Do it for Dov/Everyone ends up as a fat mess.

Dear readers, please assist me with my moral quandaries.

Someone suggested I be an American Apparel model for Halloween, which would entail wearing stupid glasses and gold lamé, and tying off my arm with rubber tubing - We thought tract marks would be excessive. The only catch is that to get the right look I may have to actually purchase something from said store, which would effectively negate my non-Dov-Charney-panderer cred. It just doesn't seem likely that I will find that token, over-the-top badge of hipster identity anywhere else in a timely manner. So please, channel your heartfelt advice into the poll that outlines my plausible options.

What do hipsters and my next topic have in common? Ray-Bans and waning sex appeal.

I watched Carlos, the heavily fictionalized film on the life of Ilich Ramirez Sanchez last night. Gangster stuff is right up my alley so I was pretty satisfied with the first 2 1/2 hours of Edgar Ramirez looking pensive, shooting people, and being, overall, dead sexy. Sadly, all it took was 5 minutes of dozing off in the final stretches of the film for Carlos to go from being the chain smoking, leather jacket wearing definition of cool to being a sweaty lipo patient with a kid and a swollen testicle, the definition of washed up.

He is currently serving a life sentence in France. Conclusion? Even the sexiest hipsters end up as fat, desperate alcoholics.

Cocaine is one helluva drug ... When you're 16.

When I was 14 I lived, indulgently unsupervised, at a friend's house for the summer. We ran the gamut of house egging, cop car defacing, car theft and dumpster fire lighting, among other admirably cool pastimes. At some point during those feverish months of gleeful rebellion I ended up sneaking into the only bar in my hometown - And by sneaking, I mean I walked really fast through the front door flanked on either side by some seedy 20 year old guys, this association aiming to dispel any doubts in the bar staff's mind of my age. It worked, and in my mind was a surefire testament to my sophistication. A greasy old cowboy showed me how to play pool while I got an earful about the Saturday night stripper, and how the bar manager reused the same pink pleather outfit for every stripper that did a stint there. In all, it was a pretty unglamorous affair, but that didn’t stop the story from being told and retold, in grandiose fashion, to all of my friends.

When I was 17 I used the ID of one Natanya Caroline Funk (yeah, Nat Funk), who was 25, blonde, and 5"10 to get into clubs and buy liquor. I was offended any time that I was actually asked for ID, and gave as much attitude as I could muster to dubious looks from bouncers. When I was finally old enough to show my own ID, it just wasn’t fun anymore. Entitlement ruined the thrill of feeling like I had one up on everybody.

Now I'm 21 and ... I'm a total fogey. In a line up at the SAQ the girls ahead of and behind me got checked for ID but I didn't. In a departure from my old smugness I just felt left out. The other night, faced with deciding between a Bad Religion show and a free ticket to see Joan Baez, I passed on the mosh pit for the concert hall. My 16 year old self would have been appalled, I thought as I stood in an orderly queue for the adult
beverage counter. Where 4 years ago I was jumping up and down, covered in GWAR style fake blood and semen at the Cobalt after a particularly rowdy show, I was now sitting cross legged, politely applauding, in a room filled with people of whom the median age was likely 55.

(As a side note Joan Baez was incredible, and my prior notions of her being a bleeding-heart pseudo-leftist with a dope hangover are dispelled. With a decade on my parents she can still rock a Bob Dylan song with sincerity. Even more respectably, she won a deserved standing ovation for her rending of "Un quebecois errant", changed from Un canadien errant ... To which I should add, I learned that she re-released the song, "We Shall Overcome", always associated with the civil rights movement with lyrics in Farsi to show support for Iranian protestors after the 2009 elections ... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVCqPAzI-JY)

But I digress. My realization that I really am becoming “too old for this shit” came a few nights ago at a club. Disenchanted and feeling rather like a pedophile, I left my friends dancing and went to the bathroom. On the way, I got felt up by a guy who was probably my little brother’s age. Picking my way through the hordes of sloppy teens with wardrobe malfunctions I made it, and behind the door of stall number one found two high school-aged girls doing blow off the toilet paper dispenser. I laughed awkwardly and, giggling, they asked if I wanted some. In true fogey fashion, I replied “Nah, I’m too old for that shit”, and used another stall. While washing my hands I watched the bouncer haul them out the front door, one of them missing a shoe.

So I guess that makes me boring, but I’m starting to see the perks. At least I left with both of my shoes.

A tardy ode to the season.

It's October already and autumn is old news. I've been meaning to give praise to my favourite season for weeks but have been too caught up in the hectic pace to do any justice to an entry. Alas here I am, and in the words of an exhausted manager patiently fixing my cash out last night, “Stop making excuses, it's just bloody annoying.”

What's not to love about nature's transition from vibrant, temperate life to desolate sub-zero death? Aside from the obvious stuff – pretty leaves and crisp days – these months still bring a lot to the table. Life settles into a predictable keel and finds some semblance of normalcy - travelling, moving, changing jobs, eating salad, all of these things that seem to make more sense in the warmer months are either resolved or put on the back burner until spring. Having a relatively clear picture of what the next 8 months will look like is comforting.

Consider Halloween, which is by far my favourite ... holiday? Is it a holiday? It is certainly not a holy day, but possibly fits the more widely accepted idea of the word as a time for celebrating. In fact, Halloween's lack of religious back-story (no one cares about pagans) is what carries most of the appeal for me. Who can resist the concept? Play dress up, get scared, get candy, get drunk. If you've ever been to a really good costume party you know what I mean. When else could you find yourself in a room with Waldo, Alex from A Clockwork Orange, Dr. Fu Manchu, a giant inflatable penis, a giant inflatable sumo wrestler, and the Jolly Green Giant? Well, I suppose there ARE ways, but I can't afford the membership fees for those clubs.

Then there are less obvious reasons to celebrate the season, such as the return of the masterful Jian Ghomeshi to Q. Starting the season off by taking gold at the International Broadcast Awards for his grand slam interview with Leonard Cohen, the man is clearly on top of his game. When fawning over his brilliance to a friend I was told matter-of-factly that he is intolerably pretentious and that most reasonable people would never voluntarily endure the sound of his “more-cultured-than-thou” musings. Maybe she was right, or maybe she's just more of a Billy Bob Thornton fan. This will not, however, deter me from listening to his velvety smooth navigation of each inspired interview, even if that means accepting the CBC's interpretation of domestic arts and culture now and again.

With September comes a return to school as well. It feels good to restrict my availability at work for reasons as lofty as the pursuit of an education, and this explanation seems to sell better to management than arguing that mornings are for nursing hangovers. Naturally, I have been making the most efficient use of my time behind a desk. While sitting in the back row of my calculus class, entirely disengaged from the lecture, I observed familiar surroundings. Taking stock of students' commonalities, it struck me that most of the similarities were in the strange shit students do during lectures when they think no one is watching them. Neuroses is universal. Your guard is down, you assume everyone behind you is either on Facebook or dozing ... Not always the case. Here is an amateur anthropological profile of a typical college class.

Mutters: Sits to my right. Answers rhetorical questions and praises the lecturer in a barely audible voice. Engages in dialogue with ... Himself. Makes it impossible to focus because I can't help but want to hear what he's on about.

OCD Notes: Forever rifling through her pencil case (and who has a pencil case anyway?) for various coloured pens, rulers, erasers, white out, etc. Takes obscenely meticulous notes, colour codes headings and sub headings, uses a special green pen for bullets ... Often the same person who is found frantically flipping through her notes before an exam because she was too busy re-writing two pages worth of superfluous junk to an acceptable level of perfection to absorb any of the material.

Dirty Texter: Sits to my left. Holding cell phone level to the desk for maximum stealth, this Blackberry Romeo indulges his Juliet with such titillating prose as, “hey babez jst in class now thinkin bout yo hot ass cant wait see u tonite”. He thinks no one notices that his pocket is vibrating at 15 second intervals. If that wasn't so irritating I might find it amusing that he doesn't realize his phone is at the perfect angle, directly in my line of sight, for me to know practically as much as he does about his post-calculus conquests.

Hopeless Highlighter: Flips through textbook at warp speed in a nonsensical pattern, highlighting insignificant, unrelated words and phrases. Not only is he ruining the book's potential resale value, but could you imagine trying to study the text version of Joseph's Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat? Often seen borrowing fluorescent shades from OCD Notes' pencil case.

Hairlot: Sits in front of me. Puts her hair in a ponytail. Takes it out. Puts it in a ponytail again. Inspects her handiwork, checking to see that it is perfectly smooth. It's not. Takes the elastic out, leans way back on her chair and shakes her hair around. Dye-tortured strands fall on my calculator. Hair up again. Hair down after 2 minutes. Attempts to replicate a Finesse commercial. No one notices, except me.

Fidget: Disassembles mechanical pencil, dumping lead on the table. Sorts through it, peers in through the opening at the top of the lead encasing. Reassembles. Finds it necessary to repeat, sometimes dropping lead on the floor and squirming around in his seat trying to locate it. This person can also be, or is friends with ...

800813SS: Can't put his calculator down. We've been doing theory all class but he is furiously punching numbers into his calculator, textbook closed. Either a closet genius who is working on a groundbreaking equation, or the guy who came up with the grade school 80081355 calculator trick. Anyone remember BOOBLESS?

Not that I am without fault, we all have our own neurotic behaviour to contend with.

Beverages: I have a psychological hangup when it comes to caffeinated drinks. Coffee, tea, GoFast. Rested or not, learning cannot be accomplished without caffeine. For some reason I am always sitting next to someone who is fasting in September and whether or not they actually give a shit I still feel guilty about my hedonistic consumption of non-water beverages. They yawn, I slurp GoFast. This guilt does not weigh heavily enough to have a consequence on my drinking, unfortunately.

This is by no means a complete list, so please share your own observations.

Welcome autumn; welcome colourful leaves, radio programming, costume wearing, desk sitting, compulsive caffeine consumption and exposure to homey classroom weirdness.