(my random act of kindness)
I was searching my hair for lice, with a comb. On the edge of the comb was a sticky note, with the words "Jihad is Wrong ~Jimmy Carter". I immediately dialed Jimmy Carter's number in Washington and told him he misplaced his sticky note. He said thanks and could I Fedex it over? I said yes and did just that, and as Carter wrote later in his memoirs, he gave the sticky note to its intended recipient, the Ayatolllah Khomeini. Since that time Iran has launched no nuclear weapons, and if our world leaders keep using 3M sticky notes, they probably never will. That's how I made the world a safer place (and no longer have head lice).
10/24/2008
10/02/2008
My screen is shattered but hell you need me
Never been so unrestrained and yet focused, never has this weight vanished so blessedly, never have I been so free to be so me. The blog was awaiting my sigh; I was never pompous about the need for purity. I boycotted for the first time, on strike to guarantee my lifeline, twisting in an hourglass until I found the time.
We observe and ape wild seductive methods, untrue expedients that succeed at blurry distance, we are consigned to blunt objects, brute conclusions, frozen resolute regretful obtrusions.
I won't rhyme just cuz I'm able, but pair sound and sense deliberately, so that the rhythm doesn't run off with the brain, a syllabic concatenation as runaway train.
***
[I dance sometimes in the early morning, don't mind me if I do. I will wake you up, my buttercup, and make you breakfast too.]
We observe and ape wild seductive methods, untrue expedients that succeed at blurry distance, we are consigned to blunt objects, brute conclusions, frozen resolute regretful obtrusions.
I won't rhyme just cuz I'm able, but pair sound and sense deliberately, so that the rhythm doesn't run off with the brain, a syllabic concatenation as runaway train.
***
[I dance sometimes in the early morning, don't mind me if I do. I will wake you up, my buttercup, and make you breakfast too.]
8/27/2008
Twenty five minutes and I'm gone
(killing time -- I missed it)
Limits get results, a hurdle before me artificially coaxes creativity, squeezing blood from oblivion, inspiring netizens to dig within. But if I'm remembered for one thing, bronzed on a pin and shouted about at parties for a game where winning didn't matter, was anti-matter, where I was thick of skin, that's when I dissolve grudges and begin:
There are lights above the muck, and I get shivers in my spine, even from the firetrucks
A toast then, to the marathon men, I was one of them, I ran, broke all my bones; I spent my very best years raising funds over telephone. What then, did I get? A slap on the back and five percent bonus on my paycheque.
But I'm fine with fruit, cave slaving, my shiny bag of loot. (I have a saxophone in my laptop bag, and there are online forums too for how to play the flute).
What boredom! We are constantly at war. No wonder how we snore. For if all the world agreed, there would be anarchy. Hands in the air? Me! me! Buddha won't let me be, until he humbles me (They penalize who's first in line to extinguish all their greed).
Limits get results, a hurdle before me artificially coaxes creativity, squeezing blood from oblivion, inspiring netizens to dig within. But if I'm remembered for one thing, bronzed on a pin and shouted about at parties for a game where winning didn't matter, was anti-matter, where I was thick of skin, that's when I dissolve grudges and begin:
There are lights above the muck, and I get shivers in my spine, even from the firetrucks
A toast then, to the marathon men, I was one of them, I ran, broke all my bones; I spent my very best years raising funds over telephone. What then, did I get? A slap on the back and five percent bonus on my paycheque.
But I'm fine with fruit, cave slaving, my shiny bag of loot. (I have a saxophone in my laptop bag, and there are online forums too for how to play the flute).
What boredom! We are constantly at war. No wonder how we snore. For if all the world agreed, there would be anarchy. Hands in the air? Me! me! Buddha won't let me be, until he humbles me (They penalize who's first in line to extinguish all their greed).
8/25/2008
Whither
Broken silence is regretful
When absence is the thing I've lacked
But generalizations, I find too stressful
That's how I earn my 'Man in Black'
I don't thrive on exposition
not so much secrecy as I'm too tired
The only thing I can't remember is
what life was like before the wire.
When absence is the thing I've lacked
But generalizations, I find too stressful
That's how I earn my 'Man in Black'
I don't thrive on exposition
not so much secrecy as I'm too tired
The only thing I can't remember is
what life was like before the wire.
7/23/2008
Watching the chili
I miss you, PM
More than [The size and shape of a nuclear plant cooling tower.]
But now the Internet won't leave me alone.
I would explain more [the above parentheses] but
digits are my job and spitting syllables becomes the enemy, totally foreign to
reveal my mind when my only breath is to
enjoy emptiness, embrace blank slates and
skip along with contentment upon
encountering my harried fellow
citizens in the shopping mall.
More than [The size and shape of a nuclear plant cooling tower.]
But now the Internet won't leave me alone.
I would explain more [the above parentheses] but
digits are my job and spitting syllables becomes the enemy, totally foreign to
reveal my mind when my only breath is to
enjoy emptiness, embrace blank slates and
skip along with contentment upon
encountering my harried fellow
citizens in the shopping mall.
7/15/2008
Admiring my empire from inside a bottle of ketchup
O, rude people, sad citizens, drowning in your thick-necked wizardry and donkey-minded back-and-forthery--will there be a peaceful moment for my clucking to cash your quickness? Hep, young lackeys! Untether my goats. I am hastened toward doom if no wench can cut through ear crusts and mend her wayward belching. If I sneeze in your face, and your brain is beslimed, your guts unsteady, then inhale that wet whisky and redouble yourself all the more!
Yech. I am agog, filled with brine. I rain these invectives for a reason, yet you quiver as toads under a shepherd's boot. Do you choose life, or loathing? Parcels of piffle, or proof and providence? Alliteration, or agony? All the more I impel you and yet you crumple in your daily quagmire. A martyr's death I'll choose before lurching under your bloodfisted baron's capricious yoke.
What there? An unassuming Olympiad? Call my mile-long trains and plunder them for a feast. Oh bottler, a million buckets of creamed soda! A tyrant's end to the unworthy! A joyous clanging amid the cock's drudgerous crow! A re-boinking of all redundancy and extra melting under the warm watery sun!!!
Yech. I am agog, filled with brine. I rain these invectives for a reason, yet you quiver as toads under a shepherd's boot. Do you choose life, or loathing? Parcels of piffle, or proof and providence? Alliteration, or agony? All the more I impel you and yet you crumple in your daily quagmire. A martyr's death I'll choose before lurching under your bloodfisted baron's capricious yoke.
What there? An unassuming Olympiad? Call my mile-long trains and plunder them for a feast. Oh bottler, a million buckets of creamed soda! A tyrant's end to the unworthy! A joyous clanging amid the cock's drudgerous crow! A re-boinking of all redundancy and extra melting under the warm watery sun!!!
7/13/2008
Things are rather flonk
Flonkishness abounds. There are many reasons. Copious like grains of sand. I was prappish, I was dunglish, but now all is frisia and butterscones, glashnoo and punabbly.
We wonder why it took so long for this vortex of meanderglow. But patience, like a feather grack, floats in far flung crevices.
Is there a brighter boygan? Is there a likelier mass of marzifleck—in oceans of under the riverbed? I know not.
Oh peppered pillows of pink, inside the undermount sink! Floating clockwise down a stainless steel drain, mixed up with macadamia and sprinkled by rain. Opium poppy powder pizza-pie piledrivers are often discussed, picked apart and proferred but in mid-July we sing instead the snappish chart toppers. Do I wheeze when sun rays are like lanterns of shiny hair? I don't think so, I just don't care.
As for blondie, she and me are in the middle of our history, no time to write, when we use up all the light admiring the light.
We wonder why it took so long for this vortex of meanderglow. But patience, like a feather grack, floats in far flung crevices.
Is there a brighter boygan? Is there a likelier mass of marzifleck—in oceans of under the riverbed? I know not.
Oh peppered pillows of pink, inside the undermount sink! Floating clockwise down a stainless steel drain, mixed up with macadamia and sprinkled by rain. Opium poppy powder pizza-pie piledrivers are often discussed, picked apart and proferred but in mid-July we sing instead the snappish chart toppers. Do I wheeze when sun rays are like lanterns of shiny hair? I don't think so, I just don't care.
As for blondie, she and me are in the middle of our history, no time to write, when we use up all the light admiring the light.
6/09/2008
Love in the Diner (04/07)
I had a strange experience today
After a 30km bike ride to the Beaches
and back in the spitting wind,
I finally made a break at Bathurst and College
at the College St Diner which
serves excellent pancakes although it has been known
to charge 50 cents a packet for strawberry jam.
In my recent streak of sheer psychic excitement
I've concluded I must be having a telepathic effect on total strangers
so wrapped up am I in this, this thing for which I have too much respect to name
that steam is pouring out my ears and infecting others
anyway it must have been a sign when
just after I ordered the 'Can't Talk, Eating' hungry-man special
four goodlooking philosophers (definitely not Toronto natives) - one woman, three men -
well coiffed, toned, erudite and inquisitive
sat down next to me and proceeded
to hold forth on
LOVE
'what love is' one of them asked
and that hooked me
and what's the difference between love and being in love
and whether love is an overused word
how it means whatever it wants to mean to whomever wants to use it
how the word means nothing at all, really
and how words generally do that.
I couldn't believe my ears
these philosophers
thirtysomething professorial types
the kind who can breezily discern semantics over brunch
the four most intelligent people on the planet, really
having this analytical argument
about the meaning of love
in which
my universe hung in the balance
they were talking about me
everything seems to be about me lately
- I deserve a healthy shake, I know -
I would have banged my sugar shaker on the table
to get their attention
saying 'hey folks, love is war and
you're looking at one of the foot soldiers!'
but I'm trying to give up sugar
in favour of healthier smoothie-type things
and so I kept silent
and they kept mocking me
four feet away
but the coincidence was too precious so
resourceful as I am I
asked the waitress for a pen
so I could jot this down for later
that was my revenge for
them talking about me and my war
ie me writing about them
so I unfolded my bike map of toronto
with the entire city depicted
(I use that map to figure out how to get around)
and wrote all over it but now it's ruined as
in scribbling in all of this
my words filled in all of lake ontario and half of the downtown west end.
(i know I must be preoccupied these days
but there are sensible ways to deal with it and there are crazy ones for
instance
on the way out of the diner
thinking about what it all meant
I accidentally walked right smack into the
women's bathroom
I guess I was looking for you
luckily no one screamed
but boy was I red.)
After a 30km bike ride to the Beaches
and back in the spitting wind,
I finally made a break at Bathurst and College
at the College St Diner which
serves excellent pancakes although it has been known
to charge 50 cents a packet for strawberry jam.
In my recent streak of sheer psychic excitement
I've concluded I must be having a telepathic effect on total strangers
so wrapped up am I in this, this thing for which I have too much respect to name
that steam is pouring out my ears and infecting others
anyway it must have been a sign when
just after I ordered the 'Can't Talk, Eating' hungry-man special
four goodlooking philosophers (definitely not Toronto natives) - one woman, three men -
well coiffed, toned, erudite and inquisitive
sat down next to me and proceeded
to hold forth on
LOVE
'what love is' one of them asked
and that hooked me
and what's the difference between love and being in love
and whether love is an overused word
how it means whatever it wants to mean to whomever wants to use it
how the word means nothing at all, really
and how words generally do that.
I couldn't believe my ears
these philosophers
thirtysomething professorial types
the kind who can breezily discern semantics over brunch
the four most intelligent people on the planet, really
having this analytical argument
about the meaning of love
in which
my universe hung in the balance
they were talking about me
everything seems to be about me lately
- I deserve a healthy shake, I know -
I would have banged my sugar shaker on the table
to get their attention
saying 'hey folks, love is war and
you're looking at one of the foot soldiers!'
but I'm trying to give up sugar
in favour of healthier smoothie-type things
and so I kept silent
and they kept mocking me
four feet away
but the coincidence was too precious so
resourceful as I am I
asked the waitress for a pen
so I could jot this down for later
that was my revenge for
them talking about me and my war
ie me writing about them
so I unfolded my bike map of toronto
with the entire city depicted
(I use that map to figure out how to get around)
and wrote all over it but now it's ruined as
in scribbling in all of this
my words filled in all of lake ontario and half of the downtown west end.
(i know I must be preoccupied these days
but there are sensible ways to deal with it and there are crazy ones for
instance
on the way out of the diner
thinking about what it all meant
I accidentally walked right smack into the
women's bathroom
I guess I was looking for you
luckily no one screamed
but boy was I red.)
5/27/2008
Built to last
Oh big boy, long at the beginning and thin in the end, mend yourself, send yourself a note, what it was she wrote.
Aggrandize, release, contemplate, celebrate, scrivel in disappearing ink what everyone thinks. The columnists, calumnists, trysts in the mist, the abcess, the cyst.
Aggrandize, release, contemplate, celebrate, scrivel in disappearing ink what everyone thinks. The columnists, calumnists, trysts in the mist, the abcess, the cyst.
5/14/2008
2 wheels good, 4 wheels bad
(written in 2007, posted today)
I got hit by a car, for the third time, while on my bike and I’ve got say it’s begun to upset me.
What upsets me most is how much I deserved it. A blow to my pride.
I realize I’m a tempting target, resplendent in my plastic helmet, legs pumping like a comely gazelle, just asking to be gunned down by the nearest metal death machine. I realize that bicycles have no place on the road, and that if a 15-tonne truck fails to see me it is completely my fault. Under the ‘survival of the fittest’ (not athletically fit, but 'he who possesses the most body armour' principle) there is no getting around blaming the victim.
Of course if bicycles dare to enter mixed traffic, they are vehicles under the Highway Traffic Act. Since the Highway Traffic Act was designed by motorists, for motorists, what this means is that bikes are actually cars. They are not, in fact, bikes. What a coup!
While upwardly mobile types may see this as promotion, I fear it is a misclassification. Unfortunately there is something called reality, which makes life and driving very inconvenient. The Highway Traffic Act is right: bikes are no different from a cement mixer, which is why I guess this last driver who hit me got confused; he thought I was one of his buddies and just wanted to give me a friendly tap. In a similar exercise in reality: when I put my bike helmet in the fridge, it actually becomes a watermelon, so it should come as no surprise if my girlfriend eats my helmet while I’m in the ICU recovering from latest cement-mixer love tap. Once again, it’s completely my fault.
Clearly, helmets do not belong in the fridge, and cyclists do not belong on the road. We must not allow a light, convenient mode of traffic to infest the asphalt, omitting to pollute and omitting to destroy the expensive right of way. Bicycles are too fast for downtown traffic, which according to longstanding traditions ought to function at a crawl. Have you ever seen a cyclist zip through a completely unnecessary traffic signal downtown, as though he had figured out a better way to navigate the road? Not to sit at an intersection and wait for a traffic light - what a horrendous level of efficiency! It’s as though with cyclists, the millions we spend on traffic signals would be completely redundant. This is a mockery! Not to mention we spend hundreds of millions of dollars a year repairing our roadways so that cars and trucks may continue to revert them to rubble. Why, my bike’s failure to destroy the roads threatens to put thousands of construction crews out of work. Why should our politicians divert workers to build subways when they can clean up after automobile wreckage? (Enough nonsense - cars can’t drive on subway tracks, not until we invent special wheels for them.)
Of course, a car goes fast. Much faster than a bike. Yet somehow, lots of cars put together don’t go so fast. When you put 1.5 million cars in Toronto – they go very very slow. The more of them there are, the slower they go? How is this possible; I must be bad at math! Yet I’ve seen it every time downtown: the slower they go, the faster my bike goes in comparison.
But who cares about that anyway, because driving in a car makes you feel free! Free to travel across the country, stopping at every fast-food monopoly at the government-allocated rest stops along the way. Free to pay thousands in mandatory insurance fees, free to line up at the gas pump, free to be fleeced by your mechanic. So free! Free to go wherever you want to go, as long as there are roads, and as long as you don’t mind being surrounded by thousands of cars, all exercising their freedom to commute 90km a day from the suburbs – free to give up any alternative to your car! You’re an individual, so don’t bother to share space on the subway. So free! So many millions of motorists, all exercising their freedom in exactly the same way on an identical stretch of road! Freedom to do what you want - that’s what makes the Highway Traffic Act and the hundreds of rules you need to learn to obtain your license so great!
But yes, there is traffic! Solution? Build more roads, so more cars can rocket around to more places! Will the traffic come to the new roads too? I’ve got a hunch it won’t. Somehow, drivers will stop crowding the roads if we keep paving the city and turn all available urban land over to cars! I’m bad at math, so who cares about logic too!
Will we ever give up cars? Likely not. For this involves heeding another feature of reality, namely history. It was actually the League of American Wheelmen, a cycling interest group, who got American roads paved over, before there were cars everywhere, in the late 19th and early 20th century. Thankfully we have managed to forget this. We don’t want motorists to feel guilty about dispossessing someone else’s territory, pretending it was theirs all along, and then lay waste to it – those pesky Indians make us feel guilty enough for stuff like that.
And so a few of us are sacrificed each year, in the name of tunnel vision, denial and a complete lack of common sense. So be it. I managed to survive my last three love taps, but when my number comes up, I’ll fly gleefully off the handles toward the tough but fair arms of that fateful telephone pole. It’s tough love from that cement-mixer, I guess, because it’s love.
I got hit by a car, for the third time, while on my bike and I’ve got say it’s begun to upset me.
What upsets me most is how much I deserved it. A blow to my pride.
I realize I’m a tempting target, resplendent in my plastic helmet, legs pumping like a comely gazelle, just asking to be gunned down by the nearest metal death machine. I realize that bicycles have no place on the road, and that if a 15-tonne truck fails to see me it is completely my fault. Under the ‘survival of the fittest’ (not athletically fit, but 'he who possesses the most body armour' principle) there is no getting around blaming the victim.
Of course if bicycles dare to enter mixed traffic, they are vehicles under the Highway Traffic Act. Since the Highway Traffic Act was designed by motorists, for motorists, what this means is that bikes are actually cars. They are not, in fact, bikes. What a coup!
While upwardly mobile types may see this as promotion, I fear it is a misclassification. Unfortunately there is something called reality, which makes life and driving very inconvenient. The Highway Traffic Act is right: bikes are no different from a cement mixer, which is why I guess this last driver who hit me got confused; he thought I was one of his buddies and just wanted to give me a friendly tap. In a similar exercise in reality: when I put my bike helmet in the fridge, it actually becomes a watermelon, so it should come as no surprise if my girlfriend eats my helmet while I’m in the ICU recovering from latest cement-mixer love tap. Once again, it’s completely my fault.
Clearly, helmets do not belong in the fridge, and cyclists do not belong on the road. We must not allow a light, convenient mode of traffic to infest the asphalt, omitting to pollute and omitting to destroy the expensive right of way. Bicycles are too fast for downtown traffic, which according to longstanding traditions ought to function at a crawl. Have you ever seen a cyclist zip through a completely unnecessary traffic signal downtown, as though he had figured out a better way to navigate the road? Not to sit at an intersection and wait for a traffic light - what a horrendous level of efficiency! It’s as though with cyclists, the millions we spend on traffic signals would be completely redundant. This is a mockery! Not to mention we spend hundreds of millions of dollars a year repairing our roadways so that cars and trucks may continue to revert them to rubble. Why, my bike’s failure to destroy the roads threatens to put thousands of construction crews out of work. Why should our politicians divert workers to build subways when they can clean up after automobile wreckage? (Enough nonsense - cars can’t drive on subway tracks, not until we invent special wheels for them.)
Of course, a car goes fast. Much faster than a bike. Yet somehow, lots of cars put together don’t go so fast. When you put 1.5 million cars in Toronto – they go very very slow. The more of them there are, the slower they go? How is this possible; I must be bad at math! Yet I’ve seen it every time downtown: the slower they go, the faster my bike goes in comparison.
But who cares about that anyway, because driving in a car makes you feel free! Free to travel across the country, stopping at every fast-food monopoly at the government-allocated rest stops along the way. Free to pay thousands in mandatory insurance fees, free to line up at the gas pump, free to be fleeced by your mechanic. So free! Free to go wherever you want to go, as long as there are roads, and as long as you don’t mind being surrounded by thousands of cars, all exercising their freedom to commute 90km a day from the suburbs – free to give up any alternative to your car! You’re an individual, so don’t bother to share space on the subway. So free! So many millions of motorists, all exercising their freedom in exactly the same way on an identical stretch of road! Freedom to do what you want - that’s what makes the Highway Traffic Act and the hundreds of rules you need to learn to obtain your license so great!
But yes, there is traffic! Solution? Build more roads, so more cars can rocket around to more places! Will the traffic come to the new roads too? I’ve got a hunch it won’t. Somehow, drivers will stop crowding the roads if we keep paving the city and turn all available urban land over to cars! I’m bad at math, so who cares about logic too!
Will we ever give up cars? Likely not. For this involves heeding another feature of reality, namely history. It was actually the League of American Wheelmen, a cycling interest group, who got American roads paved over, before there were cars everywhere, in the late 19th and early 20th century. Thankfully we have managed to forget this. We don’t want motorists to feel guilty about dispossessing someone else’s territory, pretending it was theirs all along, and then lay waste to it – those pesky Indians make us feel guilty enough for stuff like that.
And so a few of us are sacrificed each year, in the name of tunnel vision, denial and a complete lack of common sense. So be it. I managed to survive my last three love taps, but when my number comes up, I’ll fly gleefully off the handles toward the tough but fair arms of that fateful telephone pole. It’s tough love from that cement-mixer, I guess, because it’s love.
5/08/2008
5/05/2008
To/from us
We tumbled head over shoulder, face down on the sidewalk, end over end, jacket on the pavement, quite literally on the way to the movies, metaphorically much more. Open doors, evaporating clouds, hearing music never known because our hearts are turned up loud.
We got a little left tonight, we stroll along the lake, we won that right, your day off today after all, and I see your eyes are made of light.
My job's making music out of music. I mix it up to make it right. Now you've meta-musician, skip the sounds and wave to the waves, each song a ripple stitched together, interlinked as levers, free, no cost except what we couldn't save.
On the wall is the picture of the shadow of the kiss in the sand, and the stereo plays the eternal band, it's Mick and Keith and Bowie and the Cult and sweet soul sister, your little hand is in my hand.
We got a little left tonight, we stroll along the lake, we won that right, your day off today after all, and I see your eyes are made of light.
My job's making music out of music. I mix it up to make it right. Now you've meta-musician, skip the sounds and wave to the waves, each song a ripple stitched together, interlinked as levers, free, no cost except what we couldn't save.
On the wall is the picture of the shadow of the kiss in the sand, and the stereo plays the eternal band, it's Mick and Keith and Bowie and the Cult and sweet soul sister, your little hand is in my hand.
4/30/2008
M&J Discuss Anticipation
(March 31, 2007)
M: So you met her?
J: Not yet
M: What are you going to do?
J: Repaint my walls. Buy new clothes, get a face lift, the usual.
M: But you don’t have to change, you’re good enough.
J: Oh but good enough isn’t good enough for me.
M: For me or for her?
J: For her for me.
M: What does she want?
J: I don’t know but I’m afraid.
M: That's not right.
J: Oh but it is.
...
M: Facebook makes all my friends look so small
J: We were special once.
M: I never understood, don’t fill in all those likes and dislikes.
...
J: Generalized anxiety or somesuch.
...
J: I’m spotting flaws in Bob Dylan’s vocal delivery.
M: You are intolerable.
J: What is the point? I get jarred every time I go up North.
M: Aren’t you tired of nothing making sense?
J: I still believe I can fight the world.
M: You’re a fook
J: God bless the fools. They refuse to accept reality.
M: I said fook, not fool.
J: Whatever.
M: I think so often a word spoken at the right time could change a person’s life.
J: At my 100th birthday, I’m going to get up and make a three hour speech. I will have every single guest stand up and I will say something nice about each of them,
M; Why don’t you just wash everyone’s feet?
J: That would take too long.
M: More than three hours?
J: Never mind. I’ve had it to here being where love’s a small word.
M: Neil Diamond?
J: Yep
M: So you met her?
J: Not yet
M: What are you going to do?
J: Repaint my walls. Buy new clothes, get a face lift, the usual.
M: But you don’t have to change, you’re good enough.
J: Oh but good enough isn’t good enough for me.
M: For me or for her?
J: For her for me.
M: What does she want?
J: I don’t know but I’m afraid.
M: That's not right.
J: Oh but it is.
...
M: Facebook makes all my friends look so small
J: We were special once.
M: I never understood, don’t fill in all those likes and dislikes.
...
J: Generalized anxiety or somesuch.
...
J: I’m spotting flaws in Bob Dylan’s vocal delivery.
M: You are intolerable.
J: What is the point? I get jarred every time I go up North.
M: Aren’t you tired of nothing making sense?
J: I still believe I can fight the world.
M: You’re a fook
J: God bless the fools. They refuse to accept reality.
M: I said fook, not fool.
J: Whatever.
M: I think so often a word spoken at the right time could change a person’s life.
J: At my 100th birthday, I’m going to get up and make a three hour speech. I will have every single guest stand up and I will say something nice about each of them,
M; Why don’t you just wash everyone’s feet?
J: That would take too long.
M: More than three hours?
J: Never mind. I’ve had it to here being where love’s a small word.
M: Neil Diamond?
J: Yep
4/03/2008
July 24, 2005
(prequel to as-yet nonexistent brunch blog)
What: Brunch
Where: 10:40am Cafe Luna, Dovercourt and Argyle, Toronto
Who: PT [that's me], KF, DT, SB, MG.
Resolutions passed:
MG reports attempt at 'lost key' ploy to pick up cute waitress at Hooters, but does not succeed. Embroiled in own deceit, he is forced to discuss whereabouts of phantom non-keys with manager, as waitress was nonplussed. MG to return for 3rd Hooters outing in less than a month after otherwise lifelong Hooters boycott.
Party Announced: "Theme Thursday", July 28. Normally "Waffle Wednesdays" but to conform to alliterative nomenclatural procedures this will be "Theme Thursday, colon, waffles." Possibility of chicken and waffles or other savoury, non-Belgian recipes. Unfortunately MV (third Chateau Nice housemate, sidelined with ovaries) cannot attend. 'Moon waffles' proposed to celebrate the anniversarial achievement of that great astronaut and dessert aficionado, Neil Armstrong.
SB relates near-brush with megastardom, demonstrating scanning equipment for Tom Cruise's Mission Impossible 3. Unfortch SB does not get to demo scanner and meet the megastar.
Out of nowhere PT proclaims high-speed mag-lev trains needed across Canada, a project for national unity. Airplanes (those white elephants of the sky) do not suffice.
MG to visit Germany for World Cup and then wants to stay for Oktoberfest. Thinks it impractical to stay away that long. PT suggests he bone up on German and then be key Canadian player in the beer fest, influencing international events with linguistic fluency.
Talk of Masonry, conspiracy theory, secret handshakes, pirates, and gold buried in Oak Island, Nova Scotia. Botched attempt by PT to take cellphone photo of Masonic symbol etched above restroom toilet.
MG is reading a book about psychic American troops training to explode goats' hearts with staring tactics. Incredulity around the table.
Final bill: $101.90 plus tip = $120
What: Brunch
Where: 10:40am Cafe Luna, Dovercourt and Argyle, Toronto
Who: PT [that's me], KF, DT, SB, MG.
Resolutions passed:
- brunch
- conversation
MG reports attempt at 'lost key' ploy to pick up cute waitress at Hooters, but does not succeed. Embroiled in own deceit, he is forced to discuss whereabouts of phantom non-keys with manager, as waitress was nonplussed. MG to return for 3rd Hooters outing in less than a month after otherwise lifelong Hooters boycott.
Party Announced: "Theme Thursday", July 28. Normally "Waffle Wednesdays" but to conform to alliterative nomenclatural procedures this will be "Theme Thursday, colon, waffles." Possibility of chicken and waffles or other savoury, non-Belgian recipes. Unfortunately MV (third Chateau Nice housemate, sidelined with ovaries) cannot attend. 'Moon waffles' proposed to celebrate the anniversarial achievement of that great astronaut and dessert aficionado, Neil Armstrong.
SB relates near-brush with megastardom, demonstrating scanning equipment for Tom Cruise's Mission Impossible 3. Unfortch SB does not get to demo scanner and meet the megastar.
Out of nowhere PT proclaims high-speed mag-lev trains needed across Canada, a project for national unity. Airplanes (those white elephants of the sky) do not suffice.
MG to visit Germany for World Cup and then wants to stay for Oktoberfest. Thinks it impractical to stay away that long. PT suggests he bone up on German and then be key Canadian player in the beer fest, influencing international events with linguistic fluency.
Talk of Masonry, conspiracy theory, secret handshakes, pirates, and gold buried in Oak Island, Nova Scotia. Botched attempt by PT to take cellphone photo of Masonic symbol etched above restroom toilet.
MG is reading a book about psychic American troops training to explode goats' hearts with staring tactics. Incredulity around the table.
Final bill: $101.90 plus tip = $120
4/01/2008
Saddest Music
- I Can't Forget You - Cracker
- Funny How Time Slips Away - Al Green
- Catch - The Cure
- Tom Traubert's Blues - Tom Waits
- Not Dark Yet - Bob Dylan
- Hung My Head - Johnny Cash
- Emozioni - Lucio Battisti (Italian)
- Hotel Supramonte - Fabrizio de Andre (Italian)
- Zero Chance - Soundgarden
- The Day John Kennedy Died - Lou Reed
- I'll Believe in Anything - Wolf Parade
- Autumn's Here - Hawksley Workman
- Fake Plastic Trees - Radiohead
- Mother - John Lennon
- Bad - U2
- Fiddlers Green - The Tragically Hip
- Oh! Sweet Nuthin' - The Velvet Underground
3/26/2008
AbZorba the Priest
(clear throat, now preach)
Dryness delivers forest fires. Sustained silence breeds bursting. Bottlenecked threat blows through. Half-eaten hearts, eerie, humans, ever less human, more or less omniscient contempt. I'd cancel next season's episodes but there's news to pre-empt:
I am in love, it's good, was out of use, this sprawling blog, this lyrical noose, metaphysically ominous, abstruse, why not clot it? Ah not to let loose, lips tighten with a love bite, yet I am, mirrored, jammed, like all of us, doomed to write.
So stand, be counted. But count on nothing. Don't understand, instruct. Anticipate everything and you won't know bad luck.
My guitar's in storage after my house burned down; I've been living like a tourist, knackered from knocking and choking on Chinatown. That song I was writing? Kinda cobwebbed. Call Betty, shake that tambourine, it's after Xmas now, we're left with shriveled tangerines.
How I shovelled and shovelled, just to see the road. I've seen too many shovels forshadowing this ode. By Jove, I need the lash, everyone in mouse-shot licks lips, clicks trash.
But I disappoint myself. This excuse is balderdash.
You work, right? You have a life. This virtual truth subsides, those legends in your mind, you are like Babe Ruth, a benevolent John Booth, want to help build Yankee Stadium? God, I never have the time. If I let me off the hook, if I don't write another book, I blame Playstation, Arcadium, tedium, tribulation, the trials of the medium.
Oh go get em, giddy up, I'm rusty yeah so cut me slack; I'm serving this up, so swallow it up, I sugared it up with a bottle of catchup—and the tender bits are around the corner.
Dryness delivers forest fires. Sustained silence breeds bursting. Bottlenecked threat blows through. Half-eaten hearts, eerie, humans, ever less human, more or less omniscient contempt. I'd cancel next season's episodes but there's news to pre-empt:
I am in love, it's good, was out of use, this sprawling blog, this lyrical noose, metaphysically ominous, abstruse, why not clot it? Ah not to let loose, lips tighten with a love bite, yet I am, mirrored, jammed, like all of us, doomed to write.
So stand, be counted. But count on nothing. Don't understand, instruct. Anticipate everything and you won't know bad luck.
My guitar's in storage after my house burned down; I've been living like a tourist, knackered from knocking and choking on Chinatown. That song I was writing? Kinda cobwebbed. Call Betty, shake that tambourine, it's after Xmas now, we're left with shriveled tangerines.
How I shovelled and shovelled, just to see the road. I've seen too many shovels forshadowing this ode. By Jove, I need the lash, everyone in mouse-shot licks lips, clicks trash.
But I disappoint myself. This excuse is balderdash.
You work, right? You have a life. This virtual truth subsides, those legends in your mind, you are like Babe Ruth, a benevolent John Booth, want to help build Yankee Stadium? God, I never have the time. If I let me off the hook, if I don't write another book, I blame Playstation, Arcadium, tedium, tribulation, the trials of the medium.
Oh go get em, giddy up, I'm rusty yeah so cut me slack; I'm serving this up, so swallow it up, I sugared it up with a bottle of catchup—and the tender bits are around the corner.
3/17/2008
Throat clear
Beaten up and broken sided, long ago you were divided. He said I miss my wire act, my fruitful lack, rug patch and sad sack. Oh we didn't realize it did we, that everything would be read, the long tail roll call, by no one at all, this long holler into an empty drum, full of it, tossed by it, plucking its whiny thrum. So "the ants have megaphones" and their opinions are clones, rushing water on my eyes has got me stoned. Auditory hallucinogenic psychosis too long at the screen and the threat so long as you're sitting is deep-vein thrombosis.
2/13/2008
I'm Not Racist When You're Already Dead
Top ten peoples of antiquity I despise:
1. Phoenicians - apparently the first civilization to create the bireme. And the last civilization to discover deodorant! They became the Carthaginians, who were sacked by the Romans, aka my peeps. They spoke Punic. Or should it be P.U.nic. Famous for inventing the alphabet, and I glory in using their invention against them.
2. Visigoths - led by Alaric I, they sacked Rome - aka my peeps - in 410 AD. It still hurts, like they sacked me at 4:10 am Tuesday morning.
3. Cimbri - threatened my peeps around the 2nd century BC. I scoff at their Jutlandian origins.
Rounding out the top 10, minus justifications and unreadable Wikipedia links (besides it should be obvious):
4. Dravidians
5. Mycenaeans
6. Nubians
7. Amakelites (real sore spot there)
8. Beothuk
9. Gazpatcho
10. Minestrone
Ok, those last two are more soup than people. Nevertheless!
1. Phoenicians - apparently the first civilization to create the bireme. And the last civilization to discover deodorant! They became the Carthaginians, who were sacked by the Romans, aka my peeps. They spoke Punic. Or should it be P.U.nic. Famous for inventing the alphabet, and I glory in using their invention against them.
2. Visigoths - led by Alaric I, they sacked Rome - aka my peeps - in 410 AD. It still hurts, like they sacked me at 4:10 am Tuesday morning.
3. Cimbri - threatened my peeps around the 2nd century BC. I scoff at their Jutlandian origins.
Rounding out the top 10, minus justifications and unreadable Wikipedia links (besides it should be obvious):
4. Dravidians
5. Mycenaeans
6. Nubians
7. Amakelites (real sore spot there)
8. Beothuk
9. Gazpatcho
10. Minestrone
Ok, those last two are more soup than people. Nevertheless!
2/09/2008
5 ways to tell he doesn't like your turtleneck
(Cosmo, look out)
1) 'He' is your boss and you try to suck up by working late and he just says "You're fired for wearing that turtleneck."
2) You're sitting in a bus shelter and a crow flies at your face and pecks your forehead. Just then you get a text message asking you to buy a new turtleneck.
3) His favourite game is Words that Rhyme with Things I Hate and his answers are always "Thor Gerbil Heck" or "Yore Werble Schmeck."
4) He enters a pet store and cuts the neck off one of the turtles, and as he's arrested he says it's all your fault. You refuse to visit him in jail and he's partially relieved.
5) He successfully removes you from the endangered species list.
1) 'He' is your boss and you try to suck up by working late and he just says "You're fired for wearing that turtleneck."
2) You're sitting in a bus shelter and a crow flies at your face and pecks your forehead. Just then you get a text message asking you to buy a new turtleneck.
3) His favourite game is Words that Rhyme with Things I Hate and his answers are always "Thor Gerbil Heck" or "Yore Werble Schmeck."
4) He enters a pet store and cuts the neck off one of the turtles, and as he's arrested he says it's all your fault. You refuse to visit him in jail and he's partially relieved.
5) He successfully removes you from the endangered species list.
Waiting for the furniture to sell
Bodacious cutlass cuddles crowd pesky moray eels. Fashion fish fisticuffs gurgle to crescendo, raucous rallentando when your legs begin to go. Eek on mean streets, drag snow to sidewalks, talk hours to your mother on a walk around the block. He who was toned? Thrown in the clink. Outlaw maverick dries fruit inside a sink. Vishnu drank in shame, inside outside, that's how he earned his fame. Now it's Meebo and twitter, everyone too busy to hire a babysitter. The Mexicans are mild, Plaxico drove them wild. I'm from New England so I'm like a whining child. Oh you bugbears, sellers beware, hooking plastic drums to the tips of your hair - please learn to share. Now what to do with Friday nights? Explore alleyways with flashlights, place bets on fistfights, check my skin for parasites, awake my inner luddite.
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