Mr. Grill

Walked into the restaurant and was immediately greeted by a man wearing a name tag reading Sunset Grill. Now, his name may indeed have been Sunset Grill for all I know. I have little doubt that one or more persons named Sunset Grill actually exist given the vast population of the world and the rare-but-not-too-rare frequency of humorous naming activity that has made Ima Belcher a reality along with a brother and sister combination named Gonora and Syphilla and of course numerous occurences of both Santa Clause and Douglas Fir Trees.

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But this restaurant is called Sunset Grill so I'm thinking we're asking for way too much a coincidence here.

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I was sucked into this place by the promise on their sign reading World Famous All Day Breakfast - but wait. I'm sorry. Assuming you live in the same world as I then you must surely already know about their breakfast. So I'll get to the point. Here is the dialogue from this encounter:

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Man-who-may-or-may-not-be-named-Grill: Hello. How are you today?

FWG: Excellent, thanks. How are you?

MWMOMNBNG: Table for one?

FWG: Yes please. And how are you today?

MWMOMNBNG: Inside or patio?

(three seconds of silence)

FWG: I volunteered how I'm doing today when you asked.

(two or three seconds of silence)

MWM-etc: Yes?

FWG: Inside please.

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What can I say? The man is an enigma. He may be named Grill or he may not. He serves breakfast all day as all the world is aware but how he is doing today, the world may never know.

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FWG

Stuff on Claudia's Cat: Potato salad with apples

That's right. With apples! And here's a note to all you bastards who won't listen to me when I tell you that apples is the most important ingredient in any potato salad. You're all going to burn in hell. That's right. Hell. And Satan is gonna serve you the most boring potato salad every day; five meals a day. Potato salad with no apples. And way too much paprika. Oh - you will all regret your ignorance! You'll rue the day!

FWG's nature safari

I went on a wilderness tour down Mississauga's Credit River valley trail. Figured I was much overdue to get back to nature and journey this untamed wilderness paradise I'd been hearing about. Check out the highlights:
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Ah, So there is a river down here!

. Where's the Bridge out sign?

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Wow. Look at that sheer surface. If I was a tenth level thief with dexterity 16 I could climb that sheer surface - oh - 96% of the time, I'm guessing.
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Hmm. Something's missing from this scene. I guess they couldn't come up with a good sign idea. How about: WARNING: Trees and green stuff ahead.

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Took this photo just as the mega-dark clouds rolled in. Had to photo-shop the buhjeezes out of it to lighten it up hense it looks like crapola. Then the rains avalanched on me. I then dodged lightning for three miles and got home looking like I'd gone swimming in my clothes.

Fun stuff.

Who doesn't love a parade?

I survived the Umpteenth Annual Streetsville Bread and Honey Festival.

Here are the top ten highlights from the parade. You'd better sit down for this. Our parades are very very exciting. I don't want you to get overstimulated and fall down.

Counting down:

10. Some dude in a company van. Ooooh! Ahhhh! But wait. It gets even better.

9. Girl Guide cookies made out of real girl guides.

8. The Bread and Honey mascot. We thought a bee might be appropriate but we couldn't afford a bee suit so we borrowed this bear suit instead. From the Royal Bank. He's called 'Royal the Bear'. I guess. Okay, I don't know what the fuck I'm talking about.

7. Inflatable cake. This was just before they tried to light the candles. That didn't go down well at all.

6. Pooch doggies! everyone loves the pooch doggies!

5. Pillow people. These folks each had a pillow with either the word, Love or Peace embroidered on it. They spent half the time showing peace and love to the crowd and half the time beating each other senseless with the pillows.

4. The spikey-helmet people. You can't see the spikes on their helmets 'cause I'm a shitty photographer but trust me, they're there. They had to be kept away from the inflatable cake.

3. The Streetsville Rapist.

He's a bug-eyed sonofabitch, that Streetsville Rapist. But sort of a nice guy. Quiet. Keeps to himself.

2. Wrong Way Bicycle Club.

And the number one most intersting feature of the Streetsville Bread and Honey parade:

1. The dreaded Streetsville Smudge. Okay, I think I might have licked my camera lense by mistake.

Ohmygodmygodneverneveragain

Fallsview Hilton, Niagara Falls, Ontario. Annual company meeting. The agenda:

Breakfast: Everything doughy and unhealthy you can imagine.

Guest speaker: Forty-five minutes of jokes in order to ‘warm the audience up’ and fifteen minutes inadequately glossing over something called emotional intelligence. Or was it emotional quotient? I forget. Whatever it was it must surely have changed my life.

Team-building event: Photo scavenger hunt: Tramping all over Niagara Falls with Polaroid cameras and GPS devices, pissing off merchants and frightening small children. I made a ridiculously stupid face in every photo. A different one every time.
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Stuff: Talk. Applaud. Repeat 800 times.

Check-in: Showered. Felt – and smelled – human again.

Cocktails: I had seven. Yes, seven.

Dinner: Five wine-drinkers at our table. We drank five bottles of wine. You can bet I pulled my weight and then some. You see where this is going, don’t you? Oh, and I also had a beer and then another on the way to the…

Evening event: Slutty Olive Restaurant and Booze Festival – or something like that. They had a strictly awesome band. Danced like a freak to Beatles and Stones songs for hours. Had four drinks on the company tab. Bought myself drinks. Drank drinks bought for me by other people. Appropriated unknown persons’ abandoned drinks (God, how I wish I was kidding). Inexplicably avoided hospitalization and/or death.

Lost my credit card. Lost my debit card. Received credit card from the coworker who found it.

Told a big-wheel VP, when he asked about my career aspirations at Ye Olde Information Company, “To get a severance package” and then declared my “calling to a higher power.” I’m totally not kidding.

He was intrigued, bought us some vodka shots and invited me to make us a lunch appointment through his secretary and “Do you like sushi?”
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The unofficial wee-hours event: While most were either in bed or at the casino, I asked a cabby to take me to Denny’s. He pointed up the street, not a block away, and said, “It’s right there.”

Went to Denny’s. Ordered the chicken shwarma. Couldn’t figure out where all the tables and chairs were. Was told this wasn’t Denny’s but a chicken shwarma stand. Inhaled chicken shwarma. Went next door to Denny’s. Inhaled a lumberjack grand slam. .


The tomorrow-has-come-too-soon event: Asked cabby to take me to the Hilton.

“Under ten bucks. Cash only,”

“I have no cash,” said I, laying back head and closing eyes, demonstrating that I wasn’t going anywhere and would be perfectly happy to sleep in his cab instead.

He drove around the corner to the 7-Eleven and told me there was a cash machine inside. I went in, discovered debit card was still missing, inserted credit card and discovered I still do not know my credit card PIN number.

Went back and told the cabby to do ten dollars worth of driving around. He drove around the corner to the hotel and gave himself a five-dollar tip. I thought about puking in his back seat but decided to be a super nice guy instead.

Went to bed at 4AM. Woke up at 7 with something akin to a brain aneurism. Couldn’t go back to sleep because I was convinced that the pillow was chewing on my head.

Had three Advils, two coffees, three glasses of grapefruit juice and three glasses of water for breakfast at the 33rd floor restaurant overlooking the falls. Nice view. If only I hadn’t the ardent desire to leap through the glass and plunge to a watery death.

Took the bus back to the office. Emailed Big Wheel’s secretary and made the sushi appointment for July 1st. And sushi is the perfect food because I can’t eat it without dripping gallons of soya sauce on myself. How ever my end to full-time career comes – I’m sensing it may be soon and spectacular!

FWG
Days since becoming an alcohol abstainer: 1
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Dysfunctional Family Circus

Warning: Anyone boasting common decency or self-respect - you may want to skip this post. I'm not too proud of this but now that I've wasted all this time carefully butchering another man's hard work... I gotta have something to show for it:
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A thousand apologies to Bill Keane. Anyway, it's not my fault. I was just emulating these guys:

http://www.citizenofthemonth.com/2005/09/10/the-fucking-family-circus/
http://pointless-drivel.com/?p=1572
http://www.avitable.com/2008/04/23/clusterfuck-circus/