Where’s the old thedysh!? its over there under PHOTO GALLERY. I moved it to flickr for more fun. The old gallery will be taken down slowly over the next few months. I think i’ve migrated everything to flickr, but if i missed something let me know.

Mr. Greek has long been a feast for me, and many who enjoy sharing in feasting. It has provided delicious and nutritious portions of Salad, Rice, Chicken, Lamb, Beef, Pork, Potatoes, and Gyros etc.

It was about 1995 (give or take 10 years ago) when I began to really enjoy dousing my food in tzatziki. For the next ten years I proceeded to order an appetizer portion of the white stuff to enjoy with my platter. During my adolescence no-one commented on how garlic seeped out of my body and into the atmosphere. It was evident when I began to simultaneously date and consume Mr. Greek that this was going to be an issue. Turns out my whole system top to bottom ( I need not say more) is affected by the overload of yummy garlic. Moreover, if i partake in physical activity (read: bball) within 24 hours of consuming this de-lite, the results are less then desirable for those who have to cover me.

March 10, 2005 I had lunch with Julie at Mr.Greek @ Dufferin and Finch. The last time i had consumed mr.greek i had a small salad and one skewer of chicken on the side. I only ate half the itty-bitty container of Tzatziki to see what would happen. It seemed that at this point in my garlic career, any quantity would amount to a negative effect. Fast foward to the present: No Tzatziki! a bold statement that nearly shocked Julie out of her seat. “NO TZATZIKI! ?” she remarked, with un-deniable subconscious relief.

I proceeded to shock the world, and consume my entire small chicken platter ( rice, salad and chicken) without touching the removed and forbidden white yogurt-based condiment. I finished the meal, burped a few times, and on the car-ride back to work realized something:

Mr. Greek is to garlic what cigarettes are to nicotine; a delivery device. It was really my addiction to garlic that I loved, and without that Mr. Greek is Mr. Mediocre.

Mike and I went down to King St. today to check out some gear @ MEC. We went across the street to europe bound. When we were ready to leave we descended the stairs from the second floor, and i saw HIM. My nemisis. VINK the evil do-er. I proceeded to ask him if he was vink, in a demanding tone “VINK ?”.

When he made it clear, through a vink-like grunt that he was indeed vink, I proceeded to akwardly punch him. The kind of punch that you give if someone tells you a joke, and you don’t like the joke or the person. The kind of punch that is so very light, it could never be confused with assault. Don’t get me wrong my fist was closed, but it was the kind of punch, that the reciever wouldn’t even know whether it was a touch or a punch.

Next i proceeded to tell him “I still hate you” waited for a reaction, and said ” i still FUCKING hate you”. He the calmly asked me “hasn’t the therapy helped?” to which i replied “i don’t know, has it helped you?”.

Mike was slighly amused that i had told-off a teacher, even if it was 10 years removed.

But let’s really get at the heart of why this happened:

Jan Vink:
Taught Math and a few other subjects at St.Andrews Secondary School.

He decided after a few short weeks of being my grade 9 math teacher, that i was unfit to be in his class. It was a bold stance against the administrations policy. At the time for being kicked out of the class, you visited the office, filled out the dreaded pink slip, describing what you’ve done wrong… you then proceeded to show the explanation to the principal or VP, and then needed to get it signed by a parent or gaurdian within 24 hours.

In the first few winks of Vinks class i had recieved 3 of these pink slips. This initiates an automatic meeting between parents, kid, teacher and administration. Noteably - one of the pink slips was recieved for kicking a girl… named faunia (later discovered she was a man traped in a womans body). Truth goes, she kicked me in the NUTS!, he didn’t see, and then sent me marching.

Anyways, as the school year progressed, he couldn’t handle anything from me. Sometimes on days where he was stressed. He pre-emptively held me outside the class. The year went horrible. I did not learn a lot of math.

When the year was begining to become serious, there was legitamate concern that i would fail math, be held back in secondary school, and not go to my new high school with my age group / friends. VINK was very happy at the prospect that he would ruin me, if he could accomplish this goal.

The prequel: “The GUM incident.”

We went to mono-cliffs in grade 7 for a class trip. It was supposed to be an outdoor-sy nature experience for city slicker kids. Some of the scavenger hunts and stuff were genuinely fun. We had been informed of a rediculous rule, of “No GUM on the property” . WE were given several opportunities to give up any ‘accidentally packed’ gum. Vink was the head teacher on the trip. He caught me on the first day with contraban gum. I gave up that pack, but i had more in my room. I decided it was best to hide my gum, in case things got heated up in my quarters. I was over in tomas kokko’s room on the second night, and he offered me some of his gum. I took a piece, and passed it to sascha kieser or brian mcwilliams ( i can’t remember) and VINK walks in right then. CAUGHT RED-HANDED ( i think it was big-red too). VINK would have nothing of my story that it wasn’t my gum. My parents were telephoned immediately. It was 10pm, extremely foggy night, i was about 45 min outside toronto in normal driving conditions. VINK invoked a little known tactic, he cited the back of the permission form as his legal standing for ejecting me from the property. His plan was to call a CAB and send the bill to my folks. My mom was tripping out on the phone, threatening him, and said that she’d come to pick me up. I think when her and my dad showed up there was quite a shouting match that i didn’t get to hear. That was an incident that was pretty much my fault, but c;mon!!! have you ever heard of anyone being sent home from a far-away field trip for chewing GUM!

Back to Grade 9: Meetings with the principal, my parents, and VINK got very hectic. At one point VINK was called either a) an anti-semite or b) a nazi by my dad. All of this seemed to entertain me to endless degrees. For some reason i was very confident that everyone (my parents, friends, administration) viewed me as a punkish-kid with decent intentions, and vink as a fucked up ego-tripper.

Nearing the end of the year my avg. was 45 in that class. Something had to be done. Vink was insisting that there is nothing that can be done because i failed to much of the curiculum. The principal proposed that because my average was higher in other classes ( b’s and a’s) that i should be able to take the final exam, and have that mark count for 100% of my math grade. I think i scored 89, went to york mills for high school, and the rest is history.

FUCK YOU VINK!

I thought several times about slashing his tires, while he still worked at St. Andrews. My dad warned not to. He was convinced that Vink’s hatred ran deep, and that while my sister still attended the school, i shouldn’t do anything to vink. SO on my sisters final graduation i went up to him, in front of parents and kids, and give him a royal “FUCK YOU VINK”

Today was our first encounter since that day.

Fuck you vink you cocksucker.

How disposable is this blog?

It’s free, it neither lives nor dies, few people read it, and all could function without it.

Is it trendy of me to post pics at thedysh and make commentary. You have to be a bit of a nerd to setup a php photo gallery. Therefore i have invested time, and my photos do matter to me. I have never printed any of the over 1000 digital pics i have taken in the short few years of digital photography. My gf has, my mom has, but not me…. I don’t care for having prints lying around or in frames, when i can chat about thedysh with people online.

Other then reminding one’s self about a moment in time, photos have a secondary purpose of sharing that experience with others. A blog’s purpose is similar, but unless you prod people into viewing or reading, its fairly un-received.

I cannot speak on behalf of those who have truly moving stories or photos, but my online works are pretty run-of-the-mill, with a notable exception: I have purposely skipped over the midlife-midlife crisis trip to southeast asia.

I made sure we got to the jazz tent early, i wanted to have a seat and snuggle up to a cozy evening with wynton marsalis. Julie held fort while i did my thing at the sheraton bathroom (8.5/10). While in my travels she called and informed me that our tickets (which had just been ripped, our hands stamped, and our bodies admitted to the venue) were for the night prior. Wynton had already played!

I asked julie on this phone call “oh, so who’s tonight?” she replied “bela fleck”, and the rest was a night of wicked 4 and sometimes 5 string bass, and the antics of a tight stringed banjo player.

Interesting to note: among the crowd, several people i knew, but most notably: Ted Cole. Banjo player extrodinaire, and ex-camp owner, enjoying the fruits of what is probably his first June 28th evening south of the 44th parallel in 60-some years. Reminds me of something Joshua Newman once said to me: he had been spending so much time up north during the summers, whether it be cottaging or camping, that he never entered the downtown core in the summer months. Because of his lack of exposure to warm sweaty june and july days in our fare city, his memory had written the core as a ‘cold’ place.

-JC

How do news personalities talk for so long?

Peter Mansbridge talked his head off from 6pm till after i fell asleep at just past midnight
6 HOURS. To talk that much you need a decent amount of water, and when you drink that much water, you usually need to piss. This begs me to question? during crucial news events are the personalities hooked up to some sort of urine retrieval device? Do they have a bedpan for commercial breaks? Is there an assistant that helps the newscaster do his duty while on air?