Literary Nonfiction. Memoir. John Armstrong has worked as a paperboy, a caddy, and a Bible camp counsellor; as a janitor at the Regal Theatre, a shipper of video porn, and a real live punk rock star. As if those jobs weren't punishment enough, at the tender age of thirty he entered the trenches of journalism. "Get up, get dressed so you can hurry to a place you don't want to be, and do things you don't want to do for people you don't like, all for very little money at some far distant point in the future." Armstrong doesn't let it get him down. Whether he's writing about the Bobbsey Twins, a pair of strippers who really love their vegetables, the Golden Road personal fulfillment seminar, where you learn that you choose your own cancer, or the literal bowels of hometown paper the Picayune-Standard, Armstrong simultaneously excoriates and delights. WAGES is a laugh-til-you-cry account of one man's remarkable working life or attempt at a lack thereof. This eccentric, irreverent, and witty chronicle is vintage John Armstrong.

John Armstrong is an award-winning journalist, writer and musician. His early life as a "minor punk rock cult figure" is chronicled in his first book, Guilty of Everything, which was shortlisted for the Roderick Haig-Brown prize, awarded to the best non-fiction book published in BC that year. After dropping out of high school, he played in the legendary first-wave punk band the Modernettes. An accomplished journalist, Armstrong won multiple awards for critical writing, feature writing and hard news during his 15-year tenure at the Vancouver Sun. He is co-owner of Paramount Recorders, a Downtown Eastside recording studio, where he is finishing his first album of new material in 23 years. He currently lives in East Vancouver's Skid Row with a Rotweiller named BoBo.