Glen Ray Jr.

Glen was born on August 14th 1992 at the Toronto Mount Sinai Hospital and died four days later due to "not being viable". His parents, Mary and Joe were grief stricken and did the only rational thing they could think of: the "Sharon Procedure" instantly trying for another kid. What you read here is a "what would have been" story with an image generated by www.wemakeupshit4U.org (you should subscribe). Glen was bullied in all his years at school and had no friends, getting excellent marks in all subjects didn't make him popular. It was only when he went to university that he bloomed. He studied Music, Philosophy and History and learned German, Spanish and Italian to go with his already good French graduating with Honors. His took a job as a research assistant at the Musicus GmbH in Graz, Austria. He quickly became the world's foremost authority on Franz Joseph Haydn following his trail from Rohrau to Hamburg, Eisenstadt, Vienna, London and back to Eisenstadt where Haydn is buried at the Bergkirche. Colleagues, behind his back, would call him Frau Haydn recognizing his profound knowledge of the subject and acknowledging his sexual orientation. It is well known that Haydn was a mentor to Mozart and tutor of Beethoven. It was not known until Glen discovered it, that Haydn had a twin sister Edeltraud Maria, twenty minutes older and ten times more talented. They travelled together, she ostensibly housekeeper and cook, but it very well may have been she who invented the symphony and composed or contributed greatly to the, according to Mandyczewski, one hundred and four symphonies (some say 106). When his book "Haydn and I" came out in 2020, the publisher insisted on a world tour and Glen obliged asking only that the first stop be Toronto. After the launch and signings, Glen and his small entourage walked South on University Ave. towards the Shangri-La hotel. Glen, gesticulating agitated to make a point, didn't watch his step, stumbled and fell violently hitting his head on the pavement precisely in front of the Mount Sinai Hospital. They rushed him to Emergency just feet away. The triage doctor pronounced him at nine oh five PM marking cause of death as "not being viable".

  

Renée W

This is Renée as I met her at a theater venue the other day ... she is totally, purely, absolutely and thoroughly authentic (which cannot be said of many). She grew up in a warm and loving family with siblings and many aunts, uncles and cousins. To nobody's surprise she turned out to be clever, talented, hard working and gifted with an inquisitive mind. One day, Renée was about six, at a family reunion, uncle Brett said something that changed her life forever: "Vowels are fried and consonants are boiled". Uncle Brett was known to make up crazy shit like that after he came back from northern Kenya where he helped set up a sanctuary for the Reticulated Giraffe (Giraffa camelopardalis reticulata). Renée took it seriously and started intense research to learn everything she could about vowels. Unavoidably she found "EUNOIA", the famous anthology of univocalics by Canadian poet Christian Bök. [EUNOIA is the shortest English word that contains all the vowels]. When I told her that, in Romanian, I can compose sentences with only vowels, she flipped out (I have the picture) and went onto Duolingo to start learning the language. I smiled and said: "That sheep is hers" and "She takes eggs" and "They take that sheep" and "I take sheep" and "I take her blouse"*. Renée is currently developing an App to play a vowel game ... The New York Times seems to be interested.

_____________________________________

* Romanian sentences made up from vowels only

Kate, Vinicius von Meerschaum and Jake the Snake

This is Kate, I met her the other day at a theatrical venue. We had coffee and I learned her amazing story I feel I just must share.

Kate is a marvelous model, a talented actor, a fantastic singer, a skilled dancer and she is also a poet and a composer. Since she was very young, she knew two things: that she was not like anybody else and that she could smell things others could not (extreme Hyperosmia). What she did not know is that her superb physical body houses three distinct personalities completely unaware of each other in a severe case of Dissociative Identities. Besides the Kate I met, sweetest kid you ever saw, I also met Vinicius von Meerschaum, the best taxidermist in Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil who won the gold medal at the 1894 exhibition for his "Cayman kills Tapir" and Yasha Zmeyanski who is a prep cook at Gogol Club at Stoleshnikov Lane 11, in Moscow. Yasha wears a black T-shirt that reads "Jake the Snake" and, in his spare time, with his uncle Pasha, is an assassin for hire. 

While Kate and I talked about music, art and theatre, her face suddenly changed and in a low voice, in perfect Russian, asked for more carrots and beets for the soup. After about a minute, her eyes turned from brown to green (but not completely). She said that somebody near by has used Bowman's Lavender Scented Soap containing Goat Milk, Olive Oil, Coconut Oil, Palm Oil, Essential Oil and Lye within the last twelve hours. When I asked how she knew, she just made a face and that's when I took her picture.