My Robot Friend

One of the things I found most difficult about being a teacher candidate was moving all the time. Every three to five weeks over the course of teacher’s college, I was picking up and moving either from my crappy apartment in Kingston to my folks’ place in Ottawa or back to the aforementioned crappy apartment. It was nice to be back at home; I hadn’t lived with my parents in years, and I had hardly been home at all in the previous fourteen months due to a punishing work schedule…

Scarface, Part One

Those that know me (or, failing that, those who creepily stare at me from across rooms) know that, up close, I’ve got a few divots in my otherwise unblemished boyish good looks. I have very nearly symmetrical scars above my eyes, for example. You’d think that such perfectly mirrored chunks taken out of my brow would have been from some freak accident involving a obsessive-compulsive mugger, or from a run-in with curious but aesthetically advanced aliens, but no–they were, in fact, thirteen years apart and under wildly different circumstances. The second…

Vigil for a Fish

There are a lot of nerdy things I’ll cop to. Being totally fascinated with Canadian airplanes and pilots in WWII is one. Being competitive about StarCraft and feeling like I should be training for it like it’s a half-marathon and not a meaningless video game is another. But one of the things I’m not as ready to admit to–and I have to, to tell this tale–is that I kind of love fish. Not all fish, mind you. Specifically, bettas. Specifically specifically cool-coloured male bettas, the fighting fish you hear about. They’ve…