Brushes with death!

The opening piece on the local 11 o'clock news was about a child's body, found inside a burned dumpster off Whyte Avenue (the only hip street in Edmonton). If it bleeds, it leads, I guess, although in this case there's not much bleeding to be done. What with the burning and all.

Once I got done gazing longingly at Olivia Cheng (decent writer, too), my eyes began to pick out familiar details of the surroundings. A brick wall, some big factory-style glass windows... wow, that looks a lot like that parking lot behind the Orange Hall off of Whyte.

Wait, that IS the parking lot behind the Orange Hall.

Wait: I was there on Saturday night. In that corner of the lot, too. I wasn't ten feet from that burned-out dumpster.

Holy shit.


Now, I can't remember if the dumpster was there or not when I was, or whether it was burned out at the time. But it's still disconcerting to realize that you may have set foot within spitting distance of somebody's remains, in the very recent past. I realize I shouldn't really be disconcerted by that - after all, I go to school next door to a hospital, which has been the deathplace of many a person - but I suppose it's the fact that this is such a gruesome site that gets me. Rarely, if ever, are patients in the hospital charred beyond recognition. (Look, it was one time, I was drunk, I was playing with the lighter near his oxygen tank... won't happen again, I promise.)

***

Speaking of Saturday night, I apparently drank myself into a delusional state. I could blame the fact that I decided to have ~9 beers after skipping dinner, but I prefer to blame the pint of Polish lager instead. You can't trust those crafty Poles; all that solidarity makes me think they've got something to hide. Like Communism! (Seriously: Zywiec is damn fine beer and I plan to have it again if I can find it.)

In my ritual post-blackout rundown, I asked somebody I remembered talking to if I'd inadvertently said something I needed to apologize for. Tally said, "Not really, but you talked a lot about techno and how there wasn't any good music in Edmonton, and then you said you were lonely." Sounds about right.

I may be an alcoholic, but I'm a charmingly depressive one, goddammit!