This week in Culture: Bacteria & Literary Notoriety

Week 46 of the year 2006 was, as they liked to say in the 1930’s, a Duezie. First on the menu was bacteria culture, a.k.a. plain yoghurt. I normally hate yoghurt – I even hate saying it, as the word sounds like the gag reflex you’d make after eating too much of it. But it was a necessary evil in my recovery from a nasty bit of food poisoning I got on Wednesday night.

I had been felled by some bad Thai food and I payed for it with violent nausea, embarrassment (an occupied bathroom meant I had to puke in our backyard, to the amusement of the jubilantly vocal, onlooking Mexican spectators staying at an adjacent hotel), and a few lost pounds of body mass. Adding insult to injury, the big joke amongst my roommates was that I had been bested by only 6 dumplings, as I was not “man enough” to eat the full-size “family order” of 10 dumplings. All I can say is, ego be damned, praise baby Jesus I did not eat 10 of those things.

The silver, er, lining to my stomach issues was that I gave myself the day off for recovery on Thursday, spending some much-needed time at the apartment, stretching my shit out with alternating stints on Green Boy, White Lightning, and the Blue Bomber – our 3 couches in the living room.

Up-chuckery aside, the real cultural event of the week was the official Montreal launch of our boy Ryan Arnold’s published collection of short stories, titled “The Coward Files”. Ryan is my friend, the stories are funny, and his reading was hella solid, so we’re all proud of him, if a bit embarrassed by his continuing BO problem. Way to go, Arnie.


FS