know, is extremely draining after a long day); 11ish-12ish, more web/blog stuff; then sleep. So while I don't consider it a valid excuse, I hope it's now easier to see why I've been having trouble staying on top of the updates.

It's really a shame too, because so much has been going on in the last week. Frosh week for this year's first years has lead to a lot of interesting things happening. I'm trying to think back to my frosh and whether or not I enjoyed it; I have to say I did. I don't understand why people are so bitter about their frosh too. I have friends at U of T who are skipping out on frosh events because they say frosh is lame. One of Alex's roommates said the frosh week wasn't really her thing, and after moving in on Saturday I'm pretty sure she went back to spend the week at home. At Mac, the last I had heard Drew was completely avoiding interaction with not just frosh week but EVERYONE in his dorm. Oh, the joys of having a single room. I'm afraid all these people are going to seriously regret skipping out on frosh week. While UW frosh wasn't anything special (they still hadn't figured out how to not treat us like 12 year olds because we could no longer drink at the events), it was still on the whole enjoyable. That one night in the Math Castle where Helen and I completely ROCKED the scavenger hunt/team spirit business, let me tell you. We were nuts. I think there were only two or three of the frosh leaders that didn't like us by the end of it, and they all seemed to fit into the ugly-and-still-in-the-closet-but-obviously-a-flaming-homosexual category. They were most likely bitter because we were pretty and well liked. On the whole though, I had a lot of fun there.

Actually, I had so much fun that I was disappointed to realize that if I get back into residence I won't be there the same time that the first years are going through frosh. Originally I was going to apply to get into residence for the fall term because I was scheduled to go back. When it became apparent that I wasn't going to be able to write my finals in August, and needed the extension to December, I cancelled my residence application for the fall term and started my work term sequence change. I decided that I would just apply for residence over the winter and spring terms (and that's still what I plan to do now). It just didn't dawn on me that I wouldn't be there to experience all the first year jitteriness. I missed out on the real experience of residence. Suffering through mono while your roommates and his friends pull constant all nighters because they wait until 8:00pm the day before something is due in the morning to start homework does not count as experiencing residence. While it's an integral part of the university experience, everyone else got to party and forget about all the noise their roommates made while you just wanted to sleep. I won't even start on the singing-of-dashboard-confessional business. And let me tell you: you don't know just how horrible a song Vindicated is until you've heard it belted out throughout all hours of the night.

Yesterday, in a true testament to just how much of a loser I am, I went to the opening of York Region Transit’s new un-bus service Viva. They call it the un-bus because they want to make a distinction between Viva and their regular bus service. In a nutshell, it is suburbia’s answer and alternative to the expensive subway. Laurence, working for the TTC and being god of all things transit related, decided that we should go up armed with cameras and ride the shit out of the system (which only had part of two lines open). I have to say that I’m impressed with the service, and the fact that they got it up and running now while Mississauga Transit and Brampton Transit are still trying to figure out what the hell they’re doing.

Viva works like this: there are 2 (soon to be 5) routes. Its part of the 1system transit family, which only includes YRT and Viva but means that one fare lets your ride both of the services. Along each of the routes, there are vivastations that have oneRide machines to sell ready-for-use tickets. Six of the transit terminals have multiRide machines that sell the full range of fairs. You can also get on to Viva by using a transfer from a YRT bus.

The un-buses are of Belgium design, and painted a bright blue colour to help you distinguish the Viva un-bus from a YRT bus. Much like the subway which it is mean to stand in for, it has sets of large double doors that open all at once to allow for quick easy boarding instead of boarding just at the front like a regular bus. The articulated un-bus (read: long double bus) have tables set up for people who want to do work en route, with wi-fi coming soon. Or if you happen to be Laurence and Mike, you can put stuff on the table just because they're there, and you are so fucking cool because you're riding Viva on the first day (and you just happen to know more about it than any of the un-bus drivers and information employees).

The seats on the un-bus are incredibly comfortable (so much that it was hard to ride the TTC from York University to Downsview Station afterwards). There's a screen at the front of the bus that displays what the next station is, as well as a computer-female voice recording of the station as you arrive. The GPS system tells the bus when to play the recording, and also helps update the displays at the stations telling you how long it's going to be until your next un-bus arrives. It's also supposed to help with traffic priority at the lights, but for that to work the un-bus drivers need to be taught to stay in the proper lanes first.

I'm going to be honest when I say that I'm looking forward to them reconstructing the routes to give the Viva vehicles separate lanes, most likely in the middle of the road much like the streetcar LRT lines along Spadina, The Queensway, maybe the Harbourfront (I can't remember, but I don't think so) and soon to be St. Clair. You'll notice I said vehicles this time, instead of the un-bus. That wasn't a mistake. Part of the reason that Viva is being introduced in phases is because YRT wants to build up the ridership to turn Viva into an LRT line. I'd say subway line, but that would require tons and tons of ridership in an area that loves suburban sprawl. The centre Viva lanes already have money set aside for them, and would make traffic priority much easier to do. It would also make it the BRT system that they market it as, instead of just a glorified express bus route. But I still love it, and the concept. V is for Viva, and I'm going to Viva all night long.

What good is an entry if it's lacking in the sarcastic humor that makes things so interesting. Unfortunately, I'm seriously lacking in the sarcastic humor department. I'm even seriously lacking in the 'telling people off to their faces' department. The closest I've gotten to that recently is a discussion I had with Barone after he had a fight with Jess. I was originally not going to use names, but figured that it would just be a silly charade to keep up since most people would figure it out anyways, and they both seem to be big enough to be able to handle it (and I hope I'm not mistaken or there's going to be an angry Hungarian girl banging on my door within hours of this going up).

While it originally started as a conversation about the new girl in his life, it quickly turned into a conversation about whether or not he was a bad friend. I passed on making a final verdict on whether or not he was a bad friend, but I did rather bluntly tell him that he's socially inept. I think we've just hit a rough spot in a lot of our friendships. No one has patience for each other anymore. Originally, the fact that we were all from Oakville and all went to high school with each other at some point in time kept us together. Now it seems that it was the only thing that kept us together. Whether anyone wants to admit it or not, I've seen a number of people just getting fed up with each other.

It's not even that it's necessarily a bad thing. With time people are bound to change; it's a fact of life. Clinging to the past and attempting to force people into your ideal friendships are just going to make people push farther away. It's human nature to end up angry with someone if they're being clingy. I know that I get ridiculously fed up when people start clinging to me; mentally and regular type. I can't deal with doing the same fucking things over and over again, and that's all we do in Oakville: drive from Tim Horton's to Tim Horton's. Maybe we should all stop being boring. As for the regular type, hanging off of me is reserved for a very limited number of people (read: people I'm dating). If I don't latch on to you first, keep your friggin hands off. I like my space. Sometimes people need space, and that space can work wonders. I'm not just lacking on sarcasm, I'm lacking anger too.

As upset as I am about it, I hardly ever talk to Nick or Rob anymore. Both of those idiot faces were supposed to give me Julian and Dave's email addresses for my own personal use. I haven't been able to hold a conversation with them that was long enough to get just the two email addresses. I think that's a great illustration of how we've fallen apart. Yet when Rob had his birthday get together, we sunk right back into the old groove and reminisced about all the crazy shit we used to pull at Loyola. There was a reason that both of Dave's cars were flagged with the Halton police, and it was a very good one. Toy guns, stolen campaign signs, fake kidnappings, staged muggings; I'm surprised we didn't accidentally kill someone. Although, come to think of it, Rob's ass did suffer serious damage at the hands of Dave's side mirror. But then, I think anyone who gets a side mirror broken off on their ass would suffer some serious damage. There's a moral to this story kids: if you're going to moon someone, be sure that he'll put the car in drive and not reverse.