You set up the music section's young sister on a blind date with Phil Spector at an NRA fundraiser, and we reward you with a Payback Time T-shirt, two CDs off the Straight 's Top 50, and two tickets to a LiveNation club show taking place in Vancouver within the next four weeks. Here's this week's winning whine.

Dear Payback Time: Upon reading your stellar review of Beyoncé's kick-ass show, I was experiencing that blissful combination of anger and inspiration that typically is aroused by Sarah Rowland. Then along came Alexandria or Alexander or whatever it is. Which inspires my dilemma: how am I to conjure a fun-filled, expletive-laden, ad hominem attack on someone without an awareness of the sex of said writer? Now, judging from the style of journalism, my gender prediction would be male… with a hint of pillow biter. I'm being crass, but this has gone on long enough. Please, Alex! Your coy, androgynous name is tearing me up inside.

Ben Pollock

John Lucas replies: Dearest Ben, Our attempts to get our beloved Sire Varty to sit down and peck out a personal response to your sexually confused missive were frustrated by the fact that we had trouble finding him. You see, our ever-enterprising liege has taken the ongoing civic strike as an opportunity for his boldest business venture yet. Lashing together a land-roving garbage scow from sheet metal and wagon wheels, and pressing two dozen of Gabriola Island's fittest peasants into service, the bespectacled scallywag has taken to the streets of Vancouver to collect the trash, which he then carts away to an undisclosed location. Those who want his services are willing to pay Lord Alex a fair sum. And those who don't? Well, let's just say they can be convinced they do you'd be amazed how deep into his pockets the common man will dig when the business end of a cutlass is pressed against his gullet. Sire Varty calls it "no-option billing". When we finally caught up with him, he was applying his dreaded cat-o'-nine-tails to the blistered hides of his conscripts at the corner of Main and Hastings in a misguided attempt at cleaning up the lane behind the Carnegie Centre. He took a sidelong glance at your e-mail between strokes, adjusted the onions tethered to his belt, and said: "Inform this addlepated miscreant that Alexander is an exclusively male moniker. What's more, I won't have my nomenclature besmirched by a man named for a fish. Why, my fleet is trolling the Bering Sea for pollock as we speak under a flag of convenience, of course." Then, without another word, he winked, titled back his crown, and resumed his flailing with renewed vigour.

Ben Pollock continues the garbage-strikingly ignorant tradition of refusing to tell us which CDs he (or she?) wants. You can voice your impotent rage by snail mail or by sending an e-mail to payback@straight.com .