Hack to Boycott Harbourfront!

In baseball and in certain American states it's three strikes and you're out. Well, in the U.S. you'd actually be in - in the joint for a long, long time after your third conviction. I don't play baseball nor am I a criminal but I do have three strikes against me. In 2009, 2011 and again this year I've been shut out by the Harbourfront Reading Series.

It's a question of tickets and money, specifically my lack of the latter to pay for the former. Today I phoned Harbourfront to inquire about free or reduced price tickets, as I had been encouraged to do in 2009 by a PR type when I moaned in this blog that real writers couldn't afford Harbourfront's prices. I explained all this to the young woman at the end of the line - I wanted to attend the splashy crime fiction evening March 21 with John Brady, Andrew Pyper and others - and she told me tickets for the event were "only" $10 or I could pay $57 for a membership. I think about spending ten bucks and fret for weeks on end before I spend $57, when I have $57 to spend, that is. The young woman, who struck me as largely unsympathetic to my situation and a trifle too cocky, wished me "good luck" when she signed off.

Good luck? Bad luck more like. Bad luck that an impoverished hack can't afford a ticket at Harbourfront. Bad luck that there's no provision for impoverished hacks to get comp'd. Bad luck for Harbourfront that from now on I will boycott its literary activities and encourage all budding crime writers, literary types, penurious freelance hacks, friends and associates to do the same. Now then, how do I get my hands on a Twitter account?