Apart from the art

A loud cow, a lowly blow, she lows, she knows what into her stomachs go.

A sombre sonata, dove named Renata, driven away by lout in a Mazda Miata.

A Celtic shrew, witches' brew, believes in the Ark and two by twos.

A proud man, totally tan, trips, unplanned banana peel rips dignity from his twisted hips.

A festering welt, karate belt, repeating dropkicks until after the April melt.

Really excited about this week

All sorts of excellent things will happen.

World Cup of Toronto 2010

A friend just reminded me of the existence of my 2006 Toronto World Cup blog.

In June 2010, I hope to resume my Toronto world football travels. Stay tuned.

8 ways to brighten your mood

[requires a few basic supplies and a semi-permeable membrane]

1. Fire hoses spraying elephant dung - yes.
2. Win a Toblerone for every cheetah cub you save on the way to work. Has to be yelping in pain or flailing in a trapper's net somewhere. Double Toblerone for saving the mother cheetah
   
3. Leave extra space between you and the next car, allowing room for your pumped up sense of self!
   
4. Eat only raisins and tell yourself they are the shrunken heads of evil dictators
5. Spar with a old man, knock him unconscious if you have to. He's reliving his glory days, which is awesome.
6. Sweeten the mood of a loved one by extracting all of his or her salt content. You will need a semi-permeable membrane, lots of water, and patience.
7. Marvel aloud at the racetrack how sweaty the horses are and how nice it would be to wrap them in a puffy towel.
   
8. Motion toward a stranger. When he approaches, offer him a box of paper clips. If he refuses, note it well, plant a tracking device on his coat, and add him to your database of People who Have Enough Paperclips. When the paperclip shortage hits, you have the 'intel' you need to navigate the crisis.

Every Tuesday

I go make lemonade for kids who were given lemons. They don't complain, and I am thrilled to bits. It shouldn't count as volunteering when you have that much fun.

Aspirin(g)

[powered by pure wind]

Breathe what is better, borrow a letter, I knew Eddie Vedder's second cousin Bert Beethoven, massacred outside a 7-11.

Dramatic inches, Sidd Finch, the April Fool's Buddha, could throw 168 miles per hour wearing a hiking boot; could have had groupies in Bermuda or diamond-leather suit. The punchline: he didn't exist, but boy what a beaut.

Old guy with hot dame on arm got game, nobody remember his name. Crusade men, long swiss in leather, armed with big sharp spikes: we end up liking whatever they like. But I don't conspire in my spare time, which won't please the Dragon lords. We stood in back of church for Easter, punished for being bored.

We, like you, will pass, I don't think you mean to try. I'd shill like a midget on reality television; their happiness makes me cry.

Watered down in Twittered unison, nation known for barrels of bitumen, barnacles manifold, fructating cows, living like larvae on the cover of NOW. If Sid the Kid was a silver-haired Swede, I'd still love the way he leads; when we pot through five-hole those magic gifts from hockey gods the devil's eyes will bleed.

Overroasted toasters and sixty year old east coasters remembering their youth through the corner of a cover of Vogue, flattening wrinkles on foreheads 'stead of worrying about hospital beds -- we were lied to by the Mad Men, so I say AMEN - those merciful lies make life worth living; how else do we explain the continued employment of Jeremy Piven? [ok... stop]

On political correctness

Let's talk about political correctness. Political correctness is the most unprincipled, unintellectual stance I know of. Political correctness hates free speech.

Ultimately it's a tool to transfer power from 'oppressor' to 'oppressed'. Who's oppressed? Whoever you decide should gain power. Who is oppressor? Whoever you decide should lose power. The way power is taken: intimidation though incoherent guilt tactics. Whoever has PC-defined power is assumed to be guilty. All people are treated as members of stereotypical groups, fitting under either the 'privileged' group (whose motives must be suspicious), or 'underprivileged' (whose motives must be championed). Never mind that humans are individuals, and may bristle at being place in these groups, as though they can't achieve a thing through their own efforts. Everything is systemic to a PC person; all phenomena pre-explained through categorical lenses.

The hallmark of a PC mindset is obsession with defining what words mean, as well as which words are acceptable, and which are not. (This is a microcosmic example of a life of grandstanding on which actions are acceptable and which are not.) Their arguments hinge on obsessively defining each term so that there is no way they can lose the argument. PC persons are deathly afraid of how someone else might use words, and so eagerly pounce on and distort word definitions - so that they have the 'agreed upon' meaning.

They tragically think that 'bad' words in and of themselves create actual dangerous thoughts and trigger 'wrong' emotions (even though linguistic and psychological experiments have long shown this to be false -- thoughts are independent of speech; also, emotion centres of our brain evolved before the speech centres did) - and thus they see 'bad' words as weapons and spend their lives worrying about the 'harm' mere words may do. Their solution is to prevent people from doing any harm by controlling what they say (as a false shortcut to control what they do). They think that if only we ban meaningless token words like 'fag, retard, honky, wop', that everything will be well on its way to being ok. But in reality new words will pop up overnight to replace them as tokens of intolerance (example: 'retard' a few decades ago was the politically correct word to use!). They think that genetically-ingrained human emotions and attitudes such as hate and racism can actually be eradicated by a delicate use of words.

-Non PC-thug

Forced to remove my literary niqab

This is how I write angry.

Love it or list it

1. I would produce a lot more blog posts if I were batting cleanup.
2. Drunk driving would pay more if jail was like the lottery
3. People in coffee shops are more serious than is comfortable. Perhaps there is an opportunity for some enterprising coffee shop clowns to brighten our moods with heavily-makeuped antics and horn-honking while we type into this apathetic oblivion.
   
4. Driving in a swamp with an outboard engine on your boat is a good idea if pirates are chasing you and they are relying on wind power. Driving in a swamp at most other times is inadvisable.
   
5. Facebook has neutralized complainers. This doesn't sit well with me. I want more violent public outburst. This blog will have to do. INFIDELS.
   
6. 99% of everything meets with casual contempt -- the jackasses would have you believe.
   
7. Cynics only think they win if they think you are listening
8. Don't open a cheese shop if you can't handle the smell. This goes for anything you might do that might have consequences you might not handle. Basically, to accurately predict your performance far into the future is an invaluable skill, although if we master this skill the psychic industry will go out of business--but they'll see that coming so it's just a part of globalization.
   
9. Try opening the door for someone. Now, try doing it for 45 minutes straight. You've gone from being 'polite' to being 'a doorman', you cranky doorman!
10. Don't complain about things not tasting like they used to. Newsflash: Nothing tastes like it used to. Once you eat it the first time, it's gone!
11. Wait until midnight before setting your alarm. If you want to sleep for 7 hours, set it for 7 o'clock. There, I just saved you the hassle of arithmetic. Of course, if you want to wake up at 7 o'clock regardless of when you go to bed or how much you want to sleep, you can set your alarm at anytime.
    
12. Don't put on clothes if you're about to get the electric chair. Worse than being electrocuted naked is getting an autopsy done with static-y clothes.
13. Speaking of static: Plastic dryer ball in the dryer - good idea. Plastic dryer ball in your mouth - a bad idea. Who cares if your throat is wrinkle and static free. You are poisoning yourself needlessly. If you want to swallow things, try vitamin D tablets - 1000 units daily can help prevent cancer.
    
14. Rap music, polka music, banshee music, hip hop music - it's all just music. All music is identical if you are from outer space and an alien with no ears. We all could have saved a lot of time for the aliens and just had one radio station called Homogeneous Radio FM. Now when the aliens invade they will be more pissed off than necessary. Enslavement + extra punishment = smarten up next time, humans!
    
15. Until we either make peace with or annihilate the ants, they will continue plundering our dust mines. Simple as that. I have my magnifying glass, but no one I know can speak the language of antish diplomacy. Next move is totally up to you guys.
    

Chee boy vibe

Ms. Rhythm's dead, so I celebrate, I order up an ice cream cake - freshly chiffoned with sugar cream, spelling words that Zarathustra spake. You could pick it up, if you don't mind, three business days from now, the cashier tells me on the phone as I milk a mental cow. I have a coat that's smooth and grey, as my head will one day be. I need to walk outside sometimes just to have nothing to see. Talk to strangers at the bus shelter, ask to squeeze politely by--each trip upon the streetcars has me drinking bottled sighs--and commiserate telepathically while staring at the sky. I walk into an LCBO, they've got pretty good customer service--but middle-aged cashiers on Friday night can make a sober man feel nervous. Then I duck into an alleyway just to photograph graffiti. No one remembers hidden things; it's no wonder why we're needy.

Distillate

You can't write with a double life, on the page, with your strife. Lines hypnotize, lull, unfinished sentences dent everything complete. Thoughts in flight, clauses for the weak, noun phrases, pronounced aphasia, voiceless songwriter; the lazy man is an energy miser, inconclusive philosophizer.

What we did

We were warned about the snow. We told you so. We were taken in arms. What could be the harm? We were troubled to see nothing apparent in our destiny. We were asked to sacrifice, were promised hope and given the key to kingdom. We were championed by the press, then forgot to dress. We hid our gifts, and lavished paper money on the problem. We asked for advice when it did not suffice. We drank all Sunday, combed our hair, shaved our beards, we lived in fear.

Tahoma Nebraska

I found my font.

Agh fest 2010

Agh, I am spitting again, we lug loogies to mouth, then shout. I see, agh, a cowboy atop a church organ. It's a Spaghetti Western, Ennio Morricone as the angel of life and death. A fist flashes, light extinguishes itself.

Attempt to reincarnate. Attempt to relate. Mind-reading will be a feature on our next beta release. Don't bother teasing, individuality happily ceases, empathy's well-worn when I know everything you do, we are to each other a bland familiar stew...

Oh my dove, fly away, find land. Was the Odyssey just evolutionary adaptation? I'm on cold charred Galapologan islands, finding fish with finger-hooks, eeking existence from the pages of a book.

Agh - I was drunk this month, I was a pedestrian run over by a Hummer. Winter without snow, lets the homeless lie low, on King Street, where we eat street meat, where beauty meets slush, and anyone well-dressed is probably in a rush.

Tell me a story, write about your travels. To travel is to work. Packing and unpacking like George Clooney, up in the air, we expect customer service, lug lives here through air. We mostly hit eject, sucking in information, like children eating to prepare for the next stage of growth, just a billion little larvae who've grown a second mouth.

We are electric these days, we travel in every direction instantaneously. She said "I don't need your word of mouth when I got the search engines on my side."

Stephen Harper's Vacation Auto-replies

1. "I am out of the office until March 3. If this is about a breach of democracy, please call my press secretary Dimitri, ext. 666."
2. "Sorry, I'm out of Ottawa while we renovate the House. Have to tear a few things down. I bet you won't recognize the place when I'm done!"
3. "I'm still detained in Afghanistan - man, talk about torture! I'll get that information you requested as soon as I can. Could take a while."
4. "For the next little while I'll be trading Parliament Hill's eternal flame for Vancouver's Olympic torch. Please join me in watching the flames of our nation burn!"
5. "Democracy is halted until I find enough unelected senators to let it function properly."
6. "If your legislation failed to pass before the end of 2009, don't worry, you are not alone. Please contact us again in the springtime, when you can try to pass it through the House yourself."
7. "While we are away from the office, there will be no refund of your tax dollars. However, stay tuned for phase two of our economic action plan. Remember, your money supports our tropes."
8. "Sorry you noticed that I'm away! Due to Jean Chretien's bad example, we are prorogued. We are working as fast as possible to make sure nobody notices anything again."
9. "Any top civil servants requesting re-appointments during this time may contact my finger."
10. "I will not be in touch with most Canadians at this time."

Inspired by playful partisan contest on the Liberal web site. See (non Liberal) Andrew Coyne's latest blog on the prorogation travesty.

"What is liberty, without wisdom, and without virtue? It is the greatest of all possible evils."

(stern advice c/o Edmund Burke)

The errors and defects of old establishments are visible and palpable. It calls for little ability to point them out, and where absolute power is given, it requires but a word wholly to abolish the vice and establishment altogether...

Resolutions

1. Resuscitate more life forms via electrostatic reverse-cryogenics
2. Part hair in accordance with a normal distribution
3. Master the truck-to-truck propane transfer
4. Relentlessly self-actuate. Failing that, wiltingly self-deprecate
5. Cell-divide mitotically on even-numbered days of the month
6. Three words: Laser-tag Wednesdays
7. Burn down the Museum of Arson
8. Punctuate more punctiliously. Alliterate less repetitively. Write more adverbially
9. Perform at least one gastric bypass surgery
   
10. Increase sandwich production, decrease sandwich consumption. Invest sandwich-offset credits in emerging shawarma economy
    

Today's random insults

1. I am witness to a horrific belching trend.
2. We are undone by pitiless boinkery.
3. Woe to wicked! They have seven extra toes.
4. Shall I call you Shasta, or shithead?
5. Your brogue is a vulgar shrieking thing.
   
6. I have often considered you a leech-pig. I am proved right.
7. Swim in my pool and I will forcefeed you a mutton bazooka.
8. You are a man of hardened cheese.
9. Your Swedish-princess tickler is now in the mail.
10. Oh, Mr. Sludgemuffin - your hair's blown away in the wind!
11. I agree the coastal towns should sell more butter! But you've absconded with my churn.
    
12. Vicious meadowlarks defy my every ordinance. I shall torch the mountainside and begin anew.

Saint Ralph

(directed by my Grade 9 English teacher)

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.