recant

I’m starting to hear a new term “deniers” – people who question global warming theory. That’s interesting. Sounds a little like “heretic” doesn’t it? Has a tinge of shrillness about it. People need something to cling to, something to defend, an excuse to burn people in the village square.

A few years ago, near Vancouver, some anti-fur activists broke into a mink farm and released all the minks. Yay for minks. They promptly ran amuck (amink?) and killed all the local birds and frogs and a few cats. Minks are vicious.

Another time some animal people notified a supermarket chain at Thanksgiving they had poisoned some of the turkeys in some of the stores, thereby forcing the chain to discard all their birds to be safe. The other chains did likewise and then 20,000 new turkeys were promptly slaughtered and shipped under security back to the stores in time. Yay for turkeys. Saved them from the minks.

Fuck I'm Funny

Work Colleague: Hey SJ, you got a hair cut!
SJ: Most of them, actually.
WC: What?
SJ: Most of …all the ones on my head, yes.
WC: What?
SJ: Never mind.
WC: No, no…what did you mean? Most of what?
SJ: You said I got a hair cut and I said I got most of them cut. Not just the one.
WC: (stares) Oh. Very funny.
SJ: Not now.
WC: What?
SJ: (sigh) It’s not funny now I had to explain it to you.
WC: What are you saying?
SJ: I’m saying you are too stupid to follow a conversation you yourself initiated.
WC: (stares)
SJ: I’m kidding.
WC: Ahh-ha-ha, good one! Fuck you’re funny.

Lepers can't play tag. Not properly.

I got tagged with one of those taggy things.

That Doctor did it.

You can see it here.

#444

Just saw an ad for an upcoming documentary about men who get themselves castrated. Voluntarily. Man, that takes balls.

Somebody had to say it.

What does a duck say if another duck is about to bump its head?
Nothing. They’re ducks. Bitchy backstabbing little ducks.

Sorry. I used to know a duck. It got ugly.

I don’t trust pigs either. They know more than they let on. One day they’ll learn to use telephones and that’ll be it. No more bacon. Not allowed to eat smart animals. The dolphins came up with that one.

Lawyers of the sea.

tree hugger

How do you get a one-armed man out of a tree? Wave.

Or so the story goes, but it has flaws. What if the one-armed man is bitter about his deficiency and does not feel friendly? Or, he may be friendly but dull of mind from previous waving incidents and no longer responds to normal social gestures. He might be committing suicide and is building up the courage to wave. Waving at him too soon would throw him off and he’d cling even tighter. No good at all.

Another way is to throw rocks at him. But that can just force him higher. You’d have to chop the tree down then, and that would be bad for the global warming.

What the hell is he doing up there anyway? You never see one-legged men up trees, or lepers. They stay on the ground. What’s his problem? Did he lose his kite? Is he trying to see if he can see his house from here?

I’ll try poking at him with a long stick.

The Downfall of Millie Nobbs

Here we come across a piece of true Americana. Little Millie Nobbs has just won Ms Dairy Maid Tri-Counties for the third year running, once again stealing the judges’ hearts with her medley of Dolly Parton standards and a fine cheese loaf she made after school and on weekends. They praised her exquisite grip in the milking portion of the event and her ability to drain a cow dry in under 4 minutes. Unfortunately she has fallen among bad company.

A couple of smooth talkers have lured her out behind the fair grounds and are plying her with flattery and a free ear examination. Rosco and Betsy is the names they go by when they’re working, and they’re filling poor Millie’s dull little head with ideas of going on to State and, dare she dream, the National Dairy Maid Councill Pageant all the way over in Harrisburg. Sure, they tell her, we’ll all go over in our big motorcar together, Harrisburg has a café, that’s French, and it sells little pastries with cream and you can have ‘em wrap it in paper if you want to walk with it a spell. They got everything over in Harrisburg.

Everything indeed. How is poor Millie to know Harrisburg harbours an underground ring of white slave traders who specialize in plump, corn-fed, milky-sweet dairy maids for the Dutch market and that Rosco and Betsy are ruthless maid catchers? How can she resist Rosco’s rugged, greasy, good looks and rolled up sleaves and Betsy’s unusual dress and quizzical expression? It’s too late for Millie. Before she knows it she’ll be whisked overseas and find herself in the window of an Amsterdam brothel with only a large prosthetic penis and a well trained cow for company. Ironically they will dress her as Dolly Parton.

Just goes to show you what a good cheese loaf and a firm grip will get you. God bless America.

As usual, it ends badly for the French

A man on television just said “China is building the city of the future”. Wow, I wonder how far in the future they’re going with it. I mean you could just copy your city out of a street directory but give it hydrogen powered traffic lights and call it the city of the future. Do they mean All The Way into the future? To the end of time? Bold, sure, but would we be able to cope? We’d be walking around asking each other “what next?” and answering “nothing it’s the end of time” and then saying “but then what?” and giving ourselves a headache.

Of course, we would have forgotten it’s only the city of the future, not the actual future. But still, the pain. It would prevent us from doing anything except developing pain medications and Institutes of Pain Research and more Shrek movies and nothing would get done. This is nature’s way of restoring the balance. Nobody would be worried about hydrogen powered things and the cities would revert to present tense, probably even go back a little for good measure. Instead China would be building the City Of A Few Years Ago and the French would go back to rioting in the streets and chopping each other’s heads off with a giant razor blade.

You know they want to. They ain’t right in the head. Look at poodles.

The Cost Of Things

Most people think diamonds are rare and expensive. Droplets of pure carbon scattered about the mantle like toffee chips in a cake. Of elemental designs carbon’s is the most pure and symmetrical, a mathematical, engineer’s design. You can make damn near anything out of carbon, and somebody did. It’s in many forms, the black carbon of pencils and coal, of sticky bog-formed peat and dark thick crude oil. Plants and animals and spinning rocks in space, all made of carbon. And sometimes the earth squeezes it and by a quirk of molecular alignment it becomes hard and transparent and sharp at the edges and worth digging for. But it’s not rare and neither are diamonds. And they’re only expensive if you want a pretty one, wrapped in folded paper like contraband to be examined and turned under north-facing light, touched to the tip of the tongue to test purity, and passed down the chain of secrecy and ancient arrangements until it re-emerges set in gold as though it was born that way. Those diamonds are expensive because they have to be to justify their existence.

I have a saw blade I use for cutting brick. It is coated in diamond dust. I have a diamond encrusted cord which is used for cutting tile, it glitters in the sun as fetchingly as any necklace. Surely I must be wealthy and foolish to waste diamonds, even their dust, on such practical applications. But these are just normal diamonds, carbon diamonds, elemental and common and spread through the mantle like toffee chips in a cake. They are not secret diamonds, mined under armed guard to be whisked away, to be examined and breathed on and distributed cautiously by black velvet deacons. Mystique is a poor word for it for there is no mystery except the propensity for humans to deny their own light by holding something symbolic above themselves. Something un-attainable yet of their own creation. We are not happy if we do not want something, yet we want the wanting to end. And still, when we have everything we wanted, we want more. And if there is no more, we create something more to want.

My wedding ring is made of silver, not gold, because it is a symbol and would be just as valid if it were drawn on paper. It simply represents an idea and an understanding which are made of more intangible elements. But I use gold connectors on my electrical equipment for it does not corrode and if you want to cut tile, you can get a diamond cord saw for about 12 bucks down at the hardware store.

Ain’t no circus ever been to this town. Damn sky is too low for raising tents, not ones you can run an elephant around. Not ones you can swing a girl by her teeth in or shoot a fat guy across from a cannon. Sky’s been pressing down on us around here for years, it don’t care about things like that. Sky don’t mind one bit, suffocating us with pressure, making us irritable and sleepless, curt with one another. Trying to stoop us over with relentless persuasion. Can’t push back on the sky, there’s too much of it, it doesn’t notice, you get tired.

Ain’t no circus been to this town ever. Damn sky. We got a Dairy Queen though.

fyi

We got a letter in the mail. On the envelope, in jaunty script, were the words “Information inside!” I put that in italics to indicate jauntiness. Well no shit, information INSIDE the envelope. Because there was information on the outside, our address for example, but now they’re putting information inside the envelopes too. What will The Scientists think of next? I used to think Mrs Joe was having a long distance affair. Envelopes kept arriving and when you opened them there was a letter inside but it didn’t (wouldn't) say anything. Either that or an illiterate was sending us stamps.

There’s information you need and information you don’t need, of course. Some people feel compelled to tell you intimate details of their sex life, which can be uncomfortable, depending on the type of restraints used. I don’t want to know about any sex life I’m not personally involved in. Even then I only need to get the jist of it, preferably in point form. Leave a note on the fridge.

Use the fridge magnet from the veterinary clinic, its not the biggest but it’s really magnetic. I hate a sub standard magnet. Can't abide a bad magnet.

I bet you didn't know that.

Fat Jack

Jack the dog is getting fat. He’s eight years old and wolfs his food down. The problem is he is not a wolf. Wolves are in good shape. He swallows his food without even chewing, partly because he has less teeth than he used to and partly because he is a paranoid wreck. He’s convinced every feeding is the last and he’ll be damned if that smart-ass bitch Jessie is going to get his last meal. She is smarter than him and does manage to take whatever he has whenever she wants. Then she does a little dance. She really is a smart-ass bitch.

I’ve tried cutting back their food but then they go manic. Chewing on things, barking, tearing up their bedding, shitting in the no shit zones. It’s like Attica. I’ve tried tying them up and giving them separate bowls but then Jack pouts, convinced he’s been punished for something while Jessie got whatever treat was in the good bowl. Untied with separate bowls Jack tries to guard both and gets none, which further fuels his distrust of the world.

I have hit on a solution. I now give them 25% less food then I fill up a big bowl, actually an old wok, with warm water and a half a cup of milk. Jessie cottoned on pretty quick that it was a scam and she leaves most of the milk-water to Jack who uh, laps it up. When he finishes it, if he’s still skittish I fill that sucker up again. Some nights he drinks 5-6 litres of it until his lapping pace is down to five or six a minute and he looks about to fall over. Then he staggers over to his bed and crashes with a swollen belly full of warm water.

He’s losing weight, feeling satisfied and thinking maybe, just maybe, for once, he’s winning.

tornados hardly ever do any good

curvature
negligible
pachyderm menace on our shores

two words and a phrase I have had occasion to use today. Had you spoken to me this morning at 6am as I left for work, I would have been surprised, for you blog people don’t exist, at least not in my carport, and I would further have told you I had absolutely no intention of using either of those words or that phrase today. You would have been surprised and a little hurt at my outburst, especially after coming all the way from blog land and hanging out in my carport all night in near freezing weather. And I wouldn’t blame you one bit. There’s nothing to do in my carport except count the oil spots which of course you couldn’t do in the dark. Next time, if you tell me you are coming, I’ll leave a lighter out there for you or, if you tell me both that you are coming AND that you enjoy fire in a bad way, I’ll leave you one of those chemical sticks you shake up and they glow. You can pretend you’re calling in an air strike or something. Whatever you do don’t actually call in an air strike or knock on the door or try to crawl under the house for warmth. Just stay in the carport and count the spots, I’ll get to you.

Rise of The Ponyslayer

SJ: You want me to buy you a pony?
P4: Nah, I want a skateboard.
SJ: With rocket pods?
P4: Nah, just a plain one. Black rubber stuff on top and a picture on the bottom.
SJ: Ah-ha, like skulls and stuff?
P4: Eww, no how about a pony?
SJ: You can’t have ponies and faeries and unicorns on a skateboard! You have to have skulls and 8-balls and other benignly anti-social type stuff. All the other skateboarders would laugh at you and forget to evaluate you on your abilities alone, for they are small minded that way.
P4: What about a dead pony?
SJ: That’s it.
P4: And there could be a dude standing over the pony with a knife!
SJ: Make it a sword then it can be like a myth. The myth of the Ponyslayer.
P4: Coool.

bass

Did you ever notice on Rush’s song Prime Mover Geddy Lee manages in one place to play a traditional bass part AND a lead part at the same time – sort of a double picking thing usually done on guitar?

Obviously Geddy Lee of Rush is a mad bass demon who can keep up with Neil Peart’s complicated freaky time signatures. Fast, technical and tight. No matter what you think of Rush, you owe it to yourself to see them here doing YYZ....



John McVie (the Mac in Fleetwood Mac): never too flashy, solid deep tones with a bit of slap, dead-on timing. Like a big diesel engine powering the rhythm along.

Flea of the Chilli Peppers. Flea helped define SoCal phunk and plays like his shoes are on fire.

Robert Trujillo of Suicidal Tendencies, Infectious Grooves, Metalica and Ozzy Osborne. He’s a busy boy, here he is with the Grooves in 1994.

Gordon Moakes of Bloc Party. A fast and tight collaboration between him and drummer Matt Tong as seen here…



Justin Chancellor of Tool

Tim Commerford formerly of Rage Against The Machine and last seen in Audioslave.

Billy Sheehan of various bands but best know for his work with Steve Vai and David Lee Roth.

and finally this guy I found in my search doing an amazing bass cover of Rush's Analog Kid - it ain't natural having fingers that can do that...

#433

A pizza chain is offering a “70’s Line” of pizza. Apparently garlic and salami is 70’s because that’s what’s on it. I would have thought vinyl cushions and shag carpet. How many Bee-Gee’s does it take to make a pizza? Most of them. But you knew that didn’t you.

How many pizza chains does it take to moor a battleship? Quite a few, I’m sure. Pizza does not have a good strength to weight ratio. I imagine sea gulls would be a problem too.

Everybody at work got new wide screen monitors except me. I used to have the biggest monitor but now my 21” CRT just looks sad. Big hulking lump of plastic and glass firing cathode rays directly at my head all day. That’s why I need all the tin-foil. I made a tin-foil tuxedo, but I don’t wear it to work, too flashy.

I’ve taken up a hobby. Casting glass bottles around model ships. It’s not going that well, although the burns are healing.

I hooked up a laser-pointer to two truck batteries, I can’t afford a store-bought death ray, and accidentally put a hole in the cat. Doesn’t seem to have affected it much, though it’s easier to pick up and it makes a whistling sound if the wind catches it right.

Très Stinky, Jesus

Dave had a Filipino wife, probably still does, and back then her English was sometimes a bit creative, especially when stressed. She came over about 7am, we were still up, to get the car keys so she could go to church. Dave spotted her in the parking lot and went down to see her, gave her the keys, and when he got back he was chuckling to himself. Dave looks like Jesus and he talks as you might imagine Jesus did, real quiet and gentle but with swearing. Bleary eyed Jesus chuckling to yourself, what’s so funny? we asked.

She said, I think she said I smell like alcohol. She said “You stink like shit, you shit-face” – what the fuck does that mean?

Considering it was 7:04am and Jesus had a beer in his hand, we agreed that was probably it. Furthermore, we added, we believed she was also calling him an alcoholic. We thought her words translated roughly to “You smell of alcohol, you alcoholic.” or in 1930’s gangster talk it would be “Say Mac, you’re venting vapours like a regular two-bit gin-Johnny.”

I don’t know what it would sound like in today’s gangsta lingo, unless it was a Filipino gang in which case I imagine it would sound much like the original. In French, though, it would be vous êtes très stinky et je t'aime pour lui which is in fact a compliment in their land. Stupid stinky alcoholic French, no wonder the Filipinos hate them so.

Six Million Pant Suits

As my brother recently said, this is one of the best opening montages in TV history. Back in 1974 this was cutting edge shit, the hairs on the back of my neck still stir to see it...




remember too, six million dollars in 1974 would be like a billion today.

never mind

If you heard the sun was going to explode and destroy the earth in two weeks, it would be hard to get motivated in the mornings. I suppose there’d be some people who couldn’t stand to sit still, they’d be out digging holes or building escape pods to Jupiter or sitting in church, but really there’d be no point in setting the alarm for 6am would there? You’d say your goodbyes in the first few days and then it’d be just sitting around waiting. Maybe you’d pack up and go out into the woods to wait somewhere nice, but you wouldn’t be taking any knitting would you? You’d maybe take mescalin instead.

And then The Scientists would announce it was all a bit of a mistake, they had the wrong lens on the telescope, made the sun look all big and scary. Everything’s quite normal, they say, no boiling seas or melting atmosphere, just forget all about it and go about your business.

But you wouldn’t be able to. Who wants to fix a paper jam in a copy machine after that? Who wants to take their car in for new tires or mow the lawn or open a dentistry practice after that? Nobody. Everybody would stay out in the woods, watching the sky and the land and talking and listening and playing with their kids and teaching them to be human. And they’d never come back.

Bruce The Botanist

I used to work in a national park. I met a botanist there. His name was Bruce. Bruce the botanist. He looked like Farley Mowat, but all the botanists do. We’d get drunk at night and he’d tell me of his botanical adventures. I admit I didn’t really listen, a lot of it was in Latin. Demons speak Latin and I don’t listen to them either.

One night Bruce, the botanist, told me he loved all trees, but he loved sequoias the most for they were truth and beauty wrapped in bark to him. The sequoia is indeed a fine tree and large, but for Bruce it was more than that, he truly loved them. He said he found them sexy. He loved to rub their bark and inhale their evergreen goodness. He never said he actually stripped off all his clothes and ran naked and joyous through the giant sequoia forest, yelping in delight as their soft needles caressed his white botanical bum. He never said he broke down breathless afterwards and fell into a dreamless sleep in the bosom of mother sequoia, curled around her base like a long white bearded mushroom, gentle sunlight filtering down. He never went as far as to say he wished to become a sequoia himself in order to be able to copulate with them in a wholesome, meaningful and mutually fulfilling way.

He never said he did those things but I like to think he did. There’d be no point remembering him otherwise.

a tedius play on words substituting an iPod nano for one's penis

Lot of people getting the sex changes these days. I been thinking of getting one too, but they’re pretty expensive. If I could get one I think I’d get doggy-style. I know, I know it’s not real original but you have to think long term, what you can live with. I don’t want to be sixty and still have to worry about rigging harnesses and checking oxygen levels, no sir. Doggy-style may be out of fashion with the hipsters and their internet cafes, all hopped up on ice and iPods, but it’s good enough for me. And if you get tired you’ve got something to lean on.

There’s a few other things iPods can’t do either, like run for president or go back in time and fight dinosaurs. They don’t tell you that part. The Government should make them tell you that. Or actors, the actors could make them do it for sure.

Sex change or not it’s tough when you’ve only got a Nano with a soft rubber skin. Sometimes I pull it out and clip it to my belt when I’m mowing the lawn but most of the time it lies dormant. I used to play with it quite a bit when I was alone and bored, or just bored, but now I keep it clipped to the dash of my truck. I get a few comments on it but I don’t let passengers touch it while I’m driving, I like to watch, make sure they’re doing it right. You get the wrong menu, you never know what it’ll spit out.