MC McMario

In your article on MC Mario Tremblay ["The Energizer," Sept. 25], Mario defended his music by saying there's no "live from Sona show" on the radio right now. Well, there are many reasons for this.

The main reason lies in the fact that, for most of the week when Sona isn't open, the Sona-type DJs are busy in radio stations all over this town, doing shows with other top underground DJs who would rather pile themselves in a community radio station than play for handbag babes who couldn't care less what music they move their tight butt to. They take risks for what they believe in and that's what keeps music in constant evolution.

These shows serve the community and they help discover and nurture music that commercial DJs too often take for granted. I'm sorry MC Mario, but if it wasn't for Tiga, Robert de la Gauthier, Mini-Mono, Cozmic Kay, Gnat and countless others and their pioneering radio-shows, the music you play in your club wouldn't even exist in the first place and we'd be stuck with Metallica and such forever. MC Mario, you are crowning yourself the king of a revolution that my friendz have fought and I don't like it one bit. You can keep on pretending you play that music because you like it, but in the end you will always be the king of lobotomy music.

-Louis Veillette

Quit yer bellyachin' and get a job

In response to a letter about Employment 2000 by Sonia Thompson ["You can shove your job you-know-where," (e)Mail, Oct. 2], it should be noted that we were in the process of expanding the quality of our services at the time Ms. Thompson was a client. Therefore, it was necessary to change locations. All clients had been notified of our move and a sign had been posted on the office door of our previous location. It's obvious Ms. Thompson did not bother to contact us after our move.

More importantly, our objective is to provide people with employment. If it is from a personal contact, word of mouth, or a sign in a shop window, the average client's only concern is us getting them hired regardless of how we acquire the position. Therefore, if Ms. Thompson had contacted us after our move, she would probably be employed now instead of complaining.

-Harris Black, President - Employment 2000

Opinion split on new Mirror design

Hello, hello Mirror? Has there been a coup d'état? Are you in thrall to some big optical conglomerate? Are you trying to weed out all the readership over the age of 35? Has no one pointed out the psychological resistance humans have to reading the fine print on any page? So now we have advertising in clear, easy-to-read type and the journalistic content of the Mirror in eensy-teensy-weensy type with big spaces in between. And your message is?...

Yours, with bifocals,

-Dagnita Innus

I really love the new format. Outstanding job at entertaining us Montrealers!!!

- Realhappy

Ill wind blows through metro

Lionel-Groulx metro station, Tuesday, Sept. 30, 1997, 3:07 p.m., during the CLSC "awareness" campaign: I stand on the quai, waiting for my metro. I look towards the cement wall and see a gentle flow of words and oversized question marks, bathed in white light, slowly making their rounds (douleur? urgence? clinique? malaise? fièvre? vaccin? quoi faire? où aller?). Apparently it's a case of health awareness: don't be afraid to admit that you're sick, in fact, even if you're not sick, we'll convince you that you are with our hypnotic merry-go-round of illness and disease and the medical cure.

I swallow hard, very conscious of a tickle in my throat, maybe even a lump. My back suddenly aches and I wonder if all these years I haven't been living with a bum leg: it seems to have suddenly gone numb. My eyelids start twitching and I finally admit to myself that I have a nervous problem, or a tic. My body is a-tingle with all that sickness that I've been trying to ignore for years, trying to keep under wraps, keep a lid on, get a move on. Then that damn metro station goes and throws it all in my face, disease and anguish literally circling me like a vulture and I think, fuck it all, I'm sick, I'm so fucking sick, I need help, where is my neighbourhood CLSC?

My metro arrives and whisks me off down the green line, away from that shifty underground billboard, the moving word wall, like some bad grad backdrop from the early '80s.

Now that I am removed from the situation, I know that I am not sick, but someone is. And I'm still trying to repair my damaged spirit.

-Crystal Beliveau