you LIKE me! :-)

.

File under WGACA for 'What goes around, comes around': after my shout-out to mah shorteez a couple days ago, that intrepid and dedicated archivist of the blogosphere, ie 'The Ranger', has reciprocated with his thoughts on my own dear cupcakes. So check out his (Aussie-based) page, The Lost Blogs Home for a review of FIAC, as well as links to a cornucopia of other sites, from the noteworthy to the arcane. Keeping track of all those wayward blogs ain't exactly like dusting crops, so here's a shout-out to the Ranger.

In conclusion, it's so heartening--how this burgeoning, squirming blogtropolis of ours is much like a big, bloggy, happy-family-circle of online appreciation. So thanks, and werd to big berd; you freaky bastards are alright.

Shoutz out

They've been linked to my page for weeks and months--here's one or two reasons you should pay visit:


Worthy Colleagues:

• Angry Brown Man: highlights include slice-o-life social commentary, served straight up from the T-dot. Sometimes gruesome, always honest, ABM does not suffer fools gladly. And he's lefthanded, like the best of us. Now includes foto-blog!
  
• Andromache-Brie: currently drunk on wine in the Niagara region, AB's a sassy personality who tells her stories with irresistible brevity. She's been absent though--write soon, lady!
  
• Liberty Man: this polished (no pun intended) site is owned/operated by the incomparable Peter Jaworksi, aka one-man libertarian juggernaut. Also, a swell and entertaining fellow. Cool site design, deft use of photographs, and how about that HAIR? Spectacular!
  
• Journal of Doubt: at the other end of the political spectrum is JOD, which seamlessly mixes anti-Dubya invective with sketches of urbanite life in Philadelphia, as well as the author's 'gonzo' travelogue exploits. This is a sincere, humane voice; all-in-all a most edifying read. And, dude has served in the army--talk about street cred!
  
• Observances from a Stick: start reading this Colorado blogger and very soon it's like you're old friends; she oozes warmth and familiarity. An optimist--which, if you spend any amount of time online, is rather refreshing.
  
• Three Angry Guys: three guys, two words: feckin' hilarious.
  
• Spencerville Wayne - Bandwith: the ongoing of history of hoax music, a new companion site to the SW archives. Owner has suddenly gone on hiatus, but there's a ludicrous kind of magic at work here. So hang Francine--and leave her swinging from a tree!
• No No No Leah!: highly necessary skewering of Canada's most god-awfully, bobbleheadedly obscene ninny of a daily newspaper columnist, ie Leah 'Tee-hee' McLaren of Globe and Mail infamy.
  
• Candide, I Am: no guff, no fluff, this is snappy and elegant poetry.
  
• Leftbanker: hardcore Seattle blogger who takes his wicked satire seriously. Not too many bells or whistles, just post after solid post.
  
• Vancouver Girl who Owes me Letter: this left-coast freelancer and pop-cult-media-junkie was the first person I knew to have a blog; we're all following her footsteps. Check out her selection of nifty thong underwear!

The variety and quality of blogs out there is indeed mindbloggling (a pun! ahaahhhaahaha!), but the above menu should keep you busy for a while. So I sayz peace out to alla yall, and keep fightin the fight.

have your say

The results of this poll ought to render your local church, synagogue, science lab, philosophy department etc. more or less obsolete... think of the savings!

*ahem-hem*

.

Truth (rarely) speaks:

“I have a reputation for
mischief, and
so I refuse to
open my mouth:
you’ll
burn me at the stake,
and
rape my daughter—
whose name
is Beauty.”

poet-as-rock-star

(the way things used to be, or ought to be?)

*ahem*

poet-as-rock-star

I can’t sing or
play guitar,
but you can
still rhyme my
bizarro-verse
while driving in your car

the stars spin us around;
this rock is flat and upside-down
the stars spin us around;
this rock is flat and upside-down...


(repeat chorus until rich and famous)

Man I'm tired

Whoa... nelly.

Putting on a freak-ass clinic of such mind-blowing, all-encompassing importance is tiring indeed. Churning out this crap takes a lotta love (well, churning it is easy; keeping it *fresh* is a whole 'nother tub of butter). My second book is already one-third to one-half written--it's going to be an insane collection of insane short stories. It'll require some thirsty and contusion-inducing work to put that one together, but I hope it will blow minds. Right now however I need a vacation; maybe a couple days' respite from the FIAC. While I retool in the pat-cave, please do click below on the May 22 post, and I'll send you your copy of Vol. 1.

Phew. I'll be back and fresh on Saturday; fresh like a fistful of daisies--I'll be tossing you outta bed and smackin' you in the face. So giddyup, and get ready.

yum yum

snooze button

Teenagers walking in the park, to and from the bars, to get high and drunk and cop a feel.

I walked into those tired places once, was frightened by what I saw: trolls smashing their heads through wooden tabletops, many a fair maiden picking splinters from her forehead... and I dodged a flying mug of cider (it turned to vinegar inside her). I wrote like a tired hand; fingers trickling cobwebs onto a screen, wiping it clean absent-mindedly with two contemptuous clicks of a mouse. She flies into the moon, but I stay behind always; I'm the rock of the community, I am the oddity of the coffeeshop. Long days melt into easy comfort, with one or two mugs of honey-brown to keep us fast and loose. And ah, so what--the system isn't fair and never will be, but no we won't be sucked into that merry-go-round of blame, shame and guilt; 'why' is not our question; it is the 'what' and 'how' that breaks us with its relentless answer-lust. And if conventional wisdom begins to lie, we must stab at it, as at a traitor.

Fibrillation and defenestration and the constipation, the malevolence the incontinence, the tribal stipulations, the venomous conspiracies, the electoral pespicacity... and true wretchedness is when a middle-aged hedonist wakes from his dream and, face-to-face with delusion, cuts out his heart in disappointment, and then expects pity or even a paper towel to wipe up the blood.

And I love her whimsy and wonder, her touch and breath, the woman who lifts me up; she takes my hand and we float into a sky painted blue with serenity, quilted together by the sunrise and the sunset.

But the sad truth, I won't even dare to publish. This is a meeting to discuss the future. This is our business--who will take it over when we're gone?

I don't know.

I can't be in ten places at once; not like I used to.

I worry about this little secret of ours, and my links and my fonts, Helvetica, Garamond, Distant Galaxy. The time I tried to open up an ocean.

riff#5

(pulling off heartache like a pair of socks)

riff#5

Hey miss
can we talk for a while?
Hey miss
can you outlast
the only thing I ever gave you?

I am done and over the hill
we can talk about the rest
of the world after noon.
we can talk about the only thing I ever tasted
that was bitter.

pleasure trips inside
the only feeling we had was jealousy,
the only first draft ever written was meant
to make you cry, tears of presumptuous agony

How we arrived at nonsense

In the beginning it was karmash and circumstance; it was a bit of teflon marquisitiveness; it was mostly loquacious flatulation and clairvoyant bovination; it was just such underteeming incumquantable violixion—it was a shlitztorm of zuthingness. And so it started, and so it developed, until we rended up at the currulent prognex. Above all, it was blinking yaggamallow broonery (as in, don’t blink or broon, or you miss it), but at the rend of the day I apillocize for zunth of it.

I admit we were hackabilly buttnuts back then, years ago, when popular malakovs tocktillied over the teleradio humpspool, and insobreeniated professogres screed-screeched their zabootska-style 'honeysuckle', buzzing in their porntz vulga-tongues, and, it seemed to us, contimmerating everboddy’s languastic subsoil but their own. But every so often we would pick up on a dizzelating unk of sheer phantiberrish broilliance, and, to make a long story short, eventually those uranial and sacroyssant 'binge pins' ended up bilgespat over the wedge--the plastershocks of which really fasciallated me and especially my brooptha, Cyrus (Cyrus already knew how to vermiculate malandromically, with his richardsonian gothotorical vergeboards, and that always made me blast out lerfling). But never in our wizzardus screams did we think there was a raisin to siriusly conflimyoo pontifacturing this zoundsense. I juice tank Dog, wiwa wong.

(to be conflimyooed!)

Just when you figure you've heard it all, you discover the legend of the magic bunny poo, a composting tale for the ages...

wanna preview copy of my (never-to-be-published) book?

to my 10 or so loyal readers: if you leave a comment below, with an email address included, I'll send you the completed 'director's cut' version of 'Freedom is a Cupcake' (the book, not the web site), in MS-WORD attachment form. own a piece of online history, absolutely free!

as I've mentioned previous, this collection includes 100 poems/nonpoems/ prose thingys written by yours truly, some of which you may recognize from this site, but there are many many others (i'd say about 30-40) that have never seen the light of day (because they're too hot for cyberspace!). so leave your email addy, and I'll ship FIAC off to you as soon as I can!

if you are a hard-core follower and want a hard-copy version (published at kinkos, where the copiers never sleep), we can negotiate that over email, after I send you your free attachment!

this is a genuine offer: the book is done, and I'm giving it away. why? because i'm a nice person, that's why. so just leave a comment below!

(renegade marketing, yes)

May21--three-minute midnight

(written in the three minutes before the phone rang)

Three minute midnight

I woke up never again to remember what it was I left inside me. And draino is tasty and so is peanut butter. And heaven is a chocolate soda. And so is the finger of doubt. And maelstrom.

Weird, Manic Marvella tied a buttcake to a tree. Jaspar Kilgour and his heaven-sent mania and the Marmaduke madness in the leftover calligraphy sessions after the squirrel ruckus dies down and there is a sweeping chrome glimmer of nothingness. Marvelous mai-thai soaked vermillion was what it was.

Many maggots kill so swift—so what? Bobby Bigguns cannot freak—big butt. Political flap and furlongs measure depths, and moatman prophecies in underwear wateriness. Nevill the Draidle Ladle and Noah the Boa constrictor. Loki is a tyrant of Bethesda minnows. Jollity cannot be restrained or retrained or even retrofitted to fit the best and only tuckered holiday oatmeal. Polyp is drained from the swamp. Yellow Smithy in the hullabaloo tenderness and the brushing gentle pawprint in the day-old inch of snow. Helvetica is unusual is so very very unusual and the true type litterbug is machinated holographic rumproastery.

Oh mama, you got to love this thing, I was writing it when I was thinking of you.

Yesterday was a bit too much. What it wasn't was not quite enough. And Zaphod Beeblebum and Baran and Barnabas Sotheby altogether now, sing with me, “We are waltzing around a tree!” And all together now say to me “show me pain and ecstasy,” and here it is today, the surly false friends of everyday. Happy happy so pap-crazed and slap-wacky, so here it is, you can’t blame a business for making a buck, so let me serve it up, it’s on a plate with fries, and French fries tell no lies, and weirdness isn’t wise, and hippy hypnotists, what do they do? They hippy-hypnotize, and they yodel-ay-hee-hoo. They sing of super sizes, and they dance their derring do.

Moral dilemma

top four alternative uses for onion rings

1. crispy, oil-absorbent engine gaskets
2. oversized eyeglass rims
3. llama snares (you slip the onion ring over the hoof of a llama, and voila, he's all yours. but be sure to tie a string to it, or he'll get away!)
4. if you chop them up with a kitchen knife, then voila, you got yourself some finely chopped onion rings. don't eat these though--use them for french fried onion ring soup.


any other suggestions?

The ocean of hard-to-imagine things

(warning: reading this is a waste of your time)

There was once an ocean of large, mouldy, plastic things, circumferenced by a big black fence made of straw and pumice. In the middle of this ocean stood a giant parsnip kettledrum, erected beside a bucket of A-1 Top Flight golf balls. Inside this kettledrum sat a six-legged octopus named Charlie, who drank Castrol XLR motor oil and tattooed his favourite cartoon characters, such as Beatrix the Stoat and Vern Sylvester ('The Angry Anglican'), onto an elongated sheet of horsehide, which he would later sell to Armenian cellists at the Armenian cello symposium in the north-northwest centre of town. Once again, the octopus' name was Charlie.

Charlie very much enjoyed pottery; he considered it a worthwhile hobby to go along with horsehide etching. However, he often showed up late for his weekly pottery class (which was held somewhere outside this mouldy plastic ocean). In fact Charlie was so late for class one day that his teacher, a nylon sandwich bag named Clarissa, ordered him to pay his lunch money to the school prefect Mr. Moses Von Koffalot--who was actually just a figment bouncing around in a pink broom closet--by way of punishment. Although Charlie did not mind being censured (he did realize that tardiness was unacceptable), he did not want to forfeit his lunch money to a mere figment. He said to Clarissa, "Please miss, I will need this money to eat; I know Mr. Moses will just waste it on unnecessary cosmetic surgery for his mistress, Glenda Boogerstrom." Mr. Moses had a mistress, this was true, and she was a Nordic spoon-carver (which many at the school board were shocked to find out).

Now, this confrontation between Charlie the Octopus and his teacher took place on a rather humid and tawdry Guy Fawkes' Day, a circumstance that made things more tense than they ought to have been. Luckily, just before the pottery-gong sounded to announce recess, a dew-faced, hollow-boned courier knocked at the door of the classroom and shouted, "It's Guy Fawkes' Day, and I have a delivery of roses for your teacher!" Well, Miss Clarissa was so overjoyed at the thoughtful gift of flowers that she forgave everyone in the class, including Charlie, for everything they had ever done, and she pulled out a convex brass decanter and poured sixteen litres of Chilean Merlot out the window. "Whoever sent me these flowers," she beamed, "is sweeter than this vat of wine!" And Charlie looked at her and smiled, "If all it takes is flowers to appease you, I think I'll be showing up late more often!" And everyone smiled and giggled; the roses had saved the day. Charlie drew everything that happened that day on a big purple swath of horsehide; he sold the piece for a million deutschmarks to a slow-witted cellist in the north-northwest centre of town. The cellist's name was Norbert and, by some strange quirk, he was not Armenian.

And later that evening, Moses Von Koffalot took his mistress Glenda out for a relaxing fig dinner. When she asked Moses, "Can you pass me the figs," he winked and said "My dear, but of course." And they both fell asleep, but not until several hours had passed, and they were both in their separate beds.

END

the inevitable winding down

The man looks around, sees a frothing mound of Other-town, thinks, 'this can't be going down,' and frowns. The bigot bastard and his classically pilastered appearances, such semblances of sincerity, supporting pillars of depravity, his lizard innards and witch-hunt manias. But you can't blame yourself, he remembers, and so he doesn't: humility is for losers; please pass me my rifle.

(And that's how the west was won, and that's how it will implode.)

Got a pickle up your ass? Click here.

Penny on the ground

*ahem*

Penny on the ground

Penny on the ground, every day pick it up
One cent closer to your dream home
No room for it in your pockets;
maybe buy more pants first?

Gregor turned to something ugly
an insidious insect
gave the world something beautiful
Did anyone expect his soul?

Zundel deported to Canada
land that welcomes Nazis
Lollipop sugar is sweeter when licked
Is it ok to be racist, if you are a hot chick?

Alright, you convinced me, let’s get outta here
Aren’t you tired of repetition
these quadruplicating rhythms
this mental taxation?

I’m just sitting here
pretty much ok; all I need is
1600 calories every day, to stay alive, is all I need
a love of routine, and the daily news?

twist and shout

scream it up, my little sistas
your tongue's covered in the blistas
tonight we're playin' the Ultimate Twista
and i'm the rubbery Magic Mista
and it's Winner Take All.

Monday night sympathy

(a failed reader poem)

A fellow feels not when he doesn't stop to think about the baby crying behind his ear. Does he hear the inhuman shrillness of the infant? Does it stir his basest instinct?

No call can wake and no salt can shake him. He doesn't smell the Sunday cooking; doesn't worry ’bout Lord in Heaven. It's make me want to shake him, blurt advice and break him, after the booze that made him curse and touch the nurse's dress and he spilled his ginger rye. Why, he broke his glass and scared his wife, and now he dares to lie? Sticks and names can only hurt him, yet he tries to hide his hurting, praying he is certain that his God is just a Bible and this world his only trial.

But I cry out in hurry that the night will end with rain, and the women carry water jugs, but their necks will feel the pain of a chore that's never-ending while the countryside is mending and the trains are full of shore men and the coast land got fished dry.

The wetness of the morning calls for jackets, cords and warming with the hot cup of the cider and the fairy-tale spider rhyming words that were inside her while the Wright brothers did fly.

But friends of all the Grease kids flavour speech with slang and beatnik; they dream of road trips down the coast and wish the hottest spice that words can buy. They smoke cigars, inhale and choke, but even phlegm can't hide the smiles when they're dressed up all in robes and books they never plied.

Their dreams all lay with books that lie: novels, poems, diner fry. Food unfit for eating, words wasted on the breathing, ideas for forgetting, ill-gotten flights of fancy.

That's not to say Jack was wrong, or the bohemian was lying when he sang seductive songs; it's just that life is more than leaving homes where toiling wears out idle minds—never minds that think to pray for work—which cuts the hands that never tried.

And it's just that every poem is a story of a loneness that breaks itself when spoken, adding ink stains worth but tokens to the tomes of men who cry.

a new batch of sentences

There's a plebiscite in the night, a vote on the new tax. Democracy, it’s so clandestine, a secret rite, an ancient Greek fight, a fascist’s heart attack.

But trusting myself to do the laundry was an epic mistake, a true gaffe, and always will it haunt me, for I used to believe I was capable of at least not mixing my lights and my darks. But today it all came out pink in the wash. Oh the shame of it all.

Apocalyptic, menefreghistic bureaucrats and their sardonic statistics. Dry warm, cool and fresh. Remember man to feed your flesh.

I think the ugly feet of little goats will soon be generally acknowledged as the true source of all ethnic tension in this hemisphere.

I got a few things sticking in my craw:

1. Pez dispensers: use or lose 'em, that's all I gotta say. The way we just collect these neck-swivelling flip-top plastical novelties and fill them with candy for the first little while, but then forever ignore them and sometimes just throw them in the garbage--that really sticks in my craw. I mean, talk about a flavour famine; the potential for amusing sugariness is there forever, so don't waste it by dismissing so flippantly these delightful dispensers. Cuz if that's your attitude you can stick my middle finger up your pez and smoke it!

2. The big flaming circle in the sky that burns my skin: talk about a SUN of a bitch! Ahaahhahaaha. But seriously, I've walked the walk, and talked the talk, now I'm calling for a good ol'fashioned sun BLOCK. So shut your eyes when strolling outside and the sun'll surmise he'd betta wise up!

3. cheeky squirrels: they gnaw, they chew, they hop, they bounce. For god's sakes, can't we just call a 'let's cut loose all this foolishness' truce? These scurrilous scurrying squirrels are driving me 'NUTS'!

4. my new blue pen: doesn't write, doesn't think, it's just a big blue pen, full of ink!

5. cowboy cookies: I mean, shouldn't they be called COWPERSON cookies? Stick that in your politically correct cookie oven and smoke it!

6. craw burrs: man, when these little devils stick in your craw, they're hard to get out. Like the poet said, 'to get out a craw burr, you're gonna need a crow bar'!

Pants. Who the hell needs 'em?

May 7, 2005 is No Pants Day.

more unbiased coverage from the North Korean newswire...

Films on Theme of Anti-Japanese Education Screened-- Pyongyang, May 14 (KCNA)

"A series of films on the theme of anti-Japanese education are now shown at cinemas and houses of culture and other places across the country. Among them are the documentary film "History Indicts" and feature films "Japan Provokes War in Year Imjin," "Emissary Unreturned" and "Kwangju Calls."

Cinema-goers feel bitter hatred for the Japanese imperialists, the sworn enemy of the Korean nation, and renew their firm determination to take revenge upon them.... Seeing the films, people from all walks of life and school youth and children evince their firm pledge to deal merciless blows at the Japanese reactionaries"

CAN YOU BELIEVE THIS IS ALL THESE PEOPLE ARE ALLOWED TO READ!!!???

Who's afraid of the dark

.

Who’s afraid of the dark

I’m not afraid of the dark, I don’t blubber when bulbs aren’t lit. I swish, twirl in any murk, shout hosannas in every apocalypse, pish tosh to all pretentiousness. I look in your terrified, dusky grey eyes and offer surprises, not ‘full-of-it’ lies but midnight flights of fancy. Stretching my hairy ballerina thighs, I try this ink black leotard on for size:

Unlike Bruce S in all earnestness, I am immune to too-much sanguine awkwardness. Crooners only unnerve me, disturbing the common good with hypersensitive artistic suggestibility—ack, ability wasted on pedestrian emotions, inciting popular commotion, wannabe Horaces diluted to Hallmark.

I’m not one to boast of blood, it spurts inside us all; so what if drops sometime escape, it doesn’t mean we die. Get a grip and grab my plate, and eat up what I fry: if I get cut, I bandage up—I don’t go inside.

I’m no tall drink of water, I don’t spill out over bar-rails, sopped up by cooing waitresses ‘just doing their jobs’, or teeny bopping pigeons fawning online at heart-throbs, raising ruckuses like roustabouts over big-top circus freaks with an entourage of thousands, monopolizing chambermaid attention in dime a dozen five star hotels

I am the five in the morning bell
I am the hole that sinks the well
the van outside the cheap motel
I’m Gargamel and Azrael

When power’s down and night crests, I ask, What had you possessed? Well I guess under duress a melting ice box and memories of a dumb flat screen could offer comfort, but if that’s your final answer I am unimpressed. No, until you learn you get no rest; surcease your bleating, your entreating, and get dressed: Midnight doesn’t dance with you unless you look your best.

Don’t ask me who you are; I’ll tell you who you are. If you must ask, then it’s sure that, sir, you are no superstar. But the question is not ‘who am I?’—that’s a worm that digs up lies. The question, if you’ll follow through, the question is ‘what do you do?’

What do you do? What do you do? .What you do, it’s up to you.

What do I do? Well, sir, let me tell you:

In lighter days I raise the curtain
In colder days I light the boiler
In yesterdays I talked about tomorrow
In everyday ways to remind you of today

But at no time ever have I feared the dark.

Spartacus goes shopping

Why do we stand in the back of the lineup, waiting for The Man to make us pay? Brothers, sisters, levitate, congregate and fulminate. Today a new day dawns. Today it is the choicest and fluffiest loaves that we select from bakery shelves. Today it is the heartiest chicken broth that we sip; no more shall substandard, stale licorice swizzles be pawned off to the heretofore too-mild children of Africa. No more shall we honest victims engage in tiresome struggle for basic grocerial self-determination. Seize the firmest, most perfumed melons! Pluck the most savoury tenderloin from the under the nose of our cotton oppressors! Can you smell the premium coffee brewing? Well today and forever we shall have righteous cause to sip from that same percolating kettle!

Adventures of a Toad Protectorate

(about toads and the men who love them)

The adventures of a Toad Protectorate

Corporal Biggins and I waltzed into the Cleveland Downtown Animal Hospital and discovered, with both relief and surprise, that there were no toads under ailment there. And we loudly praised the Lord, that He had spared our preferred slimy creatures.

Toads, you must understand, had gotten me out of plenty a tough scrape in my marine days (it was hard to tell who was more amphibious sometimes, me or the real amphibians!). Back then we sometimes used toads to catch flies, for nourishment, or we filled them up with nitro-glycerine to heave into a hostile bunker (the enemy rarely expected an exploding toad). And though that latter option meant sacrificing the life of a toad, I always appreciated their selfless heroism. My mates sometimes worried that I'd turn one of our favourites into a grenade, and they’d remind me, “Don’t explode Little Chester”—he was our favourite brown toady, "--send up ol Dynamite Deirdre instead...” Deirdre was a new toad we hadn’t yet developed an attachment for, and so one day she bit the dust in bunker in Manila. But it was ok; Deirdre was a heroine, and we still had Little Chester.

During my years in the marines I would confide all my intimate secrets to a certain other toad, wise old Tiresias, who was blind in both eyes. We found wise old Tiresias in one of the toad-bogs in and around Delphic Greece, and I grew to trust his uncanny prowess. “Tiresias, my dear hoppity monk,” I said to him once, “My heart aches and I know not why.” And so Tiresias would hear my tales; “Did you know I stole private Jennings’ tube socks,” I confessed, “I feel woe beyond the depths of all sorrow.” Often Tiresias would just spit and pee in my hands, but one time I heard him distinctly say to me, “Live it, Live it, Live it.” Aha, a message of inspiration—he was telling me to just live my life. "Live it, Live it," he croaked again. I thanked Tiresias for his profoundly simple insight; I wanted to shake his hand, but all he had were his stringy frog legs.

“Aw, fuck,” said Major Bader, who did not approve of toads in his company, “that warty bastard is just saying ‘ribbit, ribbit,’” and he flicked a cigarette ash at Tiresias. Typical cranky Bader, I thought, and I scowled at him; I told the Major he would be getting a pipe bomb in the mail if he kept up with his infidel smartass-edness. He scowled back, "Well, aren't you a peachy little devil," and called for the MPs to slap me with irons. Three lonely days I spent in the stockade for that piece of insubordination, but heck, I was just sticking up for my wise creature-friend Tiresias.

But much, much later, at the Cleveland animal hospital, is where the current story unfolds. Corporal Biggins and I walked in to the hospital lobby on a weekday morning, asked a few questions of random passersby, and discovered not even the slightest trace of a toadlike patient under care there. We rather rejoiced at this initial good news, exultating like two people really happy, as though we were a couple of gas-station attendants who had just won the lottery. “Hurray, hoppity hoppity shazay!” I shouted in the face of a hobbled dromedary--I licked the animal’s one hump and spat out the fur; I was just so relieved the toads were safe (The dromedary whinnied in resentment; I calmed down, and afterwards apologized for my exuberance). It seemed for the moment the toads really were out of harm's way. Just how mistaken we were, I'd discover later that same day.

While Corporal Biggins was in the men’s room, I walked up to the lobby desk and in a loud, Scottish accent I asked the receptionist, “What ever became of E. Perseus Slade, the famous veterinarian and much-reviled toad-incapacitator-- who once operated out of yon poppycockish horizons?” The nurse receptionist, a young mountain-lion of a woman, peered at me curious, as though I made no sense. I flashed my marine credentials (though I had been out of the marines for 3 years, and was now delivering powdered sugar in a pickup truck for the Wilson R. DeGroot Powdered Sugar Distributoring company, I still carried my marine badges) and good thing they impressed her. She saluted me turgidly, and whispered, “Slade has disappeared like so many morning mists,” and gave me a quizzical half-smile. I nodded, baffled. The nurse was strangely metaphorical for an animal hospital flunky, but I liked her style and diction. A real looker too; I asked her to a coffee shop, hoping I could discuss these missing toads. And luckily--for me and the amphibians both--she agreed to meet me, that afternoon, at Cafe Cleevage. When Biggins finally came out of the washroom, I told him he could go home.


(unfinished of course)

99 rejected subtitles

(it took some doing, but I did it. now it's done)

99 rejected subtitles

99 just desserts
99 to-do lists for the unemployed
99 hints you should call a psychiatrist
99 songs without instruments
99 friends you never had, but always will
99 feathers in your thinking cap
99 instances of kickass ass-kicking
99 soapbox hooligans and a snot-snorting whippersnapper
99 MS-Word documents
99 excuses for my misbehaviour
99 conventions to conveniently ignore
99 roads--more or less travelled by
99 smiles, frowns and obscenities
99 typesetter’s nightmares
99 radiant swimsuit beauties
99 days in solitary confinement
99 newborn baby boys
99 middle fingers, proudly erect
99 cracked mirrors and other superstitions
99 scalding footprints on the flaming red-hot beaches of sadness
99 soul tattoos, in black and blue ink
99 things… not quite poems
99 problems that aren’t your problem
99 ave-atque-vales
99 worst hopes, best fears and apologies
99 forests for the 6.2 billion trees
99 run-o’-the-mill gluttonies and other forgivable indulgences
99 alternatives to self-medication
99 transparent secrets
99 sermons and impromptu ditherings
99 classified transmissions from the interplanetary observer
99 concrete sidewalks in Toronto (where love is a one-way street)
99 coffeeshops and their attendant consequences
99 newspaper clippings
99 amateur emotions and mercenary intellects
99 derivatives to the power of X
99 missionary positions
99 first steps to beat the disease
99 worn-out crayolas of blood sweat and tears
99 nosedive butterflies and surfacing godzillas
99 eyelashes plucked
99 linguistic fistfights
99 hosannas in the secular temple
99 left-handed ravings and wrongheaded eccentricities
99 finales from A to Z: Alphacalypse to Omegaddon
99 constitutional anarchies
99 useless miracles
99 introspective retrospections and prospective expectations
99 rhyming stigmatas and a drowning narcissist
99 direct marketers beating down your door
99 oceans of uncharted depths
99 lyrical breezes and mystic awakenings
99 whistles in an abandoned train station
99 visits to the anthropomorphological zoo
99 social misfits and semantic mavericks
99 monstrous deeds, magic bullets and smoking guns
99 conversations with The Big Guy
99 grammatical quirks and vocabularial conundra
99 gallons of rocket fuel for the outer-space astronaut
99 Marlon Brandos, two cartons of cigarettes and a bottle of whiskey
99 passports to everywhere
99 meals in heaven (by candle-light)
99 imperfect solutions
99 substitutes for rage
99 platefuls of sugar-coated Brussels sprouts
99 therapeutic scapegoats
99 grassroots excavations
99 constellation points in a single galaxy
99 unblinking assassinations
99 post-coital bearhugs
99 unwelcome beginnings and unwanted conclusions
99 rectal exams for the street-corner beatnik
99 token black guys
99 excommunicated saints
99 broken hearts and drunken insomniacs
99 questions begging for a context
99 exploding powderkegs
99 symphonic convolutions in the key of U
99 sounds, sensations and irrelevant epiphanies
99 jailbirds and their death-row consolations
99 Shakespearean insults
99 hems, haws and hahas
99 (tan)zola-esque j’accusations
99 genuine imitations
99 products from the English Factory
99 letters never sent
99 events in 9 and 9/10s decathlons (pulled a quad in the shotput and DNF’d)
99 forms to fill out before you get paid
99 repressible memories and controllable urges
99 percent of the iceberg
99 ways of saying the same thing
99 miles in somebody’s shoes
99 Easter eggs in one basket
99 cantos in one volume
99 subtitles, lost in translation
99 proofs that you love your family
99 monkeys on 99 typewriters for 99 centuries…
99 descriptions of what it’s really like
99 reasons not to write a book



(all of them rejected)

Afternoon drive

On a winding road,
on a damp Friday when
even your bones feel wet and
wind whips the aerial like a
cruel high pressure wash that
removes no dirt,
you drove up to those outlands where
wooden signs creak
sullen under
what’s left of winter.

You were surprised, at the persistence
of life flashing its
mangled brown
choppers, and industry
gasping in
a cold charred patch of no man’s land, left for
illiterates and incest pigs scratching
roots from the ground.

You made your way through
main streets, off beaten paths down to
pillows of snow atop frozen water, where
a lone teenager
lets himself be
lifted by the gale, tied to a sail flying high
screaming sing songs below in
his windbreaker—
a glorious afternoon
skipping school.

good news... and no, I'm not really a writer

The good news is that, today I find myself just one *poem* away (*poem*--from the Greek word meaning 'thing that is made') from finishing my first *book* (*book*--from the German word pertaining to 'beech', the tree whose bark was used for writing 'things' on).

To be honest, I don't consider myself much of a writer, because a writer is somebody with something to say (like a speaker has something to say, but a writer relies more on symbolic ink patterns or cathode-ray squiggles, instead of pharyngeal air vibrations). I much prefer *listening* and, after that, *editing*, as opposed to this presumptuous, confrontational act of writing. I don't write because I like writing, really, that's not the reason; I'm more of an editor of the things I catch myself listening to (and listen to me now: it's perfectly ok to end a sentence with a preposition). Generally, the writing part is accidental--in the most disastrous sense of the word--and I'm as surprised at the disturbing results of these creative accidents and impromptu emissions as anybody else.

So when I do force myself to write something (often against my will, when I'm exhausted or depressed; often when I'm in a fantastic mood, and should be outside kissing some pretty girl instead of sitting at this laptop and shrivelling into a raisin), then to get some satisfaction, to make it worth the cost, the sacrifice, the inevitable carpal tunnel syndrome, then I have to guarantee myself that the ultimate product of that writing session has to in some way, somehow, blow my mind. And doing that--ie melting my own face, with words--often requires a lot of *editing*, which on the other hand I am more than happy to do, because editing is fun, and so that's when this blog becomes fun, for me. So I confess--I have only a vague idea whether or to what degree the stuff I'm serving up here is blowing any other minds out there, but rest assured, if it's on this blog, it's because I've just managed to utterly, absolutely blow my own mind, and felt compelled to share it with the universe (who needs to smoke cigarettes, drink liquor, or tip cows to have a good time when I've got blogspot?) . That said, I am glad a few of you (among the 20-35-odd people a day who check this site) have reacted favourably to the things I've written/edited; it gives me another reason--in the long run, quite a significant reason--to keep on doing it.

So thanks to all those who have left the kind words, and please, forgive me today's puzzling hypocrisy, ie doing all this *legitimate writing* (since today I actually have something to say, which in itself is a fine thing, but is strange when I just said that usually I don't--have anything to say that is) when in actual fact I'm not a writer. I hope you can let it slide. Fortunately for me, there is not always so much writing to be done, but there is more than enough editing to go around. I tell you, *everything* out there is just waiting, asking, begging to be edited--which is probably why I've been so busy the past two-and-half months. :-)

Anyway, regarding my *book* and its one missing *poem*: it has a title, ie this poem does, but it itself is not yet written. This is where YOU come in, hopefully, since I don't know if I have the energy to complete it myself. This final, keystone poem (I wish there was a better word than *poem*, one not so completely raped and bankrupt), is titled "99 rejected subtitles." The "subtitles" referred to in this unwritten poem's title (please try to follow this) themselves refer to, ie are subordinate to, the title of the book itself, which also happens to be the title of this blog, that is, "Freedom is a Cupcake," which, you may not know, is the title of a *poem* that I wrote/edited several months ago (I think it was in December) and which so utterly blew my mind at the time of its making, that I made it the title of this web site in addition to the title of my (never-to-be-published) book, which, as a chonological sidebar, I started compiling/editing even before I knew what a *blog* was (book beats out blog by 'bout three months).

So, here's this much-too-much-ballyhooed *poem* so far:

99 rejected subtitles

[empty space]


What fills this appalling void will be a list of precisely that, 99 lines or phrases or entities of an interesting and poignant subtitular quality. And each phrase will begin with the number 99, a la

(think first, for inspiration, of the title of the book, 'Freedom is a cupcake')

(now here's the title of the poem:)

99 rejected subtitles

(and the guts of the poem:)

1.99 things to do when you're unemployed
2.99 reasons to call a psychiatrist
3.99 ideas you're going to enjoy meeting
(man this thing is writing/editing itself!)
4.99 *poems* by 99 *poets*
5.99 excuses for my misbehaviour
6.99 smiles and frowns
7.99 deliciously liberating tidbits
8. .....
9. ....
(and so on and so on and so on, up to 99 different rejected subtitles)
...
99. 99 ways to start writing a book

Anyways thanks for making it this far down in this utterly, mind-numbingly ruinous post; I hope you can help me write this *poem*, (and will perhaps want to read my book, if it ever gets published) because Lord knows I can't stand doing it myself.

Oh, just so you know, this book will end up including 100 *poems*. This one, about "99", will be the 100th.

That's all for now. Cheers, Pat


ps next up, it's blown minds, I promise

pps I was in such a rush to write this that I didn't have time to edit it very much. man, I hate that.

sour & sassy

.

Sour

Gimme liberty or gimme debt relief, just gimme a minute to sell my soul. And the jerks who cut me off in the left-turn lane, I’m gonna brain them with a painful frying pan, as I’m a man who can’t stand breaches of roadway etiquette, what with the charcoal briquette bought recently sitting in a truck, enough to remind me of my down-on-my-luckedness, or the awoken consciousness of the quaking Loch Ness wildebeest, the rising of the dough despite the paucity of yeast, syndication tips from mafia poolies or strip-tease teenagers, harbingers of gentrification or democratic condescension. And the younger ones are dismissed as ignorant of this, so it’s left up to seniors to calibrate the nation, but they’re wearing adult diapers—so that’s love they won’t be making.

I called you Fiona but you shat on my shoes, so I picked up my guitar and drizzled some blues; I am Sad Stan Wild, the October child, a mild-mannered trucker carting goods to this the electric river of indifference, and I’m sucking on my thumb but you don’t even mind, I am sour ever after as I peel the lemon rind. And daily nightmares jostle me to sleep, but the incubus are stinky—they refuse to wash their feet; so I'm gorging on platefuls of veggie crudité, while the erudite librarians are haggling over the Dewey Decimal Festival protocol, and sheesh, man, I tell ya, “manic, mercurial, ocean-parting” Moses knows where I put his clothes: it's a place behind the stairs, where the crackhead hellcat women stare, laughing so politely and wishing I was there.



Sassy

Here’s to sunshine and motherhood and flowers on Father’s day: I'm against all manner of sullenness, in favour of silliness, I’m here proclaiming symphony, announcing a race to the top of knolls, to place a flag atop a pole, to suck a jelly donut hole; smiles follow frowns, they circle around, and upside down, they make a person whole.

On with the fun you humbug huns--let’s fire up the Barbie; call your gravy baby and purchase some wieners, and send your nice dress to the cleaners, as we watch the Saturday evening Cleveland Steamers: tonight we are the Daring Dream-Schemers. And as rays of light shine out my ass, exposing dumbass twits, I notice your girlfriend Velma, she makes you happy--and what a pair of tits!

victory-guilt

(the trouble with self-confidence)


victory-guilt

lightning quick
a tiger pounces,
kills its prey
and suddenly
feels remorseful--
an exploding nuclear
regret.

because, you see
it's what I'm
programmed to do,
and
he never had
a chance.

on the internet, everything's possible

at least three phenomena often thought unlikely, but apparently, in virtual reality, realizable:

pigs flying

hell frozen over

being in two places at once

Heck even the possibility of nothing isn't impossible.

The Unquenchable Shame and Ruin?

(I have no idea... written by accident during 12 minutes of absent-minded typing, and gradually edited into presentability. Which, after reading it over a dozen or so times, may have been a mistake.)


The Unquenchable Shaman Droon

Injun Dan was at her side all night and day, applying soothing balms and ointments, but her cold—at first I had thought it was just a bad cold--was taking on a life of its own, taking a turn for the worse, sucking all the forces from her. So I made the fateful call: I rang up Shaman Droon, on his shaman cellphone--55W-ITCH.

Ring ring. “Hello, this is Shaman Droon," a mysterious voice said. "Yes, Shaman Droon--please come over here to 7 wicklow way for a look at a patient--she's a sickly Dutch boarding student. Her name is Miss Broomhilda and she's very ill, and now she's emitting pus in a most disturbingly pus-manufacturing manner,”... “Pus, eh? I'll be there right away,” and then click.

Fifteen minutes later a cab pulled up and out stepped the Shaman. Well, It was either him or an imposter. But no, this was no imposter. This was the Shaman Droon.

He was a tall, cobra-faced man with a scaly serpentine hide to match. And judging from his greasy palms, he had spent many years of his shaman life applying restorative balms to the faces and secret under-crevices of ailing patients such as my charge, Miss Broomhilda Powergaarden.

Young Miss Broomhilda, age 20 and a promising student of literature, was not a native Haitian. But half her life had been spent on the island, rooming in our house, after she had defected as a 10-year-old from the Netherlands--a spunky pint-sized stowaway on a Port-au-Prince-bound pineapple barge. But the hows and whys of her defection constitute a more whimsical tale for another, more whimsical telling--for almost a week she had been quite pale, flopping about on her sick bed, closer and closer to her "reunion with the unyielding Reaper", as she might literarily have termed it; the river of blood pouring from her face and ears was like "an effluvia of bloodied plasma, a stream of blood-like matter"--it was a real scary snootful of blood, and it was all of it Broomhilda's.

The shaman strode inside through the foyer, pausing a half-second to scoff at a print Van Gogh hanging on the wall—“that flamboyant, one-eared charlatan,” he remarked poignantly. He coolly layed his toolbox of spices and incense on the kitchen counter and asked to be led to the patient’s room, on the second floor, where Injun Dan and the gardener, Thelonius, kept their pathetic vigil. Once upstairs the shaman took one cursory look at BroomHilda twitching on the bed, and he spat, angrily, through an open window. The spittle landed on a dog below--an Irish Setter, I think; the creature immediately went mad, chasing its tail and humping a jacaranda tree.

We had just met the shaman but were already filling up with shock and awe at everything he did. “Fetch me a pail of ice-cold Kool-Aid,” the shaman said with an expectant air, addressing no one in particular. We obeyed, all three at once—his magnetic voice would tolerate no lollygaggery—and we soon surrounded the shaman with buckets and buckets of Kool-Aid, flavours ranging from Tropical Mango to Blueberry Blast to Zesty Cherry, even Wild Ocean Citrus Spray. “Here is your Kool-Aid, shaman sir,” I piped up, “will you use it now to heal our beloved Broomhilda?" Staring wondrously into his hypnotic steel eyes, I half-expected some sort of rebuke: “Nonsense,” scoffed the shaman as kool-aid splooshed nervously out the top of our pails--“I happen to be rather thirsty.”

He drained the bucket of Blueberry Blast in one gargantuan gulp, slamming the empty vessel back down on the table top and licking his lips. “Now that’s what I call summertime refreshment," he chuckled like an angel-demon possessed. The three of us absolutely were struck with awe, murmuring superlatives to each other, agape around Broomhilda's bed. But the sage would have none of it: “Fools--have you not noticed how hot it is today? My lips are wicked-parched.” A look at the thermometer was enough to affirm his mystic utterance: it was a scorching 38 degrees celsius outside--the temperature of human innards--indeed, a real cooker. We looked back again at the master, sweat dripping from his nostrils. He smirked, and then full-on grimaced, "Hot enough for you?"

Shock and awe coursed again through the room; the great Droon had wasted no time living up to his reputation. “Now fetch me another pail of the Blueberry Blast,” the miracle-man cried, “for, in all my years of shamanry, I have found the Tropical mango Kool-Aid to be of a far too tarty unpleasantness—absolutely undrinkable--and let us remember, I have sick patients to heal, and wonders to perform!” Once more, there was shock and awe in excess; were I to hold the shaman's gaze any longer, I felt I might burst into flames, or my lungs would explode from his sheer, beverage-devouring magnanimity. I looked out the window toward the sky, wishing to thank the Maker--but all I could see was a dog humping a tree.

Broomhilda groaned dirgelike from the four-poster canopy bed; her spasmodically twitching pelvis knocked over a kerosene lamp, which immediately burst into flames. My mind came back from its awestruck reverie; “Does this mean she is getting worse,” I asked nervously, “because I’m afraid she might—“

“Imbecile,” interjected the shaman, dodging a piece of flaming debris, “am I not the one who cures people in this village?”

I gazed at the ground, stricken with shame.

“Yes, yes of course Shaman Droon.”

Injun Dan had come back with another brimming pail of sugar water, but the master healer waved him away. “That’s quite enough Kool-Aid," he spoke. "Now let’s have at this bleeding wench of yours…”

the shaman walked over to Broomhilda and

(oops. I can't seem to write anything past here--suggestions?)

Meet the specialist

(ask about my ph.D in poeticality, or my mba in madcappery)


Meet the specialist

I’m good at this;
I’m better than
a plain old poet—
I’m an
omnifauxet
I write these words
and nothing but
because I'm
—top of the line
head of the class
I am a totalitarian
state of the art
ahead of my time
—and I know it;

I’m good at this,
so gimme
gimme
lots of
money.


;-)

MayDay

(as tree-hugging as I can muster)

What's a May Friday, without visiting the zoo? It was a day without you... It was a long drive in the afternoon, it was over and through to scarborough, ghostly old finch rd; it was a narrow roadway underpass in thawed and gaping dumping grounds, where rubbish sits, gathers and makes chaos of our birthright. And despite the hollering army of trees—annual over-the-top charges into budding green defiance—it was a sermon half-listened-to. And despite obscene moments of occasional piety, they'll gasp still, come June, trees in full flower, startling regenerative gasping power, gasping in their final hour. 'Cause they’re gassed too, in the rushing zoom, around and through, by Oxy-3 and SO-2, gassed by me and gassed by you--passing gas we pass the zoo. Ok, we say, boo hoo, but what’s a car to do? (It does—we say it does—it does what it will do...)

Eric the Lungfish

(based on a true story; names have been changed to protect the protagonists)


Eric the Lungfish

Eric the Lungfish
pokes his eyeballs out
he gets no support
his spine like jelly
it gives no support
an amorphous moral
in a classroom full
of six-year-olds
they call him the freak;
the board of education
should have seen this coming
to treat him like a pet
but he doesn’t like
to be touched.

Eric the Lungfish
just a bit misunderstood
ah Miss Desirée
the only one who understands
when he pokes his eyes out
the kids scream and shout
and Eric finally feels
like a human being.

Eric the Lungfish
wasn’t wanted by his mother
they’ve got a box full at home
of his funeral preparations
but the doctors say
he’ll outlive them all
that’s right Eric--
you show them.

Blind, deaf, mute
like a lungfish
he’s Eric the Lungfish
heck for all we know
he could be a
messenger from God.


(no, seriously)

survey says...

minute minute

Soft S&G filters through slits in the lavatory air duct. I catch tail end of some disturbing barista gossip: “…did you know he shaves his ass? Seriously, what a weirdo!” Echoed ventilated giggling. I’m thinking Poor hairy-assed mofo. Yet another coffee-shop indiscretion. Feeling dirty for eavesdropping, I wash my hands a second time, go on my way.

Respectfully declining hospitality

(aka rich and penniless)


Respectfully declining hospitality

The beaver chews a log
leaves soggy
dried out in the cabin
smoking wood and salmon
humming birds sip honey
tinker bell ringing on the phone;
farmer’s wife takes my pulse
‘you should eat a banana’
I nod ‘good advice’ and roll a fag.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

I need to find
a newspaper
to check out ‘New in Homes’
looking for a place to rent
among the catacombs.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

I ran away from winter
out of gridlock, into crowded
blankness, muffled
hitchhiking on the off ramps
stuck out my swollen tongue
cursed at by underpass tramps--
‘get your own damn place to think.’

I snuck into the dressing room
Cherry Blossom Studios
asked the makeup artist
to make me Valentino
but he laughed and rolled his eyes
--‘we don’t condone libido.’
I enlisted at the dating base
clicked on the singles scene
(I don’t mind discrete reminders
like ‘you could use some Listerine’)

I dried out on the wagon
the vodka cured my knees
but it made me vicious
too
I never knew what dreams were true
I always woke up screaming.

So I begged my professor
a reference letter
a scholastic potpourri
‘please send it by December
addressed to Mr. Gandhi’
(not making love
or war
sounds like
a good idea to me.)

And yesterday
I was cutting up an onion
--tears add flavour to soup--
when you walked in with
a five-course dinner
from a five-star restaurant;

and so
so much
for honest eating,
what could I do but
accept
you in my home?

by dessert
I knew
I had chewed up dignity
when
I chose your bone.

Dear Lobotomized Cosmo Girl,

Why aren’t you in love with me yet? I’m tall, athletic, smart and rich.

I like the way you dress and walk and smell. You have a nice body, and a wonderful personality too. I would love the chance to physically demonstrate just how wonderful I think you and your personality are; I’m convinced we’ll both enjoy that. I could sing you a song first--will that make your personality become naked? Singing a song or playing guitar is something I could do; it’s called being romantic. I will do whatever is required. Getting your phone number is a good first step, but I hope that eventually you’ll want to practise making babies. One day you may decide to carry my child, and care for it while I’m outside moving piles of dirt and money around, in my career. Usually I like to destroy things, but to create something would also be great--a person in your belly for example, someone who looks just like me.

So yes, I think it's best that we practise making babies. A word of warning though: I have no idea what ‘menstruation’ is, and I don’t ever want to find out.

Sincerely,

Typical Boy


Dear Typical Boy

Thank you for the letter. If you’re serious, I suggest you make reservations at a restaurant for this Friday evening, or perhaps you could plan an evening out for the 14th of February (all my best girlfriends think it’s very important that we do something as a couple on the 14th of February). When we’re out together, please pretend that you like dancing, at least for the first little while. Also, I quite enjoy ‘cuddling’—this is something I cannot do without, so please practise that. Oh, and for the first few weeks, you will find it rewarding to compliment me on my appearance, as often as possible. Mention my ass, as I spend most of my free time worrying about it.

I would be happy to carry your child, but please understand this: as soon as you impregnate me, you will no longer be of much use; therefore stay out of my way during all child-rearing years. And if you don’t mind me forsaking my appearance once we have finally finished making babies, then I won’t mind you watching sports on television every single week night. Do we have a deal?

Also, don’t ever lie to me, except when it is appropriate. Did I mention that you are a dreamboat? Well you are. Now please buy me a ring.

Sincerely,

Lobotomized Cosmo Girl

Forget chess

(why must we be adversaries?)


Forget chess


Forget chess,

Forget football

Forget the drinks we ordered

And take me home


You call me a threat;

I don’t like the tone in your voice

I don’t like you in that dress

And i don’t want to take a cab


You call me

Two years later

And say--

“I’m trying to forget the way you smell”

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

why can’t we just walk home

eat the snow before it

hits the ground,

and


fall asleep

and forget

to stop

wanting us?

Floopy foosh oon the doockside pier

Floppy fish gasping on the dockside pier, I'm a fisher without peer, wiping down the tables with a moistened rag veneer. The killer cleavage of that woman, and what’s she doing with that man? Redwood sturdiness, café flirtiness, the best dressed-up comment to impress the guests, when salty pretzel snacks don't pass the test—it’s a jungle out there my snake-flake favourite mistake heart breaking out in sweat shake faker. Whizzled, woozled unto the hip-check heart attack illegal knee on knee symphony; frock, sock and chopping block, smockwearing clockmakers tick tick tick from Bell’s Palsy, and Admiral Halsey was a good song by Wings, and the first time you read this'll be the only first time, and after it is analysis and meaning and never again enjoyment unless something sticks and then it's the secondary joy of psychic anticipation. But never give yourself a name or number you can’t live up to, like when I was 11 and I wore 99 on my back and I don’t think I scored one goal that year. And who walks in and who walks out--and why are you afraid, not of being alone, but of appearing to be alone? Because we don’t want people in the bathroom when we’re taking a dump; we don’t want to ride an elevator with anybody we don't know. Dristan revisited, Tylenol inquisited, miles of paper statutes replaced by metrical digitization, pulmonary artificial respiration, the resuscitation of resurrection theories, and clown seltzer-spray water-bottle instruction manuals--talk about overkill. Peony pot shards and card shark lowlifes, crowing strife and advocating oversimplified reductionist solutioneering, to marginalize and eliminate bureaucratic waste, and for slippery civil servants the public is enemy number one, oh the tiresome endless agony of democratic debate!

horsetorcher

(kicking ass: you have to consciously decide to do it)
.

horsetorcher

no bull
or excuse
no more of that—
I am back
and
this is called a
full frontal
attack:

I was buried in a submarine
—I died—
exploding space-shuttle highs
flaming from the skies
I was crowned, beneath me queens
drowning, gurgling, frowning
—but that is all, that’s quite enough;
changing colours
towelling off
I am not your tragic
clown
I tell you
I am tough.

it is soup of
ideas
not intensional sense
but extensive reference and
this is my two cents and
this is revenge and
it speaks its own force and
it speaks its own voice so

GET OUT OF MY WAY
do it right away
because
I’m back upon the horse
and I’m
charging into town and
I burn it to the ground
because
I’m back up on my stallion
and
I am the human torch.

R.E.M. and Hip albums, in descending order of goodness

(never has so much thought and careful deliberation been put into a post)

R.E.M. (studio albums only)

1. New Adventures in Hi-Fi
2. Automatic for the People
3. Lifes Rich Pageant
4. Green
5. Out of Time
6. Monster
7. Murmur
8. Document
9. Reveal
10.Fables of the Reconstruction
11.Up
12.Reckoning

The Tragically Hip (studio only)

1. Road Apples
2. Phantom Power
3. Fully Completely
4. Day for Night
5. Up to Here
6. In Violet Light
7. Music@Work
8. Trouble at the Henhouse
9. 'The Blue Album' (self-titled ep)

google wars

on the clash of deities, 'new economy' multinationals, linguistic theory, and some psychoanalysis of the typical blogger

Did you know that, according to that mighty search engine, google is almost as popular as The Supreme Being? On Google™, the search for 'God' turns up about 60 million links (all figures approximate), while the search for the word 'google' itself yields 46 million links. Not a bad count for a wee bit of software, however it appears the All Powerful One still holds the edge in our universal consciousness... Interestingly, Allah tallies just 1.8 million links, rather paltry in comparison to God--but before someone in Iran decrees a fatwa, I concede there must be a pro-Western bias on the internet, ie Westerners invented the damn thing and presumably use it the most, so it's normal that a certain three-letter deity gets more click-action (also, my keyboard doesn't know how to type in Arabic, which skews the results). And not to dismiss any nomenclature pertinent to that third great monotheistic religion, ie Judaism, but Yahweh clocks in at a mere 400,000, with Jehovah squeezing 550,000 links. But hey--regardless of spelling, it's all the same g-o-d right? Right. (I know, I'm asking for a lightning bolt to fly out from the monitor and zap me.)

Continuing in this confrontational vein, I wonder how google feels being 'out-googled' by their arch-nemesis, Yahoo, which clocks in at a whopping 120 million links. Even MSN has 53 mill, quite a bit more than the g-spot. IPO my ass: once Yahoo and MSN get their acts together, I think they're gonna wipe the floor with the beloved 'people-power' search machine. (I hope no one at Google™-owned blogger.com is reading this... I swear I'm just kidding guys)

But the grand-daddy of all google search items has to be--wait for it--(drum roll here) THE DEFINITE ARTICLE, which garners a staggering 5.7 billion links. Very impressive; it goes to show you that semantic precision pays off, as that wishy-washy grammatical cousin, the indefinite article, falls well behind in the links count with a second-best 3.6 billion.

Also, it turns out the online universe may be heavily populated with 'me-first' egomaniacs (what's that I said about bloggers?), as I is getting more than twice the play you does--1.3 billion links for 'I' compared to 0.5 billion for 'you'. As for 'me', that registers 316 million (but as for ME, personally, ie 'Freedom is a Cupcake'? My pathetic site is barely cracking 5,000). So heck, it's no wonder e-commerce (7 million) hasn't really taken off as hyped--why should I entrust my credit card number (4324109076542483... yeah that's the one) to a creature as dangerously narcissistic and self-interested as the (291 million) internet??

Finally, I think it's funny how 'google', which, until recently, wasn't an actual English word, has absolutely destroyed the legitimate word 'googol' in terms of 'google hits'. It's funny because 'googol', with its relatively worthless 26,000 links, is the word that represents the number 1 followed by 100 zeroes (ie 1 googol = 1.0 × 10*100)--a ridiculously massive number--and yet, 'googol' is not able to compete in the 'google' cyberscape. It's even funnier still, since as I understand it the intended brand name for 'Google™' was, in fact, supposed to be 'Googol™'--until the developers found out 'Googol™' was already taken, and so due to trademark regulations, a new word, 'google', is born, and ends up being, for us human beings, far more impressive than the mathematically mighty googol! Now is it just me, or is all of that pretty funny?

( ... I dunno, it's probably just me.)