Algerian Blog

One last message: for the friends who may be stopping by, I've started a vanilla blog of my adventures. In French.

Anyhoo, given that I wish to maintain the Chinese wall between my fictional and real self, those of you who would want to read about my new life as an expat in an exotic, winterless country can write to me through here.

Kissies,

Gargoyle Toes

No More Gargy (for now)

Hi everyone,

I know that I've been less than assiduous in writing these stories over the summer. The latest pause stems from a rather important development in my life. I've found a job. A great job which will launch the next phase of my career.

...I'm going to Algeria.

I am now working for a small consultancy which offers its economics expertise to the governments of developing countries. I'm off for at least a year.

Luckily, I've found a nice little church which will keep Gargy until my return. He's already taken his spot over the holy place's entrance, impaled on a rather impressive spike, as his ancestors have been over the centuries.

The rope-making business must unfortunately be suspended for the forseeable future. Past clients will be contacted and, if some strange, charitable geek can be found, I'll be turning off my site.

And, of course, for now, these anecdotes will end. Maybe they'll be back some day. Insh'Allah.

The Kinky Festival and The Gargoyle

The stories took a week off last Friday because we (yes, Gargy and I) attended Montréal's first annual International Kinky Festival.

The Marquise insisted we attend, knowing that I could meet any number of females who would be overjoyed at making me grovel (the Marquise isn't the most astute of people - anyone can see I'm a confident and entirely dominant male with absolutely no qualms or insecurities with regards to women).

Anyhoo, we arrived, set up our booth and I placed Gargy on a very short chain bolted to a steel pillar (the required hardware was purchased from a remainder sale from the Granby Zoo's elephant display). Over the weekend, there were people in various states of undress (in exotic combinations of leather and latex) and, well, the ladies had enough sense to do the limbo in order to avoid my pathologically onanistic beast's... eruptions while the men were visibly unsettled at seeing the gushings.

...obviously these males are less secure in their sexualities than I. THEY must be closeted submissives. Unlike me. Quite obviously. Uh-huh.

Later, after The Marquise came by our booth with her freaky-smart Dude to examine the ropes and nuzzle Gargy affectionately, she remarked that gargoyle ejaculate adds a sheen she had never yet seen on latex. Gargy was quite the attraction after that. All sorts of rubber-clad deviants knelt before him. The unfortunate part is that my flabby, scaled pervert seemed to not distinguish between the sexes (not that there was much of a difference. Traditional sexual roles, which I cling to desperately, seem to become pretzel-shaped when faced with hordes of these weirdos). Everyone was served helpings.

...and I was left bulimic by the experience. 'Lost six pounds in four days (which, after a summer away from the gym, isn't the worst thing that could happen). The things I'll do in order to sell ropes.

Back at the cottage, Gargy slept for three days straight, occasionally waking to micturate and grab an oversized pitcher of microbrew. Squirrels seem to have lost their charm on him, though I have seen him pick up old inner tubes we have hanging around and cut them into miniature vests, skirts and hoods.

Hm.

The Gargoyle and The Fetish Friendship Site

Oh... Crap.

Gargy, the adopted pet name for my gargoyle for those of you who may not be aware, just joined a Web site which, apparently, caters to our esteemed clientèle.

This unfortunately means he's now directly corresponding with perverts from around the world.

For those long time readers among you (mom), you well know that I cannot stomach any mention of sexual connections that aren't sanctioned by the Papal see. I, however, now have a reptilian squirrel sodomist who twists hemp AND actively sollicits clients by "chatting" with them. I stumbled upon his friends list and have found the most depraved, at first glance, group of people one could hope to couple with if one wished to be bolted to a harness and lashed with handmade leather implements.

(...of course, our good friend Master André is one of the eminent Canadian implement-makers AND he distributes our ropes, so I'll just shut the heck up right there. V., his wife, scares me. In a nice way).

Gargy is promoting the use of our ropes by the use of carnal photographs of the Crazy Ex in, what would seem, unfortunate situations. Her dark-skinned beauty apparently enjoys putting her in such situations with OUR ROPES (purchased, I assume, from the Marquise's boutique) and photographing her. How my blobby rodent-fucker got these pictures is a mystery.

...this does however explain the sticky puddles and the acceleration of hollow squirrel cadavers around the cottage. *sigh*

I now have to manage the company's new marketing efforts by having contact with those who are obviously condemned to eternal flaming damnation and protect the integrity of MY soul. This is NOT easy.

Of course, as loyal readers of our stories, if you wish to use our hemp in your venal games, we'd be more than happy to offer them to you in exchange for barges of cash. Capitalism always outweighs ethics (ah, the momories of my MBA ethics teacher and his winks at every case study. Good times).

Gargy thanks you. He also looks at your pictures and goes out squirrel hunting.

My Brothers

My brothers are an important part of my life these days.

When I was two, my parents wanted to manufacture a baby sister for me (as if a female version of ME would have been a gift to the world). Instead, God blessed them (and damned ME) with three baby boys.

Triplets. Twelve days before my third birthday. Conceived, my father used to tell me proudly, on the same bed as I was (and the same bed I invited the Crazy Ex onto last summer. Irony unsettles my stomach).

Two of my three brothers are identical (this, for the curious among you, is the usual way of producing a triple-litter. Two eggs come out. One splits). They both live near my cottage and have flaming, yet receding (I must mention. If only because it indicates that I have SOME measure of genetic superiority over them) red hair. The third brother is a brick wall of a defensive lineman who picked up on the sarcasm lessons I taught him in the crib and has made it into an art form.

Last weekend I was my non-redheaded brother's Best Man. Unfortunately, his lovely bride failed to plan for the usual gift to the groom's helper: first crack at a quickie in the vestibule with the cutest single girl at the wedding. The only available female present was my Acadian cousin (who, it is to be admitted, has grown into a delicious young woman, but still. God would frown upon my impure thoughts), so I was stuck with a $200 tuxedo and no one to zip me out of it. At least partially.

(...is there another reason for wearing a bronze-vested, boutonnière-adorned penguin suit other than to attract vestibule fellatio ? What a gyp).

As for the other two brothers, they come to the island often to renovate the cottage and chill. This means that they met Gargy for the first time.

Now, the first encounter was nothing particularly newsworthy as both of my bros have gone through football hazing rituals and have therefore experienced being dry-humped by overeager, stinky males (our college team's initiation traditions involve bringing engineering students along. Long story). The fun began when we were demolishing our cottage (we have two. I live in the second one. The skanky one that hasn't had a resident since before my birth. Bugs are now my live-in, bloodsucking friends due to the multiple holes in the walls).

Brother #1, whom shall remain nameless because I KNOW he would sue me for libel and take my share of the inheritance should I even attempt to mention him, once had an ant problem in his house and has been scarred by the experience. As we were busting through the beams, he found an ant colony. He ran up to get my blowtorch (which I used to set up the plumbing in cottage #2) and started burning the insects with sadistic zeal (they pop like corn when burned :D). Brother #2, noticing that the little arthropods were jumping down in droves to avoid the flame, started showering paint thinner on the ground. Where flaming ants were falling*.

Gargy, who was on a leash on the worksite with me at the time, saw the idiocy coming before it happened and tore himself from my grasp before I saw what was going on. SO, basically, the moral of the story is that, as a general rule, my gargoyle is smarter, and has a more finely-honed sense of self-preservation, than my balding brothers. This is just infinitely depressing for me and my faith in my genes.

*True story. Not kidding. No one was burnt, but blows were close to being exchanged.

Gargy's Island

Yup. Life sure is different when you're living on an island.

First off, Gargy's been running around with branches up hus bum. Not being particularly taken up by his reptilian behaviour (zoology graduates give me the creeps. And herpetologists are the weird ones of the bunch) as long as the rope orders were filled, I didn't really care until hollow rodent carcasses started showing up around the cottage in large sticky puddles.

...branches attract squirrels. Slutty squirrels apparently. Oh jeez.

Now, before PETA members start inundating Google's blog site's servers with hatred spewed from the depths of cuddly-animal-loving idiocy, please note that squirrels, from what I have gathered, have acted as gargoyles' lubricious prey for millenia. Their elongated bodies fit perfectly with... oh, just send on your messages if I need to describe it.

(As for their fuzzy tails, they are the perfect gargoyle perineal stimulators. Yup. This isn't family material).

Anyways, I now spend my days sleeping, sending out CVs, catching up on my reading of The Economist (a left-wing eurocentric publication with a decidedly secularist bent which I read out of God-fearing curiosity. It is important to know the enemies of the Right) and generally pooping in an outhouse.

...the outhouse really makes the charm of the place. Those langourous, indolence-inducing urban shits are out when one's most sensitive areas are left open to the various insect stingers that can't wait to slurp up our very lifeblood. Go in, get out and, especially, get used to sticky britches.

In any case, I just burned off a bunch of wood from our childhood cottage, took a long swim (which helps with the stickiness) and grilled myself some supper. Oh, and I have a keg of microbrewed beer in a fridge my brothers lovingly modified. Life could definitely be worse.

Jobless

(Note: The Internet connection works almost well. I'll try to keep the stories coming).

Hi everyone. I'm writing for the first time in almost two months. I lost my job and have had to spend my days between a stinky rope-twisting gargoyle and a cat that, well, didn't make it. The gargoyle is in mourning and I've got a three-week-old beard (not to mention really pungent B.O. Unemployment takes its toll on one's sense of smell. Gargy's farts sort of finished mine off).

Where to start?

Annie is an acrobatic little beast. One day, I went out on my front balcony to get some sun and read Camus' L'Étranger for the fiftieth time and I happened to not notice that Annie had followed me out (I assume Gargy's aggressive affections got the better of her sense of self-preservation). She had already taken possession of my chair before I could notice her presence and, well, I heard a cool "crunch" when I sat down. She stumbled down, noticeably lame, and her yelps of agony attracted my other pet. There was then a confusing combination of Gargy running towards his wounded loved one, his getting to the end of an unflinching chain, held back at the neck (with his feet still going forward) and my reflexive kicking at a cat that had just startled me.

...Annie fell three stories vertically and the equivalent of fourteen stories horizontally. We can't know for certain who punted her over the guardrail (three feet hit her at the same time), but her mewls of horror before she hit the wrought-iron spiked gate at my neighbours across the street (a good ten buildings to the south of mine) were one heck of a lot more cathartic for me than they were for Gargy, so I'll take the credit.

As for the joblessness, my former employer - a large IT concern - found it difficult to find work for a computer-illiterate finance/marketing/management consultant. I've decided to spend the summer (and my redundancy package) at the cottage and to dump the single-guy stylish, quasi-babe-layered apartment. Luckily, the cottage is on an island in a large lake. This allows Gargy to roam free and hunt bugs within the 50-metre radius his new chain allows. We've had to make adaptations for the rope production - it's hard to find a bug-free rope-drying spot. Wet hemp seems to attract all sorts of invertebrates. We've found one though, we swear! (though if you order ropes from us that have uncooked escargots, please just assume it's a culinary bonus we're sending on). Anyhoo, as long as Gargy doesn't adopt a wolverine to replace Annie, all is good.

Away

Hello faithful reader (aka, Mom).

Life with a gargoyle has been flipped butt over forehead. I've had to manage certain imperatives and will be taking the summer off from writing our stories. We'll be back in August or September (unless I can get a decent Internet connection on an island in a pristine - and female-less - Laurentian lake).

Kissies,

Gargoyle Toes

Fleas... again

My father died last autumn.

He had fallen from the 2nd floor balcony at our cottage. It overlooks the large kitchen/dining area and leads to the two upstairs bedrooms. When he built the place in the sixties, he never finished the overhead walkway, which means that there was no railing at the far end. As a child, I often wondered why, and stood over the three-foot gap, thinking of jumping down, simultaneously terrified and curious.

My father's cognitive skills were starting to fail. He got up in the middle of the night to take a leak. He hadn't realised that he was at the cottage, not at his house, where the bathroom is to the immediate right of his bedroom.

I wasn't there that night. My brothers told me that they heard a crash and found my dad straining, but otherwise all right. Everyone laughed, including the initiator of the raucus (though his eleven broken ribs made it kinda painful).

He went to the hospital and was required to stay in bed to let everything heal (he had three broken verterbrae in addition to the ribs). Unfortunately, things started going "bad". He caught two dangerous infections and, though he fought them off, he got worse.

We never thought he would die from a simple fall and a few broken ribs (having played football, we all knew the intense pain of the injury, but also that it goes away pretty quickly). One evening, I received a call from my mother. The brothers had gotten together. I should come meet them.

The doctors had told them that my dad's kidneys were failing and that the pain from his injuries was just not going away. My father spent two months suffering, and his time was nigh. We ate, and, holding his fate in our hands, decided that my father was going to die the following day.

...we then drank. Nobody cried. We sometimes laughed. We used drink to overcome our numbness.

I couldn't stay in the room to watch my father die. The two brothers with girlfriends stayed. The two without sat on the floor of a busy hospital hallway in a daze.

Since that day, my mortality has been shrouding me. I, one day, will no longer exist.

==============

Gargy faced his imminent slaughter grimly. I cannot read Romanian, so he explained what had to be done to get rid of Annie's fleas. He was going to sacrifice his existence - a gift from the universe so fragile and so ephemereal - in order to improve the lives of those closest to him.

I got out my battery-operated circular saw and we headed down to the park (we wanted to get his flea-manna blood away from the house). When we got to a secluded place in one far corner, my little gargoyle's big, beautiful brown eyes looked into mine, tears welling, as he scratched his hanging maleness like crazy. He knelt and looked down, presenting the back of his neck to my blade.

As I started the shrieky whirring of my instrument, a raccoon, quite obviously psychotic, demented and slightly unbalanced, frantically ran from over by the football field screaming for me to stop.

He was a faithful reader of these stories. He had Googled the site Gargy referenced and explained that it was a satire. Romanians have this thing for blood sucking and letting, so the article we read was simply that famous Bucharest dark humour. He also recommended a really great flea powder that'll get rid of our bug problem in a couple days.

Well, what a fortunate way out of THAT impasse!

Fleas

When Annie joined us last month, she had obviously been through some pretty rough times. One could see the filthy alleys and clawed battles with desperate tomcats in her natty fur and scarred hinder regions. If Gargy hadn't rescued her, her life would have undoubtedly been cut short. A pathetically lonely existence, with her being willingly pounced on by every male in sight.

(Yes, Annie is THAT kind of a female. Pretty much like every thirty-something chick I know).

My gargoyle nursed her back to health and she is now a normal, happy, self-centered and territorial feline. That she has the gall to refuse certain brands of premium tinned food after spending the first years of her life scarfing down any rotting flesh she could find is profoundly grating, yet Gargy caters to her whims and, of course, as with ANY girl, she grabs the upper hand conferred by an attentive and affectionate dude and leverages it to no end.

Alas, also as with other girls, once she knows she owns the heart of one guy, she loses interest and seeks to seduce those who are utterly disinterested. This is causing friction between me and my little green anthropomorphic blob, because Annie is increasingly less interested in receiving Gargy's care and is constantly purring around ME. Given that the only attention I wish to give her is impalement on a particularly rusty and dull stump of a spike, her efforts are obviously in vain. Yet she persists and Gargy isn't at all happy.

Anyhoo, the new development is that, in addition to her crude presence, Annie brought fleas with her into my home. Now, gargoyles don't have much hair, but that which they do have seems to be a rather ideal breeding ground for hemovore leaping insects (slime makes fleas happy I assume). The bugs had made their way into every corner of my apartment and Gargy was gradually going quite insane from the constant scratching (and dagger-sharp claws scraping scaly skin makes for a REALLY irritating noise resembling the screechy instruments played in Italian soccer stadia when a player does a particularly convincing dive-and-ankle-grab with just the right amount of tears shed).

I had gone through washing or throwing out every inch of fabric in my home and the Cleaning Lady has supplied every ounce of her insect-genocide knowledge. Despite the efforts, the bugs have proven themselves difficult to displace and we were becoming desperate.

After a quick Internet search, Gargy found a Romanian site which explained that gargoyle blood is a flea narcotic and that one should capture and slaughter any medieval beast that has been infected AFTER bringing it into one's dwelling. Once the source of their bliss has been depleted, the fleas would starve themselves to death in a massive withdrawal-induced suicide.

...Gargy wasn't happy at the news.

Q&A

In the past few months, I have received a certain number of questions from the VAAAAAST audience reading this blog (read: my mom and a Croatian dude whom I ill-advisedly friendbooked and who keeps sending me videos of a mousy, tone-deaf Balkan chick singing about Red Bull). Here are some answers:

What does Gargy eat?

In the wild, and contrary to popular belief, gargoyles do NOT eat any birds or rodents they can get their claws on. They actually have a rather... symbiotic relationship with pigeons. While I can't go into to much detail without causing widespread upchucking... let's just say that gargoyles are really good at tossing popcorn into the air and into their mouths. It's practice. For what pigeons toss into the air. Pigeons in turn practice their aim on statues.

(Alright. That's far enough).

As my little hemp boiler now spends his every waking moment in chains and pigeons have not yet infested my living space, I feed him dollar-store dry dog food and, every few months, I'll give him whatever rancid furry vegetable matter I find when I open the drawer at the bottom of the fridge.

Oh, and gargoyles don't EAT rats, but they do enjoy using them as hacky sacks.

Whatever happened to Jade Dragon?

No one really knows. She has always been rather discrete with regards to her professional life, saying only that she is "in the military". One time I made a comment on how I would like to gut some guy who had just cut me off and she asked if I had the appropriate cutlery on me and whether it was sharp enough. Given that it was winter, she also explained that hanging the entrails on a lamppost would provide a good source of protein to her friends the ravens.

...oh, and I got a charming bloodstained postcard from her which was postmarked "Kandahar". I don't think I'll be asking too many questions when she returns.

Can gargoyles really speak?

Yes. From what I've gathered, the average gargoyle is quite eloquent. Gargy just seems to be a little "slower" than his brethren. I'll keep zapping him with the shock collar to see if I can't rewire his synapses.

Any news from the Crazy Ex?

She's still making videos and boinking her mocha-skinned goddess and rebuking my attempts to join them.

These stories are all made up, right?

As mentioned - twice - in the last post, I'm not smart or demented enough to come up with these things.

How can Gargy walk around? Won't people notice that there's a GARGOYLE in their midst?

Montréal is a place where one can generally act as strangely as one wants, usually without attracting a second glance. Gargy kind of fits in with the young'uns when he slobbers and bounces around spastically.

People around here DO however take exception to street exorcisms of nattily-dressed teenaged girls (my church group needs to be more discrete with its kidnappings).

I'm thinking of getting married. What is your advice?

Make sure she is still a virgin and will remain undemanding. Some women get these "expectations" that just screw the whole concept up. Also, there have been wonderful advancements in the field of female chastity belts recently.

When is Gargy's birthday?

Gargy's birth predates the Gregorian calendar. From what I can gather, he was born "two moons and six suns after the Happy Moldavian Parsnip-Sitting Festival". We accept gifts year-round however (Gargy prefers cash).

Do you REALLY beat him??

"Beat" is a misleading term. Gargoyles are inherently hard-working beasts, they just have a lousy sense of time. Flogging him kind of restarts his inner metronome. In my managerial experience, paddling also works on supermarket cashiers while strangulation gets software programmers going.

The Breakup

Montréal is a worldly city, attracting tens of thousands of tourists each year. My French ancestors had settled in Ville-Marie - Montréal's olden-times name - in the 1600s and our history is visible across the Island. In order to satisfy visitors' insatiable appetite for "things to see", our Leaders have set up a network of museums and exhibitions to toy with those wanting to have "something to do" and "something to photograph to show to the people back home that the vacation was actually in Montréal and not some sleazy sex convention in the Midwest".

One of the more interesting attractions our city offers is our Botanical Gardens/Insectarium. The Insectarium is a unique place where bugs of all strains are set up on display, and many of the multi-legged creatures have NOT been impaled on pins, but are rather allowed to continue on with their hockey-fan-like-intellect's lives spent under glass. Having been there (forcibly, and having been thoroughly disgusted by the experience. THAT was a bad first date), I understand it to be the kind of place where children scream and run around and old people are allowed to roam freely, spreading their spoiled corporal aromas around people who have taken a shower since the John Turner Prime Ministership.

...though SOME things will get you thrown out of there.

My gargoyle returned in tears from his three-dozenth date with his British breakfast pastry in four days. As usual, he sprawled on the couch. As usual, Annie used her forepaws to rub Gargy's neck in some feline interpretation of shiatsu. Unusually, he did not dunk his masculine appendage in ice in order to keep its friction-induced swelling down. He was bawling like an infant who just saw his parents French kiss to Abba's "Fernando" (ok, we all have our personal traumas and I didn't need to put mine on display. Though any ex-girlfriend who was wondering why I curl up and stick my fingers in my mouth when I hear popular Scandinavian music now has a better understanding of my psyche).

As I was taught modern management theory, which indicates that it is better to try to empathise with one's profit-generators rather than to bring out the Taylorian caning box, I tried to figure out what happened in order to get hemp production back on track. This - and I reemphasise that I can't make these things up - is what I was able to ascertain between ghoulish gargoyle sobs:

Apparently, Gargy's bitter half was somatically triggered by the sight of creepy little arthropods. She was found in the ladies' WC - once again, my imagination isn't fertile enough to come up with these things. Please don't have me locked up. Again. Mommy. - trying to procreate with roughly a dozen of the world's rarest entomologist's delights.

Now, while this behaviour vaguely explains her attraction to the Thing Staining My Velour Furniture With Greasy Nasolacrimal Duct Waste, it does NOT pass muster with the authorities tasked with protecting our nation from itself and its baser impulses. She has been deported back to her homeland, where our Majesty will no doubt have her cast in irons and whipped in the finest tradition of English morality policing.

Gargy is devastated. He now has learned that fateful lesson that all good men have: never trust a vile, libidinous woman with your heart. Feminine chastity is a disappearing virtue in today's society, which will make it evermore prized among those men who truly deserve it.

I've got a gargoyle to flog back to his kitchen. Dammit.

The Crumpet

For three long months, my gargoyle has been patiently waiting to meet the woman of those dreams he has that almost drown him in his cage. This is the week he finally gets to sniff her.

Gargy was chomping on his claws and micturating approximately every 90 seconds (which is almost twice as often as usual. Luckily, he now uses Annie's litter box - especially when she's in it, which makes her grumpy, which is just dandy - so that's one less urine-soaked stress on my Cleaning Lady). While his usual mood can be described as "depraved hyperactivity", I would characterise his current demeanour as "stupid male waiting to meet his potential pink penis cozy".

We've all been there.

The Girlfriend arrived an hour before the Canadiens' first playoff game to pick up her date. I met her at the door and, before introducing Gargy, I briefed her on the best ways to handle his chains (it takes a little practice to get the choke collar to stick properly into his oesophagus). She acted disinterested and aloof, almost hostile towards me. When she spat at my feet, I assumed it was that British sense of humour I've so often heard of (though a woman whose passions combine English hooliganism with the Ice-Bound Sport of the Illiterate and Dentally-Challenged can be expected to expectorate).

When the little secretion pumper made his appearance, the attraction was instantaneous. Upon seeing his belle, he started making what I assume is the Gargoyle Dance of Seduction (three hops on alternating legs then four pelvic half-thrusts. Quite impressive). The Tart seemed to appreciate it - I assume this by the way she lustily licked his nose hairs.

...I handed her the remote to the shock collar (he wore two collars. One can't be TOO safe) and wished them both a good time. She blandly returned the pleasantry by goobing on my Rockports.

Lovely girl.

*******

The Canadiens won and Gargy did not return until 2:00 p.m. the following day. I had no way of communicating with the young lady, so I was slightly worried that my spastic buddy would never come back, leaving rope orders unfilled. In his absence, and being left alone with me, Annie had become unsettled and her fur-vomiting became particularly acute.

When the new couple finally entered the appartment, my usually wired little friend seemed rested and vaguely blissful. His female, on the other hand, was a wreck. She had changed clothes, but otherwise was completely shabby. Her hair seemed to have been shampooed with cabinetmaker's adhesive and all visible skin was striped with claw marks and dried blood.

They kissed (which, considering the size of Gargy's nose, was quite a remarkable thing to witness) and made plans to see each other later on that night. She then waddled down the stairs, somehow looking fearful and incontinent.

...my gargoyle splayed himself on the couch and instantly fell asleep. Annie nuzzled him and farted.

Hm.

Rock Band

My gargoyle seems to have a better credit rating than I do.

I came home on Wednesday to find Gargy howling. I assumed he had, once again, caught his rather hefty grünwurst in the bathroom door. Alas, no. My farting feline favourer has now figured out how to order credit cards online (I'm guessing that his British tart of a virtual girlfriend helped him out. I'm looking forward to meeting HER) and has been using them to make impulsive purchases.

(Wanting to object and throttle him, I harkened back to our legal escapades from a few months ago. His official status with regards to my company is now as an "employee". I'm guessing therefore that he will require an income above and beyond his room and board to cover his discretionary spending. This means I could conceivably be sued, with retroactive wages being awarded to him. Labour laws have a way of sucking all the fun out of slavery, dammit).

I ran up to investigate the noise pollution and saw that Annie was licking herself on the couch and Gargy was trying to sing to Coheed & Cambria's "Welcome Home". He purchased and had delivered a video game console with an application called "Rock Band". Apparently, time-endowed individuals can emulate the lifestyle choices of "musicians" by pretending to play pre-programmed tunes on cheap plastic "instruments" (as always, quotation marks will be my contribution to the literary artform (along with the abusive use of parentheses)). My little halitosis spewer was using the microphone and the drums simultaneously in an attempt at recreating a song about a bad breakup leading to the burial of the principal's former love.

(...of course, being divorced, the subject matter is as heartwarming to my ears as a boy-band ballad declaring eternal soft puppy kissies is to a hormonal teenaged female's. Chicks are weird).

In any case, he has recently been spending more time on frivolous pursuits than on lovingly creating hemp binding apparati. Actual output has been the same (being an MBA-holder means finding productivity gains by analysing processes and stuff) and all orders are filled and shipped in record time, but still, I've got a wailing/bashing gargoyle on my hands here.

I told him that Madame Tousigny will be apoplectic (and will start randomly firing her musket again), thinking that de Gaulle's Communists are invading her beloved Vichy if she were to hear that racket.

...at that very moment, the demented, wrinkle-adorned neighbour exited my living room closet, pulling up her oversized, crotch-stained underwear over her hose (which she forgot to remove before initiating her expulsions, as can be deduced from the dangling dripping doodie between her legs). She squishily sat down next to Annie and started slapping her head in a manner one assumes Nazis would characterise as being affectionate. She then picked up the guitar and chose a Nine Inch Nails song. On "hard". And endeavored to obtain a 98% score with a perfect solo.

My most normal homebound activity is now having to scrub old-lady poop stains out of my couch.

...so I chose Bon Jovi's Wanted Dead or Alive and took over the drums. I'm just REALLY glad the game's developers decided to include such a great artist among the Pumpkins/Metallica/FNM sludge.

Crazy Ex Revisited

I've gotten used to going to The Marquise's boutique to deliver new consignments of ropes. Enough so that I can now enter, hold my head up high, give her two kisses on the cheeks, subtly take in her saliva-inducing breastage and make small talk.

"Wow. Is that a new three-pronged anal speculum with locking mechanism? I've always loved chrome!".

(I DO have to rehearse in the bathroom mirror above my toilet. When the abdominal cramping subsides, I know I'm ready - though I do fast for 36 hours before each visit. Just in case).

Yesterday, I strided in confidently with my gargoyle's finest hemp and was about to go through the protocol. Just as I was ready to glance down at the Royal Boobies however, a voice I did NOT want to hear came wafting over my left shoulder - from the nose-hook and ball-gag display if I'm not mistaken.

The Crazy Ex, ever accompanied by her pleat-eliminating paramour, was doing some shopping. Apparently, she had not appreciated my flurry of drunken phone calls at 4:00 a.m. a few weeks ago when I discovered that she had an additional source of income from filmed leather-clad escapades with subhuman, testosterone-deprived, chastity-belted "men".

I was taken aback when SHE - being seemingly proud of her commission of sins too repugnant to enumerate - went on the offensive. Her Master's degree in French Literature from the Sorbonne has endowed her with a mastery of our tongue and of fine rhetoric. She started with a sardonic "Hello", which was followed by a lesson in late-night telephone etiquette.

The Marquise, not aware that my former orgasm inducer and I were acquainted, walked over and happily concluded that "ohhh... YOU'RE the Gargoyle Master's Mistress!" (apparently, the tone of our conversation mislead her). "He seems to be very obedient" she remarked with a wink.

The Ex then discharged a netherworld-shattering cackle.

I eventually exited after hearing a litany of my "vanilla" sexual self's "hang-ups". Apparently, not being interested in the slightest in women's latexwear and my own (quite fictional) "G-Spot" is abnormal in some people's eyes. I felt I was in some sort of bizarro flipped-up version of the universe, where women have urges to be serviced and where men are expected to be physically attentive.

Obviously, when faced with people this delusional about the origins of the universe, our reasons for being and the roles our Creator expects us to play, there is nothing one can say to expose the silliness to their eyes. It is frustrating, but the best way to change people's misguided views is to live a good life and to provide an example of moral rectitude.

Of course, they're both bisexual. They just don't understand what a man like me can offer. Quite sad really.

Feline Fracas

In 1812, Canada was invaded by our friendly neighbours to the south. French-speaking Canadians were presented with a historically significant decision: to stay within a British colony or align with the new republic that had been formed from a disdain for the Crown and not stop the invaders' taking of the St-Lawrence Valley. 200 years later, interpretation of our ancestors' choice is still open for debate among leading toenail-picking, ivory-tower-residing history professors. This is rather unusual, as the reason seems pretty obvious to me. We Canadians, though separated by geography, cultures and prevalence of female mullets, are united by one overriding passion: perpetually whining about the stupid-assed weather we've decided to live in.

Last Tuesday, at the tail end of a horrendous winter that just does NOT want to end, we had our first signs of the possible approach of Spring. I took advantage of the slightly-warmer-than-average temperatures to air out the apartment while I was at work by opening the windows.

Of course, reinforced steel bars had been installed, in addition to other redundant court-imposed precautions, so I was reassured that my little rim-pooper will not escape. That which I did NOT anticipate however, is that things may find their way IN.

I came home from work and started sneezing as soon as I opened the door. I found Gargy on the kitchen floor NOT producing ropes for our beloved clients. Rather, the screen on the living-room window had been ripped open to, apparently, welcome a lovely little unbred cat into his loving lap.

I went to grab the hairy hairball hoarder and do what any normal, non-Down's-syndrome sufferer would do: fling it down three stories and hope that the fall would be sufficient to send it back to the demon-dimension from whence it came.

Gargy had other ideas.

Apparently, and quite surprisingly, my hemp-spinner has enough of an intellect to have anticipated my disagreement with his adoption of a fuzzy, louse-bearing bastardisation of God's good will (how housecats got through the flood and onto the Ark, I've no clue. I'll just assume that Satan pulled some strings). He set up a trip-wire which, when combined with my violent, feline-seizing lunge, caused me to stumble into my back room. He then locked the door and stated his position in a remarkably unbroken French.

"Annie stays".

Annie, I quickly surmised, was our new friend. My options were made clear: die of exposure in an unheated storage locker or spend the rest of my time as CEO of a profitable ropemaking enterprise taking daily doses of antihistamines and enduring the presence of a cat in my home.

Being an MBA-holder through three years' worth of case studies and HR classes, and given that the decision-making process had been made for me, I ruefully acquiesced to my employee's request. Gargy opened the door, smiled at me, hugged my leg and went back to delicately petting Annie's macrophage-stimulating fur.

Oh well. Sanity's overrated anyway.

Online Lust

Having never sired little boobie-stealers, I've not had to face the circumstances where access to the outside world needed to be withheld from someone/something close to me in order to save him/her/it from our secular society's amorality.

Unfortunately, Canadian mores are even more secular (particularly in those places where my first language is spoken) than other countries', so the proper religious backbone which upholds modesty and muzzles our baser impulses is absent from our daily societal dialogue. Everywhere I turn, I see perverts, sodomites and vile, libidinous women, each scrummaging for their place in the queue to eternal damnation.

I guess it was just a matter of time, then, before Gargy discovered the plenitude of pornography barely hidden amongst the virtual detritus which the offal among God's children enjoy posting onto our shared planetary server farm.

...and he is one DISGUSTING gargoyle.

That this material is even legal to produce and distribute is beyond disturbing. The portrayal of females in states of "sexual extasy" is highly misleading to those among us who are not worldly enough to understand that these are fantastical flights of fiction. Some, as my little phlegm oozer, will be imparted with the idea that members of the squishier gender actually achieve such levels of selfish "pleasure" from intimate interactions, instead of the more subtle reality that their role is as a passive GIVER of satisfaction.

Subtlety is lost on most people.

Anyhoo, I've had to purchase special software packages in order to keep my little spastic odor generator from seeing anything of a prurient nature. This is because of what happened last Friday.

When I got home from my failed attempt at obtaining a human receptacle for my eagerness, Gargy was furiously frictioning my desk chair whilst watching 15-second "sample" film clips from an Internet site graciously described as "irksome".

That a woman in dire need of funds to feed her addictions and genealogically unimbued children would lower herself into the depths of drug dealing, shoplifting or drive-thru servicing MAY awaken my deeply dormant inner bleeding-heart socialist. To see such a woman reverse the Natural Order and bind men in spanking-ready positions makes me wish we would impose a sharia female-modesty lapidation statute in my decidedly snowy, non-desert-like land.

(...they're calling for another snowstorm on Montréal. This would make this winter the shoveliest since before my birth. I may be a little pissy these days).

Upon further review of the videos (after Gargy was rather reluctantly - nay, shot-inducing scratchingly - sent to his cage without his good-night Cannibal Corpse lullaby), I noticed a decidedly disturbing development. In one facially-penetrative dildo scene, the Dominatrix' genitals were more than prominently displayed.

I knew that birthmark.

I had a Crazy Ex to call.

Goin' Out

Now that the Crazy Ex is officially gone, I've had to face the fact that I am REALLY in need of some female companionship. Is it too much to ask to find a single girl who, by her wicked demeanour, is in no way marriage material AND would want to spend some happy time with me?

A buddy of mine from work (well... some guy in the IT department who, by default given his chosen vocation, doesn't wash his hands after doing number two) noticed I was not well and used his only wisp of non-machine-interacting empathy - that of being able to sense male sexual frustration - to invite me out on the town Friday and "get us some girlies" (according to his playfully phallocentric comments, he seems to have some sort of magnetism for the Y-chromosome-challenged, despite his somewhat rotund, showerless appearance. There really is no understanding that which attracts females. Actually, that's a whole paragraph unto itself).

Why in our Lord's name are average men getting women to go out with them all the time when I, a relatively attractive guy who works out pretty much every day, wears nice clothes that have big fancy logos from upscale brands, makes a pretty darned good salary, can converse fluently in two languages about my cottage in the Laurentians, my $3,000 watch, how I am extremely effective in bed (I'll back THAT comment up with stories from the first six months of my relationship with my ex-wife - ooooooh she liked that lights-off missionary sex! - I'm no empty braggart) and my knowledge of Andrea Bocelli and Stephen King and other examples of fine culture, am NOT. I mean, it's not as though less handsome, less wealthy men have anything on me, right? And I'm a nice guy too! I swear, chicks are completely unfathomable.

In any case, we met up and headed to a bar on St-Denis. The girls were plentiful and I was wearing MUCH nicer clothes than the other guys there (it's as though half-worn jeans and grubby t-shirts are somehow seen as being stylish. I'll take my pleated-front khakis and double-breasted sport coat thank you very much). We grabbed beers and my guide started chatting up girls, speaking of role-playing games and such. I was surprised by the almost universal reaction: piqued interest at the start, then immediate disinterest whenever he mentions he likes playing a fourteenth-level elf magi thingy. I was starting to wonder if he shouldn't switch to being a paladin or something, but I've no clue about these things.

I spotted a magnificent twenty-something redhead at a table and we made eye-contact and flirted from a afar for a few minutes. My buddy tells me I should buy her friends beverages and try to integrate her group. I ordered a pitcher of sangria (what they were drinking) and made my way to her table. I introduced myself and she seemed to be happy I came over. She introduced me to her four friends and I found out they were actuaries from a consultancy I knew (my ex-wife had worked there. This was an in!).

I regaled her with stories from my trips, the latest being the one to Eastern Europe, notably Bucharest. I told her in detail how I was able to save quite a bit by choosing non-busy months and by negotiating packages with various travel retailers. I showed her the watch and basically went through my life from youth until today (unfortunately, she seemed to be one of those "interrupters", as she sometimes tried to tell me how SHE had similar experiences. I'm sorry, but something that happened in the Canadian hinterlands, no matter how life-altering, CANNOT compete with the fascinating intricacies of Balkan train travel).

Anyhoo, I must've spent three hours talking to her table, drinking a few too many pichers, ribbing their choice of vocations (actuarial math. I mean, is there ANYTHING less interesting?). A couple left, probably assuming that their friend wanted some alone time with me (she playfully pled for them to stay, but they really had to get up on Saturday morning to finish a report). Eventually, the three remaining girlies left for the bathroom together (what a silly ritual), and only two came back. My carrot-haired belle (the nickname I gave her all night. Cute huh?) had to leave because she wasn't feeling well at all. They grabbed her coat for her and took my phone number to give her (they both laughed when I handed it to them - good sign! I've learned that girls LOVE to set their single friends up).

I had been hoping for some physical contact that night but hey, a good man needs to learn to be patient, right? My colleague eventually met a UNIX architect with an affinity for multiple shots of Southern Comfort, elastic-waistband hotpants (as dictated by her lower-body morphological attributes) and, one assumes, foregoing post-potty ablutions. They were one of the many couples who had concluded negotiations and were making out, dripping aromatic slobber over sticky tabletops. I therefore wished him good luck and headed out alone.

...I still don't get it. How long must I wait until I find a girl who'll slobber with ME?

At least the entire evening only cost me one pitcher of sangria. Plus the cab ride home.

Gargy was on the Internet. The bucket was overflowing. Uh-oh.

Mental Corruption

The Demon Wench (i.e. my Ex) came by yesterday. Now, I've heard that the mark of a true gentlemen is to recognise that romantic liaisons are fleeting, but friendships can last a lifetime. That one's reputation as a true man of maturity, grace and valour will be found by surveying those who have inspired the notches in one's bedposts. That one should not harbour ill feelings for one's past targets of seduction, as they can become one's fiercest allies in the search for future naked rubbing partners.

...I assume that "gentleman" is therefore defined as "pussy" by whomever came up with such lame concepts. No true Man gets his penis rejected and not moan to everyone within earshot about the See You Auntie who did it to him.

Anyhoo, she brought the stepladder, the pepper-spray AND her new partner in sapphic crime (no, girl-girl encounters are not illegal in Québec, but they darned well SHOULD be. There's enough of a single-female shortage as it is without them getting together and further cutting off the supply).

Not expecting her arrival, I just had Gargy on his one chain that allows him free reign within the apartment (this allows him to work on his potty training and use the toilet for his basest biological needs. He's still a few months away from perfecting his aim). He was working in the kitchen so I didn't think anything of it when the doorbell rang (in any case, I want him available if any heathens from those sects which corrupt the name of my God come knocking). The She-Beast walked up the stairs, dropped the ladder in my vestibule and asked me in a rather imperative tone to hand over HER stuff. She wouldn't listen to reason or my pleas to get out.

...this was NOT going to end well.

Given that I had traveled to Romania to get over her and our six-week relationship (the longest since my marriage. My track record in meeting overly demanding and unreasonable women is rather depressing), she had never met my new special friend and was unaware of his existence. As loyal readers already have guessed, Gargy's exceptional olfactory sense was almost instantaneously stimulated and he bounded into my entranceway. Though the result wasn't what I expected.

Upon seeing the being I used to take pleasure spending time in, the little monster screeched to a halt and his usual green hue started becoming... red, at least in his ears and cheeks. In an utterly stunning development, he knelt in front of her, lightly kissed her elegantly shod feet and, well, kept quiet and stared at the floor.

Even more stupefying, the Ex reached down and started scratching him behind the ears and saying how he was a good boy. She ordered him to bring the ladder to my back room and to come back. This was executed with an almost solemn calm by my usually restive midget, yet he was back in genuflection in an instant. My former pincushion smiled at me with a caustic glance and ordered him to fetch her Blackadder DVD box set and any ladies underwear he could find laying about (she was assuming that I had not bed any of her kin since our split, which I found to be highly presumptuous of her. Unfortunately, her assumption was also heinously accurate). Gargy came back with armfuls of her still-soiled, haddock-scented briefs (Note to self: the under-the-mattress hiding spot won't work against his massive sniffing implement) and one set of the finest sadistic British comedy money can import. I protested that those were MY DVDs, but she simply gathered that which she believed was hers, including her utterly magnificent girlfriend who is even more delicious with the bedhead properly groomed out, and sachayed down the stairs.

Gargy was still kneeling when the door closed. After a few moments, he became aroused and filled up the NASA bucket. He then calmly went about his rope-making duties for the rest of day.

I have NO idea what is going on around here.

The Cleaning Lady

Gargy the gargoyle (this is what his virtual girlfriend calls him now. Ugh), for those of you who were wondering, is feeling better and we're back at full production levels. Gargoyle Flu seems to pass after ten days of slime spewing, so we've advanced the knowledge of the world's reptile epidemiologists.

Unfortunately, the tarps didn't hold and my hardwood floors now have a lovely layer of caked-on gunk. Given that I'm not the type of guy who enjoys vacuuming, dusting, mopping, scrubbing or, really, cleaning activities of any type, I decided to use some of our rope revenues on a professional.

My friend Chantal, a Chartered Accountant with whom I spent many a platonic study session back in my MBA days (yes, platonic. One wishes Plato had been an intercoursing mute instead of casting three millenia's worth of men into the pits of "friendship" with attractive bean-counters. Dammit), recommended her cleaning lady, whom I met yesterday.

Those of you who remember my attempted tryst from a couple months ago may be asking whether it is wise to have a human female come into a living space shared by a sexually ravenous Gargy. I had the same thought, I assure you. His cage seems to be structurally sound, we've upgraded his chains in the kitchen (half-inch thick U-bolts drilled into reinforced beams) and I've given him a pachyderm-grade shock collar (which immobilises him if he were to get away. When I tested it on him however, he kind of enjoyed the "tickling" so I have to keep the remote out of his reach for his own good). My main concern now is how the Lady will react to being home alone with a violently messy rope-making varmint.

She came by for the interview and was 20 minutes late. This bothered me on a couple of levels. Firstly, I'm a pathologically punctual person who has difficulty bearing others' disregard for my precious time (if I had a life, and therefore something productive to do with myself, I'm guessing this trait would be even worse). Secondly, I had shocked the little bastard five minutes ahead of her ETA in order to render him a little woozy (it takes him roughly five minutes to regain consciousness you see), and therefore less intimidating. By the time she arrived however, he was happily bouncing off the walls hoping to goad me into zapping him again (my herpetology-specialised veterinarian told me that I should be sparing in my use of elephant-dosed amperage on a sixty-pound beast. Though he said this through clenched teeth, as he had just been chomped by said beast and knew that he would be heading to the hospital immediately after our consultation to have a temporary colostomy bag installed in order to lower the risk of infection while his injuries healed).

The Cleaning Lady finally arrived, dragging an empty wheeled cart and she seemed to be lost in her own mind. Chantal had explained to her that I was "a little strange", but my strangeness was lost on her (as was the flightless winged child-like green fatherless creature who was mimicking electrocution spasms and laughing heartily just five feet away from her). I helped her take off her coat while she blathered on about the detergents I needed to purchase and her preferred decontamination implements. I apparently had found the idiot-savant of house cleaning, as she expertly examined the crusty floors and walls while ignoring the foot-long string of mucus that was escaping from her own right nostril.

In any case, I now have someone who wishes to illegally supplement her welfare income with meagre wages by scouring gargoyle waste. She even does windows. I'll have to buy Chantal breakfast to thank her (and, well, subtly stare at her chest, but that's a given).

Gargoyle Snot

This place is all sticky. Urg.

I'm learning that an immigrant gargoyle's immune system needs to become accustomed to Canadian viruses. I've been dumping vitamin C capsules into his slop (as advised by a veterinarian with bite scars on his derrière. Never tell a gargoyle that he should be neutered), but it hasn't kept him from catching a cold. Now, dear Reader, you must understand what Gargoyle Flu is like.

The first stage is congestion. Nothing slimy, but his howls of sinus pain woke up senile old Madame Tousigny from downstairs. She knocked on my door and had nothing on but a double baby-carrying-backpack thing which held her two favourite cats, pupu and sissi (I can't make these things up). She was convinced that I was making a live-feline stew and would be calling the police. Luckily, her dementia allows me to change the subject, so within five seconds we were discussing how socialists are at the root of society's prostitution and sewer-management problems (the day I discovered her fascist bents was a happy one for me).

After a couple days of deafening bitching, the substance that was causing the pressure within his skull started to leak. Then gush. Now, one doesn't normally attribute a "smell" to snot (Hm. Sounds like a philosophical riddle: if the stuff that is clogging your nose smells, how would you know?), but gargoyle snot is quite a pungent fluid. I spent my entire weekend using large squeegees on the tarps covering my floors and pushing the stuff out onto my front balcony. Unfortunately, it made the snow melt and the paint underneath is peeling. We'll have to check the structural integrity before I step out in the spring.

The final step was the sneezing and coughing. Given that my pet's nose composes fully 30 % of his body weight, the stunning strength of a gargoyle sneeze seems to cause tears in fundamental Calabi-Yau shapes' p-branes and therefore in the very fabric of space-time (string theory is still a controversial segment of modern physics, but I swear I heard Ghengis Khan being given a back rub by three vestal virgins after a particularly violent expectoration).

(...which reminds me of the time I wanted to have sex with Schrödinger's cat. I just wasn't sure if it was legal in its state. Yeah, that's my idea of a joke. Sorry).

The worst part is that rope production is down 20%. I've got to increase his lashings in order to keep up with demand, but my flogger's shoulder is acting up. Ugh, I hope he gets better soon.

The Ex

Gosh. It's already been four months since I broke up with The Chick Who Enjoys Swimming Laps In The River Styx While Tossing Squeaky Toys To The Cerberus. She has three cats and I've ALWAYS told myself not to date cat fanciers. These lessons are like booster shots: if you don't inoculate yourself after a time, you might actually fall for a cat person (which isn't so much a disease as it is being cast into the depths of Satan's realm of gore and iron-broomstick trepanation. Which brings us back to the Styx-diving wench).

She has these big, firm boobies (see The Marquise for further lessons) and a marathon runner's bum. It is always a fascinating time when you're with a woman with whom you share little in common other than a mutual desire to enjoy each other's intimacy in a Papally-approved position with the lights off. At the beginning, she even closed the door to her bedroom to keep the cats out (this decent behaviour quickly disappeared and I had to get accustomed to creatures with natural night-vision trying to shred my eyeballs whilst thrusting into their mistress).

Anyhoo, she called me last week to get herself some of my man-services. At least this is what I assumed when she told me to come over to "pick up your junk" (that's code for sex, right? Guys? Come on!). When I got over to her place, spritzing Tom Brady's Stetson (purchased PRE Super Bowl. GRRRRRR) onto my uncovered chest, she awaited me with a box and a paint-smeared stepladder. Wrinkling her nose in a manner formerly caused by my hoppy flatus trapped under the sheets, she told me that she had "told you a million times that my apartment is too small for me to babysit your trash". She then slammed the door in an undeniably "teasy" way. Luckily, I still had my "secret" copies of her keys (quotation marks are a sign of fine literature and anyone who says elsewhys can bite my sack). I waited for her to turn out the lights, then I put my ninja skills to work.

Slipping in through her back exit, I quietly made my way to her bedroom. I just managed to creak open the door when, of course, the cats triggered the alarm.

Yup. The cats.

My former psycho beauty turned on her bedside light and looked at me with a delicious mixture of sadistic rage with just a pinch of embarassment. Snuggled up to her was a GORGEOUS doe-eyed, ebony-skinned incarnation of feminine pulchritude.

OH YEAH! Things were lookin' GOOD for your narrator :D

Of course, as she is wont to do, she flew into a jealous rage because her girlfriend was SOOOOOOOOO into me. Without going into too much detail, I next was lying down on a pile of feminine garments (and UNDERgarments. Oh yeah), unable to catch my breath from an unexpected blow to my sperm bank, with three cats scratching at my face and screams of unrestrained panic at not being able to find the mace and pepper spray which one apparently moved after dusting, causing the other to chew the first one out for upsetting her space.

In the time it took to understand that the mood was ruined by my ex' usual unreasonableness, and to catch my breath in a manner by which my knees could hold my muscular, virile weight (I'm really sorry for the poor nubile nubian. Kept from my darkness-induced ejaculations), I bounded the heck out of there.

...though I left the stepladder on her balcony. I'll let her have a week for her libido to infuse with thoughts of my body between her couple's and she'll call me back.

Oh yeah.

My Friday Evening

We've had a rather uneventful week. I'm still single and lonely, the pus-dripper is scoring on the Web and hemp bunnies are under my sofas.

The business is rolling along quite nicely. The company's labour got a new kettle, so we've doubled our capacity and he's currently scrunched under my dinner table whip-stitching the ends of ropes. It's kinda cute the way he sticks his tongue out just slightly when he's getting the thread through the eye of the needle.

I'm wondering how he manages to so skillfully handle a needle when his fingertips are topped off with monstrous, inch-long daggers. He can go through a pile of freshly-cut ropes in the time it would take a normal person to halve a grapefruit.

...hm. Grapefruit.

Yup. This is just a monumentally boring Friday evening, spent weighing the benefits of juicy citrus fruit with the pain that will come from applying toothpaste to the vestigial citric acid at 9:00 p.m. (my pathos-induced bedtime).

Today's snowstorm wasn't as bad as predicted, but now we're getting freezing rain, so I'll have to scour my windshield tomorrow before heading to the gym. I wonder if the cute petite geekette-like brunette with the tight bum will be there. Hm.

My Patriots are playing for a perfect season on Sunday. I've been a rabid New England fan since the age of 11. These are happy times on THAT front.

Yup.

...time for bed I guess. Sorry for troubling you all. Even with a gargoyle, we can't ALWAYS have adventures to write about.

The Web and The Gargoyle

My gargoyle usually spends most of his days in the kitchen with his ropes. When I'd let him out in the morning, he used to get up, clean his cage and start rubbing hemp between his thighs. His productivity has taken a hit however since he's recently discovered the Internet (he tried to hide his new pastime from me, but the puddles on and around my laptop kind of gave him away).

He now has profiles on Web sites which allow him to meet and greet people from around the world. In three weeks, he's gotten over 300 friends on Facebook despite the fact that he's functionally illiterate in any modern language. It seems that as long as he presses the spacebar every two or three letters, he can communicate with the IM generation.

A sample:

urg 5d fr dse tor nn

...apparently is being interpreted in Web World that he's looking for a small-statured ichthyophiliac woman with her own hedgecutters who enjoys kayaking.

For the past few days, he has been mashing my keyboard in communicating with a strange young lass from London. I've read his message logs and they've been webcamming. She likes his hairy ears and "would love to feel his claws scratching her back". This goes to show that anyone can find a kindred spirit if they look hard enough. I'm just a little jealous that my "cute, fat-tongued little ball of hunkiness" (her words) is getting more attention from the fairer sex than I am.

*sigh*

They're planning on meeting this spring, as she is an avid ice hockey fan and wants to cross the Atlantic, coming to the sport's Mecca for the playoffs. This is ironic as he doesn't have the slightest idea what a toothless puck-pusher looks like (hockey is banned in my home. Yes, I'm a traitor to the French-Canadian race). I'm just wondering how I'm going to be liable if she lets go of his chains in the Bell Centre and he starts dry-humping Youppi!, our orange hairball of a mascot*.

...I doubt many other people have these worries.

*sigh*

*Please note that I was the biggest Expos fan ever. This past summer, I got Youppi!'s autograph at a charity baseball game (I also got Andre Dawson's :D). The narrative required me to keep up my cynical tone, but I've been in love with our mascot since my first steps. The fact that he wears the Habs' uniform now just hurts.

The Marquise

In the months since I've brought back a gargoyle from Eastern Europe and have discovered that the little green buggerer makes REALLY nice ropes, I've been thrown head over scrotum into a world of chains, whips and Romanian hemp. AND, as you've no doubt ascertained from my previous posts, I'm just a little uncomfortable with the idea that male-female intimacy can be anything other than what I had learned from a fifth grade educational video involving avian/apian interactions.

...now, I've realised that I'm in up to my neck in BAAAAAAD things.

A very nice, stunningly-endowed woman had approached me a couple weeks ago to sell our ropes in her boutique. It is located in Montréal's Gay Village, a place most normal, God-fearing people avoid as though their immortal souls were on the line (because they are). A place where men (and vile, libidinous women) openly fornicate on the streets in manners which defy any Earthly description. Or so say those around me who have had the audacity to stroll east of Beaudry street.

Now, I must willingly go there to deliver our wares.

The Marquise, as I have christened her (what a poor choice of words. I'll have to do a few Hail Marys for that one), welcomed me into her bastion of degradation. Though superficially a well-lit, pretty space, the contents of her shop caused me to become a red-eared mute. Latex and leather were combined with steel implements (which I can scarcely begin to imagine how they are to be adorned/inserted upon/into the human body).

Madame La Marquise welcomed me warmly. She introduced me to her intimidatingly smart boyfriend (within three minutes, I understood that this guy had studied in the finest yet most secretive institutes of old-European science). We discussed the terms of our business arrangement and she inundated me with questions of what my life was like since I adopted my companion. I tried to hide my nausea, induced by the items of debauchery which surrounded me, and answered as gregariously as I possibly could.

She assumed I was "in the lifestyle" and made small talk about leather care. She then made a remark which has unfortunately remain engrained upon my now-fragile psyche:

"You know, there are SOOOO many people who take themselves seriously in The Community. How can we be uppity when we have fun by stuffing things up our..."

...and that's when I started retching.

She took immediate pity upon me and sent her significant other to fetch a wet towel to steady me, assuming I had recently underwent a particularly demanding session with a wench of dubious morals. This, apparently, is the kind of secondary effects that occur when one's Mistress doesn't take a particular interest in "after-care".

My desperate mind then had the inspiration of a lifetime: I tossed the recycled shopping bag (hey, even capitalists can be conscious of one's environmental impact) full of premium hemp ropes behind the counter and I bowed to her massive, shiny, rubber-clad bosoms, praying her a good evening but that my Goddess had demanded my presence within the following fifteen minutes, with a night in the stocks as my punishment were I to derogate from my orders.

...she bought it.

The moral (another bad phrasing) to the story is: adopting a gargoyle leads you to bad places. Stay away from really big boobies, no matter how enticing the rewards.

This lesson will follow me forever.

Happy Times

These are happy times in my curious household as my littlest slob is starting to become acclimated to me, and, incredibly, vice-versa. I'm actually beginning to see him as "cute", especially when I scratch him behind the ears (he starts twitching and air-humping. Kinda like Poncho, my old incontinent, retarded basset hound the ex-wife kept in the divorce. I got a beat-up old Hyundai, so it was pretty much an even trade).

It was especially difficult for him to adapt to North American mores. His first few weeks were difficult, given that he didn’t understand the language and kept yelling “Boona Zeewa” at me every morning, getting progressively more frustrated during the day as I refused to acknowledge him. Now, he’s picked up the few words of French that I’ve fed him and it’s actually kind of fun watching him try to memorise profoundly offensive phrases in the hopes of using them when friends drop by. I’m looking forward to seeing Jade’s face upon being asked how her bowels are holding up after that unmentionable (Ed. note: AND FICTITIOUS!! Jade is a Lady) orgy.

Anyhoo, we really bonded last weekend over beer and football. I’ve learned that we share a passion for dark, hoppy brews, so we huddled in front of the TV, his 20-litre bucket filled to the brim with Fuller’s Porter, to watch the playoffs.

Football isn’t all that different from rugby, which is very popular in Romania, so he quickly took to watching it with me. During the first few games, he would giggle and mumble on every play, pointing at the players. I found out that he couldn’t believe that grown men would wear plastic armour when hitting each other. While he still hasn’t come around to believing that this isn't some special-olympics version of a contact sport, he has started to pick up the nuances of the game and reacting in tense situations.

…one reaction that CAUSES tense situations is when the camera settles on cheerleaders or on hot beer-commercial chicks. Unfortunately, my little bundle hasn't known the physical touch of a woman for a few months (I understand there was a period in 2004 when he was a part of a Bucharest adult theater ensemble), so the sight of voluptuous females with tiny hinder-regions causes him to burst.

Literally.

I thought I had seen all manner of excretions coming from him, but the quantity of genetic material which jutted forth the first time a nefarious Budweiser commercial came on was beyond impressive (and intimidating. But I'm not going to get into my porn-and-Got Milk?-posters-induced performance anxieties here). The floor was flooded and I was lucky that senile old Madame Tousigny from downstairs was away for her bi-monthly fertility treatments (she wants to carry her cats' offspring­. I tend to avoid her) as her ceiling must've been dripping with gargoyle goop. Further luck: when my wannabe-procreationist... "stiffend", he knocked his bucket over and we discovered that gargoyle ejaculate and brown beer make for a stunningly resistant thermal foam. We're in the premilinary testing phases with NASA, but if things work out, my gargoyle's onanism by-products will make me rich.

I guess he isn't so bad after all.

The Judge

Nature has its laws and we see them in action everywhere. If tall trees block out sunlight to the undergrowth, the latter will feed forest fires which will burn off some of the cover. Females of various genuses have been shown to be able to reproduce asexually when males aren't present, just so they may perpetuate their genes. Packs, prides and pods (not to mention pits, parliaments and prophylactations. Gotta love Wikipedia) organise themselves in order to maximise survival.

We humans, at the zenith of the animal universe and as Mother Nature's most exquisite creation, have created our own laws to mold our world into that which we find most "just". The interpretation of justice does vary throughout our species' range, but one concept - nay, cornerstone - is ubiquitous.

Gape-assed, gonad-sucking judges.

I had my day at the courthouse, heeding my civic duty to own up to the damages inflicted upon our beautiful city's satellite dishes and prudish avian population by my gargoyle last week. Having taken the day off from work at a particularly hectic time (my boss, who has all of the traits needed to become a first-rate judge, will be secret-branding me next week), I faced the music. The insurance company has already taken my deductible and reimbursed those whose property had been harmed, so that part was settled. The proceedings centred on the legality of owning a phylum-busting creature previously unmentioned in the Napoleonic Code.

Upon entering the courtroom, I was told that my case would be the third to be examined. I was in the audience and sat through a welfare family's rant on how its landlord (and therefore, society) was forcing them to live in hellish conditions after it took four days to change the lock on their masturbatory teenaged son's bedroom door. This apparently justified their pyromania engaged upon the proprietor's four longhaired cats. The second case was less eventful, though the scorned spouse's creative use of a curling iron did allow me to strike an urban legend from snopes.com.

When my turn came, I walked to the defendant's table with my lawyer and the obese gentleman holding a gavel looked over a rather hefty-looking file. The thin line of slobber dripping from his right jowl betrayed his quasi-literate intellect's attempt to understand the case before him. When he asked the prosecutor to sum up that which he feigned reading, the lovely lady at the table next to ours stood up and spewed a litany of nausea-inducing acts of wanton gargoyle revelry. Our defense strategy was to argue that our civil responsibility has been established and that no criminal liability exists as property claims had been settled. Furthermore, we invoked labour laws to protect my rights as a businessperson, i.e. I can chain up a productive creature and exploit its unique skills if I damned well wanted to.

Luckily, this last argument seemed to get across the many layers of brain-protecting snot inside our presiding magistrate's skull, as it probably reminded him of his country club's HR policies. He mumbled something and, though utterly incomprehensible, it had quite an effect on the audience just by the cascade of saliva that soiled his lapel when he pronounced it. By everyone's reactions, I understood that I was to ensure that my gargoyle stayed properly incarcerated in my place of business for as long as he made me money. Once his productive days were over, he was to be deported or executed, whichever was more cost-efficient.

All in all, things seem to have worked out. The insurance company even sent a former penitenciary designer to advise me on how to avoid any further episodes and to keep the little green bastard indoors. For free.

Nevertheless, we need to make sure we keep selling ropes if we want to afford the quintupling of my premiums. Come on people. Get kinky.