Of Pirates And Drug Stores...

I go to the pharmacy. I go at lunch time. Now that’s not so major. But the pharmacy, well, it’s kind of like a department store. It seems to have everything, even furniture.

We have 2 big pharmacies here; one is called Pharmaprix and the other is called Jean Coutu. Now Pharmaprix, it’s called Shopper’s Drug Mart in the rest of Canada. But here in Quebec it’s Pharmaprix, because Prix is a French word that means “price,” so pharmaprix must translate as something like “drugs you buy for a price.”

The other, Jean Coutu, is named for someone called Jean Coutu. There was a chat room that had theme night every Saturday, and one time it was pirates, and I logged in as Jean Coutu, and everyone thought that Jean Coutu was a pirate.

When I was a kid, I had a pirate record, William Bendix Sings and Tells Famous Pirate Stories. And there was one story about Jean Lafitte:

Jean Lafitte, Jean Lafitte, Jean Lafitte
Was a mighty buccaneer,
He was brave as brave as he could be
But he never went to sea.

(I saw a movie about Jean Lafitte once, and in the movie he did go to sea, and he even made a woman walk the plank.)

So I rewrote the song slightly;

Jean Coutu, Jean Coutu, Jean Coutu
Was a mighty buccaneer,
He was brave as brave as he could be
So he opened a pharmaceeeeee.


Who would think you could buy clothes at a pharmacy. You can. There is a big Jean Coutu at the corner of St. Mathieu and Ste. Catherine, and they sell shirts and ties and socks and underwear and t-shirts and knickers, mens and ladies. I bought a belt there. I was very happy about that, because I need a belt. Well, no, I don’t because I bought one at Jean Coutu. It was $10.00 and it is already coming apart. But I wear it and it serves its purpose. Hurray for Jean Coutu.

Now the Pharmaprix is ok. It sells drugs, as one would expect a pharmacy to do, and first aid and the like, and some groceries, though no produce, that would be pushing it for a pharmacy. At Pharmaprix you can get a digital camera, a water filter, cosmetics and fragrances, tissues. That’s another thing I get there – tissues.

It is, for me, a sojourn, my lunch hour adventure. What’s on sale this week? What new displays have they got? Umbrellas in the spring, gloves in the winter, lawn chairs in the summer, windshield fluid all year – the surprises are never-ending.

At Jean Coutu you can use your air miles card, but Pharmaprix has something better; it’s called an Optimum card. And it’s good because it actually gets you cash discounts every so often. First they ask if you have the card: Avez vous le carte optimum? Well you don’t have to be a French scholar to understand that. Then they say you have a $20 discount will you take it. And I say, oh no, you keep it. No I don’t. I say yes. Yes Indeed. Yes. I will take the $20 discount. Thank you yes. Please give me a $20 discount.

Then I head back to work, my arms full of tissues, fragrances, bandaids, batteries, digital cameras, iced tea, melting ice cream, and knickers. And I stuff it all away in my drawer, and sit down at my desk and go back to work, anticipating the day next week when I get to go back to the pharmacy.

And that pirate record, it had a story about Captain Kidd, and I don’t for sure remember the song, but it might have gone like this:

Captain Kidd was a pirate
A mighty pirate was he
He made everybody walk the plank
Then he went home to tea…

Happy Valentine's Day

The names in this story are made up. In fact, the entire story is made up. The only part that is not made up is that there was a sock hop last night at the neighbourhood community centre a few blocks from home. But I was not there, so the story is made up. But it may well have been exactly like this...


The first thing that caught our eye was an old couple, I’d say in their 60s. They were jiving to Shake Rattle & Roll, really jiving. They were having fun. That was key, fun.

It was as motley collection of couples as I’ve seen. Of course I had no idea what to expect. The last time I was at anything like this was about 30 years ago back then I used to go to socials, organized for young singles like me. And then we were all in the same age group.

This was organized for anyone who wanted to come. Most people came with a partner, but there was a healthy minority of singles. I watched from time to time, the awkwardness, the shyness, the sparkle in the eye when someone clicked.

There was one guy, let’s call him Jack, I’d say mid 30s, who was making himself very popular. All decked out in a turtleneck, jet black trousers, he kind of looked like a John Travolta wannabe, except for his face, which looked more like Dom Deluise, It seems that his goal was not to sit out a single dance, and I don’t know if he succeeded but he can’t be faulted for not trying.

The girls, though, they mostly didn’t take him seriously. One though, let’s call her Linda, she seemed to like him quite well. Poor Linda, maybe 25, hard to tell though, I’d say she weighs about 200 lbs., she seemed quite taken with Jack. She tried to get him for the slow dances (The Drifters’ This Magic Moment, Never My Love by The Association) but Jack seemed to be otherwise occupied at those exact moments.

There were young, and not so young, couples who were obviously dating, some who didn’t seem to know each other well, some who did. The married couples, though, were the ones having the most fun.

There were 15 dance contests, and all but 2 were won by married couples. We didn’t win any contests, we didn’t enter any contests, but we danced alright, fast ones, slow ones, medium ones.

And the music, well I have to give them credit, they kept the place going – The Happening followed by I’m A Believer followed by Paperback Writer, then slowing it down with To Love Somebody and Save Your Heart For Me. The sound system reminded me of those old high school dances, after they’d quit hiring flesh and blood bands – except for the volume. No way all those seniors could stand the volume we used to hear as teenagers.

Sheldon, he was there stag. He tried to line someone up for each of the slow dances. The women weren’t as interested as he’d hoped. Some were polite, they felt sorry for him, they danced with him, but they kept their distance. Others straight out declined. There was one woman, I call her Paula, she danced by herself the whole time. She was having a great time, she had friends of both genders, but she danced by herself.


And that old couple, they didn’t quit. Every time I looked there they were on the dance floor. They were still at it as Engelbert sang The Last Waltz, and the evening drew to a close…

No PC

My PC is in the shop. Of course I can post from any computer, but I am taking a break. I am using this excuse to spend way less time in front of my 19 inch CRT monitor. That's it. Of course I'm still updating my playlist on the other blog...

So I'm Reading...

I read. It’s a thing. Generally speaking I have four books going at any given time. My list shows three because I just finished one. The one I finished is called Disappearing Acts. It’s a novel by Terry McMillan, who also wrote Waiting To Exhale, and it’s not very good, but I read it and it’s done. So the next one up is called Buffalo Girls and it’s by Larry McMurtry, who I’ve been reading a lot of lately. It you going to read McMurtry, read The Last Picture Show.

So I read four books at once. Now I only have two eyes, and even using both at once, I can only read one book at any given instant. But what happens is this. After I read about 100 pages I switch. And I keep doing that, juggling four books that way. It’s not that complicated.

I read sometimes in the evening, always on the weekend, especially Friday night and Saturday afternoon, Saturday morning after I’m done with the paper. I always have a book in waiting rooms, in coffee shops, between classes when I go to school, which I haven’t done since 2000 and will undoubtedly not do again. And by big reading time is on public transit, to and from work, on the bus and on the metro, on the metro and on the bus, assuming I get a seat, and if I don’t fall asleep.

Usually I have two novels, the other one right now being Barnaby Rudge by Charles Dickens. I’m no great Dickens fan, though I’ve read Great Expectations and David Copperfield (“OH my lungs and liver!!”) and A Tale Of Two Cities. I’ve not read Oliver Twist nor A Christmas Carol. I don’t know if he does it in his other books, but in this one Dickens puts a lot of commas in weird places, doing what Lynn Truss calls “using a comma like a stupid person.” And so we have “When Barnaby returned with the bread, the sight of the pious old pilgrim smoking his pipe and making himself so thoroughly at home, appeared to surprise him even more.” Maybe punctuation was different then.

I read books about music, and they are usually fairly pathetic, but I read them anyway, and now it’s a biography of Hendrix which is better than average, and the other book I have going on now is from a collection that I inherited from someone, a collection of books about Israel and about the Holocaust, and some are a bit odd, but none are as odd as this one, a book called The Secret War Against The Jews, which is an unsettling combination of, one the one hand, phenomenally extensive and hard gotten research, and, on the other hand, the hysterical conspiracy theory ravings of the authors. Oh well.

Now that’s not it. I’m also reading a book about ASP.Net, and I read that at work, a few pages every day. And I’m reading a book from the Beth Zion library, and I read that during Saturday morning service when I have a few minutes. And there are one or two others that I catch a page of now and then.

And the sad thing is that my eyes are going. Oh yes. Old age is coming on. I’ve already been wearing reading glasses for five years, and it’s getting to where I’m just going to have replace my eyes.

Good. Then I can finish this other book about .net remoting….

Montréal Snow Storm, January 6, 2009

Lost At Lunch Hour

What do you do on your lunch hour when you work downtown?

Well, there are so many possibilities.

There are stores, many, many stores. So sometimes I will walk around and look at stores. The problem, though, is this. Many of these stores are small boutiques. And they don’t get too many shoppers. So the salespeople, they hover. They sit there, or stand around, and when you walk in the assault you. “can I help you?” they so unhelpfully ask. Or, this being Quebec, “Recherchez-vous quelque chose particulier ?” Oui, I say, watching them get excited. Je cherche ma femme, mais elle n’est pas ici. I am looking for my wife, but she is not here.

Prices tend to be very high in these boutiques. I could buy a new shirt for $175.00. Well, it’s a nice shirt.

When I’m not in the mood for salespeople, then I can pick a particular store, usually a big one, and spend my entire lunch hour there. The Bay is good. I look at men’s wear, but I don’t buy anything. I like looking at hats. Sometimes I try some on. Or else I look at jewellery. Jewellery? Yes. I’ve bought one or two pieces there, so I’ve delevoped a sort of weird familiarity with the jewellery department. Or I go up and look at electronics, but I don’t understand much of what they sell anymore.

If not the Bay I go to HMV superstore. I was much more interested in going there a few years ago, when I first came to this city. It’s not the best music store I’ve ever been to, but it’s one of the better ones, with not just the most obvious titles, and upstairs they have a jazz department, and a classical department, and they are across a narrow corridor from each other, and each one plays its own music, and they are completely soundproofed, so you can’t hear jazz from the classical section, or classical from the jazz section, and I guess everyone is happy. I like to go up there and walk back and forth from one to the other; it’s better than drugs.

Not that I would know…

They have museums, the Redpath Museum has rocks and minerals, and there is the Fine Arts Museum, and there are others if I want to spend money. But you can only go to the museums so many times before it gets kind of stale.

Not too many parks downtown, though there are few small squares, and they are not particularly quiet, and not too much quiet altogether, though for someone who has music on whenever I’m awake, I suppose I could be accused of disingenuousness for speaking of quiet. But back in Boucherville, I liked the quiet, I would go out at lunch time and walk along the St. Lawrence River, and enjoy the peace.

So I go out, and I explore: McGill, Cresent Avenue with its small galleries, The Concordia Bookstore. And not that it’s winter I explore the Underground City, the Cours de Mont Royal, the underground shopping malls. I walk from the Peel Metro station to the McGill Metro station, but when I walk back, I always end up at McGill again. This is a weird kind of maze they’ve concocted. So my challenge is to do the round trip without resorting the to actual Metro to get back.

And once I figure it out I will go into the breadcrumb business…

To Two Friends...

A and I work together. We are pals. She’s been listening to me whine a bit. And in the morning she stops by my desk with her thermos of special tea-like substance, made with ginseng, asks me if I’d like some, and fills my cup. Thank you, A, for making me feel like I’m worth paying attention to.

A, this is for you.

SC is my southern confidante. We are friends. So thanks SC. Thanks for sharing and for letting me share, thanks for understanding, thanks for allowing me to understand, thanks for sharing music, mine and yours, thanks for getting it, thanks for being there, on the other end of yahoo, on the other end of Bell Canada, for proving with me that a man and a woman can pursue romance together, but not with each other, and stay best friends. Oh, and thanks for calling me sweet…

SC this is for you.

And so is this.