Author's Note

After reading through my blog entries over the past year I realized that there is a certain crassness inherent which falsely reflects my actual perception of things. True, I faced increasing frustration while in Ottawa because of the bureaucracy, high prices and general lack of ambience and entertainment in Canada’s capital, however, the way in which I described this frustration was far out of proportion with my actual level of discontent.

As a result I have re-vamped this blog to be more aesthetically pleasing. The message of each entry, dating to the autumn of 2008, remains the same. In some places I have made significant changes that affect the overall theme of the message. For instance, rather than naming this blog “Atethepaint’s Mis-Adventures” I have decided to name it “Mission To Moscow” after the book with the same title by U.S. Ambassador to Moscow Joseph E. Davies in the late 1930’s. This book was given to me by my sister and her boyfriend the day before I left Canada for Russia and it is a fascinating look at the Soviet Union in the time of Stalin’s purges and farm collectivization.

Of course, there is nothing like that in the new Russia, but the title is fitting.

Some previous entries have been deleted altogether. For instance, there was an entry from late August 2009 entitled “Kitchener Slut”, which was a very vulgar tirade against my ex-fiancé who cheated on me. I had originally written this entry while drunk and angry at her but I really didn’t like how crude it was. The general theme of that entry was that because she cheated on me once, she sullied 6 years of pleasant memories that I had had.

I toyed with the wording of this entry for some time, trying to make it less vulgar without changing the overall meaning. For instance, I changed the sentence “..she probably fucked the intersection itself, because it has four long poles instead of just one, and apparently she needs more than one.” to “...she may even have had a passionate coupling with the intersection...”, which was still crude AND pretentious, so I changed it again to “...she may have been vaginally penetrated by four telephone poles...” and so on and so forth. None of these edits were satisfactory, so I ended up deleting the post entirely. Besides, I do not bear that bad of a grudge against her.

Another entry which was deleted was an open letter to Canada, in which I railed against the bureaucracy and the copious amount of ‘fees’ that companies and governments are allowed to tack on to prices. While this practise irritates me to no end, I do not hate my home country as that entry would have the reader believe. I am, in fact, quite patriotic and love the freedom, comfort and unbeatable beauty of my homeland. That entry, too, was removed.

While I don’t believe that anybody is actually reading this blog, these changes were made to be more aligned with my actual perception. In the unlikely event that somebody is following these accounts, then I hope that they continue to enjoy the new format.

I have the pleasure to be your humble blogger.

AteThePaint