Today a no-fault fuckup stranded me in Richmond.

I took the new Skytrain in from Vancouver. The attendant uniforms are those of the PacWest branch of the Gestapo: Green fleece undercoats topped with green vests over green pants, their rank insignia hid in tasteful muted matching browns, part Nike swoosh, part covert epaulet, part UPS tracking code. There was the occasional bandoleer-slung beige European carryall (standard issue), and all of their many and varied high-tech pockets burst with low-tech police gadgetry. Radios of that size are simply uncivilized.

At the downtown station the eager eyes would have had trouble differentiating the human collaborators from the rest of the PacWest plebs. Towards the heart of Richmond, however, they looked less like your fellow clean-thinking outdoorsy citizen-hikers and more like an occupational police force. A monochromatic uniform on a monoracial police force is, after all, a monochromatic uniform on a monoracial police force.

But the Greenshirts let me be. I was considering defacing their nice train but all of my graffiti pens were in storage in front of me. I walked due South of the terminus along Three road and stopped by the Murder McDonald’s — no tape, no blood, no signs. Well, apart from Mr. Safety toppling over a “slippery when wet” neon cleaning sandwich. I imagine they got some minimum wager to scrub the gore thoroughly: “Johnson! The police are done! I want this floor clean enough to eat off of in 30 minutes!”

I haven’t been back to Richmond in weeks. Since then my apartment has been gutted, painted, and boxed. I begged a key from the building manager and took a rest in some unpacked bedding on the floor by the fire. I was quite angry at circumstances and needed to take some time to cool off.

I got through The Wall, Warren Zevon, and Gogol’s The Mysterious Portrait lying there on the floor, ladders and white paint and boxes around. Gogol comes to me via Adventureland, a painfully self-aware movie for people of my age and temperament, like Kevin Smith or John Hughes but all the characters are smart, know they’re smart, and are struggling with existential dilemmas. Avoid it, it’s embarrassing (with occasional brilliant acting).

Gogol comes up when one of the characters tries to engage a beautiful woman on the wrong level and hands her a copy of one of the Russian’s books, saying:

Gogol went insane and burned the only copy of his last book a week before he starved himself to death.

Gogol was, of course, a Russian humorist. The Mysterious Portrait deals with “what to do for a career” stuff obliquely, so was a fun little read. After all that I hopped die Deutscheferry home.

Earlier this weekend I caught a little of an interview with Anne Rice on CBC (the latest “Tapestry“). She said her vampire stories are really about mourning the loss of her Catholic faith, which is something it’s never occurred to me to try — I might have to finally read Interview. Ex-Catholic writes books about sexual torture and murderous undead with a fetish for the living?

Story checks out.