Tragic Flaw Jam

(preserved in a dusty file since December 2005... I dunno, gotta publish something)

Happy is the word the trolls use, abuse and even lose. People can't be happy when they live within a cave, slap themselves upon the forehead and wonder who to save. The potions I drank, they made me thank (a kind of fantastical think), my grammar was warped and the universe stank. Jello's what I was, my spine like a string, elusive and full of guile like a calculated combinatorial and dictatorially lethal diamond ring. I was under a rock and talking to slugs, I was on all sorts of drugs. I escaped into a rainbow that drizzled from a bottle, I was high on chicken wings and flying pigs and fried turkey wattle. Moses condescended from the mountain to kick the crap out of me, I was laughing as he command-mentalized me; he was old and grey and couldn’t out-dance me. O the ocean was my home (but it was steaming into foam).

I couldn’t care for my kids. I was ketchup and mustard in the same bottle, a condiment unclassifiable, a poisonous mixture brewed from spite. The marvelous magicians were wounded too; I was their hero and leader, but they were alcoholic and impotent too, they wanted me to validate them, to party all night with them. I was tired and confused so I whispered ‘all right’. The devil did a number on me, happy with my trinkets, my blinking squealing ignorance; I was his pet, a protégé, I smelled like a bed of roses and there would never be decay. My mumblings were masterpieces, my farts the sweet perfume, my sins were super-sexy, I was popular at last, I could eat cheese and wear linen, I had a maid from Ethiopia, hell I was on my way to saving the world. I had a 4000-watt speaker system, I could listen to the Boss from blocks away. And it was me who wrote the fairy tales, I was the silky spider trading rhymes for curds and whey. I sat beside the milkmaid and she would swoon at my soul, I could croon and babble and make her blush, yes I was totally on a roll.

But I rotted away that autumn, I was all sugar and no meat, I was the devil’s little bitch, and I had begged him for the beats.

The jester's union returned my registration fees, I was shunted and disowned and left to starve in a heap beside a jeep on a road filled with toads and leading into a gulch. I was struck by lightning not once but twice and my hair went silver grey. Onions rolled out my mouth, my stinky breath made babies and mothers cry and my oh my the warts on my nose grew quite large. My declarations were premature, ejaculations suspicionable, my stakes on the new frontier slipping away like a greased feather. My mind stopped rolling along, I couldn’t keep on keeping on, I was bruised to the bone by my broad sweeping fallacies, my redundant originalities, my peculiar chariots and Phaetonesque fantasies. No one needed to ride the sun, I discovered my quests were foolish and full of holes and the wind blew through me like a needle ripping through my spine, passing out the back and leaving that leaky fluid dripping like a pissing wizard from my mind.

Bob the Trowel

(as mindless as I can think it)

Bob the Trowel was an unopened bumpkin on the road to revelry. He sang like a mocha man in an underwater tapestry. Bob divided his loves among the wordly, sang sonatas to the gentry and stowed his cash in Burnaby. Leroy Lambada talked him down from the ledge, after the markets crashed and Bob quite lost his head. Bob the trowel took his cue from the Messiah, turned the other cheek and called his ex-girlfriend Snazz a liar. She was busy wondering about Zoroaster the Short-Circuiting Toaster, smushed in a split-second underneath a rollercoaster. Snazz evicted her guppy and smashed a bottle 'top a table (she was drunk on Irish whiskey and halfway to the label). Freedom fighters arrived and called her 'terrorist', it was ostracism 101 and she nearly slashed her wrists. It was Family Guy that saved her, her laughter did return and she sweated out her love of Bob upon the treadmill's tortured burn.

Ideas for upcoming posts:

• an etymological analysis of the words "banjo" and "milkshake" and how they influenced 18th-century historians' interpretations of the Norman conquest. (hey it's half written)
• photos of my pet pigeon, Stoolie "Stooges" MacPuffin
  
• dialogue featuring opposing opposable thumbs
  
• rant on monogrammed sweatshirts
  
• list of my preferred flavours of Italian ices
• noir fiction piece involving a cross-dressing juggler, Kim Jong Il, and American Pie's Jason Biggs. Don't know how it starts but halfway through Clyde "The Glide" Drexler rolls into town with a bazooka, firing rockets at all the trees. "Burn them timbers," he cries -- and he snores constantly. But he gives up militancy, takes up the hookah, and falls into sheesha dependency. To support his habit he impersonates a firefighter who breaks into houses to steal the owner's Wii. NB Drex doesn't actually do those things, but he impersonates someone who does, and so becomes a smash on the mime circuit ... oh yeah the whole thing is mimed. Could be a musical too
  
• Analysis: "Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart -- Music Man, Decaying Mummy, or Mistress to the Czars?"

Poof Dervish

Screed magnet motorhead said "I am ghetto war slave" as she drove long nails into the knave. She brave, enmeshed in a maze. This day, this minute, hopping like an unkilled snapper on a skillet. I don't look, stare into sidewalk air, this jazz evening green tea becomes me, I haven't revealed the rules while winning the game, which isn't entirely fair.

Unlike tall soda boys, loud tweedy-duddies, we don't speak like sentences tend to speak, spoken thoughts unbroken plots and narrow corridors. I don't publish, I don't petition, I sit at home and read books about investments and nutrition. I have 5 minutes to write this, so I've lost after having 11 days to fight this. We build it up, it overflows, who will click? Thickness that sickness, sun of a brickness.

Extremely Blurry Post

I have only a couple seconds, ok:

• First, LOVE the new LEOPARD. It takes away so many compu-noyances from my OS X life-cycle! MacIntosh, thy name is... satisfaction.
  
• Next -- anyone seen The Wire? Great show -- apparently -- but neither have I. And what's this about a serial killer named Dexter? Another great show I intend to keep hearing about from other people.
  
• I wonder, how do you move your apartment into a bunch of boxes, when you've been living all this time outside of a box. Is that all my life is, a bunch of boxable crap to be put in a box? Yes it is.
• I wish I spoke Gaelic. Also, I wish I knew why.
• I've been told I have a hair dangling from my jacket. But not every day.
• Nobody talks like this any more: "I AM A ROBOT! GIVE ME CANDY!" I mean, Hallowe'en was soooo long ago.
• People don't give the Taxman enough credit. Did John and George die in vain? The Beatles made music for a reason. So pay your taxes, while my keyboard gently weeps.
  
• If I was a whale with digestion problems, I would consider outsourcing my stomach functions to a school of piranha.
• Proselytize all you like, you cannot stop sidewalk litterbugs. My solution: sidewalk sledgehammers.
• When donuts are finally shaped like the infinity symbol, every donut could last forever. Coffee Time's two-day-old product will finally be appealing in comparison.
  
• I've yet to make my mark on the puppet theatre scene. I've also never climbed a skyscraper using just the stairs. These will be my dying regrets.
  

Inauspicious comeback

We are drunk, loving lifelessness, fill each day with nightlong bluster. So contain what you can't create (contain it, that is, explain it: drain it of life). Drink wine with someone else's wife, raw steak tartare with your wit, your carving knife.

The approval I seek: my mind's eye's Everest peak. Blind to what I seek. Pride won't let me speak.

Don't name names or play blame games, lay in bed with collectors of strife. He loved her, and she swallowed his forboding incoherence, left him a beggar in heaven, silent and innocent.

Key to success: possess pretension to transcend daily drudgery -- never mind what a masterpiece monotony may make.

Insects are exalted somehow: silk from worms, jewels from bottom-feeders, diamonds from coal, gold from oil. (Are dinosaurs Catholic? We are the agents of their ascension, resurrecting fossil fuel corpses to inject into the stratosphere).

Don't mind me, while you drink coffee, quietly having a religious experience.

Grimly gathering dust by court order, my card-castle dictionary's writhing collapse. I'm still stupefied by bricks and mortar. How do buildings go up - who could plan that well? I know why they fall. A well-intentioned man pleases no one at all. What sticks gather Earth; what's lost in the entropy? Include unwritten notes from my latest symphony.

"I got a job as a Chinaman..."

Bob Dylan, on how he chose his career (Playboy interview, 1966):

Carelessness. I lost my one true love. I started drinking. The first thing I know, I'm in a card game. Then I'm in a crap game. I wake up in a pool hall. Then this big Mexican lady drags me off the table, takes me to Philadelphia. She leaves me alone in her house, and it burns down. I wind up in Phoenix. I get a job as a Chinaman. I start working in a dime store, and move in with a 13-year-old girl. Then this big Mexican lady from Philadelphia comes in and burns the house down. I go down to Dallas. I get a job as a "before" in a Charles Atlas "before and after" ad. I move in with a delivery boy who can cook fantastic chili and hot dogs. Then this 13-year-old girl from Phoenix comes and burns the house down. The delivery boy — he ain't so mild: He gives her the knife, and the next thing I know I'm in Omaha. It's so cold there, by this time I'm robbing my own bicycles and frying my own fish. I stumble onto some luck and get a job as a carburetor out at the hot-rod races every Thursday night. I move in with a high school teacher who also does a little plumbing on the side, who ain't much to look at, but who's built a special kind of refrigerator that can turn newspaper into lettuce. Everything's going good until that delivery boy shows up and tries to knife me. Needless to say, he burned the house down, and I hit the road. The first guy that picked me up asked me if I wanted to be a star. What could I say?

Blizz blather from the Hem-hawser

Dear punk buddies, I greet you! Welcome to my thoughts. A few ground rules: do not step on the walls, the floor or inhale the fumes.

Ok first item: shrill moans from the froo-froo Malignotech. Who disagrees? Good then, the others can shut their pie holes. We all vote in favour, froo froo, whoop do doo.

Ok next item: zonking in the parlour when your mother's on the phone - good idea or swinishly ogresome? Aha, five hands raised in runamok moodiness - ok sirs and dames, dissent noted and your names forever blacklisted. As they say in Purvish County - please count your friends on my middle finger! {to be continued}

"It's WHO you know..."

Words break hearts
study invisibility
few syllables from thinkmaker,
stunned silence

imaginative laziness
narrowminded nepotism
penchant for pre-approved lists
distorts reality
repeats history
'we only accept
published authors'
ensures mediocrity
unplowed potential

I don't have patience
for unsurprising revelations

afraid to lose a job
ie enemy of truth
I don't love truth when I might die.

Halifax café

Halifax on Blowers street in the afternoon, by George you come here too.

Goulash grammage and first past the postage, loco, no locus of control, soul sold - crown to soles. I was swooning like a big baboon. Sweet as sugar in a carrot cake, freshly baked and iced with all the fixings of a fake.

Insert a guffah, laugh at the almighty, sing sad sugar to outshine Aphrodite. Opus magnum, drink me a gin. I was quick with my wallet and pricked on a pin.

A typo turned my mind on something unthought and worth a speed bump, like pixie swill at a vegan cafe and translating from the French 'cafe au lait' suddenly I have a headache today, how little I am, shriveled and fearful, a hatful of feathers and belly of beer, stuck somewhere in outer nowheresville, crunching my gears.

Pass out fridge magnets on the corner to pump up my band, we play five free shows on the sidewalk this week, hear us, pity us, fill our hats as we weep.

Okay bean bag bean burrito mocha man sits and steals a wireless signal, down looking at the downtrodden waltzing past with squeegee rags and cigarette drags, I have huffed and puffed my poverty away - I took a day job and jumped into the bay - relief from desperation struck me with dismay

Sideways I touch this. Never a straight line, a direct line to your soul, downward digging devilish mole. Stream no filter no filtration such frustration we were first for elation digital pagination, same topic as every other, remembering how I was in awe at the Smothers Brothers. Turning off the monitor in disgust, looking for a pink thermometer to measure my distrust, then burning all my albums (protects my memories from rust).

"That was my nickname in high school..."

'Big Taco'
'The Sweaterless Peasant'
'Donut King'
'Harlem's Roundest'
'The Juice Wagon'
'Axe Sharpener'
'Sweet and Low'
'El Dominio'
'Poison Peacock'
'Thor's Werewolf'
'Black Fungus'
'Mocha Flavour'
'Sticky Buns'...?

I play this game with certain people I really like, called "That was my nickname in high school."

It is usually inspired by odd noun-phrase snippets, hilarious adjective-verb combinations and come-by-chance signage. The point of the game is to interrupt a conversation with a completely random interjection involving the last words noticed or spoken. Eg. " 'Razor toes' ? Funny you mention it; that was my nickname in high school!" This de-kilters the conversation just enough to be amusing.

"That was my nickname" is based on 'spontaneous decontextualization' (a term I just now invented) and keeping an open mind to the absurd at all times. It's a fun game.

five bucks if you can use these words in a paragraph

Muskrat
tongue
wasp
cardboard
semiconductor
queequeg
marzipam
bloat
half-nelson
fusion
longevity
distill
benzodiazepine
far flung
Madras
yosemite
ululate
Vishnu
qatar
impish

The Great Gay Peacock flies to Newark

(yet another brilliant story...)

In the town of Littlepocket, New Jersey was a small band of onion-eating postal workers. Postal workers were not popular as a rule, and the onions made it worse. The onions arrived, strangely, not in the mail, but on a bus filled with Mexican sweatshop workers who were employed in the shoe-manufacturing side of the Hudson River.

Littlepocket was home to the Precision Dance Competition, where young men and women stole away and precisely danced the Koochoo, the Wombat and the Delorean [recalls Back to the Future].

One of the great hopes of the dance world was Edgar F. Gunwaddle, who was sympathetic to the Mexican plight and grew visibly reddened whenever his mom made reference to tacos, or hired Mexicans to water her suburban lawn.

Edgar was an activist, and the dancing made his a celebrated cause, for let it not be said that a man's legs have never danced him into the record books.

Edgar worked night and day on the Peacock, a crazed dance that made him sweat. The Peacock was a stinky dance, and it was not without practical and social peril. Edgar was a bashful stinkmaker in his private life who refused to fart or even be caught without deodorant in his over-the-shoulder laptop sack. Imagine, then, the stink of sweat.

Peacocks were plentiful, as it was 1999. The great peacock hunt had not fully decimated the beplumaged game fowl and many fine feathers spread across the eastern seaboard. They clogged the propellors of ships, blocking up the drainage pipes and littering the beach coast.

Storkels Mendacus Mulberry was a beach worker charged with general maintenance and shoreline vigilance. He strutted about the surf's edge like a grand Iroquois chief, or a great janitor from beyond the mists of centuries. Mulberry drove an elevated hovercraft across the glades and bays of the New Jersey peacock-feather delta. He searched for flotsam and jetsam through the lens of his optical X-Viewtron binoculars and cussed at the clouds whenever they threatened his sorties with a contratempal rain.

Obadiah Von Boatwater was Mulberry's liege upon the hovercraft. The man was a grand Ethiopian chessmaster, a top ranked pogo stick-hopper who somehow found himself exiled to the deltas of New Jersey. The Nubian could sing great Sinatra and his plaintive guttural rumbles did not just clear phlegm from his throat but somehow attracted the peacocks of the delta.

These three characters collided one night in mid-river, Boatwater and Mulberry in their patrol craft and Edgar F. Gunwaddle in his bare bones laser. It was a mischance that scuttled a great dancer's career. Gunwaddle drowned and as he choked and thrashed the two shoreline vigilantes splashed at him with paddles to stoke some buoyancy into the man. But this could only aggravate him and Gunwaddle sank to the bottom of the man-claiming Hudson, kicking and thrashing his last glorious Peacock down into the mud.

The police arrived but could not reclaim the waterlogged corpse and their dredgings only returned sundry rotten planks and tires from the riverbed.

[unfinished of course]

CNE

sweet smells my mind

remembering her hair,

jetscreams everywhere

airshow blow-by

blonde with blue eye

what time wasted I

and now must we die

having lived just now

alive

Smiles from my other life

Heartening proof that the Internet has not fully annihilated the past: MiSC.ots!

yee-haws while you can

Astonishingly correct, derelict and sweaty.
smashing horrific devilishly explicit - I'm out of honorifics
- I'm simply a sleuth
freakishly Turkish and bonded to teeth
I'd mix a wet martini but I've got no sweet vermouth

washed into whirlpools and dried on the dock,
unlocked and spun out, it's eternadoubt,
so erase graffiti, my dear Sylvester-Tweety
"Cartoons are what I'm on about."

I quiver as I wait: it's a date with Michaela Simmons Jasper Tate!
High fives to Ebeneezer 'the Colon Cleaner' Johnson-Skinner, bean-counting with tweezer feelers; he scammed a scumbag subscription from the Publishers' Clearing House
"online beejeezus-healers' hot summer sale spectacular" with free
push-button crackhead codebreakers and hot-flash menopausal McDonald's grandma pie-a-la-mode-baking features, three to a box, twist off the box-top and you've got yourself a cure to chronic chest congestion and dry, hacking throat coughs...

It is difficult...

writing in a vacuum.

The world must cease to be.

The world without us... where cupcakes are free.

This aquarium sits on a fractalized squiggle, I don't recognize it, it's artificial.

Oh to bore you with details, to banish all reference points, to explode the sun. Oh to be done, being bored, to outlive the One. Bored at insignificance, lament the last living existentialist, to wonder why we create new digits, memory so easily erased, cannot be etched on immortal copper, bronzed and stuck in one place. I am happy today, borderline silly, all the way gay, love my sweet woman, we cycled by the river and kissed each other's shoulders - oh what a day.

An unnecessary display of force. 'These aren't the droids you're looking for' a quicker passage to my illegal Millenium Falcon.

Blanket

(no excuses, none necessary)

I mimed in silence, rode rainbows to Venice, through cloudy gondoliers with typhoon paddles, to the glistening summer evening ponds lit up by fireflies and bonfire light.
...yeah I drained my skull in the basement,
cleared out mucus, marveled at the miracle blank canvass, the second-third-fourth-chancedness, depackaging, gleaming white casement, superficie, public relations statement, another image replacement.

Joy is no longer obsolete - I've got blastoff feet, enough-strength-to-achieve-orbit feet.
Regeneration - reinvention, I've achieved meaning, self-deception recognition, so cancel that part of you that is a whore
You are better than this, my dear one, and you can ask for more.

Why do it? Why give in? When nothing is forbidden except the word sin — you give away your cookies and end up in the dust bin.

Calm

Happiness can be deadly. Procrastinate amid generalized joy; the blog must face this new steady state. You can still write - but you don't have to shout; tired of the tongue-tied fistfight. You can't worry about calm. So invent a new category.

Once-a-year light at 8:30pm tonight. The house bottom bricks past the point of light but the treetops turn a sunset shade of green with the last rays licking leaves. Notice it all, the firefly-night delight, swing-sitting take-in-everything insight, meander on the bike, sackclothed women with hoses on the lawn, group goodbyes upon a porch, summer not for long. Tightrope walkers tree to tree in Trinity B, I stick hands to highfive strangers, oh yellow-green jerseys - go Brazil! - dogs, smirk, always dogs - please, have a kid instead.

I'm stuck on a stunning white dress, fluffy bathrobe, warm towel, my sweet success, half-baked bluster, waffles I insist are morally provocative, but a first-prize smile takes the cake. Who is to blame for this dance-sing-body-mind harmony? A woman named Justin Timberlake.

Ms. Rhythm had stopped my heart, an arrhythmia, mumbling mumbletypeg; she rained vicious undulating waves of vocab from the sky, she wanted logic to die; and so whenever I tried it felt like a lie - that is, to prompt an effect - your deliberate intentions are just like a shipwreck. She would sing mind-wringing rubbish that rang like a siren: You are sleeping and beautiful. You will never know yourself. Creep alone, unconscious as you type Sanskrit-speak, spinning at perfectly harmoniously satanically satellite suborbital outer-space speeds, forever peeking at the pink edge of dawn from the dark side of the moon.

(And so I've decided to fire her!)

6 things that bother me about Optimus Prime

1. His name isn't Optimus Del Sexy.
2. Energon, smenergon. Trailer-trucks run on diesel fuel, so Optimus is far from carbon-neutral.
3. The Autobots are awesome mech-aliens with the firepower to destroy whole cities. You'd think their leader would maybe have a girlfriend.
   
4. Tens of thousands of kids dress like him every year — but has Optimus ever given you Hallowe'en candy?
5. I'm disturbed by all these scenes where Jazz keeps riding up into the trailer.
6. Humanity-destroying evil is a turnoff, but at least Megatron knows what he wants.

Funniest thing I overheard this morning

'It's such a shame you are whoring yourself, just so you can one day publish a book about what a whore you are.'

More pelican notes

If I ever get old I want to be like you.

I just listened to you sum up the meaning of life, in under two minutes, and I want to listen again and again

Pure feeling wells, cannot dwell or oversell – let’s call things as they are, so we can be sure of just one thing, the fullness you find feeding hungry people, there are those in particular who ask me for just a little more, and there is always more.

If I have to start the conversation well I’ll tell about my appreciation for the sun. If you ask me anything I give detailed replies.

My head aches, I’ve been soaring. Can’t make sense of an old man’s epiphany, expanding to include the dawn of the century.

Full of
and overflowing
So thankful for what I’m owing

Fear accusation of triteness; I don’t express my love for you simply out of politeness.

These are your eyes

multicoloured flashes
green blue lightning
strangers ogle, waitresses gush
lucky me
I bask all day
puts a stupid grin
on me;
the irony is that
wherever you gaze we
see the
brilliance only
you can't see.

(and mirrors aren't the same)

I was on hiatus...

...due to extreme happiness. Just gimme couple seconds, ok

To tide you over...

8 forthcoming certainties:

1. After a comet passes less than 5,000 miles from the Northern hemisphere, Texas will self-replicate, somewhere in Europe. Cowboys who speak French will no longer be shot at.
2. Small toads will get together and discuss ways to become even smaller. They will marvel at nearby grasshoppers, who will spit at the toads and call them whores.
3. Light switches will finally get together and demand that we stop tickling them.
4. The number of dogs in the world will fluctuate wildly after the International Zoological Society redefines 'dog' as 'a four-legged creature too large to be hurled from a slingshot'.
   
5. Madonna will finally declare war on Pakistan. Pakistan will lose horribly, and change its name to Rosie O'Donnell - a sad nation of defeated radical Islamic lesbians.
6. The insanity is complete when all mucus is banned from airports, except for what can be placed in a clear re-sealable 90mL container.
7. As global warming drenches coastal cities with rising floods, aqua-commuting will become increasingly sophisticated, resulting in advancements such as moisture-proof laptops, inkless newspapers and an underwater Starbucks.
8. U2 will finally start to suck, after naming a future album Abraham Lincoln's Groovy Gettysburg Go-Go. Lincoln's ghost will haunt the band, driving Bono insane, until he begs the Edge to shoot him in a crowded theatre. In the same spirit Larry Mullen, Jr. will free Adam Clayton, who it turns out was an Irish slave who could not play the bass worth a lick.

Feed the dragon #68

(until I think of something interesting...)

Marvellous minute in an ocean of crunk. Cut to Mr. Dressup and a copper-plated trunk. Puppets self-assemble and chatter over brunch. I've asked for strawberry banana and the robes of a monk. The brother sat down and began to whistle, rubbed my stubbled face until I would bristle, "Touch me not - I'm a model; this pose is for the magazine!" then I admitted to the doctor I'm allergic to tartrazine. Cheetos dropped from the sky like hydrogenated butterflies, but I'm a bee sting baby and dislike the honey hives...

15 more astonishing predictions

(just, because)

1. Ann Coulter's new book, This is How to Skin a Cat, will receive horrible reviews.
2. A reality tv show Communist Stars will feature Danny DeVito, aka the red dwarf.
3. Anthropologists in Montreal will argue that the invention of the wheel was merely a fortunate by-product of primitive man's repeated failed attempts to invent the bagel.
4. The Association of Fast-Food Mascots will be sullied by scandal when Grimace steps forward and admits to being proof that, yes, your face will stay that way.
5. Clothes hooks and hangers will be obsolete with the discovery of self-levitating clothes. In turn, self-levitating clothes will be obsolete with the discovery of clothes that leave the house on their own and go to the office for you, allowing everyone to stay at home and make sweet sweet love.
6. Nutritionists will announce that 85 percent of the average person's recommended daily allowance of niacin can be found in fiery car crashes. However, saner heads will point out that car crashes far exceed the RDA of brain shrapnel, causing nutritionists to back away from their prior claim, to the relief of everyone.
7. Mortuaries will - unsurprisingly - tip their hand in the abortion debate, when the Association of Undertakers says that all women should have the right to an abortion, as long as all fetuses have the right to a funeral.
8. Science will achieve a new low, after an apparently useless multi-million-dollar study is released which proves that being peed on by a camel causes hiccups. This discovery forges an unlikely alliance among scientists, the Christian Right and Middle Eastern camel breeders — after a further study proves that hiccups cure atheism.
9. Another study will show that violence among teenagers is not caused by video games. Conversely, video-game violence will be inextricably linked to video-game designing adults who were violent as children, teenagers, and adults.
10. Procrastination will reach epidemic proportions, when 'a stitch in time' is revealed to save nothing at all — because Velcro has become mandatory.
11. PETA will once again protest the signs of the Zodiac, and achieve a small victory when 'Aquarius' agrees to change its name to 'Aquarium.' Unfortunately for the animal rights organization, goldfish will then be hunted to extinction.
12. Antitrust legislators will rule against God's dominion over heaven and Earth, citing an unfair monopoly. God will phone Bill Gates to seek commiseration, but Bill Gates will be unsympathetic, and hang up. God will smite Bill Gates with Microsoft Vista.
13. Savvy bakeries will get out of the breadmaking business, and go into the perfume business selling bread-scented lines. Calvin Klein will latch onto this crossover notion, open a bakery and make a killing selling loaves of bread that taste like Elle Macpherson.
14. Archaeological evidence reveals that one of the marvels of the Ancient World 'jumped the shark' back in 1350 BC, when in an attempt to appeal to the youth demographic, the Sphinx stopped asking its famous riddles and simply queried Egyptian passersby with the rather unchallenging 'Do you know what the Sphinx is cooking?'
15. Lobe-nibbling lovers will become understandably paranoid - at the same time, marketers of nacho chips to cannibals will leap for joy - after Oprah proclaims that human ears dipped in salsa are simply delicious.

We are hard won

(best writer's block you ever had - enjoy it)

We wear
bloody battle fatigues
best dressed
in symmetry
you and me, writing history
wildasimaginable fantasy and
extraordinary reality

Never had much to say
but always had the
flair to say it
got my attention now
don't know quite how to say
but it's time I
I took the time to pay it so
today it's
let me catch breath
air my bones
after my hall of fame home run
away from home and
unplugged phone
I ran a month-long marathon to tell you that
we won we won we won

happiness shrivelled the
sighs upon the
laptop, yammering
fighting not to mix up ecstasy
with pop
but sweetness + fizz is everywhere and
I'm a pig for slop
so, indeed
why stop
?

Silence
submerged in the brain
for years shouting over rain
now silence
brought by this
bliss
bursting at the keys
gravy
on our knees
waiting, oh
till sky clears
poems appear
content blares
pelican man cheers
and ms. rhythm despairs
the cupcakes —Jesus, for all they are
they're what they are and
they are half-baked to
please us

I am the phoenix

(proudly blurring lines between weirdness and boredom since 2004)

I am the phoenix (previously unreleased excerpt)

I am the phoenix tonight. I rise from the ash into the light. Evanescent and intransigent, my aura is smoke and incense, split between the perfect geometry of stars, mixed through the last particle.

Do not fear; I have come at last. You were promised—I will take you on my shoulders.

You were warned it would be me.

Listen to the talk below, behind the closed doors of the sordid inn. Sprawling limbs soak up spilled ale. Men in soiled coats listen for the end of the world.

It has taken much to come together, but this will last forever. We look into our innermost reasons, and we are set on fire. Around insane beggars and destroyed egos, we come to cleanse. To be reborn.

But we fail to respond. There is an indecision. I am stolen.

All I can promise is sympathy, not action. For now I am weak, but I will be strong again.

I hear the call every day, but I forget; I lose myself in its clarity.

The poisons are many, and the antidote is a fiction—it cannot be found. We dissolve ourselves into waters surrounding the mountain; we slave in dark anonymous caves. But there is not futility able to keep at bay the phoenix.

I rise above.

This is not the end of days, though night does fall, and the logic of blackness is
smothering.

We dress for the moment; we are ready at the moment’s notice.

Into infinity we charge on silver lightning, into the end of cause and effect, of unfeeling order, to the breach between world and dream.

“Stop the smallest man forever from lunging after death!”

We are conceived in a quicksilver flash—and I am the phoenix. I am the exploding sun, and the red and white light is blinding.

O'Hare airport

(4 cups of coffee into my trip home)

This is not a good idea

O true worship, O man of length, the strength I gave was never spent.

If persons black were lent a noose, so I could I clear my name, the effect was cursory; I never was the same. Poems black as clouds, shave the faces of the proud. Othello was my cousin, I carried his sword and dagger, I walked in shadows until I reached the cliff of the great green adder. "This is Sunday morning showdown," and the walls shook like spiderwebs. I heaved at smoke and breathed in cellar dust, wrote encyclopedia entries for acid and rust.

She wore a cloak of silk atop her oiled golden tan. A frog and a gazelle traded jokes in Hindustan. I would calculate with simpletons; they crowned me Foxy Beast. Now insomniacs contribute to my pot of charity, it was explosive death I traded in — it was mindless liberty.

I dig for hours before I find the straighter line, open cans of worms and evaporate the brine. I wonder 'what will come?' but it's hours late, I looked up words like 'jaunty' 'facade' and 'defenestrate'.

If cobras could combine into a mild lamb, if pomegranates sprang like diamonds from my hand - why I'd spit out choreography and smile at the moon. I'd drink mudslides in the hammock and name my firstborn daughter June.

I call you contradiction I call you labyrinth, I call you late for dinner with an absinthe after dinner mint. I'd drink ovations with a monk and we'd scan the crossword pages, I'd make a pact with Lady Silver, and her first cousins, the Sages.

Collect a few fragments, polish them a bit, point them at the ocean and then be done with it. That's better than most, who obsess with spelling, grammar, father son and holy host.

I'm winding down and that's what makes me glow. I hammer till I shiver, live on love, process grief through my wretched liver. I can breathe now. I always knew this, but did not know how.

I loved many but insufficiently, never a soul completely, until we ate street meat at Queen and Spadina on Saturday evening. Lady, treat me as your lord, slave, lover, knave, lad, brave mad sad king. I have nothing except you - and I will give you everything.

Scribbles from Austin

6th Street scene, me like a Wallflower, if I sang; if I lived in Texas I'd have to form my own gang. High heeled blondies, beefy baby boys with hair like Capote. Downtown paradise, await my moment on stage, fly gleefully with wireless, love Texas accents, have a cute stress recorder, it's so much like Tronno.

Stevie Ray Vaughan stetson wings on a river with bronze string. Lutists, artists like a lootbag, sweaty boys whiz, caffeine squeeze like oj, scabs on rock hard abs and mexican lime soda fizz, enchilada pigs. We snatch signals on a cafe patio, Austin to Boston, coffee and toffee, mosh pit mania and dirt trail llamas, I segue, the Segways on the sidealk, gawk, talk how silly and sinister two-wheeled half-cocked automobile replacements — I'm sipping mocha warm and sultry 5 feet 9 from the pavement.

And it's bubbly and outlandish, there's Barbie everywhere - can I help but stare? [Oh don't think I'm in trouble, my lady don't berate; she's so much more lovely and we quiver as we wait.] Fair hair here and there — got that oblivious aristocratic 'my city — built by slaves' air.

And this afternoon I'm a buffoon. I'm on stage soon. We want gold for Canada, to celebrate the loon.

rhyming as sleep aid

(a week with no words - wakes you up at 2am with itchy fingers)

After midnight with no one around
the wolves are silent, well profound
atop a mountain, climbing down
to the heart of an ocean underground

what sleep may come with a beating drum
nobody now to rub my tum
lie on the floor and pray for sun
when morning makes you run

the glow persists, vigil screen
too old to pretend to scream
no nightmare pillows, it's you I dream
and plunder what it means.

O fog sit thick atop my brow
tired bones beat back the drowse
warm words rock me gently now
[I see no point asking how.]

Channel changing blues

(hey - by the end it starts to makes sense!)

Witness this
we words work wonders
deliberate misses, don’t strike the missus
“Today I was threatened with a baseball bat”
so I’ve been saving kisses, and I’m
done compensating with a kitty cat. I
switch too fast, hang on
get steam, make it last; we
oscillate, can’t let your logic penetrate – I don’t
have time for eventual comprehension
we have a seven-city tour of
the
septic tanks.
If you were exhausted like me
these little bits are plenty feed
so don’t choose, just beg
be satisfied, signals collide we sigh
don’t die yet, go on a diet
of fibrous thoughts, roughage regurgitated
for rectal rumination, when you
barely gather your carcass
after sweat and elation
victorious and arbitrary
competition is something scary on your
face and I’d

marry that face to mine
and await my bottle of wine
we circled that date
months in advance
and now I’m ready
done floggin’ the remote
or switching sides in my one-paddle boat;
let’s watch every program; I don’t interrupt.
[Although I might occasionally curse the sky and get up if
it’s one of those two-hour documentaries
on the history of the menstrual cup!]

New blogfriend in Colorado?

I have no idea who she is - but she liked one of my posts, so can't be all bad.

I don't go to pieces without my puzzle:)

(effortless expression, stressless impressions)

Don't feel like incriminating myself
got nothing to write for another two weeks or so.
Besides I can't type when exhausted.

No more censors in this special patch of grass, it is shrinking, too many eyes, who else watching us as we light up in that drug nosed high. I need an artificial barrier, how else can I mix my batter? If you see me in a trance, do your best to flatter, it's better for the blog if we lie to each other. Be discreet with all these secrets which are uninteresting when passed around.

I've been working on my posture, practised deep breathing. I've worked on preparation, explanation, delegation, and no more self denial or flagellation. (btw eco-guilt is the new catholicism)

I've sharpened that sense of humour, yet I'm mostly gormless (great word); I've donated spare change to the homeless. I've never been a borrower. I've lived alone without a loan or begging for a bone but certainly never chose this loneness over any other. I've learned from Bruce Springsteen - the boss himself. "You do some sad sad things, when it's you you're trying to lose." So I've finally arrived, paid my dues. Just watch now, what I will do.

It spills over me

I'm whirlwinded, wallowing in highs. She sang swirlies, talks me over telescopic lines, I'm doing twirlies, this soundtrack never ceases, joy just abstract enough, satisfaction in that sensory vacuum, where everything heightens, this virtual stuff. It is tough. Yet it's the easiest thing, or so it's been, and still, it's hard, but "I don't mind hard work" and you'll agree. (I'm looking forward to our conversation, so we can end our purgatory.)

I've written lyrics for songs; didn't know my music though, and every note was wrong. Didn't know my strength, I'm sorry, I never lifted a finger. I let doubt fester; I let madness run rumour; I let simpletons shriek and drown out reason… and I let sadness linger.

I don't have time to gather arguments, rather be happy than right. I'm short on preamble, but I always fall back on the rhyming ramble. Amiability is a crutch; if you don't dare you don't win, and so I threw away my education because my mind was hollowing.

I didn't set out to break records for complexity - vexing with my book of photos, subversive against storytelling itself - though underlying everything, besides unlikelihood and improbability, is simple appreciation for the possibility of possibilities.

What is anticipation?

"From this distance, I think I might love you.

I am beginning to hate this distance."

Have no doubt

(I want this to be talked about.)

Truly, I’m tizzied. Has it affected me? Certainly, since last week I’ve dreamt, not slept, swept and checked my countenance for cracks, carefully counted my steps and spent sweat, pain, laughter all spun together in this mind-churning infatuation with your brain.

And your name! I am ashamed; I have not yet said your name to you. All of the above has numbed my voicebox, a blow from which I can’t recover, and beyond my lyrics and drums, I do confess: I fear my rubber tongue.

And “Oh but reality,” the fingers wag, citing polysyllabic nonsensicalities, eventualities, uncertainties, contingencies, superstitions and fragilities:

For instance, it is true, we have not met. And do we both clean our apartments? Do we disdain four-legged pets? Do we like the mornings? And do we both eat meat??

I do, I love meat. I do. I’ll get my fill at our first meeting, with eyes that taste every inch of you. And I’ll call the banquet hall tomorrow, if you like what you see too.

But do not doubt the serene certainty in my insanity, surety in my naivete, Samsonlike strength in my devotion to this realism. Full of bull? Oh no. Ole!

Backflips

(folks, we have arrived)

The written word is a funny thing.
I get the feeling you're
less sentimental than I
so you won't think twice
about me waxing
about how
important it is that
since I discovered your
existence I have resolved
to meet you
as soon as possible.

Oh I've been plotting suddenly
-and this is nothing like me-
and scheming,
every song selected
for maximum meaning
and melting of
your shivering hard diamond heart.

Call me a wacko
but a sliver of me
suspects
for the longest time
I've been writing
about you
-wacko, yes-
bet you didn't
know that
but here just now
I catch myself staring
at you
and reading you
in disbelief and
afraid to tell anyone
lest
they pinch me
and
I can't deny
this egocentric eccentricity
-so indulge me, please-
that if you were conjured
from poems
I've been writing for years
'Measuring the best of me,
awaiting her, clandestinely'
then it's nothing at all for me
to wait a bit longer.

I'll do what I have to.

Wait, yes.
When it's
blind love, Tom waits
But today I got my wish
and
will
see you soon enough
thanks to two unlikely cupids
and boy yeah now I'm being mushy and stupid and
be warned that
in person I tell shockingly horrendous puns!

Actual thoughts

(hardest to write down)

Dreaming of six things at once, occasionally erotic, ruing expression as the new running water. "Everybody wants the same thing." When I'm overcaffeinated and drunk I get strange results. Wake up in a thought clot, last night my eyes bloodshot, tearshot swearing and crying. Like a kid with a brand new toy; but I know I'll need a newer toy. I collect notions so I can liberate them.The other day I overheard myself thinking "How smart are we? Slightly less than he who can fully comprehend how smart we are, which means we have a lot to learn." I've been striving for sentences that enforce calmness. I could attach notes to people and places in my life, but thoughts in a vacuum have an obscene grace that make me shiver. Whom do I read these days? Oh no the discrepancy between where our minds want to go and the crude instruments around us. We all want to melt hearts. It's a test: how much can I bear embarrassing myself. If so many words could make you weak in the knees, I'm satisfied, tapping my baton behind curtains when the crowd's gone home, saying 'still got it'. 'Still got it' - but that proves what? An extra gear I've reached, what is it all tied back to neurotransmitters, all this hustle and bluster competing desires in a crowded cafe, flashes of potential for exceptional harmony, and I hear the miracle of the gregorian chant, submission to one note, take all these different people tell them 'sing this note and sing it well' yeah that's tougher than it looks. I don't sell myself well at all. If I did sell you on me I still wouldn't be sure that you're sold. So why bother with disappointment. Pioneers don't have time for applause or to dodge tomatoes. Mad Max in the desert trying to keep one or two loyal friends. Remember in Owen Meany, they practise the jump for the entire book? And the meaning came crashing down? But John Irving cheats because he knows how it will end. Not really a writer but a problem solver working on his next contingency, making lemonade from lemons. If I told you mixing drinks is what this blog is about, that it's based on fermentation and yeast, or whatever. Do you know what beer is? It's yeast shit. It's not something I would ever choose for myself ie expression as an addiction but there we have it.

20 four-word sentences

(excellent practice for writing headlines)

1) Cuddle peacocks every Tuesday.
2) Waffles bludgeon my soul.
3) Seek cobra venom antidotes.
4) Tarred, feathered, I moan.
5) I crave tofu biscuits.
6) Be smart, eat fish.
7) Revel in word zest.
8) Mormons haunt my thoughts.
9) Who has osmosis exhaustion?
10) Spanish eyes shine mightily.
11) Equal rights never arrive.
12) Club chicks gyrate hypnotically.
13) Polish grandma's copper dentures.
14) Spontaneously combust, then extinguish.
15) Analyze your squeegee budget.
16) Feast upon barbecued rhinoceros.
17) Swedes are prettier, bouncier.
18) Skydiving is aborted suicide.
19) Chickens cluck Swahili sonnets.
20) Ottawa Senators choke, again.

20 more friggin' brilliant ideas

(self-explanatory, I think)

1) Coin laundromats that double as slot machines, to reduce gambling addiction. It would take 25 minutes for the spin cycle to end and achieve payout, thus delaying instant gratification. Spot gaming addicts by how white their clothes are, while the phrase "I'm all cleaned out," takes on a fresh-scented double-meaning.

2) Instead of left-turn lanes, laughterin' lanes! Uncontrollable giggling accompanies every fatal car crash.

3) In our germophobic society, handshakes should be replaced by a universally agreed upon system of pleasant whistling noises.

4) A coffee-flavoured, tobacco-based hard liquor you inject in your forearm, as a slightly less powerful substitute for Facebook addiction.

5) A separate country for dyslexics, where each citizen has the right to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Hippo Penis.

6) A kindler, gentler Mafia, where 'taking care of stoolies' means more than taking a man's life; it means taking his family out for wings afterwards.

7) We could solve the scourges of world hunger and overpopulation simultaneously, with an admittedly controversial practice I call 'corrective cannibalism'.

8) Forget the concept of 'Give a Penny, Take a Penny'. I'd be elected President in no time with my proposed 'Give a Penny, Take a Sandwich' legislation.

9) Perfume lines that don't smell like fruits, or flowers, but smell like Historical Events. Calvin Klein's Normandy Invasion. Or a history book that actually smells like the Battle of Hastings. Or, if smell was the most important sense we had, then for final exams, you wouldn't write about a given topic—you'd have to smell just like it!

10) A Portuguese custard pastry so light it actually floats on air (if you call this a 'pie in the sky idea' I will shoot you).

11) A law that forbids lineups of any kind, for any situation that involves waiting—in favour of mandatory human pyramids.

12) A 1-800 help line for plumbers who are victimized by references to 'loving caulk', having 'a crack addiction' etc.

13) If cows were religious animals, then the 'Jesus cow' would be the one who invented vegetarianism.

14) To minimize litter in alleyways, call them Litter Death Zones.

15) Men should be able to brag about universally defunct skills in order to impress women. For example, my proficiency in morse code is second to none; my copper smelting is talked about in foreign countries, and I can skin a yak with my bare gherkin. Women should play along with this harmless delusion.

16) More Jedi in our armed forces, definitely.

17) To win more funding for space exploration, more astronauts need to return to Earth in space shuttles filled to the brim with astronougat.

18) The climactic scene in any movie should be called The Nutsgrabber.

19) Great TV show idea that's still a little ways off: Shark vs. Bark: Great White Sharks battle Evil Supernatural Trees, filmed in a giant floating arena, possibly a Jello-filled Zeppelin sponsored by the Discovery Channel.

20) Motorized glaciers!

Prospecting for semantics

(what you get when you delete 9 out of every 10 words:)

Throwing

freedom underwear silence Cyril Crosby. Polemicize fissions. happiness is mortgaged the moat hollowed out. throwing abstracts at walls, piling on concrete, dumptruck bricks oh fascinating tricks.

College marvins collect colanders in pots. Stick with me that’s all I’ve got. vegetative, delirious, suckling on sticks, swizzle trouble rum meadow shacks. Taught by beavers and climbing a smokestack.

Mozart was a keyboardist, too many letters loud lengthy staccato beaten by his betters, Wolfgang, undress secrets, expect no applause until you sign upon the line!

symphonic nonsense music words, cymbal crash symbolic trash rat tat tat

young as the day you untied your tongue, numb stuporal syllabic centuries of sssh! Silence in the library , greedy stern mother, gentry mores and clucking crow.

Half a liter more, I’m half the leader I was, I was littering below!

Sunday morning coming down

Now I’m afraid of what Facebook might think. I’m self-censoring again, and I’ve started to drink. Or at least tend bar, I might as well, if I’m stuck here in the clink. I’ve got advice for every alcoholic, for the shiftless syphilitics, I’ve got the right diet for chubzos and the proper punctuation for the it's-greek-to-me acidics.

And yes - today I confessed, and that’s my confession, nothing left for this blog, I’ve lost touch with discretion.

I have so many projects on the go, if I stopped and focused then I’d have to go slow. And Mr. Peculiar is a no show? Oh no. Ergo, speed it up, pretend like you’re loco.

I miss everybody. Yeah though I see em each day. But we were special once and hard to pin down and I was lucky when you asked what am I doing on Friday. Now nothing’s a surprise, when I watch your every move, I’ve lost my drive to comprehend, analyze, pore through. Soon we’ll both die and the program will end, and you’ll finally feel loss electricity can’t mend. But suddenly suddenly that’s how fast it will end. Abruptness is the only crime, we adapt to Vesuvius if you give us enough time (and a decent pair of shoes).

Blues pour down, it always comes to this, Mystery mystery that’s what we’ll miss. The Borg is invasive and crisp and well-meaning me I’m spree-spending and hiding out by the cliffs. There’s a happy mob gathering blunt clubs, I’ve danced in disco clubs forty nights and worn down to the nubs. We all see now that we breathe the same air, misery loves company yes, but familiarity breeds contempt, and we’re simultaneously turbocharged and spent, equally miserable and ecstatic and so I'm borrowed for Lent.

I’m a man of few words, really I am, and this is the truth, in what I don’t say, so what kind of writer am I anyway.

Everyone has that nagging suspicion: Am I a hack? It’s an act of contrition. There is no easy out, no eraser of doubt and I’ve embraced this fact and that’s precisely what keeps bringing me back.

Flocculation! aka So this is what it's like to run a water filtration plant...

First ever FIAC 'guest cupcake', written by Charlotte L (thanks Charlotte!), in response to my March 15 post:

Jeremy woke with a start to the truck-backing-up sound of his alarm, jumping across the room to press snooze and then dragging his feet back across the floor and flopping back into bed. Twenty minutes later he was standing in his boxers and housecoat at the kitchen counter pouring boiling water over instant coffee in a salt-and-pepper mug with a chip across from the handle. He stood there with his eyes closed, still half asleep, holding the mug up to his chest, enjoying the warmth of the steam rising to his nostrils and the rich smell of the dark roast. He put down the mug and let himself fall into a chair at the small kitchen table. Slowly waking up, sipping on his coffee every couple of minutes, he thought about the day ahead of him:
How when he finished his coffee he would rush about his apartment trying to find the right shirt for his meeting, realising it was in the laundry and have to pick the next best one, ultimately feeling less confident not only because he wasn’t looking put together, but because the search caused him to be late even though he had given himself an extra fifteen minutes.

How when he finally grabbed his car keys from the bowl on the table in the hallway he would race downstairs, feeling that dreadful feeling of “I-know-I-forgot-something-but-what-IS-it?” but already being late not being able to do the slightest thing about it. Slowly freaking out in his head at how slow the traffic is, it must be slower than usual today, what is there an accident or something, it would be today, maybe it’s on the radio, god I hate talk radio, yes! Boston! Nothing gives you more confidence than grooving to Boston as you pull into the parking garage.

How he would walk into the plant, walk past Lyndsay’s office (“Hey Jer! Nice suit!”) and run a little to get to the other end of the building to meet with Mr. Peterson. Of course Mr. Peterson is always running late so even being 7 minutes late, Jeremy will still be 8 minutes early and have to sit in the reception area outside his office, with Gertrude humming nothing in particular while she files whatever files she files.

How he would sit and fumble through the monthly status report for Mr. Peterson and how Mr. Peterson would likely look about as half awake as Jer looks before his coffee and Jer making the mental note to bring coffee to the next meeting and Mr. Peterson clearly not caring at all about coagulation and flocculation and pH levels and how much lime was used this month as long as the job is getting done, Thank you Mr. Powell, I’ll see you next month, and how Jer cursed himself for being nervous every time he had to do this, like his job was a stake, like he hadn’t done this for the past year and 7 months.

How he would make his way back down the hall and stop for a cup of coffee in the break room and talk to Lyndsay about last night’s hockey game which she would know more about than he would but these conversations made him feel a bit more of a man and Lyndsay was a nice enough girl, but really could have been doing something more with her time than general reception for the plant.

How he would take off his jacket and hang it in his locker, replacing it with his yellowing lab coat and unhook his clipboard from its place up on the wall beside the door to the plant proper. How he would walk through the deafening plant, with its steam and its ducts and valves and how it was all so big that it would make him feel small and it was all so loud that it seemed like complete silence and how it was all very Zen. This was what he liked about his job: the solitude, the recording of data, the graphing of various chemicals and products and temperatures like some mad scientist plotting to destroy the world or, when he was in a better mood, a brilliant chemist saving the world. And sometimes he honestly believed it.

How he would get home and pry off his shoes and toss his jacket and tie over the chair in the hall. Twist the cap off a bottle of beer, with the satisfying hiss and the cool drink that made him feel more and less cool at the same time. He would turn on the TV and watch the news and decide whether to make dinner or order in Chinese. How he would pick up the phone and dial a number from the black book full of post-its and scrap pieces of paper and business cards and wait for someone to pick up. “Lyndsay?” he would ask. “Hold on just a minute.” a nasal voice replies. Silence. “Hello?” “Hey, you want to meet at the Brunny for a drink and a bite to eat? I thought we could watch the Leafs game.” Silence again. Some rustling, conferring with the roommate, then: “Meet you there in 45 minutes.”

Taking a last sip of coffee, realising his mug is empty, Jeremy is finally awake and has to get ready for work.

Nonsense Sermonizing

(I gotta do more of this!)

Omigod Sconfitter wallooned four pudgemuffins into a grangish grey Flexpool. It was Augustus 32, Year of the Yade. Deltavoid V Waxcollar was droopydrunk and brimstoned. He dangled a fist and bellowed, disneyfied his sermonizing, occlusions included, bombastardizations aplenty and befouled his flock with tactic unfit for happy dwarves and slabbed out the aforementioned undulating dreck.

By then Microeconecronomics had filtered to the tittletelligentsia, half-knackered with doom nuggets and drunk on pigeon-livered, duck-gizzarded bronchial eructations and horseradish greyneck.

Reverend Waxcollar exhaled insults instantaneously: “You scud! Pale movenpickles! Enemies of omnipleasance! Chad-dimpled democratizers, hiding half-chosen presidents and worse!”

Waxcollar heaved his totem and bangled the podium. The congregionals cooed twittery chattervanilla. “Far flung goulash,” he continued, “– what you will get. So it is, dreampuffs, kaleido-decadecisionery, all fake figments of the opiated opinionator. Clicked to the dicks and scrolled to the bowels – shut your macbooks and breathe afield freshivity.”

The crowd crowed; Waxcollar was looped to the gills, depillocked but unbowed. (Though if any were harrumphing it’d’ve been big loud beat-threats conking confidence hastifying rapid retreat.)

“Often ghosts mist up the mirrors,” continued the Sweaty Shamu. “Shamble away before whispering woe. I have eleventeen twenty-four packs of alcoholic advices – left to your devices your sinnicysm suffices.Will I tolerate this state of the inebriate? No, not unless the hour is too late. There it is. Checkmate!”

[to be continued, oh yes...]

sundry pelican notes

(polish squishy bits into shiny pebbles)

...You said "I am a gift to humanity and afraid for myself for that fact." Humanity doesn't treat its blessings kindly.

Give until you break. Why? There is nothing for you here. You don't need anything.

You use the same language I do, for thoughts that are too big. So we have these talks where you're the only one speaking, and I'm jotting it all down like a conversation with an overly interesting invisible man.

We were put here to do good, but I get stuck. I keep forgetting how to walk. Please help me. I am independent and proud and young, but be ready one day to answer my call for help.

It is easier to be sincere at the end of the day. Though, not enough has been done. But I'm tired of it anyway.

I don't know if a love explained is a secret ruined, or if a love explained is love that is permanent.

I am seeing a part of you that always existed come alive the first time. Nothing you do surprises me, because I've loved parts of you that you don't know yet exist.

Maybe it’s the music that funnels it out of me. I can’t call it ecstasy, I’m thinking too clearly, and I can’t call it peace, when I’m so desperately seeking something I can say brand new each time. I’m sorry for being quiet so long. If you only knew how tiring it is to try to contain all this.

A glow, I guess, a glow, not from alcohol, but maybe it’s the release. Collapsing on the ground afterglow. I am certain suffering has much to do with it. And being beat up so often, until you realize humility is strength.

There is release knowing you are completely lost. Being lost you are free. I am finding this out.

Thought of the day

The written word isn't being devalued. It's being revalued. It's changed from being like a diamond (in the Age of Gutenburg), to being like water. Incredibly high total utility, incredibly tiny marginal utility. Being a writer or editor will soon be like running a freshwater filtration plant - not glamourous at all but incredibly necessary. When pipes are everywhere, how interesting can running water be? And literature is like bottled water: refreshing for its utter luxury.

Everyone that is written (online) has universal currency, but no permanence. Stickiness is highly sought after. The scramble for fresh metaphors is more intense than ever. The alphabet is the most pervasive set of metaphors we have, but they are exhausted, mostly taken for granted.

...I have no idea what running a water filtration plant is like. Can someone write me a description? :-)

Age-based voting!

(either nonsense, or da bom)

I've figured out how to make young people vote:

Change the voting system from geographically determined ridings to demographically determined ridings,

We live in communities of our age-peers, do we not?

Take me for example. I'm 28. I am Cupcake Man, Arts and Science '01, Class of '97 etc etc. These are the groups that set the context of my development and adolescent reference points the Snorks and Transformers etc. Unfortunately my age group (people under 40) doesn't vote much. So our political views aren't represented, politicians ignore us, and we become even more disillusioned with the vote.

Me, I vote, I do, but the electable pool of political talent (stress on 'electable' b/c I'm cynical) I vote for often has little in common with me, b/c they are pandering across all age groups in my geographically-determined riding, usually pandering to older votes who often have nothing better to do with their afternoons than go out and vote (Good for those old people - voting is fun!).

I argue that with the internet, political views are becoming more age-based than community-based. Look at marketing surveys - do advertisers care what 'people in Toronto' watch on television, or do they care what males aged 25-29 watch? It's more the latter. And see how efficient marketers are at meeting the needs of these 'consumer voters'. Politics could be just as efficient. Under the age-based voting scheme, People aged 25-29 would have a certain number of representatives, based on total population.

Let's take Canada (ok I admit, Canada is a country, a geographical entity, so I'm compromising but we have to start somewhere and Canada is enlightened enough to listen), which has 32 million people. Let's divide that into 1000 seats, or 32,000 per riding.

If ages 25-29 make up 5 per cent of the population, then people in my demographic - ie those aged 25-29 get 50 seats, guaranteed. The only people who can elect those 50 seats will be people in my age group. Same goes for any other age group (maybe do it in increments of 5 starting at age 15). Our voices will be heard. You could then split it into male and female votes too ie 25 of the seats are determined by women voters, 25 by men. Now, you could still have political parties, and any politician could still run for any seat. 60 year old pasty white lawyers could run to represent '25-29' voters, if they wanted, but they'd probably lose to people who are more in tune with what 25-29 years olds want. All issues would be redefined based on age. People would think more about the future b/c the youngest demographic would be the most cherished AND have the most future votes. Woodstock all over again. Global warming solved just like that. It would get results, I promise you. Baby boomers might still throw their (more precisely allocated) weight around, but this more democratic citizenry would be politically engaged, ie would give a shit and be happier. Accidents of geography will be overcome by the internet. Once we achieve the blah-blah-blah global village (perhaps a long way off) and everyone has an wifi signal planted in their cranium, all national geographic boundaries will finally melt away and that's when I'm running for the age-based Web 2.0 Omniparliament!

Contrast with another idea - cumulative voting. Votes that pile up over a lifetime, like money! And then when you die they finally count. You live your entire life just to finally have your say...murder will be a thing of the past as it increases electoral unpredictability (erp, this is the exact opposite of age-based voting, but would prob be a lot cheaper to administer). Ok I'm gonna stop now.

More story bits...

A quail staggered to the counter and asked for a pitcher of prune juice. “This is how I stay in business on the telephone lines... You think I can just ‘blam blam’ like it’s target practise all day? But it ain’t that easy." The quail, named Dawson, was an avian prick with constipation problems...

[Then, a novella about telescopes!]

Vernon's Telescopic Pathos

A constellationist named Vernon opened his telescope-cleaning kit only to find the lens oil had been pilfered. "This can only be the work of Nancy the Clod," he thought to himself, and straightaway rang the polymer factory he had on speed dial.

“Jesse,” he said to the voice on the phone, “I need more Bimutex Silver Sheen. Like, this afternoon!’”

There was a spitting noise. "You gotta be kidding me Vern, the boss is gonna notice the missing cylinders."

“I know Jess. But Nancy took my scope oil, and I got XSZK1-Omega on the sked tonight."

"So what," said Jesse.

“So--I can’t afford another night like Foggy Tuesday. I’ll lose 10 more students. Remember what happened?"

A pause. "Ok, no Foggy Tuesday.... shit."

"Hit me, J. You know I'll be your bitch."

"Bitch-Who's who here? Come by the back and I’ll fix you with 750mL."

"Alright! Sunday night, Big Bop--cracker-shakes on me." And Jesse sighed and hung up.

Vernon’s partner, Gonga Gringo, a Papua New Guinean tracker who moonlighted in telescope viewing atop Mount Panorama phoned just then. “Hey, Vern can you go by the polymer place – Jesse’s got--"

“What you’re borrowing more polymer – what happened to the crate of ethylurethene Auntie Galicia got us for the solstice?"

"Borrowed by Ned Philadelphia to clean his GPS sextant."

"That wacko. You're both wacko. Christ, well Nancy snatched my Bitumex sheen again."

"Nancy. That hobag!" Gonga almost had to laugh. "I’m massively asswenched by these freaks stealing our 'scope oil Vern – it was never like this in the forest."

"Yeah, Gongs. But don't call her a ho-bag."

"Fine. Nancy no-brain.'

"Yeah, well I guess it takes a Foggy Tuesday to smarten us up bout how evil this stargazing can get."

Foggy Tuesday ruined Vernon’s outdoor seminar business for almost a month. It was the year of the Solar Flare, the night comet Flugelheim was streaking directly into Oberon, causing destruction that to astronomers was ballet. But no scope oil and a western fog- after a Monday of prismatic midnight skies-- scuppered Vernon's lenses and the astral dance went unobserved the next night. The veteran constellationists on the Tuesday watch filed a Motion to Impugn and Vern was nearly forced to sell his 900mm Magnum Andromeda in the ensuing scandal . He signed up at the community college to teach Historical Cosmology and for three weeks laid low. Thank god for Jesse and his polymers.

Nancy the Clod was really named Nancy Posie. She loved telescope oil, but didn’t own a telescope. She needed the oil to grease her bike cables. Regular lube didn’t work. she said. Nancy the Clod didn’t follow other people’s conventions. Just like her brother Deacon Noah. Deacon Noah had a python in his robe. No, not a molestation python. An actual snake.

Anyway Nancy the Clod was in attendance at the viewing of XSZK1-Omega. "Hi Vern." She was riding her bike.

"Hi Nancy," he said, but he was thinking you thieving slut.

Nancy and Vernon had had a 9-day relationship a couple years before. It was the year of the Solar Flare...

[unfinished of course... all astronomy-related terms are complete BS]

Common Law Rhetoric

There's a tired old rhetorical question used to explain why people should 'live together first':

ie Would you buy a car without test driving it?

A: No, that would be silly.

But the question above is wrong. The more analogous question is:

Would you drive around in a car for two or three years, for free, telling everyone you're thinking of buying that car, before possibly buying it?

A: No, that would be silly, and weird.

Just something that struck me while driving.

(And if it's a Mercedes Benz I'm choosing, I probably wouldn't worry too much about the test drive.)

Everybody just say 'ah!'

(lyrical runoff from a glacial gargantumumble)

Oh great Gonga, fresh from travails in southeast Tonga, long on anecdote and rhyming postcard poetry in pastels, delivering that 'oh it's gorgeous' transatlantic rote:

Mood music too singular to digest, too tight and interwoven to appreciate or undress, something so important riven to my chest. And she laboured lonely, but inquisited brief. Too bad her toned tetrahedral sketches can't be curled into a Christmas wreath.

Surrealism insustenant, frustrated by our ancestral covenant, Genesis chapter 1 asks too much, obedience demanded beyond the grave is unfair, rewrite the contract every six months, cuz I won't let a pile of bones make me their slave.

Cro-magnon Mensa, Dinosaur da Vinci, Coretta Scott meets Daniela Carinci. Smug syllables, pillows of thought indivisible, irreducible, repudiate the deuce, twisting the middle abdominal, until spell check and reality check ask me for a truce.

Half-pints for the children, pitchers for the men, peppermint spritzers for your spinster auntie who's about to toss her standards, sick of asking 'when oh when - my kindred soul, my best friend?'. Will everyone settle for less than glass slippers at midnight? (She goes home with the coachman at quarter past ten.)

Jittery teens scream their souls into text, fake friends frenzy feeds dyslexia, and what next: YouTube deliquents torch computer screens, not realizing why they seethe, until they can't find any more mystery in sex.

Bogged in bloggerrhea, Holograph hoaxes, too many performers disperse the audience, diaspora, poor us, so much to say and who will listen? Perhaps I'll build a time machine to impress the 18th century, that enlightened age, me scruffy and stuffy and puffed at my podium. Justly desserted, completely deserted, applauded by my best friend the monkey but oh yeah I'm certainly sage.

Old friend, new blogfriend

Congrats to my darling dearest Vanessa F for paddling off with her very own blogondola: Green as a Thistle. I'm so proud. Finally, she is saving the lions, instead of slaughtering them!

Hey guess what—

I almost forgot: today this blog is 3 years old! First ever post was here.

Aside from accidentally retiring on my 27th birthday, I have tried to remain true to my inauspicious yet completely self-important beginning.

After 3 years and 688 posts, I still get a kick out of hitting the 'publish' button. I still think it's hilarious that I get to publish whatever the frig I want. Sometimes I look through the FIAC archives and I am shocked, bewildered, heartened and besorrowed at the dragon-fire.

Whoever writes these cupcake things can't be mentally sound, can he?

I'm still dying to find out :-).

How will it end?

I have no idea!

Why do you do it?

That's easy - for the pelican man.

Who is the pelican man?

C'mon. You already know.

Um, ok... What's with the recent penchant for lists?

Hmm, I dunno. I came back from a Cayman Islands vacation in an extraordinarily refreshened state. I hope it's not just a Feb 2007 thing.

I think March 2007 will be just as fun. My goal is, as always: self-sustaining laughter following self-deprecating tears, tossing my party through the air on the wings of a pelican...

10 silly noun phrases

(the delight!)

Are you ready for incredible things, big long lists and a pig in a swing?

(ALOUD)

1) Great greenish-grey petticoats, stuffed in storage bins in the metal belly of a tugboat.

2) Longlegged Lolitas licking plasticine fajitas, moody, milking mojitos on a Monday, nursing the same sugared drink till midnight on a Sunday.

3) Happy pink flamingos, pontificating about mangos, feathers plucked by a whiskeysoaked gigolo for a tickle-and-sing six-string meringue banjo.

4) Ornery toads with complaints by the truckload, hopped up against heros and cowboy zeros, running the poor unlucky Mayor, Harry McBroken-Hose, out on rails to Pocahontas House.

5) Outer-space ambassadors obsessed with flux capacitors, spew invectives and bombast, fie-fieing aghast, spelunking every last intergalactic stalactite, either over-verbose or borderline comatose from cheap cereal-box cracktose!

6) Goonish gorillas sculpting 'I love yous' into pillars in Ancient Greece, disguising with chimp-love their secret affairs with Attican geese!

7) Lee Harvey Wallbanger, an assassin for a doppelganger. languid and dyspeptic, scrubbing his chest every five minutes for lack of antiseptic.

8) 'Oh-my-God' Mollies with polka-dot brollies, chitter-chatter and titter, each with a teetoring Tom Collins in the indentation of their hats, bought for nickels in Kensington (and lined with lavender-scented burlap).

9) Gregory Peck's pants, shredded, torn and scuppered askance, restitched with concern by a flurrying hill of hardworking ants, loaned with an honest man's bedpan to an mild-mannered monk—to wear under his cassock during Gregorian chants.

10) An ad hoc eagle, lawyerly and regal, befriended by a world-famous beagle.

(Oh Snoopy, does that smile droop? But you have no claim to frown when I'm stuffing you with goop.)

20 astounding predictions

1) 'Coffee is bad for your teeth': This wisdom will be turned on its head, after a boy named Jack exchanges his mother's cow for a handful of Columbian coffee beans that sprout overnight into a towering dentist who doles out gold fillings.

2) A revolutionary 'kidney sponge' is invented that, with a simple wipe across a plate, processes food and drink into human waste before you eat it. Restrooms will be a thing of the past, and kidney donors will be completely unnecessary.

3) Tubas will be made obsolete, after Barry White learns to play the trumpet.

4) Steel-toe boots at construction sites will be scrapped, finally, in favour of steel toes.

5) 'Embedded reporters' will greatly enhance media coverage of the Being Eaten By A Snake World Championships.

6) Sectarian jihad will spread to the Amazon jungle, where, in deadly suicide attacks, rabid Shiite pelicans take flight and launch themselves at high speeds into trees filled with infidel Sunni baboons.

7) The preserved corpse of Lenin will have a reoccurring dream that he has risen from the dead shaved his mustache. In each dream he hides his identity, and works in St. Petersburg as a stockbroker. One day in a pharmacy he encounters the resurrected corpse of Stalin, and both men pretend not to notice. Alarmed, Lenin hastens to the grave of Trotsky and digs up his corpse, to make sure Trotsky is still dead, and when he fails to see the body Lenin wakes up screaming. Tourists in Moscow will begin to notice this and complain.

8) Pizzas and humans will achieve a glorious 1-to-1 ratio.

9) Oklahoma, Arkansas, and New Mexico will be amalgamated into 'New Arkansoma' in a bid to reduce the number of U.S. states that are too hard to remember.

10) The helmet industry will suffer a setback, after it is discovered that, when being shot from a cannon, wearing a helmet is completely useless.

11) Reality TV will once again go too far, with the airing of Survivor: Charles Manson.

12) High heels will become redundant, as the surface of the Earth becomes so hot that all women must walk on tip toes - to the delight of men everywhere.

13) Hundreds of toads will blacken the sky over Canada, causing great anxiety among Canadians. Anxiety will lessen when it is discovered the creatures are not an act of God, but were intentionally airdropped by the U.S. Marines. Anxiety will shoot up again when Canadians realize they are being invaded - and are hopelessly outgunned.

14) India will protest the use of 'laying down a brownie' as a euphemism for defecation.

15) Prostitutes will gain widespread respect, after the Pope's latest encyclical urging Catholics to 'Holy it up' over Lent contains a hilarious spelling mistake.

16) Amid a critical housing shortage, crocodiles will populate our city sewers, raising the question - do crocodiles know something we don't?

17) The West's 'aspirin embargo' against North Korea indirectly sentences millions to death, when, slamming down the phone following a lengthy argument and, frustrated by his throbbing headache, Kim Jong Il launches a nuclear strike on his mother-in-law.

18) Saddam's decaying corpse will begin to emit deadly chemical gases throughout the cemetery, polluting the other coffins. In response an outraged Iraqi Tribunal will dig up his body, try, convict and execute Saddam again.

19) Due to global warming, Kevin Costner's Waterworld will become a nightmarish reality. In this water-soaked age, demoralized umbrella manufacturers will go out of business, but ironically make a comeback selling spring-loaded lily pads.

20) Eating bacon is found to cure cataracts. The phrase 'like a blind man slaughtering a pig' will suddenly become a byword for sensible behaviour.

A hollow stump...

A hollowed out stump may or may not be filled with peanut butter. The likelihood of this depends on the promixity of the stump to peanuts, the cleanliness of the stump, the availability of a spreading instrument, the effectiveness of such a tactic at hiding peanut butter in the mind of the peanut-butter owner, the existence of peanuts, the availability of a tree of sufficient girth, the continuance of nuclear reactions inside the centre of the sun, a refutation of Hume's unproveability of causation (see Kant), a chemical composition for peanuts that permits butterification, the actualization of abstract concepts such as 'hollowness', the absence of any wolf or wolf-like creature that will devour the peanut butter no matter how well you hide it (cf. third point on dependency), the continued east-west rotation of the Earth, the neutralization of any threat of Ice Age, El Nino effect or rampant Fire Ant plague...

A mini-list:
1) Anyone who has an 'electric smile' should be careful around bathtubs.
2) If Venice is indeed sinking, then I will buy up Prague, gut the streets, fill them with water, and give the big middle finger to global warming. If any Czech complains, I will silence him with sugared pastries.
3) A man with too much time on his hands will never be able to bench-press a grandfather clock.
4) Phone me, email me, or send me a letter if you like. I cannot reply as long as I am locked in this damn mystery, wrapped in a riddle!

24 profound revelations

(may require a complete re-thinking of your existence)

1) Why were there four Gospels written, instead of just one? Did the four evangelists not trust each other to get it right? Or they each wanted to take the credit for themselves. Seems that way. Hanging on the J-man's coattails - so typical.

2) Eleven people stomping on your throat hurts just as much as five people stomping on your throat.

3) Just because you compost, and don't contaminate the groundwater by throwing dead batteries in the trash doesn't mean you aren't an asshole.

4) You don't own the moon and neither do I. Who owns the moon? Why, that's P.J. PennyPincher, an evil billionaire. Remember whenever you look at the moon, that P.J. PennyPincher is up there - oppressing an innocent civilization of docile moon men.

5) It's weird how my auntie used to say, "Don't call me late for dinner, or I will feed you a poison breakfast!" But she never did.

6) A 'pack rat' with kleptomania would be relatively easy to catch.

7) Everyone would be 'on time' and no one would 'give foot rubs' if 'meetings' meant 'foot rubs' and 'foot rubs' meant 'meetings'. [?]

8) The great mass of humanity will never know the joys of individualism.

9) It's always 'hypotenuse this' and 'hypotenuse that'. The other two sides of a triangle must get jealous. But then again, it's a triangle.

10) I admit that a song titled 'Hotel Californium' might be interesting, but it caters to a very select audience of chemistry nerds.

11) People who are cute and who smile a lot often get held back from promotion. In Australia alone, komodo dragons fill the executive ranks while millions of cuddly koala bears are doomed to toil in the service industry.

12) It must be hard staying motivated if you're a potter, knowing that human beings perfected the water jar thousands of years ago.

13) Concealed weapons are so unsportsmanlike. If you have a concealed knife, I'd rather you said "Don't trust me, I'm carrying a knife!' instead of biding your time and then stabbing me.

14) Women pirates love arguing with their husbands. For them it's always about argh! you men! tation.

15) Camera-phones are a much better idea than what I once invented: the toaster-fax. A machine that catches fire any time you send a fax is pret-ty worthless.

16) A pocket full of posies? Forget that. I'd rather take a pocket full of quarters - or a pocket full of gold - any day. Or a giant robot that speaks 15 languages and serves you limonata whenever you want.

17) I could move to Egypt and build the world's largest outdoor triangular prism - if only I had a million Hebrew slaves.

18) Don't knock it: radioactive waste has made me a lot smarter. People always say "You've got a good head protruding from underneath your shoulder!"

19) People who don't write in complete sentences

20) Improving the smells on this planet requires a complete re-imagining of what it means to fart.

21) If I were a space traveler, I wouldn't put up with all this fuss from milk drinkers. 'Intergalactose' will be universally tolerated!

22) If my name were Colleen I would hate owning a phone. 'Oh, someone's calling, Colleen! Or 'It's Colleen calling! Or - if I was from India and my name was Obanji Pinthador, and whenever someone knocked on the door my wife screeched 'Open the door, O. Pinthador!' that would be tres annoying.

23) I absolutely hate it when this one friend of mine vomits, curses and then rolls over me, just because he's a wheelchair-bound alcoholic with Tourette's syndrome.

24) Don't trust me - I'm carrying a knife!

20 astonishing facts of history

(google em yourself)

1) The Italian monument was a filthy mess, until Michelangelo's wife crafted the famed Cleaning Towel of Pisa.

2) Superstition prompted Genghis Khan to undergo dangerous organ transplants after each battle. He misheard advice from a witch doctor, who he thought said 'The Great Khan will be immortal, and outliver his enemies."

3) George Bush knows he can't subdue Iraq militarily so has asked Congress to send 92,000 rowdy American tourists to overwhelm the Middle East during Spring break.

4) Darwin's personal motive behind the Theory of Evolution was to legitimize his torrid passion with Kongo, the great ape of the London Zoo, as a relationship between equals and not a monkey-man perversion. Also in his retirement years he was an staunch activist for Sasquatch rights.

5) The guillotine was invented as a more humane way of slicing cheese.

6) Helen of Troy was known as the Anna Nicole Smith of Antiquity.

7) Horace commanded an exorbitant salary as the Poet Laureate of Rome. There was also his controversial demand of a car per diem.

8) As a five-year-old Isaac Newton drew an apple on his forehead, proving his controversial Theory of Graffiti.

9) Dusk curfews for children were instituted so that adults could stay up late and watch 'constellation porn'.

10) Einstein's kids were all incredible athletes - sprinters in fact. They never excelled at intellectual pursuits - because, in accordance with dad's discoveries, the faster they moved, the denser they became.

11) Napoleon had a 'little man' complex, and marched all across Europe just to find a pair of men's jeans that would fit his scrawny butt.

12) It has come to light that the Great Crash of '29 happened when all stockbrokers began using PCs.

13) As a young punk Martin Luther rebuked the Catholic church as a dull, constipated body. As a symbolic taunt he nailed his 95 feces to a church door.

14) Shakespeare wrote 'Hamlet' with the uncredited help of Woody Allen.

15) Otto von Bismarck said that unifying the German and Prussian states was still easier than tying a half-hitch sheep-shank.

16) Garibaldi marched through southern Italy, not liberating but 'liberalizing' towns along the way. It was a year long parade, full of pride, and he wore a flamboyant red t-shirt.

17) Marco Polo returned from travel and wrote three travel guides: 'Lonely Planet: The Orient', 'Conquer the East in just 300 Ships '; ' Chinese food for Italians - steal these recipes!'

18) Magellan sailed around the world and when he got back his housemates still hadn't done the dishes!

19) When nobody was looking William Tell fired an arrow directly through his son's face.

20) Stalin demolished Gandhi in an arm-wrestling match. Years later India got revenge by flooding the Earth with software engineers.

10 incredible pronouncements

(more believable than you think)

1) Space aliens will one day come to Earth, read our resumes, and marvel at our productivity.

2) To 'slip on a banana peel' will no longer be considered funny, after archaeologists reveal that this was how ancient clowns ended unwanted pregnancies.

3) Weather systems, like human beings, are never fully satisfied. People will eventually become annoyed that, whenever the sun shines, the sky is 'blue'.

4) 'Think before you drink' is considered good advice. Within centuries however it will be made obsolete, by the more authoritative 'Thonk before you dronk' .

5) The confirmed existence of God will follow immediately upon the confirmed existence of a pizza crust so thin that the Pope describes it as 'miraculously thin'.

6) With the explosion of communication technology, verbal self-awareness will one day reach a fever pitch, such that anyone who says the oxymoronic phrase 'I have certain doubts' will be flabberghasted.

7) An ingenious cure for lethal peanut allergies will be discovered: the EpiPeanut.

8) Desperate YouTube users will pad their 'view stats' by bribing teenage robots.

9) A ban on sleepwalking will have limited effect on cutting carbon emissions. A further ban on sleepdriving however, will work wonders.

10) Vegetarianism among cannibals will gain legitimacy - with the invention of a delicious soy mannequin.