leroBlog

Here’s a piece I wrote for Nerve.com.

I used to have a personal ad up on that website in 2003. I dated someone boring for far too long thanks to them and myself. But now the slate is clear; I love them.

when i was small i used to be in a tennis league. i wanted to be a young professional like jennifer capriati, but without all the eventual cocaine use. i quit at 15 because my hormones went psychokiller. i was being bullied by the older boys i was forced to play with and ended up going all john mcenroe for a bit before announcing my retirement to my parents. i’m back at it now and beginning to exhume my ground strokes and service. i’m teaching my boyfriend how to play — we walk over to a nearby school and bang balls against the wall.

when i was still small there was a life-sized poster of steffi graf leaping into the air, presumably right after she’d hit one of her characteristic luger forehands. her legs were apart and she was wearing a short white tennis skirt. at the time, i didn’t quite understand how photography worked. when no one was around i’d crouch below the poster to try and see her underwear.

i fell off my bike on sunday night after eating too many tacos.

yesterday i scoured and showered out all the gunk. boy was it gunky.

it is possible that soon someone will start an internet smear campaign about how i wrote about my gunky knee. THEY LET THE GUNK-KNEED GIRL WRITE A BOOK? KILL HER!

formerly in this space was the letter of resignation i wrote to the CBC. i took it down because it was screen-captured and posted somewhere else and now a fresh crew of people hate my guts on a new website.

i still haven’t grown the kind of thick skin one needs to deal with this sort of stuff.

i quit my job last week so i spent a lot of time looking at who has made changes on my wikipedia page. this small one came in on may 8th and i know who it is because of THE INTERNET. now all i need to do is geolocate all those people who called me a murderer on Salon.com last month.

Today I lost the Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour Writing to now three-time winner Will Ferguson. (Hearty congratulations to him.)

It is only a shame because I was going to use the money to resurrect my dead paternal grandfather with an expensive spell and potion after starting up a backroom pygmy small loris fighting ring n’ craps shack. I was going to do both of these things next week. Now my schedule is clear. Call me!

I have a shard of glass lodged in my left foot from jumping off the couch while playing Boston’s More Than a Feeling on XBox Rock Band. There’s glass everywhere.

Hey Kids! Kathryn Borel sez: THERE’S GLASS EVERYWHERE.

I thought I was going to get shot in the Vons parking lot tonight.

Hey Kids! Remember to MAKE A DIFF.

I went to Venice Beach for the first time. It was a Sunday, and the boardwalk was packed full of people eating the biggest Snow Cones I’d ever seen. There was 30-something woman in a graying green fairy costume with frayed wings, standing on a small mat looking down at her dirty pointe shoes. A little girl walked by and put a few dollar bills into a tin can that had a paper with TIPS written on it. The fairy’s face came alive and she bounced into an en pointe position. It was the kind of face and posture that indicated that she knew exactly what she was going to buy with her can of money.

Then I ate a hot dog in one bite. Just like a velociraptor.

My first In N Out burger as photographed over my first private strawberry patch.

A true fact about humans: You either have had a near-death experience or you are dead.

UNRELATED:

Here is a photo of my parents at their wedding reception.

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