Ottawa Adventures

When I woke up, I then slept some more, and then started to ponder my plans for the day.  I had some purchases to make for my video-making, and needed to go into Ottawa to make them.  Trouble was, I soon fell deeply into one of my Ecclesiastical states, thinking "What's the point of anything?  Why bother?  Isn't it a waste of time, self-indulgent, not worth the trouble and not going to be good?"

  Then KT phoned.  She has a boyfriend, and is in her twenties, but she has troubles with depression, and seems to want to use me as a depression sponsor the way alcoholics use each other as addiction sponsors.  She was firming up a plan to hang out tomorrow, and also invited me to go out with her boyfriend and her (that is grammatically sound, uninformed scoffers...) to a haunted Halloween house farm thing.  I declined.  And adjourned to the couch to try to work up the energy to get off the couch.  Wasn't working.
 Then Peter emailed to ask if I'd like to go hiking.  I declined that as well. (I should point out that I just read the latest of Jeff Lindsay's Dexter books, upon which the TV series is based, and the dry formality in which his serial killer protagonist conveys his unorthodox thoughts and feelings seems to be catching)

  By supper-time I still wasn't heading anywhere much, having merely watched some Bored To Death, exchanged opinionated Facebook messages and re-encoded and watched a BBC documentary about the Spitfire aircraft at a size my hacked XBOX can play, so I went up the street to the butcher's, got some meat, and also got a Monster energy drink.  Energy drinks and I do not mix.  I get all buzzy, terribly impatient and think and talk at about triple speed.  And not for an hour.  Like for six. (so, buzzing still at time of writing this)

  I realized I could also do something I'd been planning on for a while.  I'm doing video for my various songs, and although the songs go very much in a specific order, I've been doing whatever video seems fun and seasonal and so on.  My song "Maybe Someday" was written at the end of October, walking home down Moodie Avenue in Nepean (Ottawa) late at night, coming home from an evening shift at Nortel.  It contains the words "October's ending cold, October's ending cold this year."  I realized if I videoed this evening, I could literally film during October, right before November got here.  So I waited until the sun was setting, and headed into the city, all buzzed and vibrating on Monster.

  I had a list of things to buy at the Bayshore Shopping Mall.  It's a big, three-floor mall, so I thought I'd have no trouble getting my stuff.  My list was:

• a pair of black, high-top Converse All-Stars for when I'm shooting a video pretending to be the Ramones.  Shoes are important in my videos, as I don't usually show faces. I'm a size ten and a half or eleven, which is a pretty average shoe size for a man, so a shoe store should have that stocked.
• one of those straps you can connect to glasses or sunglasses so they don't come off your head while playing sports or going in the water.
• a bowtie.

  First I went to Sports Experts for the Converses.  Converses are sports shoes in name only, nowadays, so they sent me to Footlocker (yes, the "Sandals?! In August?!  Are you mad?!" store).  There was a big bench to sit on while trying on shoes, and at each end of it, in the men's shoe section, a very large woman was blocking the way into the entire section.  One also had a stroller.  I stood, Monster coursing like hot venom through my arteries, using body language to let them know they were very much in the way of me getting to look at some shoes too.  They were large, slow-moving and uncivil, so I thought "If I actually hopped the bench, I could stand and look at the shoes.  But that would be pretty eccentric and rude.  Quite beneath a dignified gentleman of middle years."  I waited longer, to see if they'd let me by.  They showed no sign, so in a fluid movement, I jumped the entire bench, landing catlike just past it and looked at the shoes.  No reaction.  From anyone.  They had a few Converse, but nothing retro, just the new failed attempts.  Silly looking things.  Only two classic high-top ones, and not in my size and in a choice of two wrong colours.   It all looked pretty grim.  And no staff showing any interesting in helping me in any way, despite how eagerly I had jumped their fitting bench.  So I hopped the bench in the other direction and left.

  On my way up the esplanade, a shrill voice called out "Neighbor!" and I turned reluctantly to see that it was one of the lustful 50-somethings who stand smoking and watch me daily ascend my fire-escape to my third floor apartment.  She was raising money for a charity, and was abusing her living near me to try to guilt me into listening to what was clearly going to be an involved sales pitch.  My face remained as impassive as it tends to, and gradually as she spoke and my face didn't open up, her face fell and she wound down and then said "Do you want to hear this?" and I smiled winsomely and said "Not right now..."

  "You in a hurry?" she asked.

  "Yes" I said very emphatically, as the Monster was making anything else impossible.  I headed off to look for the Converses.

  West 49th stocks no Converses of any kind.  The kid there named three stores in the mall which he thought should have some.  Stance had nothing bigger than size 9.  Sof Moc only had them for women.  Town Shoe also only had high top Converses for women.    Boathouse had a lot of pairs for women and nothing larger than 8 for men. All stores agreed that the lack of these shoes for men was because lots of men had liked them and had bought them.  They also agreed that restocking these popular shoes would therefore make good business sense. 

  As at every single store, the pre-teen manager at Boathouse agreed wholeheartedly with this sentiment and said the shoe order system was "weird.  Like really weird."  He had a girl phone all five of their Ottawa area stores, and said "Not a single store in Ottawa has anything like that for men bigger than 9, except Orleans, which has one size twelve."
  "You're all only interested in selling shoes to mini-men, looks like," I said, aware this was a bizarre comment.  "Average to tall guys?  Forget about it."

  "Oh well.  Internet!" I said.   He agreed that this was wise and I left.

 "I give up on the Converses," I decided.  "I will get the strap for the glasses."  When I'm wearing the black morphsuit with the wig and glasses, the glasses don't properly have ears and nose to hold them on, as they're squashed flat by the morphsuit.  I tried Sports Experts again, this time for the strap.  You know?  To keep glasses from flying off while sports experts play sports?  They sent me to Footlocker again.
  They didn't have any of those either.  The guy there said, as he's dressing as Bubbles from Trailerpark Boys for Halloween, that he needs one of those too.  I tried various stores, including looking at Zellers.  No luck.  Then I realized "This mall has a Lenscrafters!  They sell glasses!  They'll have those spectacle accessories for sure!"
  Nope.  They told me to try Zellers or Watch It!, the watch and sunglasses store.  Also nope.

  "Can it be I will not be able to get any of the things I want from this mall?" I wondered, tweaking on the remnants of the Monster and not showing any signs of coming down. "It really seems more and more like a poorly stocked, shitty mall that is always out of stock on whatever I want," I decided.  "Maybe I should just never shop here."
  I then saw Tip Top Tailors, a formal wear store.  The sales lady was in her fifties, and was flirty in a pleasant, warm way without being pressuring like the ones who live near me always are.  I got two good shirts for teaching in, a tie clip and...a bow tie.  "Huzzah!" I thought.  Finally I had obtained my first item from my list of three things. It had only taken about an hour and a half.

  Walking by Foot Locker before leaving, I saw exactly the Converse I wanted on the opposite side of the store.  "Could they have their classic Converses in a different section?  No doubt the bovine ladies are gone.  I will go in yet again," I decided.  Yup, the Converses I wanted.  Sitting right there, on the wrong side of the store?  I stood impatiently by them, and then gradually realized that the reason they were on the opposite side of the store was because it was the ladies side.  No staff was in the least bit interested in helping me anyway, so I figured that out myself.  I then went over to the men's side and decided to try to flag down a staff member and ask if they'd phone their other stores to see if any other store was stocked for men's Converse, size typical.
  Two referee-striped sales guys walked past me over and over, stocking the shelves, pointedly avoiding eye-contact and clearly not interested in selling any shoes.  Eventually a third guy (there were no other customers in the store) said he'd call about the shoes, said that it was really weird that no stores had any, and then suddenly said "You know, I just stocked the shelves with the last order we got earlier this week.  But maybe I forgot some boxes or something.   Let me look."  He went into the back room for a really long time, and then came out quite casually holding a box of the shoes I was looking for, in the size I was looking for.  Hallelujah.

  Walking out of the store, I saw a kiosk store called Sunglass Hut.  I thought "What are the odds they'll have those head strap things no one else, even the eyeglasses store, seems to have?"  They had them.  On the counter, in various kinds, free for the taking.  There was no one manning the kiosk.  I stood, holding the strap in my hand, no one around, thinking "I have never been so tempted to steal something in my life."

  Turning eventually to a guy who was manning some kind of cosmetics wonderstuff for women kiosk across the concourse, I said "Have you seen anyone working here?  I'm thinking of shoplifting this..."

  He laughed, said they'd probably gone to the washroom or something and pointed to my shirt and said "Pink Floyd's The Wall... did you see the tour?"  I said I'd seen in when they came to town.  He was confused, as he'd seen it in Israel, where he's from.  When had they come here?  And had David Gilmour and Roger Waters played together?  They certainly didn't mind coming to Israel and tut-tutting over Israel and Palestine not getting along, he said, but they couldn't even get along in the same band!
  We had a long conversation about Pink Floyd and Israel and stuff, and eventually I said "I can't actually shoplift this, so I'm just going to put it down on the counter and walk away as if I were a moral person."  He smiled and I did just that.

  Walking across the concourse, I saw a well-dressed girl walking very quickly.  "What are the odds she's hurrying back to the Sunglass Hut kiosk?" I wondered.  I watched her and sure enough, she took up running the kiosk. So I went and bought the strap and left, feeling like I'd been terribly clever.  Monster tends to make me feel clever.

  Then I drove to the old complex where I used to work at Nortel.  It isn't a Nortel complex anymore.  I parked my car in a dark area and got out and shot video of the lighted windows of the building.  Seeing a security guy patrolling inside as I looked in from the bushes, I remembered that they tend to accost people lurking outside industrial complexes. I lurked anyway, and got some not terribly good footage.  Then I decided to move my car to a better lit area and put on my "costume" (a Halloween short-hair wig and my late 90s glasses, with my coat from that era) in my car and video myself walking in front of the entrance as if I was leaving work.  I was just about ready to get out of the car when a security car popped on its headlights and turned the car so as to shine them on mine.  They do that to encourage you to leave, before accosting you.  So I drove just off property, stopped and shot some stuff from there.

  I shot numerous shots of me walking up Moodie Ave in my ridiculous wig and glasses, and did time-lapse of the tail-lights streaking past.  Then I drove up to where I used to live and shot footage there as well.  Made me feel like such a stalker.  Wondered why no one called the cops.  There was, of course, a mysterious figure walking around with a camera, and wearing a bizarre wig and glasses.  (It is kinda Halloween, though...)

  Then I came home.  The moral of the story is, when feeling that one's life is pointless and not worth living, it is a sound strategy to fill up on caffeine and go indulge one's fool's quest silliness, so as not to be lying around being miserable.