As a wise Québécois once said of his province, "All of Canada hates us, and we hate ourselves..."

Along 34th street heralding the miracle of muggy vented sewer steam through gray pavement slabs into frigid air; a foggy eve backdrop to time-traveling tales and fictional histories slurred with the staccato expression of a drunk, a slush, a slosh, no a slid, a sled. He tapped a finger alongside his bulbous nose, grinned like the Cheshire cat, and unsteadily offered the enamel-cracked flask in a jocular vein, which was snatched by a ratchety-sight of a companion (dressed with broken weeds from the latest lawn bed clinging like mistletoe on his wiry thin-haired head). Together they laughed at the haut of Avenue shoppers, as they sat in urine-stained squalor, swilled in toxicity from the bare holes of their boot heels to a toothless smile. Santa is dead they whispered at the child-sized snow boots that walked past; a holiday wish, a jest on the wind. The scorned door stoop dwellers in mock Kringle-pajama wear chuckled in derision, Ssslanta ist dead.