Tussaud's

In the wax museum with Attila and Genghis and Tamerlane all so         close in spirit with our century.         At Madame Tussaud's in London: Neill Cream. Burke and Hare. It's         hard to keep the legitimate heroes straight from the villains. I expect         Houdini to make this Niagara Falls and appear at midnight         Halloween.         With so many real and picturesque notables in abundance, I plan         the idea of creating my own arch criminal wax museum assembled         from the hallways and stairwells of my own life.         I imagine employment counsellors from across the years with sardonic         laughs and strings tripping off records to make them authentic.         Then busts of fiendish ex-teachers and hatchet fanatics that         pass as librarians giving me advanced nausea because my card         has technically expired. Think the occasional gesture at remembering         a swine or two from freeway driving might not be entirely out of         place or that mindless clerks administering my life from afar and         costing a future deserve an enshrining.         "A nickel short," droned the bureaucrat, "no transfer," secures him         passage to my waxworks.         "Sorry," and "we'll certainly keep you in mind," as a litany of woe         with its users made to memorize and make good all promises ever         made.         Wish the mind and her memories could be enlarged; I would recreate         my own historic scenes to stand alongside Nelson's Death,         the Little Princes in the Tower. Detail Israeli Nazi-hunters to         track down my Adolf Eichmanns.         Instead of samples from Jack the Ripper's handwriting in the waxworks,         rejection slips and the stylized, flowery "we'll keep your         application on file," would be served up as horror epics.         Dunces that compose form letters made to live out the threadbare         future promises. Each human roadblock making decisions out of         ignorance would have his statement dutifully recorded before entering         a world of his own design.         Ad agency types made to explain in effortless detail to packed         houses why their ketchup commercial should stand up.         Crooked garage operators made to oil and grease the chassis of         every car owner hoodwinked since the automobile began.         Football made a crime punishable by fate.         Shyster store owners too cheap to bag my newspaper made to         launder all the soiled white pants across a lifetime.         Tailors that mistakenly think they are being shortchanged         and become vocal made to attend Sartre courses where "hell is other         people," doctrines predominate.         The huckster, the con-man, those who prey on the multitude         transposed from whatever city of origin then made to tramp the         streets of Toronto where every wrong syllable or misbegotten         accent costs them a dollar of their savings.         My whole museum a living aviary, a subway at rush hour where         snotty, telephone receptionists are fed a steady diet of the Biblical         injunction "by words they shall be known."         Well meaning but ignorant people endlessly poking with the "you         should smile more," placed in a house of mirrors with durable         cassettes of Laugh-In.         Belligerent restaurant owners telling kids they can't use the         washroom then made to mop up the waste they helped create.         The world, a stand-up comic throwing away his happy face then         coming to sit in disgust at the unchronicled petty evil of our times.