Summer '05 Chronicles Issue 1: Franco-Dragon Ruled Mutant Land

I went all the way to the eastern end of the island... Bout de L'ile or some such unoriginal name for the end of the island. It is the land of the mutants. Fire spouts into the sky. Whole towns teeter on edges of quarries. Noone stepped past 1999 fashion. The mutants just said NON! to the new millenium.

I will elaborate. I went to the end of the island because my friend made me. Apparently if you go as far as you can to the edge of the island (so close you can smell Trois-Rivieres) you will be enlightened. So we played on the traintracks for a bit and I made him really nervous by lying down smack in the middle. Then we almost hopped a freight train to god-only-knows-where-land. But I was wearing Birkenstocks, so we didn't. I had a feeling that my hippie-tofu shoes are not the type of shoes for a train adventure. Then we got back on a bus and I was home about 2 hours later.

About the fire spouting into the sky. That is true. There is a massive amount of land marked off by barbed wire fences and within that area lies a scary mass of metal and towers and light. And smell. It smells really really bad. Every so often there is a super skinny tower that reaches higher than all the others and it spews fire into the sky above. To enhance your reading experience, imagine a "bulemic over-acheiver". I went to high school with one of those. I am sure you did too.

The eve I was there, I saw about 5 different fire-breathing towers. Before I saw those mythical towers, I believed in the legend about the francophone dragon who dwells in that region. A dragon that breathes flame upon anything with an English influence. A dragon that would eat an Anglo but would let a tiny, plastic mini-golf "course" live beside the highway remain. Stupid Franco-Dragon.

Now I accept that it is not a Franco-Dragon, but something straight out of Lord of the Rings. I even saw a hobbit on the bus dressed in a teal blue tracksuit. No velour, just splashy-pants material. It was horrifying.

I am never ever going there again unless I have a gas-mask, some Mutant-Spray and a pair of running shoes. And I will only go there to hop a train that is going really really fast out of that hellish Franco-Dragon Ruled Mutant Land.