"At the touch of love everyone becomes a poet"
Spam of the week, that was -- Russian advertisement for V!agra. "Wanna her making all your dreams come true in the bed? Keep in mind - your hypersexuality doesn't depend n the size of your penis, it depends on ability to keep its hard-on up to several hours! And that's the way to deliver the best orgasm to her!" Orgasm singular? Dear me.

The V!agran hyperbole was followed, rather touchingly, by a large excerpt from Anna Karenina -- spring at last, in rural Russia, full of larks and children.

Had an odd encounter in the 24-hour grocer last night, stopping off after getting out of the theatre. I was looking about for some sort of treat for the cast for opening tonight, and was examining a box of heavily discounted Lindt (the store is being renovated, and a lot of quite nice stuff is being sold for nothing in a back corner) when this older man of the well-worn artsy type (battered leather jacket, beret, long grizzled hair, face looking as though it had been dragged face down along an alley paved with beer and cigarettes) wandered by with a cart full of discounted things. "These biscuits are on sale in the back. Four dollars. They're usually nine. I picked up a lot for my song circles."

Like a fool, I mentioned that I was looking for a treat for a show cast, and that was it. The floodgates opened. He was an actor. He'd been in films. He'd studied with so and so and thus and who. He loved the new! the novel! the experimental! He'd lived in Toronto till his arts coop burned down, now he lived with his mother, and where were all the wild artists in this town?

Souls killed off, I thought, working in the civil service. I mentioned a couple people; he scorned them. But he knew quite a lot of people I know, and boy! was he ever longing to spill his life story. And he did, for two hours, me pinned by my Canadian politeness. (And, at first, I must confess, a curiosity to know just who the hell he was; I thought he might be someone I knew by repute.) As it turned out, he wasn't, although by the sounds of it I should, as it seems he's made a pain in the arse of himself all over both city cultural services.

He gave me his card, claiming to be looking for collaborators. "I'll do anything, just to get something happening." No you won't, I thought, since he'd already expressed his disdain of anyone doing anything remotely "experimental" (meaning not Wingfield Farm or musical comedy) in town. I finally managed my escape, after three tries.

So there it is. My freak magnet is working again. Bizarre outcast men will once again pin me into corners to tell me their life stories.

If they were only devastatingly hot attractive men, it wouldn't be so bad. But they never are.

Not that it would matter. I wouldn't want anyone I can have.