by KRISTIAN GRAVENOR

Walkley Avenue has a bad reputation as a violent street in a quiet neighbourhood. My theory: near its base stands a huge commercial sign that says MELDRUM. Backwards - as my fellow dyslexics will attest - it reads a lot like "murder."

Do you live near a bus stop? The city might be shortchanging you on street parking. The Montreal Transit Community says a stop must be 87 to 93 feet long. But they're routinely longer. Verdun orders stops to be 98.4 feet, a full 11 feet longer than necessary. Toronto's bus stops are 157.4 feet long.

When you phone Bell Canada customer service reps, they access a file of notes on your past telephone behaviour. I want my file to be special, so I always call with a new accent - sometimes I'm a shouting Argentinean, other times I practice my Cambodian lisp.

A Rev Up is a small toy car that can climb vertically or even upside-down thanks to the miracle of magnetic technology. My dream is to organize a massive Rev Up race over the Orange Julep dome. Later I want to repaint the dome multi-coloured stripes by hanging paintbrushes behind the toy cars.

Le Journal Positif, Montreal's only currently surviving Haitian newspaper, has opened an office in a spiffy split-level loft at 1021 Bleury, near Viger. After working hours, they transform it into a lounge bar. I bet many newspapers could get their workers' salaries back by running a bar on the premises.

Lise Bissonnette wrote a column in Le Devoir about literacy and it inspired politicians to build our new mega-library. Don MacPherson wrote an article that led Dorchester Boulevard to be renamed after a separatist leader. In an effort to claim my columnist urban renewal entitlement, I urge the authorities to redo the St-Rémi tunnel to allow car traffic between the Point and adjacent St-Henri and Côte-St-Paul.

In Westmount, they ticket you for idling in a car for four minutes. Yet the same hypocrites rig it so you get every red light, leaving you spewing pollution at every light.

My buddy Doug in Auteuil, a part of Laval, was tending to his neighbour's pool. One day, he found a drowned black cat floating in it. He told a work colleague. By coincidence, that colleague knew of the cat, having a mutual acquaintance who had witnessed the body's removal. So Doug concluded his anecdote by arguing that an animal could drown in the little pool in our backyard. The next morning, I woke to see a squirrel scrambling for his life in my pool. We saved it, just barely.

It's got to be pretty embarrassing to be a cigarette pack model. You probably wouldn't boast about it.

Here's a story to confirm your feelings about dead PQ language minister Camille Laurin. In 1948, muderous French Nazi collaborator Jacques de Bernonville was hiding out in Montreal avoiding war crimes trials. Among those who fought to allow the villain to remain here were Camillien Houde, Denis Lazure, Abbé Lionel Groulx as well as Laurin. Bernonville fled to Brazil, where he died of old age in 1972.

I'm getting impatient for Mayor Drapeau's long-promised letters. If they're not released soon, I'm going to write them myself with ample reference to his alleged fetish for chicken suits.

Kids have their own world of news. Mine insist that Ciara had a sex change. They call a can's pull-tab a "wheelchair." My oldest, Livia, invented a ball game with a brilliant yet inexplicable title: "Starburn or Philosophy."

How bad is my bike? Somebody stole it in St-Henri and ditched it a few feet away, where I found it, not locked to anything.

To the unknown vandals who secretly cut holes in the wire fence to allow people to trespass over the CP railroad tracks on de Maisonneuve: I thank and salute you.

I asked Pierre Bourque why he's running for mayor. He just looked quietly insulted. I suspect he still wants to give trendy tech names like Pixel and Bubble Jet to our streets. Just think, if past mayors did that, we'd have Jitterbug Avenue, Buggy Whip Boulevard, Toaster Iron Road, Pantaloon Street, Dot Matrix Drive, etc.

Comments? kgravy@openface.ca