Radiation release valve activated

Semiotic rifle, spoonful of trifle, we carry our cups to the dishwasher, rinsed, tossed, sealed, it's a cutlery holocaust. Tempers flare, totally tequila, bees in bonnets, nightmare sonnets:

Of his soul, it is dead, he buried it quickly with strokes of lead.

Bottle vapour is tough, but you'll be so high when you dig this stuff.

Be careful what you write: it might come true. I've been thinking about that since 2002.

There's no conspiracy - just fear and apathy. The stats are gnats; I count just fine. You can't predict a series in time.

Distrust what you know. You'll thank me later. Defeat him now - a reluctant debater.

Invisible hand removes the deadwood. Capitalism, man, it cuts down redwoods. Public institutions full of private people, bowing hypocritically for posts of unimportance? Inequality erases over time. My neighbour is starving, reeks of slime.

A reliable form of morality

A fairly reliable form of morality requires no holy books or eternal truths. If a question of right or wrong arises, simply ask yourself 'If everyone else I know did this thing, would I like it?' Saves a lot of time and gets pretty good results, in general. There are always exceptions.

Leggo the Lion

[sequel to Tony the Tiger]

Give us potato hash, and ready for the backlash. We want coiled licorice strings and fast-food onion rings. We want everything on our list, boxed and delivered and rung up on the exchange. Then the devil readies thugs to de-liver deadbeats, shivering and hungover waking in a bath of ice, and missing key internal organs - or so I've read once or twice.

Tall men in suits chuff effetely on the flute, lining up for coffee instead of kneeling in a pew. Why not be a coffee bean and never wonder why? I get steamed, I get drunk, I have swimwear in my trunks. I have a bank right in the clouds -- too bad the interest rates are junk.

Try to relax as the keys get stuck, the mind in muck, the wherewithal just out of plucking range, the chi, the Clear, the dianetical celebrisphere. Why not dabble in a bit of Scientology? L Ron's alright? Give new religions a chance, if we have no use for God, we gotta have SOME sort of crazy dance.

Leo the Lion wrote an airtight business case for getting the hell out of this place: to rent a forty-foot canoe big enough for him, me, you and half the local zoo. A simple fifty bucks a head; that is, unless they're two by two.

Obadiah Smith and Jersey Pocahontas, tied together on a raft, forced to agree while Ms. Rhythm had a laugh. She put a waterfall + jagged-rocks right where they shook hands, then she'll pile their shattered souls to blackmail the Pelican man.

Grow nuts! Yes, to plant seeds, you dig up dirt to build a tree. I never smiled at a toddler reading, seems so unfair -- I had a thirty year head start to also sit and stare, wonder what I was needing, to find a decent patch of air.

Ozark Ike and the TSX, robber barons merge agendas while a man in Muskoka builds a deck. In the June air above water 'round dusk you can only hear ducks. "I don't believe in boardrooms when my teenager drives a truck." Okeeochobee in Florida, palm trees ye high, I got no patience for humidity, and cockroaches creep by. Did you call the exterminator? He's got a hot date on the playa; men with blue collars have thick brown wrists, I'll put out the ant traps myself just this once - that guy deserves a filthy tryst.

Mona Decadona has cleavage she bought in Arizona, loaned $50K to wear her dreams in silicone, or silicon, body porn or cyber porn just makes another yawn. How can we afford to pay? We got money marts poppin' up like crickets off a log. I got facelift grannies melting in Phoenix in a slow midmorning jog. I got fatass secretaries poppin' Skittles I got human-as-dogs at forty bucks a kibble, getting groomed and massaged more than a man with a sledgehammer stance and cigarette breath ever will and you wonder why the onlines seeth with despair, every thought you ever had will splat against the stare, at forms you fill in, it's never enough, you are like me, guaranteed to leave - we got a forty-foot canoe, just me and you and Leo wishing he never learned to read.

Frances the Snark (or the Tower of Deafening Daredevilry)

[stretch old dusty limbs]

In the town of Ocanonda in the north-northwest part of Pitzmiel, on the coast of the Glaylish plain across from the Buntish Ocean -- where water bubbles of its own accord -- lay a snark den full of snarks. One snark in particular is the subject of this tale. Not just any snark. The snark was four-legged, hairy and tough, with an aardvark's disposition and a man's grasp of physics. Not just any man, but something like Niels Bohr's or Richard Feynman's grasp of phyics. Not just any physics, but quantum physics.

Now the town of Ocanonda was not of this Earth, but thanks to transdimensional teleportation and fibre optic spacetime-shifting the men of Ocanonda -- even ones who would mate with a snark -- had access to iTunes. This would mean nothing, of course, without an iPad. For Feynman in this universe was known only through the digital medium. Books of course, meant nothing along the coast of the Buntish Ocean. And all the better for the trees, particularly the knobblish and the punter trees, which heavily populated the Glaylish crescent, planted by colonial thrompets centuries before, during the Golden Age of Slag, the wanton trade of which conspiracy theorists believed made the Buntish waters boil. Of course, not many worried about such theories five furlongs deep in the lagoons near where our snark did spend his middle decades - at the edge of the waters that touched Ocanonda and made her snark-maidens (fully snark and in no way human) moist-eyed with romance and other rubbish rot. A rather picturesque place - worthy of a postcard, if punter trees indeed had ever been felled for such an industry.

The snark we will come to know -- though only those inside his mind could say so -- was nicknamed Franny and realnamed Frances. He was a solid Glaylish plain-snark who moved to the seaside for opportunity, to work part-time in the Slag mines, and be low-level PR flak for the sub-prefect #4 of Ocanonda, aka His Honour, Commodius Flatus, who was appointed to the post for no other reason than his seaside land holdings which yielded 5% of income (much less than the usual 15%) to the Ocanonda-Pitzmiel SupraRegional Treasury. Commodius Flatus' vast and wind-stubbled homestead included forty hectare fruit-groves of wannabi-dates, but was in no other way extraordinary except for its peculiar road-side construction works that included a tall thin tower of frozen mud which housed a wizened black-nosed Slag-monk who was nicknamed One-Eyed Cecil and realnamed Snert Cecilius.

[unfinished of course]

Should it concern me...

That I had all my good ideas seven years ago?

When the Internet reinvents itself, I'll be waiting.

Maybe I just need more of this.

The cupcakes are burnin

Trying to think of reasons to keep blogging. I may need to declare another hiatus. The pointlessness of it all is overpowering at the moment. Let's see how I feel tomorrow. In the meantime, check out this.

"Some swarthy sonufabitch scattered slurpee sauce up my sneakers!"

We grow fat at a magnificent pace, in this, the donut race, a cycle ride from Leaside up to 905 and back again - it makes  a man. Now I swallow mounds of fried magoo, as only I can do. An about-face, all about timing, pace, the business case. An obsession with a grand 'a-ha' makes magicians vanish senza trace. Prophalaxis upon members of the Axis would attract some serious debate. [Even Hitler bowed and scraped at Eva Braun's father's place??] Do I snicker when I say 'Djibouti', or a keep a straight face for 'Clafouti' - your snobbery eventually lands in a glove that only fits your hand.

Verbatim

Exercise
Write
Act, no plan
Read
Rent
Invest
Organize
Gather
Cultivate
Network
Get born
Flower
Flourish
Take stock
Account
Develop

Digitized Egos Take Up Less Space

Try harder than ever not to impress anybody. Soon you will evaporate and that will be wonderful.

Some wisdom just before lunch

1. Love it or list it--just get it out of my hallway, before I kick it off the balcony!
2. When a man is upset, cover his face with soothing lotions. When a man is on fire, do the same. This is a kind of consistency that few appreciate, least of all an angry burn victim.
3. The word 'factotum' will be downsized from the dictionary, forcing the phrase 'snap-scrotum' to do double duty. Many will be confused, and none will be pleased.
4. To avoid scandal, do not mix  yourself up in any assassination plots. This is harder than it looks. 
5. Drive more slowly, chew more noisily, breathe more forcefully, whistle more relentlessly. You will lose a few friends this way, but have awakened a way of life.

14 assertions you can take to the bank

[Don't ask me how I know, just know that you now know.]

1. Colbert and Stewart will get out of the satire business and decide to craft America's perfect root beer.
2. Petroleum proves to be made mostly out of leprechauns. The maxim "When you drill for oil, you disturb the Irish" will be in vogue. When you see a rainbow in your gasoline, remember where that pot of gold really is.
3. A tragic mistake is made when fifty thousand drums of ketchup are sent on a ship bound for Rotterdam, where they dunk french fries in mayonnaise only. Asked to explain himself, the ship's captain will argue his only true mistake was erasing last night's episode of Jeopardy!.
4. Things that melt in your mouth, not in your hand prove to be heretical to  flamethrowers, but obvious to fire eaters.
5. A drunk midget will control the levers of power in the European fashion industry. Those seeking access to top international designers must volunteer to stay sober and learn how to drive a tiny SUV.
6. A quest to reclaim the Holy Land from yuppies meets unforeseen obstacles when Jerusalem office workers discover yoga mats make very plush seat covers.
7. First Contact turns ugly when UFOs land at a CFO convention in Boston, demanding an audience with Earth's leaders. When the CFOs suggest the UFOs  should meet the Earth's CEOs, the aliens scoff at the perceived mispelling, and threaten to melt the planet with an infrared pulsar bomb while shouting 'UEOs! UEOs!' 
8. The Seventh Sign is revealed when Boris Yeltsin returns to Earth as an offensive defenseman for the Montreal Canadiens. When Yeltsin smites Sidney Crosby with a devastating hipcheck, siamese-twin serpents spring from holes in the ice and devour the injured Penguin's mouthguard, creating a YouTube sensation and earning Yeltsin the nickname 'Boris SnakeBite'
9. A madman races across the Sahara desert in search of free wifi access, stupidly unaware that the password is 'scorpion'.
10. The ghost of Queen Cleopatra proves to be an excellent predictor of 2014 World Cup outcomes. A special section for necromancers is installed in every sports booking table in Brazil casinos -- while a backlash against Paul the Octopus and other invertebrate prognosticators means the vast majority of calamari are still sliced up and fried or pickled.
11. Cartoon physicists cite evidence that Isaac Newton discovered gravity right before an anvil fell on his head, but tested his theories only after running off a cliff and looking down.
12. DJs and rappers will be forbidden from using capitals in their name, or any intentionally misspelled words. The only people allowed to misspell their names will be inner-city elementary school teachers, who sadistically force students to write out the new names hundreds of times on electric chalkboards they call 'scratchpads'.
13. Equal rights will be realized in an advanced society of sleepwalkers. Where you are from and who you know will not matter nearly as much how loud you snore, how padded your stairs are and whether your drool can be monetized.
14. Justice is finally done when, after centuries of having it land on them, sidewalks win the right to chew our gum.

Need change

I see what a mistake this has been.

I couldn't stop it though. It needed to roll all the way down hill.

I have set myself a deadline.

I will work toward it now.

There is no future in the social networks. The more they feed us, the emptier we feel.
 
Old things are best.

People need to figure that out for themselves.

Feel free to take advantage in the meantime.

No use bleating. How could any of us have known?

Zounds - 150 pounds

Unfortunately I find I'm unable to write. You never had that problem, never had to fight.

Swish in sandals, heavenly dreaded scandals singing overlong in temples gold and making men feel young and old. I was white and bored and black and cold and wired to fail. Magic muffins burn in brown and challah loaves from Chinatown did frown my friends and eleventy-ninety never-ending disco bending botany beauties - walnuts wild and other fruits, I did elope and pas de tout did you know that far below, the TSX, I wrote it down, a silver quote that make men rich. You want that cash, clutching savings in a book your advisors so much trouble took and bishops knights and castles rook which check you out of fortune.

Tralala, said Sherry Sweet, from 119 East Dover Street--her rubies slippers on her feet did flit and float on Sunday. I never saw her bottled hair, I always knew she'd never share, I couldn't care when her auntie crowed of how she'd hit the jackpot. The mother lode! My poor toad! It's nothing now to save a tree, when green is black and white is wrong. Of manic men we often sing, a quota on our list to fling, a fire into open arms, we spread a blanket warm but made of lead to cover all your good ideas?

Oh yeah, still here

Big burly buckets of beans in a soup canteen, asking me politely if I still was a has been.

Slow silence and sound screams, not knowing whether to dare or dream.

Minus my magic, married by logic into a silver blue suit, never ask Noah if he packed your flute.

Obvious analogies, fitting fallacies, tautologies, originalities, all the third-world nationalities gathered baseball bats in a banana tree and launched hysterical bees at a satellite tv, laughing so rude and scatologically.

Find me foolish, drink my wine. I don't bother to dress up swine.

Heaven men, best of 10, nothing to compare when we have no when.

I miss that season, the meaning, the simple dimension, when I got excited at a media mention. When running water's everywhere, do I give my friend a drink? When information is the air, well, don't ask me what I think.

An Exercise in Foolishness

Part 1 – Scene with no figurative language:

I was at the front of the group of bicycles lined up behind the stoplight, which was red. The cyclists were one behind the other. A blue and yellow City garbage truck pulled along trying to make a right hand turn, but was stopped by the line of commuters who came from behind me and started pedaling before the light turned green.

The driver of the truck braked suddenly. The truck stopped, the driver rolled down his window and shouted a curse. “You filthy hippies!” I hadn’t begun pedaling, so I smiled at the driver and said, “Some people just don’t know how to drive.” I tried to sound apologetic. The driver of the truck spit out his window and it nearly landed on me. I spit my gum into the back of the truck as it went on its away.


Part 2 – Same scene with super flowery language:

An army of bicycles, buzzing hornets on two wheels, were lined up at the intersection of the throbbing urban jungle’s roadway artery, like unpredictable insects just asking to be swatted by the nearest metal death machine. The stoplight shone an ominous red: death would ambush those who might illegally trespass into the roadway before the anointed moment. From behind there rumbled the blue and yellow metallic Gargantua, the beastly transporter of refuse known as a garbage truck, intent on a turn to the starboard side of the road, to carry its stinking orgy of collected goo away from the pathetic consumerist citizens and their throwaway lifestyles toward the cursed burial grounds, degrading the nostrils of those who fell afoul of its sulfuric stench along the way.

The cadre of velocipedic ant-men did the unthinkable and began an assault upon the open intersection before the red lamp had given permission and ceded into a permissive green. The wheels rolled through like snakes slithering into a baby’s crib; it was Caesar crossing the Rubicon; it was a moment of pure effrontery to reason, goodness and the Highway Traffic Act.

The operator of the trash-vehicle was agog and forced to press desperate foot upon the stopping pads of the steel juggernaut, initiating an inhuman screeching blast that echoed across the roadway and ricocheted into every ear: the bicycles had put a stop to this truck driver’s sacred mission, for now.

The fuming man inside, who took the insult as though his fair mother had been debased by loutish buggerers, rapists and freakpeople, rolling down his Plexiglas barrier and unsheathed his anger in broad daylight. “You filthy hippies” was the reprimand, and it stung my soul as true, for I had not washed since the morning. I was overcome with remorse on behalf of my fellow bipedalists, although I had in fact done right by John Law and never an inch did move before my time had come and until the street lanterns above glowed green. Yet I spoke for my wayward compatriots with an entreating explanation: “Some people just don’t know how to drive.” But it inflamed the fellow’s wound all the more, and he let uncurl from his hateful gullet a sopping sponge-bath worth of heinous saliva, that rocketed past my brow and did despoil the road, as though marking the turf upon which Thomas of Canterbury himself had unjustly lost his neck.

Now I was hot, feeling caught unfairly between a man’s wrath and his target, and so did I then launch my counteroffensive, a Trudeauesque pirouette if there ever was one: I lobbed the mass of chewable gumstuff I had been working most diligently on for masticative purposes and it did so humourously tumble into the back of the villain's trash-machine as he mushed away like Achilles chasing down the armour of Patrocles.

my little lady

works hard all day
much work no play
my little lady don't stray she's
wearing her silver blues and needing new shoes
and lying on the deck by the flowers at a quarter past
two - maybe just for an hour cause who knows who
will call the hotline?

do I buy red roses when asked to now
she still smiles at the power of flowers I
shush her now she calms right down she works so hard
and right downtown so proud I tell her that; how she is my
champion

oops

There was some errors on the pungents.com hosting side, and PDFs of all my *books* (haha) online (right side links) got deleted. I'll have to reupload those, but in the meantime I found and reuploaded Hope is a Piano - easily the worst of the four. Read it! Ha.

UPDATE: PDFs of cupcakes restored!

Metaphoria

[a word I could have invented but chose not to]

The ability to choose we rarely exercise; move an inch forward to look me in the eye. A wheel revolves until it stops, but inertia might mean the other shoe won't drop. And if we ever agree on progress then someone call the cops.

Omega man has a broken hand, which requires more thinking—the need to plan. You can't dig out of sand with just one hand. He tried it once on dry land. He dug sand too out from the ocean, but could not understand: When you dig something real, but have nothing to say, the sand creeps back in and fills your hole, and you just wasted the day. Toil is a cruel idea, invented by school so that we'd behave, and what exactly is the difference between me and a slave? You earn it while it burns you; to see the light you ignite the candle in your mind—which unfortunately means your head is on fire, spine is a wick, face is wax and there's no water by design.

Top 10 Cupcake Man Jersey Shore Nicknames

[inspired by Mike 'The Situation' Sorrentino]

1. Xupcake Man
2. FREE-CUPPs
3. Bloggzy
4. TDottily
5. BloodCuddler
6. Ramblo
7. MiSCter E
8. Prose-Echo
9. Misa Fred Moe Cupcake
10. The Internast

RIP Musa

This photo totally ripped off from blogto.com

I rode by on a Monday morning and
saw the police tape.
So many times served by the waiter
in the cowboy hat
I never minded the wait

French toast smothered in maple syrup
Red bricks eaten by flames
On a weekend with so many fire alarms
In a city that lives to blame

When power goes out in a heat wave
We rush to corners to direct the cars
But when Sundays are snuffed like a lit cigar
The police state's rather lame
And my daily pass through Dundas
and Euclid never will be the same

[See "Fire destroys Musa and several homes at Dundas and Euclid"]