- I am witness to a horrific belching trend.
- We are undone by pitiless boinkery.
- Woe to wicked! They have seven extra toes.
- Shall I call you Shasta, or shithead?
- Your brogue is a vulgar shrieking thing.
- I have often considered you a leech-pig. I am proved right.
- Swim in my pool and I will forcefeed you a mutton bazooka.
- You are a man of hardened cheese.
- Your Swedish-princess tickler is now in the mail.
- Oh, Mr. Sludgemuffin - your hair's blown away in the wind!
- I agree the coastal towns should sell more butter! But you've absconded with my churn.
- Vicious meadowlarks defy my every ordinance. I shall torch the mountainside and begin anew.
12/14/2009
Today's random insults
11/24/2009
11/22/2009
Naples
Naples is filthy, but gorgeous—like a lingerie model at a belching contest.
When the garbage syndicates aren’t striking and medieval cobblestones are visible above the trash, when you’re not run down by twelve year old handbag artists scootering on the sidewalk like truant hyenas; when the mafia’s not putting screws to the teeming underclass with every purchase of fresh fruit or cut flowers—you see the city could be an angel in spite of its demons.
You escape the overcrowded afternoon Intercity train arriving an hour late from Rome. Move quickly or be crushed. Your head swims; the sweat of Stazione Garibaldi in your nostrils. The frenzied Neapolitans are everywhere, and—everyone has assured you—none can be trusted. You’ve arranged your cash, passport and credit cards in six places around your undergarments; the signs on the platform warn of pickpockets in six languages. Instinctively putting hands to your wallet, you ironically inform nearby thieves precisely where to strike. Neapolitan trickery at its most subtle? The city is a conspiracy, and the safest bet is paranoia.
You exit onto piazza Garibaldi, the air fetid in summer heat. Plastic bags and empty paper cups collect at your feet. Yet beautiful architecture, centuries old, towers above the mire. Baroque and older, majestic, a gorgeous tradition of grand public building since the 13th century. The list of visual treasures is endless: cathedrals, museums, the colourful palazzi of the Vomero hill, and shopping malls like the Galleria Umberto, that most beautiful outdoor arcade shaped like a holy cross.
But what a falling off. The population has paid for a past golden age by feeding on itself, since 1944, when the Allies were handed control of the city and enlisted the insidious Camorra to reconstruct after all the bombings. They reconstructed, sure, like mad scientists; they built a Frankenstein that serves them to this day.
Two young men on a scooter buzz past, make a coy grab at your fiancée’s purse. You outmaneuver them. The demons turn, cackle and laugh. All the evildoers from the Old Testament were banished here: Every encounter seems to be with usurer from the Book of Numbers, the vendor of impure meats from Leviticus; the catamite owner of fourteen teenage concubines runs the brothel next to your hotel. Sodom and Gomorrah have a run for their money. Where’s prophet Jeremiah when you need him?
But this city was always out of control. You can’t contain its millions of highly involved actors; every inch is a dramatic scene. Collectively the Neapolitans are frightening, but individually each one a studied gem. Each gypsy panhandler could have been Meryl Streep. What performances! These women are all over you with outstretched hands, like Jesus on a leper, aiming to cure you of your earthly possessions.
Refuel with espresso, walk a few blocks more. Don’t even think of pulling out your camera. Try not to get killed crossing the main streets. The motorists are toying with you, skilled and capricious, they let you live. You learn quickly here: to paraphrase Paul Theroux, The Naples Book of Road Etiquette is a very slim volume. Rome in comparison is seven days of Sunday driving.
There are rewards for the brave wandering souls, however. Pizza at Da Michele is the best in Naples, and by extension, the world.
Full of the Queen Marguerita, you navigate street vendors, young men with toothpicks in mouths and wooden crates on shoulders hawking black market frippery; energetic North African immigrants or underemployed locals all ogling your fiancée. They’re saying with their eyes, ‘she’s got a lot of nerve having blonde hair’. The one honest soul in Naples, the guy who works at your hotel, was right to refuse to let her out of the building wearing her bracelet.
You keep escaping, from the spiderweb labyrinth of Spaccanapoli, down the Corso Umberto I toward the port, the spots south of the city centre that let you breathe. You reach the water, outlet for the condensed mass of Europe’s most densely populated city, writhing between the surrounding hills, waiting to be pushed into the sea by the next volcanic eruption.
Most astonishing is that view from the sea: how the city erupts above the bay of Naples. On one end, toward Pompeii, you see Vesuvius, the ornery beached whale promising to spew ash from his blowhole. And like the murderous Camorra, the fire mountain makes good on that threat every so often. 79 AD was the year immortalized for wiping out 20,000 in Pompeii, but Naples has had its kneecaps smashed by quakes every few decades. In 1693, 93000 dead, in 1980 another 10,000, and those are just the highlights. Still the surrounding suburban hills are jam-packed with illegally-constructed housing. The lava hills are deadly but fertile; people survive, thrive somehow, building up their jammed structures like a colony of vain termites destined for collapse.
Naples has a tragic death wish. This lingerie model is not only beautiful, but bipolar. It’s heartbreakingly obvious why they love her so much: I mean, Sofia Loren's from around here.
When the garbage syndicates aren’t striking and medieval cobblestones are visible above the trash, when you’re not run down by twelve year old handbag artists scootering on the sidewalk like truant hyenas; when the mafia’s not putting screws to the teeming underclass with every purchase of fresh fruit or cut flowers—you see the city could be an angel in spite of its demons.
You escape the overcrowded afternoon Intercity train arriving an hour late from Rome. Move quickly or be crushed. Your head swims; the sweat of Stazione Garibaldi in your nostrils. The frenzied Neapolitans are everywhere, and—everyone has assured you—none can be trusted. You’ve arranged your cash, passport and credit cards in six places around your undergarments; the signs on the platform warn of pickpockets in six languages. Instinctively putting hands to your wallet, you ironically inform nearby thieves precisely where to strike. Neapolitan trickery at its most subtle? The city is a conspiracy, and the safest bet is paranoia.
You exit onto piazza Garibaldi, the air fetid in summer heat. Plastic bags and empty paper cups collect at your feet. Yet beautiful architecture, centuries old, towers above the mire. Baroque and older, majestic, a gorgeous tradition of grand public building since the 13th century. The list of visual treasures is endless: cathedrals, museums, the colourful palazzi of the Vomero hill, and shopping malls like the Galleria Umberto, that most beautiful outdoor arcade shaped like a holy cross.
But what a falling off. The population has paid for a past golden age by feeding on itself, since 1944, when the Allies were handed control of the city and enlisted the insidious Camorra to reconstruct after all the bombings. They reconstructed, sure, like mad scientists; they built a Frankenstein that serves them to this day.
Two young men on a scooter buzz past, make a coy grab at your fiancée’s purse. You outmaneuver them. The demons turn, cackle and laugh. All the evildoers from the Old Testament were banished here: Every encounter seems to be with usurer from the Book of Numbers, the vendor of impure meats from Leviticus; the catamite owner of fourteen teenage concubines runs the brothel next to your hotel. Sodom and Gomorrah have a run for their money. Where’s prophet Jeremiah when you need him?
But this city was always out of control. You can’t contain its millions of highly involved actors; every inch is a dramatic scene. Collectively the Neapolitans are frightening, but individually each one a studied gem. Each gypsy panhandler could have been Meryl Streep. What performances! These women are all over you with outstretched hands, like Jesus on a leper, aiming to cure you of your earthly possessions.
Refuel with espresso, walk a few blocks more. Don’t even think of pulling out your camera. Try not to get killed crossing the main streets. The motorists are toying with you, skilled and capricious, they let you live. You learn quickly here: to paraphrase Paul Theroux, The Naples Book of Road Etiquette is a very slim volume. Rome in comparison is seven days of Sunday driving.
There are rewards for the brave wandering souls, however. Pizza at Da Michele is the best in Naples, and by extension, the world.
Full of the Queen Marguerita, you navigate street vendors, young men with toothpicks in mouths and wooden crates on shoulders hawking black market frippery; energetic North African immigrants or underemployed locals all ogling your fiancée. They’re saying with their eyes, ‘she’s got a lot of nerve having blonde hair’. The one honest soul in Naples, the guy who works at your hotel, was right to refuse to let her out of the building wearing her bracelet.
You keep escaping, from the spiderweb labyrinth of Spaccanapoli, down the Corso Umberto I toward the port, the spots south of the city centre that let you breathe. You reach the water, outlet for the condensed mass of Europe’s most densely populated city, writhing between the surrounding hills, waiting to be pushed into the sea by the next volcanic eruption.
Most astonishing is that view from the sea: how the city erupts above the bay of Naples. On one end, toward Pompeii, you see Vesuvius, the ornery beached whale promising to spew ash from his blowhole. And like the murderous Camorra, the fire mountain makes good on that threat every so often. 79 AD was the year immortalized for wiping out 20,000 in Pompeii, but Naples has had its kneecaps smashed by quakes every few decades. In 1693, 93000 dead, in 1980 another 10,000, and those are just the highlights. Still the surrounding suburban hills are jam-packed with illegally-constructed housing. The lava hills are deadly but fertile; people survive, thrive somehow, building up their jammed structures like a colony of vain termites destined for collapse.
Naples has a tragic death wish. This lingerie model is not only beautiful, but bipolar. It’s heartbreakingly obvious why they love her so much: I mean, Sofia Loren's from around here.
11/18/2009
Every time I stare at this screen
...I feel 1 frickin inch tall. Like Pac-Man in the maze, but I can't see any blinking edible pellets, and the blue ghosts are after me.
Mostly there is the waiting, and the empty space, and the strangers in the coffee shop if I'm out on the road looking for inspiration, and the guilt at not writing. The writing happens in about 2.5 minutes. The rest of the time is wasted, or maybe praying is what they would have called it 150 years ago.
Do you know what ultramontanism is? It's the sort of crap I look up on the Wik instead of facing this job: write a crapass FIAC blog post that don't make no sense. Which is we both expect. Ex pectin. Like the man who gave up strawberry jam was ex pectin. Argh.
I have almost deleted this blog entirely about 57,000 times. But the other 2,454,000 times I didn't so who cares right?
Last night I met this huge tall Asian dude who wants to open up a bake shop in Nashville, Tennessee--a Christian bakery in Nashville that serves discount baked goods to starving country music artists and pays them decent wages to perform, because there's so many GD musicians in Nashville that they don't get paid. Ha. Just like the blogosphere. Such is the landscape when 99.9% of your colleagues are barely 1% distinguishable from you. Ability to discern is victimized by Hick's law, whereby increased infomation prolongs decisionmaking time, and by corollary, apathy. Low barrier to entry. High cost of breaking through the dip. Know what I thought about the Asian baker? I thought this guy has it figured out. Good for him. There are still saints out there.
Mostly there is the waiting, and the empty space, and the strangers in the coffee shop if I'm out on the road looking for inspiration, and the guilt at not writing. The writing happens in about 2.5 minutes. The rest of the time is wasted, or maybe praying is what they would have called it 150 years ago.
Do you know what ultramontanism is? It's the sort of crap I look up on the Wik instead of facing this job: write a crapass FIAC blog post that don't make no sense. Which is we both expect. Ex pectin. Like the man who gave up strawberry jam was ex pectin. Argh.
I have almost deleted this blog entirely about 57,000 times. But the other 2,454,000 times I didn't so who cares right?
Last night I met this huge tall Asian dude who wants to open up a bake shop in Nashville, Tennessee--a Christian bakery in Nashville that serves discount baked goods to starving country music artists and pays them decent wages to perform, because there's so many GD musicians in Nashville that they don't get paid. Ha. Just like the blogosphere. Such is the landscape when 99.9% of your colleagues are barely 1% distinguishable from you. Ability to discern is victimized by Hick's law, whereby increased infomation prolongs decisionmaking time, and by corollary, apathy. Low barrier to entry. High cost of breaking through the dip. Know what I thought about the Asian baker? I thought this guy has it figured out. Good for him. There are still saints out there.
11/06/2009
Digit Wails
The walls here are beige brown. The people are painted figures. We stare, silent.
We don't learn by doing but by staring, and we don't learn very well.
We weren't meant to stare all day. We need a treadmill or we'll wither away.
We cry with our fingers. Loud fingers are angry spirits. We tickle the scroll bar in search of love.
The man with shortcuts is an angry man, his keystrokes more ambitious, he wants to use less so he can do more. The shortcut man scares the scrolling, clicking man. Those who master shortcuts become king.
Outside they breath oxygen. It makes us afraid, desperate for electricity again. We need to be on and off and on and again, because we are digits ourselves, processing signals to serve the end user. Our job is to be the current. The process is always being written, for the end user. We wish we could ask him if he likes it. If he doesn't like it we are aborted.
We no longer talk. Our fingers become smaller, hands like pin pricks, we apprehend it by staring. We see everything but feel nothing.
We don't learn by doing but by staring, and we don't learn very well.
We weren't meant to stare all day. We need a treadmill or we'll wither away.
We cry with our fingers. Loud fingers are angry spirits. We tickle the scroll bar in search of love.
The man with shortcuts is an angry man, his keystrokes more ambitious, he wants to use less so he can do more. The shortcut man scares the scrolling, clicking man. Those who master shortcuts become king.
Outside they breath oxygen. It makes us afraid, desperate for electricity again. We need to be on and off and on and again, because we are digits ourselves, processing signals to serve the end user. Our job is to be the current. The process is always being written, for the end user. We wish we could ask him if he likes it. If he doesn't like it we are aborted.
We no longer talk. Our fingers become smaller, hands like pin pricks, we apprehend it by staring. We see everything but feel nothing.
10/30/2009
Exacting
The marathon pace amounted to what? I can't retrace the lines on my face. You who were wise--all ruined by bankers? Why lie to yourself, to live today by spiting forever? We were meant to be dirty, meant to argue, meant to pick up the cheque after World War III, but then why dream of victory? All our hopes are cruel, but believing less makes us fools.
Read to channel something, to make to think, to believe in potential. I couldn't persuade a dog to come out of the rain with a raw leg of lamb. I don't know how to debate. I have no point to prove, I am editing everything the best I can, deciding what to keep and what to lose.
Read to channel something, to make to think, to believe in potential. I couldn't persuade a dog to come out of the rain with a raw leg of lamb. I don't know how to debate. I have no point to prove, I am editing everything the best I can, deciding what to keep and what to lose.
10/23/2009
10/15/2009
Hotel Supramonte
If ever I was kidnapped thirty years ago, like Fabrizio De Andre, and forced to spend my nights inside a cave, put for ransom by desperate Sardinian mountain men from the bloody village of Orgosolo, long before the tourists came, I would have asked these men to drag me away to one of those other-worldly open air caves that are hollowed from the cliffs north of the northern tip of the empty Cala Luna-the lonesome 'moon beach' lapped by the similarly crescent-shaped Golfo di Orosei. A hideout found only by boat or by hours-long hike along inland mountain trails, down to a silent river mouth that enjoys an unlikely refuge beneath the Supramonte's grey limestone mass: a strip of sand and driftwood just fifteen paces wide which separates the still freshwater reeds from the searching sea. There I'd wait for rescue in a cave beside the bay, as the sun sets hours early behind cliffs that plunge like a guillotine into dark blue-green waters.
My captors might not be cruel while they awaited their pay, driven by hunger more than malice and aware that the beauty that clung them to this barren land would captivate me too, and they would let me wade in the river in the morning, where hundreds of minnows would chase my feet, so that my footfalls would overturn enough dirt to feed them too. I would maybe try to carve a flute from the driftwood to play a sorry tune, and make a joke about scaling the sheer rock face of the cliffs when they looked away, how I would spirit away to Tiscali, the 6000-year-old hideout in the high part of the mountains where ancient peoples hid from bandits too.
And when we finally parted ways I would forgive my kidnappers too, the way De Andre did in 1980, not begrudging the price you pay living at the Hotel Supramonte.
My captors might not be cruel while they awaited their pay, driven by hunger more than malice and aware that the beauty that clung them to this barren land would captivate me too, and they would let me wade in the river in the morning, where hundreds of minnows would chase my feet, so that my footfalls would overturn enough dirt to feed them too. I would maybe try to carve a flute from the driftwood to play a sorry tune, and make a joke about scaling the sheer rock face of the cliffs when they looked away, how I would spirit away to Tiscali, the 6000-year-old hideout in the high part of the mountains where ancient peoples hid from bandits too.
And when we finally parted ways I would forgive my kidnappers too, the way De Andre did in 1980, not begrudging the price you pay living at the Hotel Supramonte.
10/07/2009
That one song over and over
[always skipping over half the words]
I met this lady, I love her, lovely, fair. I'd go for days about her hair if you'd let me. I promised I'd write her but have been swaddled in sacred feelings for a couple years. I made provision only for burps or farts, no knowhow to explain those dimples that bring me tears.
***
There're only seven songs in the universe, and I've gotten used to one
I do like variations on a theme, but
if there's only one way to flatten out into a runway, carry all your friends
so we land with dignity
if there's still a reason to blog
if someone on this passive intelligent planet hasn't learned to read then
I'll gladly stay stodgy if it means I can pay an entrance fee to see
a lone lost tourist find a reason to fall on his knees
and I'll wait to hear minds click, my
mouse is making me sick;
you there,
too entertained to realize your boredom
too sustained by routine to fall down running
on empty
you there, I need lost little lambs like you! we need a lost little land like ours. we live lost lives, learning to get big, know ye not that ye are gods? and
the kingdom's within you
there's that ancient wisdom burning through, I thought technology'd let me forget where I came from? the definition of a fool
I met this lady, I love her, lovely, fair. I'd go for days about her hair if you'd let me. I promised I'd write her but have been swaddled in sacred feelings for a couple years. I made provision only for burps or farts, no knowhow to explain those dimples that bring me tears.
***
There're only seven songs in the universe, and I've gotten used to one
I do like variations on a theme, but
if there's only one way to flatten out into a runway, carry all your friends
so we land with dignity
if there's still a reason to blog
if someone on this passive intelligent planet hasn't learned to read then
I'll gladly stay stodgy if it means I can pay an entrance fee to see
a lone lost tourist find a reason to fall on his knees
and I'll wait to hear minds click, my
mouse is making me sick;
you there,
too entertained to realize your boredom
too sustained by routine to fall down running
on empty
you there, I need lost little lambs like you! we need a lost little land like ours. we live lost lives, learning to get big, know ye not that ye are gods? and
the kingdom's within you
there's that ancient wisdom burning through, I thought technology'd let me forget where I came from? the definition of a fool
10/06/2009
15 minutes of focus
Too long I put this off, it seems, I use happiness as an excuse not to bust my own knees. It is not allowed to slink silently into bliss, while my charges sit in a barn underground amid the cobras' hiss. If I could take you where I've gone it would not do, for I do as I must, and you are you--and what use will I be to all of us if I don't do write by you?
I've been admiring the bricks of my finished mansion, afraid to meet the press, I've been poring over pictures on Facebook, obsessed with how I'm dressed. I always wait until the last minute to squeeze this bottle through the tube, but it seems I'll be up till midnight glued to what I'd already conclusively proved to be "what is '1 + 1 equals 2'?".
I can't wish better things for my reflection, the universe I saw last night happened 4 billion years ago, we can't let that be our life story, we have to build another universe to grow, we can be so much better than our demographic peer group analysis would predict was the way we vertigo.
So I'd like to promise never to think so much before putting finger to key, that's been my problem with this blog for oh for about a year; a problem with everybody. Everything created is a miracle, and we've been in awe of all the miracles, until the miracles made us small. I've got to make friends with giant aliens, massive creatures, influential blue whales or something, somebody with a blowhole big enough to toss all the self-consciousness into, somebody with the garbanzos to toasterize every little worry and kerblontz all thin-haired pale quiggling into salty smithereens.
I am a weirdo overdone by words, I have polished many dancing turds, they make me giggle and I overindulge, but undone if by nothing else but the bulge. At 31 I'm in my prime, yet all these words aren't worth a dime if we aren't tumbling headlong into truth - that we can't mind striking out so much, as the Bambino would often do. No use sitting in a germ-free oxygen booth, and hey did you know cancer of the mouth is probably what killed Babe Ruth?
I've been admiring the bricks of my finished mansion, afraid to meet the press, I've been poring over pictures on Facebook, obsessed with how I'm dressed. I always wait until the last minute to squeeze this bottle through the tube, but it seems I'll be up till midnight glued to what I'd already conclusively proved to be "what is '1 + 1 equals 2'?".
I can't wish better things for my reflection, the universe I saw last night happened 4 billion years ago, we can't let that be our life story, we have to build another universe to grow, we can be so much better than our demographic peer group analysis would predict was the way we vertigo.
So I'd like to promise never to think so much before putting finger to key, that's been my problem with this blog for oh for about a year; a problem with everybody. Everything created is a miracle, and we've been in awe of all the miracles, until the miracles made us small. I've got to make friends with giant aliens, massive creatures, influential blue whales or something, somebody with a blowhole big enough to toss all the self-consciousness into, somebody with the garbanzos to toasterize every little worry and kerblontz all thin-haired pale quiggling into salty smithereens.
I am a weirdo overdone by words, I have polished many dancing turds, they make me giggle and I overindulge, but undone if by nothing else but the bulge. At 31 I'm in my prime, yet all these words aren't worth a dime if we aren't tumbling headlong into truth - that we can't mind striking out so much, as the Bambino would often do. No use sitting in a germ-free oxygen booth, and hey did you know cancer of the mouth is probably what killed Babe Ruth?
8/24/2009
Woohoo
Fartleks and frodo intimating bloating. This note I wrote was sour and lumpy and long past expiry. I was giving up my final run at the friary in favour of full lunged admiration, and August light, tongue tricks refracting reverberation.
We are swollen shrimp in the catch-drain of the sink, thank god for a dripping faucet, an Econo-lodge amid the forest, middle class dreams with an unvarnished support beam, factor in hidden expenses and, it seems, we are better off with Mr. Clean.
If I ever tried to paint I would make your children faint. I don't breathe when about to burst; in fact I'll pay the limo driver personally, so get your hands off my purse.
Instead I'll write ten thousand terse two-word rejection letters to all my creditors, ask my debtors to hand me an Ontario peach: in fact I'd trade everything they owe me for a 30-second speech!
We are swollen shrimp in the catch-drain of the sink, thank god for a dripping faucet, an Econo-lodge amid the forest, middle class dreams with an unvarnished support beam, factor in hidden expenses and, it seems, we are better off with Mr. Clean.
If I ever tried to paint I would make your children faint. I don't breathe when about to burst; in fact I'll pay the limo driver personally, so get your hands off my purse.
Instead I'll write ten thousand terse two-word rejection letters to all my creditors, ask my debtors to hand me an Ontario peach: in fact I'd trade everything they owe me for a 30-second speech!
7/27/2009
Mass Email for New Years 2001
[When it was still an art form]
Date: Sat, 30 Dec 2000 07:36:33 -0500 (EST)
From: ##### <####@qlink.queensu.ca>
To: ##########
Subject: Mass email for New Year's
Dear People On This List,
I swore I'd never do it again, but newly ingrained habits die hard, harder than old habits die hard. Yes, this habit of making everyone feel depersonalized via the odious mass email is dying hard with a vengeance.
I blame the cold weather. You might say it has frozen all the human feeling that is left in me. Some of you might also say that I was a soulless monster anyway, what with already having sent three other de-individualizing mass emails out in the past eight months anyways (I reluctantly recall a May 6 mass email and September 8 mass email, and a short, some would say nasty and brutish Dec 13 mass email). If you have already dialed up your OPP bureau, asking for my head on a plate, and demanding that my email-writing fingers be cut off and preserved in a jar as a symbolic act of retribution, then I understand.
Yes, I understand if you would do that. Just know that I am wilier than any of you.
Yes, I am both foxy and wily, and if you think I will lie down and let you cut my fingers off without some evil payback of my own somewhere down the line, then think again, peasants! I will reveal nothing more. Revenge is a dish best served cold. With a side order of humiliation. Go ahead, enjoy my severed fingers preserved in a jar! I still have my very capable and evil reptile brain to plot and hatch future machinations (indeed, the brain is the root of all email, 'mass'ive and otherwise, and even a stumpy-fisted evil mastermind can have tricks up his sleeve, though there be no mittens on his on hands). Maybe you should be thinking long term with your acts of retributive justice, instead of scheming these near-sighted and downright petty digit-severing childish acts of vengeance. You ought to think these things out before you start brandishing a saw willy-nilly and demand my fingers in a jar. I just admitted (my facade of wiliness breached in a moment of openness andtruthfulness, probably sparked subconsciously by the one remainingcompassionate sector of my brain, the one part not yet wholly consumed by reptilian evil, the one part of me fighting to break free from the rest and proclaim itself human, and good), that my brain is reptile. If my brain is evil and reptile, why wouldn't my fingers be reptile as well?
Like the wily salamander who's had its tail cut off in a life-or-death 'imbroglio', why couldn't I simply regrow my fingers in time and recommence writing mass emails, continuing the evil all the more, adding to it like a small child adds Lego bricks to a castle, until the castle (and, in my case, the evil) reaches the heavens and thereupon only God Himself can stop me! Oh, the wickedness of it all!
If the harsh Canadian winters have taught me anything (and they rarely teach me much--indeed, the sub zero extremities of the season usually slow down the blood flow in my brain to a Saharan trickle, resulting in an evil mastermind who, though wily, is at his most relatively dull-witted in winter-time, hence the possibility of having his fingers cut off and preserved in a jar becomes a veritable concern, whereas in other climates an evil mastermind of comparable scale would never have fear of getting part of him amputated, because the warmer weather would allow blood flow in the brain to be at maximum, and such finger-chopping conspiracies would be nipped in the bud, perhaps by an evilly-masterminded pre-emptive counter-offensive, plotted and hatched by a smoothly functioning reptile evil brain. For example, before you had the opportunity of dialing up your local police bureau and calling for my head on a plate and my fingers separated from my hands and displayed, label and all, in this now-clichéd finger jar, a warm-weather, brain-well-lubed evil genius would have done something evil to prevent you from accomplishing your goal of retributive mass-email penance, before you even picked up the phone. Say, for example, that I fire-bombed your house. Good luck amputating my fingers then! I would think that rescuing your cat and your loved ones from the charred inferno would be higher up on your 'to do' list than making examples out of workaday evil masterminds! But I am completely abusing this parenthesis. Remember, I was trying to make a point before all this talk of how a warm weather evil mastermind would fend off a finger-chomping conspiracy much better than I would be able to, in my frigid 'lukewarm if I'm lucky, blood flow at a trickle' state...here goes what's on the other side of this bracket. Props to my friend ####...'if the harsh Canadian winters have taught me anything..') it's how to die hard with a vengeance.
Wow, I have now been writing this email for an hour and a half. That's how much this topic concerns me.
To sum up my introduction to this email: All of you can kiss my ass!
ON TO THE REST OF THE EMAIL:
I just wanted to say Happy New Year to everybody on this list, and Happy New Year to everyone else too. I hope you still love me. Forgive my hair-trigger tangents. Let this be my belated XMAS
present to you. I know mass emails aren't a unique gift, but at least you don't have to fight off crowds in the GAP to exchange it. Small consolation...
Lata
####
Date: Sat, 30 Dec 2000 07:36:33 -0500 (EST)
From: ##### <####@qlink.queensu.ca>
To: ##########
Subject: Mass email for New Year's
Dear People On This List,
I swore I'd never do it again, but newly ingrained habits die hard, harder than old habits die hard. Yes, this habit of making everyone feel depersonalized via the odious mass email is dying hard with a vengeance.
I blame the cold weather. You might say it has frozen all the human feeling that is left in me. Some of you might also say that I was a soulless monster anyway, what with already having sent three other de-individualizing mass emails out in the past eight months anyways (I reluctantly recall a May 6 mass email and September 8 mass email, and a short, some would say nasty and brutish Dec 13 mass email). If you have already dialed up your OPP bureau, asking for my head on a plate, and demanding that my email-writing fingers be cut off and preserved in a jar as a symbolic act of retribution, then I understand.
Yes, I understand if you would do that. Just know that I am wilier than any of you.
Yes, I am both foxy and wily, and if you think I will lie down and let you cut my fingers off without some evil payback of my own somewhere down the line, then think again, peasants! I will reveal nothing more. Revenge is a dish best served cold. With a side order of humiliation. Go ahead, enjoy my severed fingers preserved in a jar! I still have my very capable and evil reptile brain to plot and hatch future machinations (indeed, the brain is the root of all email, 'mass'ive and otherwise, and even a stumpy-fisted evil mastermind can have tricks up his sleeve, though there be no mittens on his on hands). Maybe you should be thinking long term with your acts of retributive justice, instead of scheming these near-sighted and downright petty digit-severing childish acts of vengeance. You ought to think these things out before you start brandishing a saw willy-nilly and demand my fingers in a jar. I just admitted (my facade of wiliness breached in a moment of openness andtruthfulness, probably sparked subconsciously by the one remainingcompassionate sector of my brain, the one part not yet wholly consumed by reptilian evil, the one part of me fighting to break free from the rest and proclaim itself human, and good), that my brain is reptile. If my brain is evil and reptile, why wouldn't my fingers be reptile as well?
Like the wily salamander who's had its tail cut off in a life-or-death 'imbroglio', why couldn't I simply regrow my fingers in time and recommence writing mass emails, continuing the evil all the more, adding to it like a small child adds Lego bricks to a castle, until the castle (and, in my case, the evil) reaches the heavens and thereupon only God Himself can stop me! Oh, the wickedness of it all!
If the harsh Canadian winters have taught me anything (and they rarely teach me much--indeed, the sub zero extremities of the season usually slow down the blood flow in my brain to a Saharan trickle, resulting in an evil mastermind who, though wily, is at his most relatively dull-witted in winter-time, hence the possibility of having his fingers cut off and preserved in a jar becomes a veritable concern, whereas in other climates an evil mastermind of comparable scale would never have fear of getting part of him amputated, because the warmer weather would allow blood flow in the brain to be at maximum, and such finger-chopping conspiracies would be nipped in the bud, perhaps by an evilly-masterminded pre-emptive counter-offensive, plotted and hatched by a smoothly functioning reptile evil brain. For example, before you had the opportunity of dialing up your local police bureau and calling for my head on a plate and my fingers separated from my hands and displayed, label and all, in this now-clichéd finger jar, a warm-weather, brain-well-lubed evil genius would have done something evil to prevent you from accomplishing your goal of retributive mass-email penance, before you even picked up the phone. Say, for example, that I fire-bombed your house. Good luck amputating my fingers then! I would think that rescuing your cat and your loved ones from the charred inferno would be higher up on your 'to do' list than making examples out of workaday evil masterminds! But I am completely abusing this parenthesis. Remember, I was trying to make a point before all this talk of how a warm weather evil mastermind would fend off a finger-chomping conspiracy much better than I would be able to, in my frigid 'lukewarm if I'm lucky, blood flow at a trickle' state...here goes what's on the other side of this bracket. Props to my friend ####...'if the harsh Canadian winters have taught me anything..') it's how to die hard with a vengeance.
Wow, I have now been writing this email for an hour and a half. That's how much this topic concerns me.
To sum up my introduction to this email: All of you can kiss my ass!
ON TO THE REST OF THE EMAIL:
I just wanted to say Happy New Year to everybody on this list, and Happy New Year to everyone else too. I hope you still love me. Forgive my hair-trigger tangents. Let this be my belated XMAS
present to you. I know mass emails aren't a unique gift, but at least you don't have to fight off crowds in the GAP to exchange it. Small consolation...
Lata
####
7/15/2009
11 Tantalizing Headlines (for future posts)
- 1 Year Plan for World Domination (including mid-plan sabbatical because it's really easy)
- I'm Actually Not As Crazy As I Was Five Minutes Ago (and other discouraging trends)
- Words I Will Now Refuse to Read
- What Mild Rejection Has Taught Me (aka 1 year plan to settle for a boring desk job)
- If Only I Could Hear at Canine Frequencies ...
- Beyonce Is My Cousin?? Eww, That's Travolting!
- I Never Wash My Hands (But I Do Wash My Fists... With The Blood of Aliens!)
- How I Greened My Nightmares
- Facebook, The Movie? Meet Cupcake Man, The Smiling!
- Ear Wax: Why Those Who Have It Just Don't Care, And Those Who Don't Are Jealous
- Please...Talk To Me When I'm Listening
7/07/2009
This blog
is a detailed survey of invisible cracks.
To find invisible cracks, you have to listen.
You listen for echoes.
To make an echo, you have to speak.
Speak what?
Anything.
As long as it's out loud.
But, if there is too much noise, you don't hear anything.
To find invisible cracks, you have to listen.
You listen for echoes.
To make an echo, you have to speak.
Speak what?
Anything.
As long as it's out loud.
But, if there is too much noise, you don't hear anything.
6/16/2009
Keytharsis
"She did what?" and we cried, she lied! I just can't believe it's my last reprieve. What could explain such pain, how I end up on any plane, aerial crash rehash and embellish balderdash, I whigged out on my walkabout and, Yoda says, I'm you.. telling it ... about. Never stopper yourself, save the stoic face for the Elf. Jumble all your crap and unwind it in a wrap. Dig dirt, cast about to subvert little ones hiding under mom's skirt who'd better learn to marvel at my mega-hurts. Ataturk, a great man, such a sissy, he had no pithy profile to sympathize with, he did his job just, massive feat and hard-to-fill shoes, so biographers could have at it, exhume his bones and whiten his skeleton, omitted his cycling prowess, or his fondness for the peleton, and so does this remind me why I'm me again?
5/22/2009
Imagine
Imagine a pickle falling sideways from a tin of tuna-ham.
Now imagine a fat policeman, one who gives a damn.
Imagine a tortoise, feathers in beak, drinking liquids from a coat sleeve in a sorghum silo... midweek.
Imagine a polka dance cross state lines,
or a fantasy camp owned by Larry Fine.
Imagine a streusel fan with a plateful left to chew,
or twenty blackbirds contemplating early curfew.
Imagine a hairless nomad left to solve a Rubik's cube, and dragging sons and daughters to the mouth of the Danube, and he says "Imagine me in front of a screen.
Check your neck for pimples and ensure your nose is clean."
And if you imagine that, then welcome to my dream.
Now imagine a fat policeman, one who gives a damn.
Imagine a tortoise, feathers in beak, drinking liquids from a coat sleeve in a sorghum silo... midweek.
Imagine a polka dance cross state lines,
or a fantasy camp owned by Larry Fine.
Imagine a streusel fan with a plateful left to chew,
or twenty blackbirds contemplating early curfew.
Imagine a hairless nomad left to solve a Rubik's cube, and dragging sons and daughters to the mouth of the Danube, and he says "Imagine me in front of a screen.
Check your neck for pimples and ensure your nose is clean."
And if you imagine that, then welcome to my dream.
5/21/2009
Ask me about my hobbies
"I’ll cut to the cheese: I had a you reeka moment while reading an article in Ass Choir magazine.
It said that though Western peoples are controlling their emissions, there are still vast buildups of natural gas, held in tense grip between belligerent Cheeks in the Mid East.
This has led to methane-ous crimes among Arab arsetalkocracies, including the assgassination of the Blue Angel, leader of the Fartsee people, which has the hole region under a terrible cloud. The stealth bomber let loose in a crowded theatre hot box; it was John Wilts-the-Booth, a has-beans actor, aka Jack the Ripper, who suffocated his victim in the dark.
Since then, nonstop stench warfare: silent-but-deadly rocket blasts (outside the Qatar embarrassee) and the cries of aerate sirens. Ol factories have been odoured shut down for safety. In Krakow meanwhile, Eeeeewww leaders have held nothing in there but talks for days– many high rank officials are holding their noses in response to the colon of doody.
Egyptian statesman Atef Ebeid (Burrito) also scented a strong message: He let one slip recently, boasting “In Egypt, we have ‘toot’ in common. We created the mysterious Sphinx, which baffle the world. Now we have a mighty Force of Air. Let smell-odious trumpets sound! Let the infidels sulphur!”
I’m no Nostrildamus, but my analysis? Throw caulking to the wind, and plug holes in these terrorassts: That would help rectumfy everything before it goes any farter!
Thank you, it’s been a slice."
~aired May 16, 2009 in Austin, Texas. Visit the source.
5/07/2009
4/20/2009
Facebook thoughts
The great part about Facebook being public is that soon everyone will have something incriminating on there that should get them fired. But at a certain point, no one will be fired or forced to resign for Facebook stupidity anymore, simply because you can't fire everyone. It will just be too impractical to follow the politically correct ethos to its logical conclusion: ie that we are all guilty and must be cast into the wilderness. Public/private and professional lives will meld. It will be 'live and let live', and the retaliations/penalties will take place on Facebook, not meatspace. We're not there yet though. In general we are still hypocrites about this sort of thing. Sounds crazy I know, but I traffic in crazy. I can't wait for the day we are allowed to embrace our true stupid embarrassing selves.
4/14/2009
Drink yourself silly
Oh we are wired now, get here and stare, don't care about the crows, the cattle, the lows, we think and drink stacks of pink things, shirking on lunch hour, counting every hour as accounts receivable, unbelievable us educated fops lining up at the trough. I never wanted a job that worked, just eight hours to iron all the creases in my shirt. I figured, 'what now? go on a road trip? take a taxi to Timbuktu, tip the driver, avoid all landmines with an all-knowing GPS'. Great, so I am a success. Hey, driver, stop at the cigar store, I need to blow smoke up your pipe, I have a backlog of friends on Skype I've ignored, you hear about how I'm competing in the Olympics For the Bored?' No wonder when I'm on my bike and doored I don't mind, some adrenaline at last, this big drink all pink and fizzy they call it Sassafraz.
3/29/2009
Ranting from the top floor across the city
Lou sings Lisa says as I sit above a city soaked this morning, drying out in March superzero breezes, sweet pre-sunset shadows and light. It's been a while, as we bloggers say, I've been so bad, feel guilty to've been away, but hey I didn't have to be here, you're lucky I even take a dump here! I'm a victim of my rules, and so anyone's morality makes everyone a fool. Trouble is top stuff doesn't follow Western timelines, three dimensions, it's more like horizontal heuristics, the stuff of thought generated via semantic linguistics - or so I'm learning from an unreadable book I just have to mention.
I switched where I sat, and that is the source of this scat. When I peek across the city, bombarded by baroque, as towers grow from mounds of dirt, where faroff sun-dried cyclists prompt mental microflirts, you get perspective, or maybe just discrete novel excretive blarghblectives, whatever - I can't be against anything new - as I rub the velvet of my button-down shirt.
I switched where I sat, and that is the source of this scat. When I peek across the city, bombarded by baroque, as towers grow from mounds of dirt, where faroff sun-dried cyclists prompt mental microflirts, you get perspective, or maybe just discrete novel excretive blarghblectives, whatever - I can't be against anything new - as I rub the velvet of my button-down shirt.
3/11/2009
God uses a Mac
(or at least Bono does)
Go, shout it out, rise up
Oh, oh
Escape yourself, and gravity
Hear me, cease to speak that I may speak
Shush now
Oh, oh
Force quit and move to trash
~Unknown Caller by U2
3/09/2009
Meltdown?
(My hardline-conservative yet somehow marxist comment on "No more cash for CBC, Heritage Minister says" ~www.globeandmail.com)
From my few years observing the cosmos, here's what I've learned of how the Canadian economy works when things go bad: Those closest to the Government are able (via lobbyists and their friends) to line up first at the trough to save their skins. Those closest to the trough (CBC, car makers) are the ones who deserve the money least, because they have been coddled the longest. [This includes the government workers themselves who basically control the trough, who ARE the trough - and who are most hysterical about a downtown in the economy, because it means we may actually wake up and demand accountability for our vote and our money.] Those who have been coddled the longest are theoretically most able to withstand the downturn because they've been getting the money all along, but they are also the ones who cry the loudest when things go bad.
This recession is not a tragedy in and of itself, but only a tragedy of relative expectations and disappointment. Our society is ridiculously wealthy and incremental decreases in GDP will cause no suffering that compares in any way to the great depression of the 1930s. The squeaky wheel gets the grease, because the squeaky wheel is the one that doesn't do any work. Those who suffer most are also the most accustomed to suffering when things go bad are furthest from the trough, because they have learned to live without government support. Call it the virtue of honest work, the spirit of capitalism - the lack of honest work, the prevalence of cronyism --> This is how the establishment remains the establishment: by milking honest workers, honest workers who have learned not to depend on government to bail them out but to work to find a way no matter what. This is also why voting is important, so we can deliver justice at times of reckoning which are right now.
2/18/2009
Heart > Brain
Heart > Brain. I think that's the reason. There are so many dimensions to it.
I always looked forward to exams, because it was during these moments that I could feel the full power of the heart to trump something as puny as the intellect. My heart made me learn the material. My mind was just a tool. [Is this thread becoming a tad dualist? apologies] The material was always just as arbitrary as this blog template.
It still is, but I'm also running out of time, I get distracted, and these days it's so easy to get confused. WWW makes us a much healthier ant colony, but individually more insecure.
[the dirty little secret, I learned from reading Marshall McLuhan: just like 50 years ago, washing machines and appliances didn't allow all humans to escape from housework -- it just made it possible, indeed, made it almost obligatory -- because it made it so damn easy -- for everyone to do their own housework, whereas they previously they relied on specialists, ie housekeepers to do the dirty work for them. So too info tech has made experts with arcane knowledge obsolete and shifted the burden of intellectual capital creation equally on all individuals in the modern society, and this seems like a blessing, but really it's a curse, especially if ignorance is bliss, for the tools -- no, not just the tools, but also the ball and chain, the mouse and the keys, are literally at our fingertips, and so no one can ever stop doing homework, just like your washing machine forces you to wash your own clothes; anyways this is a long explanation for how we are so intellectually exhausted and feeling tricked by our 'advancement'.]
SoI'm always willing to start fresh, and not worried about not writing as much as I used to. Why was I writing in the first place? To prove a point? To be admired? Or to love you?
It still is, but I'm also running out of time, I get distracted, and these days it's so easy to get confused. WWW makes us a much healthier ant colony, but individually more insecure.
[the dirty little secret, I learned from reading Marshall McLuhan: just like 50 years ago, washing machines and appliances didn't allow all humans to escape from housework -- it just made it possible, indeed, made it almost obligatory -- because it made it so damn easy -- for everyone to do their own housework, whereas they previously they relied on specialists, ie housekeepers to do the dirty work for them. So too info tech has made experts with arcane knowledge obsolete and shifted the burden of intellectual capital creation equally on all individuals in the modern society, and this seems like a blessing, but really it's a curse, especially if ignorance is bliss, for the tools -- no, not just the tools, but also the ball and chain, the mouse and the keys, are literally at our fingertips, and so no one can ever stop doing homework, just like your washing machine forces you to wash your own clothes; anyways this is a long explanation for how we are so intellectually exhausted and feeling tricked by our 'advancement'.]
So
2/13/2009
Some particularly urgent sermonizing
(whozzis? factor: 8)
Handle not these words as a baker grabs hot pizza trays with an oven mitt. Instead, let the sizzling slop pour down your legs and stick to your unwilling knee skins, 3rd degree burns be cursed-- or better still, allow your soul full immersion to sights your eyeballs shrink to see. Filter not the ear-ringing that ensues upon crunching my message to its kernel: instead, flutter your lips with hosannanalia and cup your lucky ears to the wind. Be coarse and gay and twimble about the barn!
Do we dine, or die? Do we limp and lie, or crackle and fly?
A weekend awaits! Scan the movie-house schedules and build a future-barge to float your flopsy fantasies. You could dig a large hole, fill it with butter, jump headlong and cook yourself in predictable stews. You could snort vast quantities of otherworldly powders, seductively expedient shortcuts to ectasy - but would they open your essence to its inner eagle?
Fantastic figures of otherwise ordinary citizens, drowning each other with carefulness to keep all volume at a medium -- to Styx with them, they lack all glitter. I insist upon a more potent jamboree. I will have a violent clashing of words, and I will sweep up all the hairy leavings and build a magic pillow to sleep through this incredible assault of boredom that cankers my skin to dust!
BLARGH!
Handle not these words as a baker grabs hot pizza trays with an oven mitt. Instead, let the sizzling slop pour down your legs and stick to your unwilling knee skins, 3rd degree burns be cursed-- or better still, allow your soul full immersion to sights your eyeballs shrink to see. Filter not the ear-ringing that ensues upon crunching my message to its kernel: instead, flutter your lips with hosannanalia and cup your lucky ears to the wind. Be coarse and gay and twimble about the barn!
Do we dine, or die? Do we limp and lie, or crackle and fly?
A weekend awaits! Scan the movie-house schedules and build a future-barge to float your flopsy fantasies. You could dig a large hole, fill it with butter, jump headlong and cook yourself in predictable stews. You could snort vast quantities of otherworldly powders, seductively expedient shortcuts to ectasy - but would they open your essence to its inner eagle?
Fantastic figures of otherwise ordinary citizens, drowning each other with carefulness to keep all volume at a medium -- to Styx with them, they lack all glitter. I insist upon a more potent jamboree. I will have a violent clashing of words, and I will sweep up all the hairy leavings and build a magic pillow to sleep through this incredible assault of boredom that cankers my skin to dust!
BLARGH!
1/15/2009
1/14/2009
8 Ideas for Blogonomic Stimulus
Latest reports from Statistics Blogger showed I posted only 31 times in 2008, which is--ouch--less than 10% of my first year output, when I posted exactly 365 times, or almost once per day (2004 was a leap year).
Ideas to get me out of my blogonomic recession:
1) Tax-free blogging accounts. Own a blog, pay no taxes on that blog.
2) Make-work blog posts. Fill a page with words, post it, don't worry about editing. Could look something like this:
Wait a sec, I already do a bit of this...
3) Invest in solar, geothermal and other alternative-energy writing strategies. Screw my Mac's AC adaptor, I'm installing a wind turbine: This should create 5,000,000 highly intelligent and dynamic green-sector blog posts by 2015.
4) Increase blog unemployment benefits. Instead of beating myself up over lazines, buy more lattés and stare therapeutically into space.
5) Blog protectionism. I'll blog only about my blog and its blog products. Pageviews may suffer, but at least I won't get any bad comments.
6) Rewrite old posts to compete with bleeding edge products. This means reworking beastly screeds like this into punchy grabbums like this. Take that, TMZ!
7) Blog ironically about the economy.Yes, tackling the global financial mess with wit and verve.
8) More lists. God they're so easy.
Ideas to get me out of my blogonomic recession:
1) Tax-free blogging accounts. Own a blog, pay no taxes on that blog.
2) Make-work blog posts. Fill a page with words, post it, don't worry about editing. Could look something like this:
Flark doodle pansy poop ina fracktacular momentous goop handled fridge magnet moneymaker. Did things like pizza ever pepper the peonies till poems proud did pander out to the west side of the syrup factory foreman's left ankle? Oh crows in a cello salesman's wallet! Eat more Pez and gargle Listerine lustily till the edge of the cole slaw melted more quickly than a bridge builder boosted a bashful boy. If the Fez freaks ever drown a tadpole then I've got more legs than a horned owls has feathers. If that doesn't impress you, then read this, gawk slackjawed and grew twenty extra pairs of ears. Oh yes, the expectations of an oration after Obama's inauguration let's turn off CNN and focus on Playstation...
Wait a sec, I already do a bit of this...
3) Invest in solar, geothermal and other alternative-energy writing strategies. Screw my Mac's AC adaptor, I'm installing a wind turbine: This should create 5,000,000 highly intelligent and dynamic green-sector blog posts by 2015.
4) Increase blog unemployment benefits. Instead of beating myself up over lazines, buy more lattés and stare therapeutically into space.
5) Blog protectionism. I'll blog only about my blog and its blog products. Pageviews may suffer, but at least I won't get any bad comments.
6) Rewrite old posts to compete with bleeding edge products. This means reworking beastly screeds like this into punchy grabbums like this. Take that, TMZ!
7) Blog ironically about the economy.Yes, tackling the global financial mess with wit and verve.
8) More lists. God they're so easy.
1/06/2009
Commuter sentence
Winter loses bloom and leaves
on the ground and the freeze thaw cycle
makes thick jagged potholes right on major roadways like
Bathurst. I live on an arterial road, something about the circulation of the city
I bike uphill to work, I almost die every morning nearly creamed by cabbies I
ride a two wheeled prayer got to make it over frozen tiny ice hills that send
tires skidding dangerous my face brushes concrete curbs I arrive at the office covered in
sweat and dirt
on the ground and the freeze thaw cycle
makes thick jagged potholes right on major roadways like
Bathurst. I live on an arterial road, something about the circulation of the city
I bike uphill to work, I almost die every morning nearly creamed by cabbies I
ride a two wheeled prayer got to make it over frozen tiny ice hills that send
tires skidding dangerous my face brushes concrete curbs I arrive at the office covered in
sweat and dirt
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So...
1) Online readers love to read news
BUT
2) Advertisers no longer want to advertise with it
SO, WHO WILL PAY FOR THE NEWS? ANSWER:
3) Telco/Cable Monopolies
WHO
4) Buy up newspaper organizations (already doing so and will increasingly pick up the remaining scraps, dirt cheap)
AND
5) Charge subscribers in their monthly bill.
So instead of reading newspapers for $100/year subscription, we’ll pay min $500/yr (in Canada) to read news online (and Twitter, and Facebook, and watch porn) via our internet bill, and an extra $600/yr to get it on our mobile phones. Instead of $100 for news, we pay $1100.
Wow, our generation is so advanced. We just agreed to the biggest upsell in history.