Author: Michael Murray

Usually when I get drunk, I write a letter to a Hollywood celebrity, but last night, as it was on the eve of my birthday and I was almost immobilized by the crushing weight of my ever-accelerating mortality and the subsequent depression that caused, I decided to write a letter to the biggest celebrity there…

Chatroulette, as most people probably know by now, is a website that pairs random strangers for webcam-based conversations that include both video and text. At any point during the interaction, either participant can leave, springing off to a more promising one, by hitting a button that initiates another random connection. The idea is brilliant, I…

  I came across this passage the other day: “If you can think of times in your life that you’ve treated people with extraordinary decency and love, and pure uninterested concern, just because they were valuable as human beings. The ability to do that with ourselves. To treat ourselves the way we would treat a…

Although I have absolutely no authority over my own dog, Heidi, a Miniature Dachshund, or any dog, I still think that I have an awful lot to offer the canine world. With this in mind, I have started an advice column for dogs, in which I answer questions from animals looking to negotiate the mystifying…

On Saturday, while flicking about the TV, I came across the movie The Thin Red Line. When this happens, I’m usually compelled to stop everything and watch it until the end. It’s an utterly mesmerizing film, and I’m pretty sure it’s my favourite movie of all time. Made in 1998 by Terrence Malick, the movie…

Friday was beautiful, and most everybody you encountered on the street was feeling pretty good about things. A city worker in blue coveralls stood on the sidewalk smoking a cigarette. He was staring at Heidi, our Miniature Dachshund. “ I tell ya,” he began, “ for the life of me I can’t understand how somebody…

These are a series of personal ads that I wrote for the Craigslist Missed Connections section. They are all located in my kind of sketchy neigbhourhood in Toronto. ********************************************************************* Corner Store on Queen East It was Tuesday night and you were in the Green Grocer corner store. You were wearing pink hot pants and a…

Around midnight on Saturday, Rachelle and I heard a sort of pandemonium out in front of our apartment on Queen East. There was the sound of frantic shouting and the pulse of movement and velocity. In short, there was the sound and feeling of a fierce, uncontrollable energy. We went out to the balcony, which…

I have to admit, when I saw the photographs of the Canadian Women’s Hockey Team celebrating their gold medal victory, I felt a twinge of disapproval. I wasn’t sure what it was, but there was something that seemed, well, off. After a bit of reflection, I’ve decided it was the presence of cigars. In our…