September 18-20, 2001 — Being a drug mule is stupid

Andrew was teamed up with a copy writer who he has to work with to design a poster regarding drug mules, and, more specifically, why you mightn't want to be one. On Tuesday, Andrew's partner dropped by and it was decided that they needed someone to be photographed as the person trying to convince innocent travelers to smuggle illegal narcotics across international borders. Needless to say, that person was me.

The problem was, Andrew's partner was the one taking the pictures, and he kept saying things like, "You're Sean Connery. Give me a shit-eating grin. More grin. More eyes. More grin. You're a party animal. You're everybody's friend," and I was expected to keep a straight face through all this. That Andrew was cracking up in the background did not make it any easier. He took about twenty or thirty pictures. They found one that was borderline useable. The copy for the poster was as follows:

Beside the copy is a picture of me smiling, wearing a Saves The Day shirt. (Greg: "Drug smugglers wear Saves The Day shirts?" Andrew: "Dude, it's the perfect cover.")

In between modeling for photographs, I managed to get the extremely shitty temporary discussion board going.

The other highlight of Tuesday was finding the Converge's Jane Doe lyrics over at Equalvision (they're too distorted in the booklet to really be legible) and realizing that even with the words right in front of me, I still don't have the slightest clue what Jacob Bannon is saying 90% of the time. The Jane Doe vinyl that I ordered from Equalvision still hasn't arrived, either. That they're based out of New York probably doesn't help these days...

On Wednesday, I woke up to the phone ringing eight times. Which is odd since we have CallAnswer, which is supposed to answer after four rings. I checked the messages and found that not only did we not have any, we also no longer had CallAnswer. I called Bell and found that not only had they lost our request to keep CallAnswer, but they had also lost Andrew's request that I have permission to make changes to the setup of our phone line. After briefly bickering with someone from Bell and acting very annoyed with the whole ordeal (as I preferred to call it), I was assured that CallAnswer would indeed be back within the hour. But you just know that the phone call I missed has to have been an important one. And since no one can prove otherwise, I'll continue to assume that that is the case.

Wednesday was also the Strike Anywhere show. It was the first time I'd really seen Laura and Nathan since moving back to Toronto. We went for bubble tea, which I hear is plenty popular, during the opening bands. I didn't get any bubble tea because I'm scared of new things.

We returned in time to see Layaway Plan. (Update: It was in fact the Black Halos that we returned to see. My bad.) They played a Joy Division cover and a song of theirs that I recognized as having heard (I think) on the radio back in Ottawa. Which is strange because I'd never really heard their name before.

Strike Anywhere were lots of fun. They didn't play a Joy Division cover, but I'll get over it.

Lindsay drove Andrew and I home. She was passing cars in heavy rain in the oncoming lane of traffic on city streets. I was freaking out a little bit (read: quite a lot) in the back seat. Then she almost drove into a bus. I hate cars.

On Thursday, I finally got around to calling a medical journal that is apparently interested in hiring me to setup a reference linking system similar to the one that I setup for the Canadian Medical Association back in the day. I'll be working as a contractor and will hopefully make enough money at this to last me through the rest of the year without needing any other jobs. I called my parents and asked them to send me my shirt and tie. (I'd left them behind, vowing that I wouldn't need them all year — it's my year off, after all. Don't I feel silly...)

I also started work on the program that I would use to convert over all the old antigreg journals. If I'd known how much of an ordeal this would turn out to be, I might've had second thoughts. But it's too late for that now. It'll've been worth it in the end, I think.

And then on Thursday night, I found myself talking to Karin, a girl from Makeoutclub that I'd been talking to on and off since the Dismemberment Plan show. We were talking about Apocalypse Now Redux and she suggested that we go see it Friday afternoon. It seemed more spontaneous than anything I'd done in awhile, and I was due to find a reason to leave the house outside of shows and grocery shopping. So we made plans for Friday and I went to sleep.