Novel Ideas 1999

I *heart* having Mondays off. I love Mondays. I can do anything and nothing.
Today - I decided to search through some old scrappy notebooks of miscellaneous writing and scribbling I did as a young'un.
Rewind back six years ago to the year Nineteen-Ninety and Ninety-Nine.
We were all teetering on the edge of the world.
Y2K was approaching, a blackout in our technologically dependent world was inevitable.
Satan was about to rule the earth and the Father Hen of All Creation was about to call all his little chickens home, and send the rest of the faggots to hell and damnation.
I was a University boy, debating my own existence and going through boyfriends like they were kleenex.
Wiping my snot on them and tossing them over my shoulder.
I forgot about them before they even hit the floor.
I'm exagerating. I wasn't the man-killng villian I paint myself to be.
But, I took a bite out of my fair share of hearts.
Fuck it.
Anyway - I decided I was going to write the great Canadian Faggot novel - about every stereotype and thought and ass-o-holic thing us boy fags are capable of doing.
I wrote about two pages. I forgot I even wrote this.
I'm seriously contemplating picking up where I left off and start this up again.
But it's been six years.
ALSO - DISCLAIMER DISCLAIMER DISCLAIMER!!
BEFORE ANYONE READS THIS - ONE OF THE MAIN CHARACTERS IS NAMED "JEFF".
THIS IS NO WAY A SHADOW OF MY REAL LIFE FRIEND JEFF. THIS IS ACTUALLY BEFORE I EVEN KNEW MY GOOD, GUITAR PLAYIN', NADER-LOVIN', PHILOSOPHIZIN' BUDDY NAMED JEFF.
SO DON'T START THINKING I'M TAKING OUT SOME KIND OF INNATE ATTRACTION TO MY HETEROSEXUAL FRIEND JEFF.
HOWEVER - THE FRIEND "KAREN" WHO I MAKE REFERENCE TO IS INFACT A COMBO OF MY ACTUAL FRIEND KAREN AND MY ACTUAL FRIEND KARMEN.
BUT SHE'LL PLAY MORE IN THE STORY AS IT EVOVLES.
*IF* IT EVOLVES AT ALL.
LET ME KNOW IF IT'S WORTH CONTINUING - I KNOW I HAVE TO EDIT IT A BIT AND REFINE IT - BUT WOULD ANYONE ENJOY READING MORE ABOUT THIS DUDE?
LET ME KNOW.
HERE IT IS....

Title: Untitled

chapter one:

“See it’s not the same for you as it is for me. I can’t just ‘come out’ that easily. I mean, you live alone on your own, you support yourself, all your friends and family are really supportive and cool with it. You don’t know how lucky you are - to be able to be out. Seriously. You’re lucky.”
I looked at him for a few seconds and realised how innocent he was.
Here in front of me sat this beautiful but petrified 23-year-old, pouring his heart and soul out to me about his problems in life - HELL! - his sexual identity at that, and all I could think about was unbuttoning his pants.
Dear GOD! I’m a slut.
For the life of me, I can’t stop thinking about sex.
“For real, I thought I was never going to tell a soul,” I began, trying to focus on the subject. “Then, when I finally told my first friend, I couldn’t stop. I just kept telling people. I know how you feel though.” I paused, staring at his neck, looking at how his T-shirt drooped just a bit, showing the slightest hint of his chest. “You just gotta do it at the right time – you’re the only one who will know when that right time is.”
I blushed. Christ, it seemed ridiculous to even entertain this thought, but as I was spewing forth my “Chicken Soup for The Closeted Faggot’s Soul” speech, I couldn’t help but graze my eyes over the impressive bulge in the groin of his jeans.
If he is this “in the closet”, does that mean it is going to be more of a challenge to get him into bed? If so, how much longer? Two weeks? A month? God, I’ll explode by then.
If we so much as even have one drink together, my inhibitions are going to be out the window and before I know it, I’ll be date raping him in his own backseat.
I smiled at the very thought.
Nasty NASTY!
I gave myself a mental slap on the hand for thinking such naughty thoughs about this poor guy.
God, I have to get serious. He’s all "into" this conversation.
Christ.
This is his life he’s talking about here!!
He was looking me right in the eyes. He was thinking something. Deep in thought, I could tell.
He shook his head.
“Shit..my friends are just really stuck up and snobby. They wouldn’t take it the way your friends did. And my family..oh God.. My Dad would disown me. My mother would cry her eyes out and never get over the fact that she’ll never own a “Bitchin’ Granny” T-shirt and…” He sighed and looked down at his empty coffee mug.
My smile faded as I realised he was on the verge of tears.
“God..I don’t even know how I could begin to tell my brother.”
“You have a brother?” I asked. I immediately frowned.
I was insanely jealous.
From as far back as I could remember, I had always wanted a big brother. When I was six years old, I told my grade one class that my family was planning a trip to Canada’s Wonderland to celebrate my big brother’s birthday.
I had no big brother.
In reality, I tagged along with my parents feeling like a neglected third wheel on a rainy, one-day excursion to Boblo, a far cry from the entity that is Canada’s Wonderland.
To this day, I have still not been there.
He has a brother. God I’d love to have a brother.
An older, stable, sensitive, good-looking brother.
“You don’t think your brother would take it well?” I asked.
“I don’t know. We used to be really close, like, when we were younger. He’s just really protective over me, I think. I honestly don’t know how he’d react.”
I swallowed as a shiver ran up my spine.
Protective.
I cleared my throat.
“How old is your brother?”
“Twenty-seven.”
“Wow.”
I was speechless. I sighed and my eyes rested on the table.
Even though I remembered how scary it was to be in the closet, I still kind of envied Jeff for the fact that he wasn’t really out yet to anyone. Everything was so new to him.
He realizes he’s gay, but he is not yet immersed in the whole gay mess. He’s not exposed to all the bullshit yet. He’s not a hoe, he’s not a fag, and he’s just a guy with no one to really turn to. If I could come out all over again - I would.
There was something kind of exciting about having a secret like that hanging over my head, although I didn’t see it quite that way at the time.
There was just something fresh about Jeff and I think it was the fact that he wasn’t dragged through the bullshit fag filter yet. He was just Jeff. Plain and simple. No highlights in his hair, both his eyebrows were perfectly intact and to my knowledge, he didn’t own a single pair of white jeans.
This very well could be the man of my dreams.
We talked for awhile longer, about nothing really. I liked talking to him, I liked the way his eyes would widen and his eyebrow would rise when he told a funny story. I liked the way he half-smiled and stared at the table when he talked and the way he’d raise his eyebrows when looked me right in the face.
He was attracted to me, I was sure of it.
When I got home, I had that excited feeling in my stomach that I always had whenever I just finished having a great conversation with that special “someone”. I knew I had all the “should I call him, should I wait” games ahead of me. I felt like calling Karen and telling her about my afternoon, but nothing really major happened.
We just talked. There wouldn’t really be anything for me to even tell Karen, I’d just be rehashing the entire conversation, which would most likely do nothing but bore Karen to the point of self-mutilation.
I decided to keep all my fantasies of lying beside him in bed to myself until something a bit more significant took place.
I jerked off once and spent the rest of the day in front of the television.

Around 8 o clock I logged onto the Internet and entered mantalk.com
My nickname: AssMan80.
God bless the internet.
And God bless the parents of the spoiled 20 year old twinks who had money to buy their horny teenagers computers. It was a full room tonight, and I immediately saw the one I wanted.
Time to play.

---
that's about all i have folks. i was gonna make the main character be kind of an asshole. but i don't know...see this idea was before i saw movies like Broken hearts Club...now it all kinda seems cliche...done. i should have fuckin wrote the thing and had it published BEFORE that movie. fuckers ripped off my idea.
but, i still think i can make it original if i work at it.
i don't know if i even want to focus on the innocent kid or not...maybe just focus on the main character and his fucked up, self-centered take on the world - and a cynical look at fags.
who knows..maybe i'll just say fuck it -and this is as close to being published as it will ever get. i have other ideas for novels anyway. why dredge up a has-been idea from another decade.
farewell for now, brothers and sisters,

dan

Shitbanger's Revenge: A Point A to Point B FUCKING RANT

My fucking "brokedown palace on wheels" has failed me yet again.
She's exiled and alone, in a Jerome Taylor parking lot - stranded and sitting like a little cunty bitch singing "Na-Na-Na-Na-Poo-Poo" because she broke down yet again on my way home from work.
Nice, eh?
I fucking hate cars. Seriously.
Why don't they make a "BASIC" model car?
Four wheels, a steering wheel, basic gears and a defroster.
Fuck power windows, fuck a CD player, fuck the airbags, the god damn mind numbing DVD players, the electronic computers and microchips, fuck the bucket seats, the sun roofs, the spacious coffee cup holders and the engine that sings Yankee Doodle Doo as an extra, added bonus.
Give me an ugly, boxy, unpainted steel car with four wheels - hubcaps aren't even necessary - with the most MINIMAL amount of things in it.
FORD can market this car as "For those who like it simple" or "Point A to Point B: For the More Practical Driver" and make it like...super cheap.
The car doesn't have to be pretty. It can be ugly, boxy and known as the welfare care.
Charge people $2,000 bucks for it.
Students would have cars. Poor people would have cars. People who are too lazy to take the bus would have a better chance of having cars.
People would be motivated, owning a car - they'd be able to get to work - employment would probably even go up.
FUCK MAN - it'd be the best fucking seller FORD or Chrysler or GM has ever seen - because all the people (like me) who are out of the market to buy a new car - would all of a sudden be able to buy one.
The fact that it is so cheap - they would make up for because so many people would buy it.
Then, when it breaks down - it could only be one of five things. Something wrong with the engine, the axle, the alternator or the breaks. There'd be no "cylinders" no "horse-power" and no bonus anti-lock-whatcha-ma-call-its.
Just fucking strip down the car. Make it sensible.
They are making cars too fucking complicated.
The fucking chaos that has become the world's economic monopoly - you know -the fucking giants of the world who corner the market and charge people whatever ridiculous price they pull out of their ass - has got their fucking dirty, thieving fingers in our pockets and I'm fucking sick of being ripped off.
SICK OF IT.
Fucking mark ups on cars are ridiculous.
You go into a lot to buy a new car - and you get to swindle with the salesperson.
So if someone has better debating skills - they get to pay a cheaper amount on the car.
That doesn't fucking make sense.
And what burns my ass - no matter HOW MUCH you swindle down - no matter HOW GOOD a "deal" the salesperson gives you - you know they are still making a chunk of change off you in commission, otherwise they would never agree to such a "great" deal.
Why can't a car be $8,000 dollars. Final offer.
It comes with a price tag and that's what you pay for it. No swindling, no bargaining - just a flat price. Those who can buy it - buy it. Those who can't - get a cheaper model.
Everyone pays the same price.
I know, I know, commission - but fuck that.
It's just another way of ripping us off. The fact that they make so much commission off us is proof that the car is not really WORTH that much.
Why isn't the price set in stone? Because it's marked up so disgustingly high - the salespeople have a HUGE celing to play with - and you know they are always aiming high.
Sure, it's a great job - they are motivated people earning money by having fantastic people skills - but fuck that.
We are the ones getting ripped off - and it's not right.
Are you with me - or are you with me, brothers and sisters?
Fuckin' cars.

hearts and farts,

dan

Achluophobia: My Fear of the Dark (and the ghosties that live in it)

"Can't Sleep. Clowns Will Eat Me."
My friend bought me a button with that statement on it, and when I read it for the first time - it gave me goosebumps.
Now I have to worry about flesh-eating clowns?!?! Can't it be enough that I'm just plain ole petrified of darkness??!?!?!
Not that I'm blaming her. As a matter of fact - I'm glad she reminded me of the danger clowns my pose upon a dark-fearing lad, such as I.
How the hell is anyone expected to sleep in the dark?
Sleep in the dark???!?!
Fuck that.
I haven't slept alone in the dark for nearly 10 years. It's true.
The light stays on if I'm all alone. Unless I have someone in bed with me - girl or boy - it doesn't matter - I can't sleep properly without feeling a warm, supple, hot body next to me. Just kidding. It's not a sex-thing...I just can't sleep in the dark unless I can feel that someone is next to me.
I can barely BREATHE properly if I'm alone in the dark.
When I lived with my parents, they would always raise an eyebrow at me in the morning, when they'd see the light STILL on in my bedroom at eight in the morning.
Assuming I was drunk and passed out - or still on the phone with some anonymous "lover-friend", they'd open the door - only to find their first-born son curled up as snug as a penis in a vagina sleeping soundly in bed. Eww. Gross analogy.
When I went away with my friends to a cottage far out into the Canadian wilderness, I successfully boggled the minds of several of my nearest and dearest by keeping the light on all night in my own private bedroom (no one wanted to sleep with me because my feet stunk, I had sewer-rat-campbell's-soup-smelling farts and I snored like a whipper-snipper).
Whenever Life Partner goes away - I make sure someone stays in the house with me - and the light switch stays firmly ON all through the night.
In the day - the blinds must be open - every blind in the house because blinds will Blind you - and being blinded isn't a good thing. If it's a rainy day - the lights go on - every light in the house. Darkness creeps up, slithers around the base of the room and re-groups in shadowy corners, growing, getting bigger and bigger until it's ready to snatch out at your throat with smokey fingers and suffocate you when you least expect it.
Darkness sucks.
But being afraid of the dark sucks even more.
The sad thing is...I really have nothing against darkness. It's only the absence of light.
It's what is IN the dark that terrifies me. Or what ISN'T in the dark.
See, I'm one of those annoying people who is CONSTANTLY asking people "What would you do if - " type questions.
Absurd, hypothetical situations that could never happen.
"What would you do if all of a sudden there were two moons up in the sky?" "What would you do if all of a sudden I started crying and screaming and said we had ten seconds to get out of the house because I put a bomb in the basement?" "What would you do if all of a sudden I pulled my pants down in the restaurant and took a shit on the floor?" "What would you do if I threw my wine on the floor, shattering the glass, then continued conversation as if nothing happened?"
Just dumb questions like that. Stupid shit that pops into my head. Sometimes they give me a real answer of what they would SERIOUSLY do if something that absurd happened. Other times, when they are annoyed with me - they answer with a simple "I'd piss if that happened", and they change the subject.
It's disappointing when they answer like that.
It's not just my friends I ask that question to. I ask myself "What If"s all the time.
"What would you do if your boss hit on you?" "What would you do if someone brought a gun to work?" "What would you do if you fucked up the work computer and accidentally erased all the files?"
(For the record - I'd simply get up and walk out).
But...the other kinds of questions that I plague myself with:
"What would you do if you heard someone whispering your name in the dark and you were too paralized with fear to run to the light switch to turn it on to see who was caling your name?"
See, I have parasomnia, although it hasn't affected me in a long time.
It's this weird thing I had (mostly in highschool) where you stop breathing in the middle of the night. You wake up SUDDENLY - gasping for air - totally paralyzed and unable to breathe.
There's a plus though:
It also has to do with waking up - and going to sleep. There is this stage of sleep - when your body and mind are on the CUSP of a deep sleep - and you are about to start dreaming...you all of a sudden WAKE UP.
Or so you think.
It seems like you are awake. You'll see your bedroom, your surroundings - you might even hear your dad up in the next room, making breakfast. You'll look around your room, realize it's still dark and decide to go back to sleep.
Then - you'll see something...
It could be anything. I've seen counltess things. When I was a little kid - I'd see a snake slither across my floor. I'd see a jumbo-sized rat jump off my dresser onto the floor, scurrying towards my bed. I'd see spiders the size of my hand coming down from my ceiling, or spinning a web up by my light fixture.
See - you THINK you're awake - but you're not. You're in this weird parasomniac limbo of "sleep" and "awake".
Your dreams LITERALLY overlap into reality and you have these little hallucinations of things that you know can't be real - except they are.
It's like a what-if - but for real.
I used to run from my room, clutching my throat and being unable to breathe - and run to my parents room - now totally awake from fear - and scream that there was a rat in my room, or a snake in my bed.
Seeing as this isn't totally impossible, my parents went to check it out. I was convinced there was something in there - because I SAW whatever vermon it was with my own two eyes.
My parents tried to tell me I was dreaming - but I knew I wasn't because it seemed so real.
It was just something I dealt with and luckily, it didn't happen much.
When I was 18 - it happened again - but the worst ever.
I woke up, or so I thought. I glanced around my room - even saw that the clock read 6:33 a.m. and kind of smiled, knowing I still had a few hours to sleep. I noticed there was a light coming from the hallway - it was my dad - eating breakfast in the other room - early bird that he is.
That was when I saw a person - a man - in a uniform - almost like some kind of army uniform or soldier uniform, dart from one corner of my room - to the next.
I froze with terror.
I literally couldn't move or breathe and I stared at the sillhouette of this person in my room.
At that moment - I knew it was real.
Someone snuck into my house and was now trapped in my room because my father got up to get breakfast, so the burgler hid in my room.
The reality of what was happening hit me like a brick in the face - this was REAL - this was NOT a dream - this was a fucking PERSON in my bedroom, hiding - and he didn't know that I spotted him yet.
I hurled myself out of bed trying to yell for my dad, but I couldn't.
It was like my throat and lungs were paralized...like when you are in a dream and you want to scream or yell at someone - or run fast - but you can't.
I burst into the kitchen, clutching my throat and coughing, pointing desperately to my bedroom.
My dad, obviously shaken - jumped up and asked what the hell was wrong.
I tried to gasp out that there was a derranged man in an arm uniform in my bedroom but I couldn't.
My dad ran to my room and turned on the light - ready to fight if he had to, I followed him back in.
Nothing. Empty.
That was probably the last time I slept alone in the dark.
My friends and family have ridiculed me for this - telling me to get over it - but it's not something I see myself getting over.
See - this is how I see it.
You can check in your closet, you can look under your bed, you can make the rounds around the house and double-check that all the doors are locked and bolted...
but "What IF..."
What if you go to sleep - and something shows up anyway?
What If - is infinite. The possibilities span as far as imagination - it's eternal - never-ending.
Any horror in the universe - real or not - is a possibility in What-If-Land.
What if I shut the light off and I hear a voice.
What if I shut the light off and I see a face in the window.
What if I shut the light off and I hear footsteps on the stairs.
Will I stop breathing? Will I be paralyzed and unable to run?
See - the fact that I've seen the shit that I've seen through my hallucination saturated half-sleeps is proof enough that What Ifs - can happen.
I mean - yeah - chances are - it WILL NOT happen. It can't happen. But that makes it even more terrifying.
IF - *IF* it happened - in some crazy weird cosmic switch of time - IF all of a sudden there WAS some voice in the dark or some insane man in a soldier suit hiding behind your dresser - then anything is possible.
Chances are - with the lights out - nothing would happen...
But WHAT IF....
Ask yourself that at night - no matter how absurd the situation.
What if....
Creepy as hell.
Anyway, this blog was pointless. I apologize.

hearts and farts,
dan

Exile in Soberland

I ask myself, my friends and anyone I ever get drunk or high with - this question - and the answers always vary...but no one has ever really given me much of a straight answer.
I ask them what it is they like about being in an altered state.
"What is it about being drunk or high that appeals to you?"
Is it mind-expanding? Do you notice things you wouldn't normally notice, laugh at things you wouldn't normally laugh at, do things you wouldn't normally do or say things you wouldn't normally say? Sleep with people you wouldn't normally sleep with, think of things you wouldn't normally think of?
Does it make you relax? Does it clear your mind? Does it calm you down? Does it make you aware? Introspective? Violent? Foggy? Awake? Sleepy?
Happy?
My favorite things to do when I'm drinking are listen to music and really THINK about the songs. It gets annoying if everyone is in a talkie mood, and I'm in my "this album could change the world" drunk mood.
I also like to sit infront of the computer and write thoughts out. It gives my mind some substance to workwith sometimes.
Substance I couldn't find if I wasn't drinking, which could be scary. Or it could be fantastic.
A doorway to creativity? Or an elevator ride down to alcoholism.
You hear so much shit - it sways you - tricks you - and plays with your mind - and that's only reality.
But I've also heard people say that every single person has a means, or a method - or tools they use to help them with what it is they love to do most.
Why can't alcohol and pot be one of those tools?
Now this brings up a whole other slew of questions I have - and people usually tell me to drop it by this point.
One friend said she enjoys being in an altered state "just for a change of pace".
A change from the pace of what? Reality? Life?
I'm not challenging what she said - I'm just exploring it - I'm intrigued by it.
But are drugs and alcohol - and being drunk or high - just safe havens for reality escapists?
For people who can't find anything to giggle about, or any reason to relax - unless they remove their consciousness from reality and put it in a different, spacey state?
Is it a disability if we can't find anything amazing about a certain song when we are sober? Is it really amazing at all, or just the drugs making us think it is?
If we can't write without taking something to help us out - can we write at all? Or is it credited as much to the whiskey as it is the writer?
We do it to laugh and forget about things - but what is worth forgetting?
I'm kind of asking myself these things as I write them - and I can't think of an answer.
Why do I like to get drunk?
Does it drag me out of my shell so I can talk to people? Does it spawn ideas - or does it just give me a little extra confidence to put the ideas out on the table - ideas that I was too insecure to even acknowlege without a few drinks in me.
Put me in the middle of a karaoke bar at 2 p.m. in the afternoon filled with 100 people, and I'd sit in the corner and swear I'd never get up there.
But fast forward to 12:45 a.m. - after three pitchers of beer and I'm up there belting out Bob Dylan songs and inviting people to come up on the dancefloor and shake their asses.
Now - do I *Like* Karaoke? It doesn't appeal to me when I'm sober. So do I drink JUST so I can be able to physically get myself up there and lose it?
(keep in mind - i don't go to karaoke anymore - i'm just using this as an example of things we wouldn't normally do when we are sober vs things we do when we're drunk).
Does substance use take us out of ourselves?
How many times have you heard: "Oh boy..I can't wait to see what you're like drunk."
I swear - it changes our character.
"I get really sad when I'm drunk." "I get really loud when I'm drunk." "I get really flirty when I'm drunk." "I get really stupid when I'm drunk." "I get really quiet when I'm drunk."
Now - do we hate ourselves that much that we want to constantly change our character - make ourselves be things we normally aren't?
Or is it a positive thing to change who you are, temporarily? Be something you are not and do things you wouldn't want to try otherwise? Is it mind-expanding to explore the other side - or are you even exploring anything at all, except another side of yourself that you are too afraid to notice when you're living in soberland?
Why can't we pull those traits out when we're not under the influence? Does this mean our personality is only half-completed, half on display for the entire world, including ourselves - and in order to activate the rest of it - we have to take something?
I have no answer for that. Or any of it.

hearts and farts,
dan

Moongazers and Starfuckers - The Path to Enlightenment Gets a Little Bit Lighter

Happy star-watching piggies and piglettes.
Last night on my radio show - I noticed an astrologer hanging around the station. She was reading astrological star charts of people who called in to the show before mine.
On my way in - I recognized her from being on the CBC - her name is Leslie Nadon - and asked if she could read my charts - really quick - and if she could do it on air.
She said yes.
I popped in a Blake Babies CD (long live Juliana Hatfield!) and gave her my birthday - the exact year - right down to the very minute.
May 17th, 1977 - around 10:53 p.m. - that's as close to accurate as my papa could remember.
She did some flipping around in her books, smiled and said "You're being challenged."
Go fucking figure.
I told her to save it for when we were live on air.
"We're on in five seconds..." I warned...and then we were on.
I announced her as my special guest - and asked my vast audience of three listeners to bear with me while she did my reading.
Keep in my mind - I never met her. Never said a word about myself. Didn't say anything.
Here's what she said, basically:
I have a hard time articulating myself, I'm nervous - I can't convey thoughts all that well - unless I write them down. She said through writing, I can usually say exactly what is on my mind and people usually catch my drift.
True, true - I am a long winded son of a bitch.
She also said I'm very down to earth and hesitant - but at the same time - very creative - and this pulls me in two different directions.
She asked if I ever felt like a frustrated actor and I replied with a smug: "Honey, that's the story of my life."
She said she thinks I should concentrate on writing - and oddly enough - trying to write music - something I have been doing lately with my bass and playing around on guitar.
Although I don't consider myself to be even a shadow of musician - nothing is more pleasing/relaxing and satisfying than coming up with a little ditty on guitar.
Seriously.
Or jamming with friends.
Remind me to write a blog about "The Jam Session" I had with my friends Jeff and James. It was literally - one of the most mind-blowing experiences of my life. We were communicating without talking - conversations through pure, spontaneous jamming on geetars.
Anyway - she said that if I try writing music - and she did say "try" - that I'll find that rewarding.
A certain singer in the Windsor area has been asking me to play with her too. And I'm terrified because I think I suck.
As C+C Music Factory once sang: "Things that Make Ya Go Hmmmm...".
She also said that I am kinda modest and shy and even a little insecure at times about my creative side - and I need to just PUT IT OUT THERE because it's the correct path for me.
She said out of all sports - she saw me swimming, and diving down - that's what people with my astrological profile are into, I guess.
The only sport I ever enjoyed - was swimming - because it let me be underwater all the time. At family pool parties - the only time I ever saw my family - was when I came up for a quick gasp for air. I was obsessed with staying at the bottom of the pool for as long as I could.
But whatever.
She said I was brilliant and a genius - and I feel pompous writing that - I'm not endorsing it.
If you ask me - I'm one of the dumbest fucks ever.
My politics are completely off, I'm only in the Green Party because Patti Smith says it's cool - and the only reason I even read half the books I do is because they are on Leonard Cohen and Liz Phair's "must read" list.
Genius, indeed.
But - it was nice to hear.
She also said that I'm constantly pulled in two directions - one being practical and down-to-earth - the other being out-there, creative and spacey. But my practical side keeps the creative side on a leash.
She also said my financial situation will begin to look up this year - I'm coming out of my torrent of being pulled from side to side.
She ALSO told me - a very useful excercise would be for me to start taking everyday incidents, and writing about them.
"Like a log," she said. "Just write about things that happened or have happened to you - write a little bit everyday - and make it into a book."
"Hmmm...a log...", I thought to myself..."Kinda like...a BLOG!!!"
I was astounded.
Well of course, I immediately thought of this blog. That was exactly my plan from the beginning.
That was basically it.
This chick gave me goosebumps. She said I was a sweetheart and that being nice was just in my natural profile.
I was beginning to like this woman.
But that's about it.
I'm taking all of it with a grain of salt. I don't understand much about astrology - I have no idea what the lunar pull or position of planets, suns and stars have on our psyche and personality or drive or capability.
It was great fun to hear someone say such nice and flattering things about me though. And it sort of gave me confidence to try writing more music and get my name out there a little more.
I always kinda thought - in the back of my head - that the universe is just a straight line that spans out in every single direction. Every single part is another part of another part. Hard to wrap your head around - but hey - you don't have to.
It's eternity.
It's not possible because it is everything and nothing.
Whatever kind of "GOD" people talk about can all be summed down to the simple fact that there IS some kind of energy alive in the universe - the proof is us and the fact that we can generate our own thoughts. That right there - is energy.
The fact that trees and plants and air and water and cells mate and reproduce and atoms and tics and molecules combust and conjoin...there's energy all over.
Light and dark - stars that implode and explode and suns that burn and move and rotate and act as magnets - if anything - this is probably this "God" that everyone is talking about.
Not a white guy with a beard on a throne.
Not some Catholic or Christian or Buddhist - but probably all and none of the above.
The fact that we little grains of sand known as Humans need to turn to the stars as an excuse - as a means to justify why we are - and why we aren't certain things, is just another way of trying to make sense out of something that is probably too simple to ever understand.
Why can't we just accept that we ARE - because that's the only thing we are really sure of.
We just ARE.
All the rest is up for speculation - and if it's up for speculation - and if there is really no way of proving anything else - except that there is some form of physical movement, activity - energy - whatever going on up in the sky - then there really aren't - nor should there be - any right or wrong answers to the big question that is plaguing everyone:
"WHY ME?"
Self-centered bunch of motherfuckers, aren't we?

hearts and farts,
dan

The Desperate Kingdom of Love

Happy Valentine's Day, brothers and sisters.
I'm a little early - but what the fuck does it matter?
What is the point of Valentine's Day - other than buying a bunch of Halmark cards and roses if you're with someone - or getting drunk and depressed and laughing about it if you're not?
Fuck it.
If Valentine's Day is supposed to be a day where you spread the love - then let every day be Valentine's Day!! From here on out!!
Regardless if you're fucking anyone or not - tell someone you love - that you love them. It feels good. It'll make your toes tingle and your heart feel like it's been touched by Christ.
I never did get the point of Valentine's Day though. Is it just another consumer-day?
A day when significant others expect gifts - and if their expetations aren't met or satisfied, a fight insues because it has become part of the "Significant Other's" code of conduct - an unspoken rule or one of the holy commandments of relationshipland: "Thou Shalt Honour the Holy Sabbath Day of Saint Valentine".
I hear about men bending over backwards to make sure there are rose petals on the bed, bath salts in the tub, candles in the hallway and reservations at an over-priced restaurant at 8 p.m. - just because it happens to be February the fourteenth.
Bullshit.
Now if someone does something like that for their significant other on a day like...oh..let's just say...January the twenty-fourth..that's nice. It's unexpected. It's an impromtu show of love, uninstigated. It's thoughtful. Still unnecessary. But everyone likes to be wined and dined now and then - especially when you're least expecting it.
A total surprise - maybe even a wake up call - a splash of cold water in the face, an alarm call that screams "YES!! I STILL REALLY REALLY REALLY LOVE YOU!!"
Now that's romantic.
But following a pre-written script complete with a heart shaped box of chocolates, red, white and pink tissue paper and a dozen roses?
YAWN. YAWN. YAWN.
Valentine's Day is a joke, man! It's all a conspiracy to get us to buy buy buy buybuyBUYBUYBUYUBUYBUY!!!!SHOP!SHOP!SHOP!SHOP!CONSUME!CONSOME!CONSUME!
I've seen a few friends actually become ANGERED because their significant other didn't pull out all the stops and lassoo the moon for them, come Valentine's Day.
People have almost broken up over disappointment on 02/14.
Kind of missing the point here, aren't we?
Men wearing Drakkar Noir standing at the perfume counters looking like a jock strap in a lingerie shop...while women run to the hair salon and buy lemon-scented douches because Britney Simpson said that's what she does for her man.
Maybe I am cynical. But I don't see why I would be. Maybe I am cheap? I am a procrastinator - I still haven't bought a birthday gift for my significant other, and that was last Friday.
How the hell am I gonna keep a day dedicated to telling the one you love - that you love them?
I tell him that everyday anyway. Multiple times.
Yet a dear friend of mine is worried about being single on Valentine's Day.
Maybe it's wall flower syndrome. Perhaps it is loneliness. Maybe it's the urge to just BE with someone - an urge I know nothing about anymore because I have been with someone for the better part of the last decade.
Love, Love, Love.
As cliche as all the wanker ballads and pop-tart jingles are - they are always spot on.
It blinds. It hurts. It confuses. It stings.
Yes, it even stinks sometimes.
All part of the heart-shaped package.
The good, the bad and the Lovely.
Love is a mystery - we don't know how to get it - we rarely recognize it when we got it - and we almost never know how to make it stay.
The colours on the roses fade away, the scented candles lose their scent and the bath salts eventually get washed right down the drain.
I've seen the lovers of my friends come and go - I've seen my own lovers come and go - and I've even heard a few of them say "I Love You".
That's the one thing I won't step on. I can be cynical and cunty about a lot of things - but not love, as bullshitty as I sound right now.
I've never used that word -when I didn't really mean it. I've heard people say it to me - when I knew THEY didn't really mean it.
I would respond with something cocky like "I know" or "I love me too!" - and make a mental note to dump them the next day.
Maybe it's too permanent an emotion. Love scars. Once you love - you always love, a little.
And love can make you hate. It can make you hate harder than you've ever hated before - because you HATE to HATE - because you love so much.
The more you love - the stronger you hate. It's a viscious circle.
Weird. You would think I am in some huge crisis right now - questioning my love, happiness and mental survival, but I'm not. I'm just kinda bored - and I heard the word "Valentine" being said on the Mazzy Star album I am listening to right now and it kinda spawned all this shit.
So - once again - Happy Valentine's Day, peoples.
I know it's early - but does it really fucking matter?
hearts and farts,

dan

Office MuthaFuckuz

Happy faxing, brothers and sisters.
Remember that whole employment thing I was talking about?
I forgot to let you in on a little fantasty of mine.
Since I was a kid - I always wanted to be "professional".
Like - go to work dressed up. Sit at an big desk landscaped with red pens, sharpies and post-it notes. Read and write "memos" about "whatever".
Photocopy "reports".
Take "faxes".
Tilt my head, coffee cup in hand, at my fellow workers as we pass each other in the hallways, on our seperate ways to our "office".
In my office - I'd "buzz" people and ask: "Did you get my memo re: net income yet?"
Then, I'd stamp a pile full of files on my desk with the company logo, organize them and then file them in my very own filing cabinet for future reference.
Buzz Mrs.Brisby, my boss and let her know I was gonna "Do lunch", and then me and the secretaries would hit the town for a "business lunch" consisting of onion rings, caesar salads and martoonies.
(this is sort of where the fantasty part kicks in).
We'd get back to the office - and low and behold - Mrs.Brisby (normally a stuffy cunt who everyone secretly despises) decided to throw an office appreciation day for her group of "professional business people".
Confetti coats the office as business men in suits slur their words, beers in hand while take-no-shit-from-no-body business women do the limbo, swing from the light fixtures and photo copy their asses.
Ah, the joys of office life.
Anyway - I got an office job.
Not QUITE like my fantasy - but close enough.
I take faxes, write memos, file files and buzz fellow-workers.
But there's a whole other side to it that my fantasy never covered.
Some office people - are unhappy. Luckily, no one I work directly with is unhappy.
The office I work in is QUITE likely to throw a "surprise appreciation party" one day - without any warning. Complete with confetti and ass-photocopying.
However, I've seen others who work in the same building in "sales" and WOWZA.
Unhappy motherfuckers they be.
The most stressed of all, are men - since sexism allows them to have the highest positions of power (too bad they can't fucking suck it up and take it) - and they reek of absolute sadness.
Decked out in gorgeous armani suits and Hootchie-Cootchie-Gucci colognes to emanate the aura of success, they walk around with phoney smiles or flat-out scowls on their faces.
They snap their fingers and straighten their ties.
They click their pens and check out their profiles in every reflective surface, constantly primping and adjusting.
They make cracks about women they've banged while they adjust the tightening hold their wedding ring has on their fat fingers.
Muffled yelling sounds seep out from behind closed office doors, and their desks are scattered with antacid pills, migraine medication and caffiene tablets.
Terror. Sheer, dangerous terror.
One of them approached me and introduced himself, seeing I was new.
His name was Jake - for real - and his face was the alarm-call-colour-of-red that should be a warning sign of blood pressure that is about to sky-rocket into a heart attack.
He asked me if I had sales experience. I thought he was just making small-talk.
I said no, I just work in the office. I was trying to fraternize, go on his level.
"No sales for me. Just the usual...faxes, memos and conference calls."
I didn't actually say this, I told him I just work in the office.
I eyed his tie and noticed the navy blue did not match the black of his jacket.
We made eye contact. I wondered if he was psychic and could read what I was thinking.
I tried to clear my mind.
"Well, if you're not in sales," he snickered, "How the hell do they figure out what to pay you?"
He popped a Tums.
I swallowed.
"Well - I'm on salary..." I stammered.
"So ...do they just pull the salary out of a hat and pay you whatever they want?"
I was now starting to catch on that a) he was an asshole and b) he was fucking with me.
Except he wasn't smiling - there was anger in his eyes.
So help me god - ANGER. Over what??
His own miserable life? The fact that I'm allowed to sit on my ass in an office and read a Danielle Steele novel if I wanted to - and STILL make the same amount of money I would make if I was acutally working?
Meanwhile, he has to suck the big giant cock of customer service on his knees - getting his nice armani suit wrinkled so he can make his commission.
Was he angry because he sits at his desk everyday before he has to "work the floor" and hope the swishing of the janitor's mop on the marble floors drowns out the crying sounds coming from his office?
Now don't get me wrong. I'm not knocking ANYONE in sales.
It's probably a fucking fantastic job. Working on 100% commission has GOT to pay off.
Just like being a server. It's dirty, it's nasty - you have to kiss the big white ass of the customer - but if you can cut it, and still smile about it, laugh about it - and be okay with it because you are making a sick amount of money - then what's wrong with it?
As long as you're happy and not starving - it doesn't matter what job you do.
But if you can't handle it, and you're miserable with it or you're sad and angry at the world - but you're using other people as a scape goat to take out your own frustrations about the mistakes you've made in your life - then perhaps you're working in the wrong department.
But of course, he already knew all this, so I didn't bother to say any of it.
"Yup," I smiled. "They just pull it out of a hat."
Then I gave my "office nod" and skipped off, back to my end of the building to play on the internet and eat a granola bar. And organize files.
I *heart* my job!
But some of those poor people in sales. Wow.
While I'm sure they make an arm and a leg - it's gotta suck having a "quota" to meet. Having to talk people into buying things so you can make a living and not get fired.
The migraine pills, antacid, stress relievers, high blood pressure...beautifully awful.
Reminds me of a song by Grandaddy called "The Group Who Couldn't Say".
I'll end with a quote from that song:
"And at the desk tops there's crying sounds
for all the projects due
when no one else is around,
And the sprinklers that come on
at 3 a.m.
sound like crowds of people asking:
'Are you happy with what yer doing?'"

hearts and farts,

dan

An Evening With...Dan MacDonald

There's a concert in my computer room every single morning, between the hours of 9 a.m. and noon.
Starring: Me!
Except I pretend I'm not in my computer room. I pretend I'm at Phog or the Avalon or Milk - or on my more adventurous days - I'm playing a gig at Saint Andrew's Hall, the Magic Stick or even State Theatre.
I've done this since I was a little kid.
When I was just a mere squirrel of a boy, seven years old to be precise, I began listening to my Michael Jackson, Culture Club and Dolly Parton (my parent's) records and air guitaring along with the songs to an imaginary audience on the beginners acoustic guitar my folks gave me for my birthday.
It was the best thing in the world. I rocked out, lip synced to all the words - and in my head - my entire school gym clapped along with me, while I strummed away on the school stage, winning the talent competition with my stellar performance skills and original songs I wrote like "Billie Jean" and "Karma Chameleon".
This evolved through highschool. It turned into me - in the highschool auditorium strumming along at the school talent show - and wowing even the dumb jocks with my original songs that I wrote. Songs like "Smells Like Teen Spirit", "Bullet With Butterfly Wings" and "Miss World".
Embarassing.
Not to mention immature - I know - but it's great fun.
In 1990 - at the genesis of my "Madonna Stage" - I bought the I'm Breathless album and did full-on off-broadway productions in my bedrooom, conjuring up dance moves not seen since Gypsy Rose Lee kicked the bucket.
I shimmied, I shook, I gyrated and I even did the fucking moonwalk.
I vogued, I kicked, I sometimes even grabbed props from my room to aid me with my illusion of REALLy putting on a show.
An old costume top hat for a Girlie Show segment.
A bed post to slide around when I was feeling a little like Prince.
Or - my six string Ibanez electric guitar to fake strum along to (I always made sure it wasn't plugged in) if I was feeling like David Bowie or Courtney Love.
Once - I even acted like Madonna in Truth or Dare and fucked a bed pillow, to the tune of Like a Virgin.
Nice eh? I figure I might as well lay it all out in the open - do a no-holds-barred and tell it all.
Shocking? Sure. But fuck it.
That's what blogs are for, right?
Uh...right?
RIGHT!!?!?!?!?!?!?!
Back in the highschool days - I'd imagine the kids smirking as I took to the stage.
"Dan is gonna do a song?? For real?? I didn't know he played..."
Then - the opening chords to PJ Harvey's "Rid of Me" would begin - and the crowd would grow silent as their awe of my amazing and unlikely song-writing ability grabbed them by surprise.
By the end of it - I'd hear the imaginary audience members shocked murmurs:
"Holy fuck!! he's really good!! JESUS!! He's going places!"
"Oh My god!! I wish he wrote this song about me!!" (that was when I was doing Cyndi Lauper's "True Colours")
I'd do duets as well.
Jesus and Mary Chain + Hope Sandoval do a great duet with their "Sometimes Always" song.
To date - it is among my top ten, perhaps top five favorite songs ever.
I always did William Reid's part and I'd be silent during Hope's part, as if she was on the stage with me.
Then - I'd merge into Hope Sandoval herself and put on a Mazzy Star album and lip sync and hippie-dance along to those in my room while the druggie crowd of fashionable hipsters swayed in the shock and awe of the beauty of my songs.
To this day - every morning when I'm downloading songs or demoing a new album I picked up - if the mood hits me, I'll jump up and do a little one-man-show - maybe give a little "this next song is going out to all my friends in Windsor...it's good to be home", because in my head - I have gone on to be a big star - and this was my homecoming show - my much anticipated homecoming show - at the State Theatre. Ah fuck - the Palace Theatre!
It's best to lip sync to live tracks - songs that were recorded live from a concert.
There is actual cheering in them. So at the end of the song, the room fills with applause.
If you close your eyes at the right moment, it sounds like the entire room is applauding just for you.
So I figure I probably missed my calling.
I shoulda been a rock star.
If not that - than at least a damn good drag queen.
Oh, to dream...to dream.
But it's good to daydream. There are wheels turning. Ideas swimming. Creative energy buzzing.
And crowds and crowds of imaginary fans at an imaginary concert with imaginary tickets to an imaginary sold-out homecoming show - and the number one imaginary star who is the eye of the whole, beautiful storm - is Me
My belief is, if you don't tune out for even a few minutes a day - and take yourself to La La land for even just a quick visit - you're missing out.
We were given an imagination for SOME reason - and I have no idea what its real purpose is yet - but regardless, it's damn good entertainment.

hearts and farts,

dan

The Dying Art of the Mix Tape

Like the magnificent and tragic beasts who fell before it - the Victrola, the 8-track, the turn-table and now the cassette player, the art of creating mix tapes for friends, lovers and significant others is sadly a dying art.
When I was a kid - and the latest craze was the "double whammy" ghetto blaster - which held not one, but TWO cassette tapes and allowed music fanatics to record the contents of one tape onto another, a whole new universe of possibilities was born.
At the tender age of eight, I remember scrounging up five dollars so I could head over to a local comic book and record store to stock up on blank tapes.
Maxwell.
I'd stare at the logo on my walk back home. It was a little black and white drawing of some rock-n-roll dude sitting infront of a huge speaker on a comfortable looking leather chair while the sheer force of music and sound blew his shaggy hair from his face. Beautiful.
After that, I'd go to all my friend's houses and ask their fathers and mothers and older brothers and sisters and babysitters if I could browse their tape collection and borrow a few.
Quiet Riot, Styxx, Scritti Pollitti, Prince, Dire Straits, The Fabulous Thunderbirds, Joan Jett, The Bangles, Scandal, The Beatles, David Bowie, Culture Club, The Troggs, Madonna, Cyndi Lauper, Michael Jackson, Smokey and the Miracles, the Supremes, Sly and the Family Stone, Linda Ronstadt, Olivia Newton John, Tom Jones, The Doors, Sonny and Cher, Elton John, Glass Tiger, David Lee Roth, Van Halen, Whitney Houston, Bruce Springsteen.
I was in absolute heaven. Nirvana, so to speak.
I'd go home with an A&P bag bursting at the seams with clunky cassette tapes and dump them all on my floor, spreading them out and staring at each one, scrutinizing every cover, reading the track listing over and over, reading the liner notes, the thank you's, the lyrics - in sheer AWE of every single song - my head spinning and overwhelmed, not knowing where to start.
All the toys in the world would not have been able to drag me from that room when I had borrowed cassette tapes in my posession.
I'd listen to each one, one at a time - and read along with the lyrics while the tape played.
I'd write down my favorite song from each album, sometimes several - and rate them in lists of which ones I liked the most.
Then - I'd whittle the list down to my all time favorites. Figure out which songs SPOKE to me, which ones I related to, which ones were friends and which ones were enemies.
And the enemies made it on mix tapes too.
I'd decide which songs were going where - insert one of my brand new Maxwells into Cassette Slot A - and a borrowed cassette into Cassette Slot B - and begin the tedious task of making a mix-tape.
They were a little shakey at first, I admit.
Long pauses between songs. Sometimes, songs would be cut off. The final song on each side would always cut off - or there would be long gaps at the end of one side of the tape.
But it was MY collection. I started associating certain collections of songs to certain moods I was in, things I was thinking about - relating them to shit that was going on in my life at that particular moment. To this day - I still relate certain songs to certain times - dating back to the very first mix-tape I ever made, which included Dion Warwick's "That's What Friends are For", The Beach Boys "Help Me Rhonda" and El Debarge's "Who's Johnny".
Music is such a trigger. A song you haven't heard in a long time can jog your memory, stir up emotions you seriously haven't felt - or even acknowleged you had - in years, decades.
When I was a kid, the art of the mix-tape was alive and kicking.
All through grade school - I taped everyhing. Radio, songs off television, more cassette tapes from friends - clips from my own small, but growing collection.
As I grew older - I started to refine the art.
I'd make sleeves and decorate them with my own drawings or stickers. Sometimes magazine cut-outs.
I started to name them according to mood. "Happy Songs" "Dance Songs" "Rainy Day Songs" "Radio Songs".
By the time I got to grade 11 - I damn near perfected the art. I went from recording tape-to-tape, to recording CD-to-tape, since there was still no way (and I thought never would be) to record onto a CD.
That was around the time I started giving them out to people.
When I was eighteen I made my friend Christine a mix-tape called "Summersongs", because I figured she would be going away after the summer and I would not be seeing her as much. I included a poem I wrote about Summer - how it's the happiest and most heart breaking season of the year. I put on songs about skinny dipping and getting drunk during the day and getting lost in rock-n-roll clubs by night, all to the tune of glorious summer-themed music.
When I was twenty I made one of my best friends a whole series of mix-tapes.
It started with "Meet My Friend".
Songs about obsession, disaster and addiction in the love-department. Religious undertones. They seriously made me understand the shit she was going through better.
You go through (and put yourself through) some crazy times when you're in your early twenties. Songs started reminding me of other people.
I started thinking "That's a song so-and-so would like because they are going through the same thing" - I started not only relating to the songs on a personal level, but I started relating OTHER PEOPLE to songs - so much so, I became connected to their emotions, through the music - up to the point that it felt like I was experiencing the same things my friends were. At least the same emotions. And maybe I was.
It sounds crazy, but that's how connected I was and am to these special songs.
Thrashing guitars and echoing screams that still reside in the atmosphere somewhere between outer space, and a University house on California street, circa 1997 - 1998.
The series continued. "Soft Things", "Things I Meant To Say" and "Ever Fuck a Rock Star?"
came next - I glued intricate collages of photographs and magazine cut-outs, tore pages from my own poetry out of my black book, and glued key-lines as an inlay.
I tried to pass subliminal messages to my friends. If I was in trouble. If I was scared. If I was in love. If I was angry. If I was horny.
You get the idea.
And I tried to pass along messages to them - about them. "You're fucked up." "You're hopelessly in love and she doesn't want anything to do with you." "We're all alone in this, but it's okay."
When I was 21 I fell in love with someone hardcore and made him an untitled mix tape and was terrified of giving it to him, for fear that he'd read too much into it.
When I was 22 I met the best guy in the world and made him a mix-tape to match.
In exchange, he gave me something I never had or even saw. Something I heard about but had no idea how to make:
A Mix-CD.
A "burned" compact disk, complete with a back and front cover of smoothly printed fonts and slick looking graphics.
It was beautiful. It looked store bought. It made my rough and chunky collages of words and coloured pencil scratches look so amateur, I felt silly for making them.
Slowly, tapes were going out.
Napster was grabbing us music fanatics by the throat - making it so easy for us to snatch a song off our very own computers and burn it onto a CD almost effortlessly.
Gone were the days of sorting through CDs and queuing up the record button to capture a song onto a tape.
Gone were the days of calculating how long each song was - and splitting them up from side a to side b - so the tape wouldn't run short and the songs be cut off.
Gone were the days of fussing over the track listing - it had to be PERFECT because once you start a mix-tape - if the timing is even slightly off - you can't go back and fix it without wasting a few hour's worth of work, time and thought.
Instead, I could move MP3 files from a folder. Line them up in the order and move them around, changing the tracklisting as easy as I could arrange a set of tea-lights on a patio table.
When satisified - one click of a button, and "burn".
Done.
No cut offs. No flipping to B-side.
I was hooked, I admit.
Nowadays, most cars only have CD players.
Most ghetto blasters don't have tape players.
It made sense. The mix tape was dying.
I traded in Maxwell for Memorex, and my Double Whammy ghetto blaster - for a high speed CD burner.
I haven't made a mix-tape since the year 2000.
I still make mix-CDs, and it's fun as hell. It's still one of my favorite things to do for someone and one of my favorite gifts to get from someone.
I still try to make nifty covers, I still use my own poetry, or nifty images - but it's not the same.
It's a little more sleek.
There is just something a little less homemade about making a mix-CD vs. a mix-tape.
Most eight year olds today will never make a mix-tape. That's sort of sad.
But I'm a nostalgia junkie.
Every generation misses out on something. I'm sure I missed out on a little something special when the glorious age of the Victrola ruled supreme. That belonged to someone else.
Although I caught the tail end - Vinyl belonged to someone else.
But I'm glad to say, the tedious and rewarding art of the mix-tape belonged to me.
And it's sort of sad to see it slipping away...

hearts and farts,

dan

Me Boom Boom: Why I'm Glad I'm Not An Infantalist - or - "I Think I Made A Stinky"

i wike to be a baby sumtime.
me wike to curl up wif my wittle botty-wotty of drinky-winky and be nice and cozy.
sumtimes i wike to be a wittle gurl baby and wear a wittle cute bonnet wif a fancy sailor dwess that i make all messy by going boom boom when i'm not es-posed to.
This is all a joke. I'd never want to be an adult baby. I'll tell you why.
But before I get to the "why", I just want to say that I do think the whole "infantalism" fetish is a strange one indeed. Grown men (mostly) dressing up like little babies with diapers - and having women breast feed them and spank them and pat them on the head and feed them.
Fuck man. Can sexism get any more strange? Having a woman dote on you hand-and-foot is one thing. But Hand, foot and now BREAST?!?! What kind of a fucking world are we living in?
No one works the way a mother works for her kids.
Her world revolves around her baby. Is it THIS level of devotion from a woman a man is looking for? Is he trying to instill in her the stress and emotional ties a woman feels as a mother?
Then I wonder if it is sexism at all...maybe it's a man's desire to be totally submissive to a woman?
Or is it some kind of innate, immature love a man has for a woman - or even more - his mother. So is it sexist? Some people say there is NO respect stronger than the respect a son or daughter (you hear more about it from sons - or maybe society is just creepy and likes to think that) has for their mother.
Freudian maybe? Obviously. Freud would have had a fucking field day.
What creeps me out is that it is usually sexualized. Ending in handjobs. Oh god.
I can't even talk about it anymore.
I saw this documentary by Nick Broomfield, the guy who did Kurt and Courtney - and it discussed topics of fetish, like infantalism.
It showed this guy all dolled up in a sailor suit, letting this mother-figure woman fuss over him, while he sprawled helplessly on the bed, with his dress up, I might add.
It was single-handedly, one of those most atrocious horrors I have ever subjected myself to. Like - so disturbing, I was drawn to it, compelled to write this blog about it.
Like female circumcision or plastic surgery operations or that godhatesfags website. Just so nasty and brutal - you can't help but have a peek.
If I was ever gonna try being an adult baby - and believe me, the thought crosses my mind now and then - I think I'd stick to being a boy baby. Minus the snakes and snails.
The puppy dog tails can stay though.
And we might as well throw in a well-oiled, buff surfer boy muscle stud to be my big brother, for good measure.
I'll take my breast milk from him, thank you.
I wouldn't want to be a girl baby because girl babies always have really ugly hair accessories. LIke the hair-band, even though they don't have any hair. Or the annoying little tufts of hair pulled into a "poneytail" on top of the head and clipped with a little Drew Barrymore daisy burrette. Gimme a fucking break.
BUT - if I was going to be an adult baby (which I wouldn't want to, and I'll tell you why in a moment) - I'd have several stipulations:
1) Beer in my baby bottle. If they could not find beer - rye or vodka with a dash of vermouth will do fine. Shaken up with some olive juicey wuicey.
2) A REALLY big fuckin play pen with a ghetto blaster and at least ten CDs (of my choice) for "Sweepy Time" so I could relax. The play pen would have to come equipped with a portable DVD player, a lap top computer with internet hook-up and a pen, paper and envelope so I could write letters to people.
3) For food - I'd want chopped up steak and eggs, spoon fed to me by a topless whore. And she'd have to be hot. Firm legs, perky tits and a June Cleaver hairdo.
"Mama. Mama," I'd say. And she'd laugh. And I'd laugh.
Oh, how we'd laugh.
4) Disregard number three.
5) I'd want a heated blanket in my crib, padded bars so I didn't bang my wittle head in the throws of baby-ecstasy, and a vibrating mattress to sooth me to sleep.
6) A baby monitor so I could ask for requests all night. "More beer." "More pizza." "My nappy needs changing." "I made a stinky - come clean me."
Sounds like fucking heaven.
It probably does suck to be a baby. Worse yet, it probably sucks even MORE to be a grown man who wants to be a baby.
And I'm a grown man.
A GROWN MAN.
And that my friends, is why I'd NEVER want to be an adult baby.
THE END.

hearts and farts,

dan

Toronto: Sex Drugs and Rock-N-Roll...minus the Sex and Rock-N-Roll

Happy hangovers, brothers and sisters.
I took my precious ass down to the fashion-loving city of Toronto this weekend to celebrate my friend's 30th birthday.
It was a total surprise, there were about 14 of us - we ate at some place called Tortilla Flats, which gave me the shites (even though I only had chicken fingers and fries) and I drank about six jumbo - and i mean JUMBO - Caesars. They came in half-litre bottles and they went down so nice, I was slurring my words and licking the celery salt from my fingers before the birthday boy even arrived.
So in he walked "SURPRISE" we all yelled - and so began the night. Trips out with the smokers to the back patio, incesstant chatter inside - topics ranging from car accidents to date rape drugs and whether or not we'd ever spike someone's drink with them.
The answer was, thankfully - "No" from all the people I asked. I don't even know how I got on the subject.
Emily previewed me one of her new songs in the hotel room - I guess it's called Rip Chord - and it's been in my head ever since. Fantastic, but I'm never surprised when she comes up with a new song that blows me mind - because it seems to be a bit of a habbit she's formed.
Anyway, we went off to Buddies in Bad Times (I think that's the name) to get even more drunk and wear cheesey sunglasses on the dancefloor. And I don't mean cheesey like Paris Hilton glasses...I mean cheesey like "Hi..we're so obviously NOT from this city so we're wearing Cyndi Lauper/Marilyn Manson/Marilyn Monroe glasses." They were actually Emily's, but I made sure to steal them as much as possible.
Oh, the depravity. The depravity, I say!!
I bumped into a guy I used to know from Windsor there - and he told me about this other guy I used to know who became a porn star. Except he's not a star. Yikes. I told him I was a little too drunk to register all the info he gave me, and to quote my loving mother, he should "hush".
Then I almost vomitted outside infront of all my friends and a bunch of guys who were talking, trying to act like the Fonze from Happy Days, even though they all had plucked eyebrows and their shoes looked like Rainbow Bright creamed on them.
Everyone told me to stand away from them but I was seriously fine.
I just gagged.
It wasn't even a puke-gag. It was like when you swallow wrong and you start choking - or coughing - you cough so hard you gag. That's it. When I puke - I'm out for the night.
But after the little parking-lot-gag-incident, I was back inside buying shots of nastiness for Ian and me, all in the name of him turning 30 of course.
We all went back to the hotel room, I ping-ponged between two hotel rooms - one with Wayne (Life Partner), Faustine and Emily and the other with Ian, Karen, Todd, Deanna and Gary. I rolled and smoked joints for and with everyone in both rooms and was treated to a few beers in the room I was a guest in.
I remember yap-yap-yapping but I have no idea what I was going on about. And I was in my pajamas.
I also remember squirting - full stream - a bottle of gatorade at Ian, and him returning the favour. I forgot about that until I saw the blue stain on my t-shirt today, while unpacking.
I was among the last men standing - I was the last one standing in my hotel room. I got back to my room at almost 4 a.m. and it was slumberland. Cozy to crawl into a bed that someone is already sleeping in though. I love that. Even if it is a nasty sofa bed with pillows that smell like doggy cunt.
I still stand by that I don't think Toronto is for me. I love it to death - and some of my bestest friends in the world live there (Lisa, Ian) but it's just too fast.
I think I'm just so used to Windsor, so settled - and I hate driving in lots of traffic and hate public transit even MORE - and those are two things there are a LOT of in Toronto. It works - I'm for sure not knocking it. It is a fantastic city - and for the first time - it actually looked TOTALLY beautiful to me.
But to live there...I don't know. It would REALLY have to grow on me.
If I did live there - I would want to live on Lisa and Dustin's street, or one like it. It had character - no two houses looked the same. Super interesting, friendly, cozy, warm...little corner-nooks everywhere to eat breakfast...it just looked like a place I could see myself living.
The stupid fucking bartender at that bar had no idea what he was doing. It was a "shooter bar", yet all he had were bottles of Sour Puss and Sambuca. Bullshit.
I'm not even a shooter kinda guy...but for birthdays - you have to do those ridiculous "fun shots" and I was disappointed that this bar didn't have any. Shocked actually.
A gay bar with no foo-foo drinks? I expected much more from T-O.
In the morning we went to a place called Sneaky Dee's for breakfast (more mexican food - fantastic this time) and we all basked in the morning glory of hangover heaven.
It was breath-taking and beautiful.
I heard George Strombolopolous (or however the hell you spell his name) the hottie from Much Music who is the only one with a brain and half-decent taste in music goes to that place all the time. I only ever met him once (briefly) and while he is still possibly the best looking man on television, I was more than a little disturbed to find that I towered over him, and I'm not even a very tall person.
Lisa and Dustin said they see him all the time, and his girlfriend is a ditz.
I found that comforting for some reason.
We hung out at Lisa and Dustin's, finally getting to see their place and it was gorgeous - a total fun spot to hang out in.
We then said our goodbyes and Life Partner and I headed down to the most kick-ass record store I have ever been in. It's called Sonic Boom - and if you are EVER in the Toronto area - do yourself a LARGE favour, skip HMV, skip fucking EVERY SINGLE record store you have ever GONE to - and go to Sonic Boom.
We spent pretty near an hour in there - and it was not NEAR enough time to see even a fraction of the shit they had to offer. SOOOO cheap too!
Here's my purchases:
Juliana Hatfield - I See You (the E.P.)
the Amps - Tipp City single (w/ two VERY rare songs)
Wig in a Box (song from and inspired by the movie Hedwig and the Angry Inch, but all the songs are done by artists like Ben Kweller, The Breeders, Frank Black, Imperial Teen, Rufus Wainwright, Spoon, Sleater-Kinney, Cyndi Lauper etc..and all the proceeds go to the Harvey Milk Foundation - some school in New York for gay kids). Whatever. Talk about segregation. What next, bathrooms for gay people? A gay section in restaurants? "Sit anywhere you like honey - but mind the chairs with the pink triangles. They're for the fags.")
At the same time - if they are only trying to create a safe environment for gay or transgendered kids...I mean...it's not like its a bad intention. It's ultimately a good thing - somewhat progressive, anyway - and the States needs a little push in that direction - especially after they "rocked the vote" this year by not only re-electing a fucker they complained about "not being properly elected" the first time around - but voting across the board to allow the fucking convervative hick to write an amendment banning gay marriage.
Like - fuck off - seriously.
Hardcore Christians need to be given two nails, two pieces of wood and a big fucking hammer to just nail themselves to a big ole self-righteous cross and bleed profusely from the mouth so we can all see how much better they are than us. I seriously think that's the only thing that would EVER make one of those people truly happy and content.
Lord have mercy.
Wayne picked up some steals too.
George Michael Listen Without Prejudice Vol. 1, Tricky's Vulnerable, Eve's Scorpion album, which I'm very excited to hear, and a live Cowboy Junkies album. Great buys...tons of rare stuff.
Okay, enough of my ad for Sonic Boom. www.sonicboom.ca
Now, I'm beginning to do two things with this blog that I feared I would.
One - is not post everyday. I promise I will get better.
Two - is NOT use it as a diary and list of events.
I need to excercise the little tiny worm that's living inside my head and tummy - called "The Writer" - and nurture the poor little fucker.
He needs to grow. So I'm gonna write more fun stories, rather than just accounts of events I did. Who wants to read about that anyway? It's boring. So what - I went out for someone's b-day and got drunk. Whoopee. How original. No one in their twenties EVER does stuff like that.
I'm currently thinking about writing another Vagina Monologue about a certain gal-pal of mine from 1993 and I have a sad one about a car accident I was in and ended up spending half a semester in a wheelchair with a broken pelvis.
That was fun.
Until next time. I start my brand new job tomorrow..first day. I'm nervous.
I should have cut my hair, I should have bought new outfits to wear. Shoulda shoulda shoulda.
Didn't Didn't Didn't.
Fucking typical.
Wish me luck.
Until tomorrow....
sorry for the bitter, sour tone.
hearts and farts,

dan

Quitters Inc.

Quit my job yesterday.
It was terrifying and fun. Keep in mind, it wasn't some spur-of-the-moment event, where I threw my apron at a customer and screamed in the manager's face: "I QUIIIIIT!" and stormed out.
See, I applied for another job on Monday. It was for Customer Service and Accounts at a furniture store. No sales, no commission - just plain old front desk stuff - and I would be in charge of handling accounts, processing payments blah blah blah. Typical stuff, but the pay was surprisingly not bad.
They called me in for an interview that night. I was surprised they responded so fast.
The very next day they called me back and said I was hired.
So basically I emailed my resume on Monday - and was hired by Tuesday. Less than 24 hours after pushing a few buttons on my computer and I have a brand new full-time job.
If that doesn't scream "sign of the times" ....well...the fact that they didn't find any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, will.
Anyway, the new place wanted me to start as soon as possible - which meant I had to quit my job as a resident of Waitress Hell right away.
I was happy and sad.
Happy because this is one of my new year's goals already met. I wanted a new job, that still involved work with the public, didn't require me to wear a uniform, didn't involve me bringing food or drink to tables full of ravenous, self-righteous white trash, but still paid semi-decent.
Hard to find that after Xmas.
However - I worked as a resident of Waitress Hell for nearly five years. It was my second home.
The money I made from that place was ridiculous, even for a serving job - and I'm saying that without trying to brag. It was just beautiful. The people I worked with have ALL been there longer than five years - one of the waitresses was going on 16 years.
There were four of us who worked the day shift, ranging in age from 27 to 52. It rocked. Of course, the hootchie gals came in after 5 p.m. - but they were great too. Even though I could relate more to the older people and learned so much from them - I learned SO MUCH from the younger people too - the 15 year old dish washers, the 16 and 17 year old girls who were hostesses and even the 21 year old downtown bar gals, who went to all the trendy clubs I never went to.
They seriously kept me up to steam on things. I found out about such "modern" concepts like "text messaging" through them. I found out (to my horror) that none of them buy CDs anymore, and laughed at me for going to HMV everyday to pick up my "cd-of-the-day".
"Dan...don't buy CDs...download them."
Now I know what downloading is - I'm not that fucking out of it - but download ALL your CDs?? That's ridiculous. But none of them buy music. I was shocked.
At any rate - I'm drifting now - it was fantastic to work there.
Hell, spending five years anywhere - you get attached whether you are compatible with the people or not.
So - the very next day - I decided to drop the news to my manager and everyone. They all took it well - were happy for me. The one lady I didn't think would really care - started crying when I said that this staff was the best one I ever worked with - and I kinda lost it and got choked up too and had to tighten the leash on my composure before it completely took over and I lost it completely.
It got me thinking about work though.
Work has always been WORK for me. I never really had much of a pretension about what I - or anyone else - did for a living.
I hear people complaining about "getting a real job" etc...because they think being a server is a shitty job, meant for highschool drop outs or people who can't handle a job that requires real thinking.
And anyone who is a "lifer" server - is a loser.
That's so not true. Working this job - which I admit, I used to think the same things back when I was a LOT younger - taught me so much about people from every end of the spectrum.
It taught me that people are kind, selfish, generous, gracious, power-tripping, bitchy, cunty, snobby, wonderful, self-less, thoughtful, impatient, and weird as hell. In good and bad ways.
It also taught me that money-is-money. Some people go to an auto factory to install speaker wires for eight hours a day - to make their 22 bucks an hour.
Others go sit in an office and play solotaire on their lunch break for 18 bucks an hour.
I brought plates of food to people, laughed all day, talked to the nice customers and was short with the bad - and brought home enough under-the-table money to buy a house and a car.
I loved what I did - and that was kind of all that mattered.
Rather than feel insecure and not-worthy when people asked me "What do you REALLY want to do?" - I started saying "I like doing this."
Because I did. It rocked. I probably could have even been happy doing it for the rest of my life. That's not true. It was a fucking bitch on the back. But so is being a letter carrier for Canada Post. Hell - so is sitting in a chair hunched over a computer all day. Every job is gruelling - mentally or physically or both.
I do know I for sure left this place with far better memory, organizational and time management skills than I had before. And a bunch of new friends (who are now old friends) that I didn't have before.
It's also the first time I ever quit a job on good terms.
A quick run-through of the jobs I've done.
McDonald's - Cook and Drive-thru customer service.
I was 16. This job sucked the big one. I ended up quitting by telling the manager I hated every aspect of my life while working in this demeaning atmosphere - and I am not downplaying the job itself - like I said - it doesn't matter what someone does - but fuck man - the kids who work at McDonald's deserve at LEAST 12 bucks an hour for the shit they have to put up with.
The manager told me he needed to see my resignation in writing. I proceeded to tear a page from the "Ten Guidelines to Becoming a McWow Employee" and scrawled the words "I QUIT" across it and handed it to him, glaring at him defiantly.
He was not impressed but I didn't give a shit - I was fucking 16, and he was an an unhappy asshole.
I didn't need his negative shit hovering over my head while I worked. I hope he went for help after that too, in retrospect I kinda feel bad for him.
After that I worked at the Red Cross as a janitor and groundskeeper, when I was 17. I didn't mind this place. Even though I did a half-assed job of trimming the hedges, and I never quite knew how to use the lawnmower - it rocked because I loved being outside and working alone. The Janitor part was nothing. You could practically eat out of the toilets there, because they were always so clean. I don't think those people ever even went to the bathroom at work.
The worst part was mopping the floors - but only because it sucks to mop floors. No complaints.
I left that job because it was only on contract for two months in the summer, while the full-time dude was off on vacation.
Then...the job to end all jobs: Video store customer service!!! This job fucking rocked. I worked at Jumbo Video, which was like, the indepenent, cool video store of Windsor. Kind of like what Dr.Disc is to music - Jumbo Video was to renting videos. I held this job for five years, was a supervisor, worked every shift imaginable, the owners were alcoholic dicks - but I absolutely loved every second of it. I talked about movies all day with people. Watched movies all day. Listened to music all day while my favorite movies played. It was great. It closed down in 2000 because the company went bankrupt. I was heart broken, but - the show must go on.
Then I had Margarita's ever since.
In between, I worked for Campus Worklink (told them to fuck themselves), East Side Marios (stopped showing up after one shift because it was like working for corporate canada and i wasn't QUITE ready to sell my soul), Hurricane's Roadhouse (stopped showing up because there was something shadey about that place), and the Collection Service of Windsor - which involved me calling people who were deeply in debt and harrassing them. NIGHTMARE. I got into an argument with my manager about an old lady (who cried on the phone to me) - he wanted me to be more mean to her - tell her she was going to court (even though she didn't owe enough money to be taken to court - he just wanted me to scare her) and I said I can't do that - fuck - I couldn't wear that shit on my conscience and be able to sleep at night. So I quit.
And now Margarita's..another one bites the dust.
Anyway...gotta run...sorry this isn't much of a post. this is just more therapeutic for me. To kind of make sense of everything. In less than a week - my entire life is changed. I knew I'd eventually get a new job - but not this fast. I can't believe I'm done at Margarita's.
Anyway - album of the day:
Bright Eyes "10 Song Sampler".
This is a compilation of ten songs from Conor Oberst, otherwise known as Bright Eyes, taken from four of his albums: "I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning", "Digital Ash in a Digital Urn", "Lua", and "Take itEasy (Love Nothing)".
It's nice to hear songs which are good because they are written well, and are not weighed down with heavy over-production. No nifty beeps or distortions here. The songs are stripped down, mainly acoustic - with some band and minor production. But they are so happy and sad - the emotions are so up and down - it's just mind-blowing. He sounds a little like the guy from Violent Femmes - but the songs are perfect gems, each of them.
He's someone I should have gotten into a long time ago, and I've missed out.
Songs about alcoholism, sad models, and house parties filled with disaffected, unhappy people trying to get along. That alone says something. They're trying.
It's an awesome album. The kind you are supposed to listen to alone, with the lights off and just THINK about the lyrics.
"When eveything is lonely, I can be my own best friend." - Great line. It's a nice reminder, that when everything is going a little crazy - you still have yourself.
It sounds cheesey when I try to put it into perspective. Just go out and buy an album by Bright Eyes. Any album. I can't believe I've been missing out for so long.
hearts and farts,

dan

Little Girl Lost: The Claiming of Mandy Walker

WARNING: THE FOLLOWING STORY CONTAINS SCENES OF DISTURBING VIOLENCE. READER DISCRETION IS ADVISED - THIS MAY NOT BE APPROPRIATE FOR A YOUNG AUDIENCE.

Once upon a time, there lived a brother and a sister.
The brother was the older of the two - by six years - and was a curious lad who enjoyed digging holes that led to nowhere in the family tomato garden, weaving bracelets out of dandelions and repeatedly listening to cassette tapes by the 80's all-female pop-rock group The Bangles.
His sister enjoyed hoola-hooping, pogo-balling and playing with life-sized dolls. The bigger the better. The closer to resembling a real little girl - the more fun and interesting her games became.
Little Sister disliked the tomato garden. It was full of worms and spiders and mud and slime.
Big Brother disliked the Hoola-Hoop. He thought it was a waste of time.
Little Sister disliked dandelion bracelets. She was scared of being stung by bumblebees.
Big brother disliked the Pogo-Ball. He deflated it, cut it in half and used it as a hat so he could look Jewish - "Just like the Pope".
But both children shared their intesne joy of playing with life-like dolls.
One year, Santy Claus was especially kind to the little girl, and bestowed upon her - a wonderful and magical gift, in the form of a Mandy Walker doll.
Mandy Walker stood at nearly 4 feet, towered over the four year old Little Sister - and came up just above the waist of nine year old Big Brother.
Mandy's arms could move, her hips could turn, her eyes could blink and best of all - she could walk - if you held her hand and moved her body a certain way.
She was like a third sibling. So real - it was almost eerie.
Her blonde head of hair - just like goldilocks. Her puckered, pink lips - frozen in a plastic smooch for all of eternity. Her eyes that always seemed to be looking directly into the PIT OF YOUR SOUL, regardless of where you were standing in the room.
She was irresistable.
That was when the games began.
Mandy started out as a friend. She joined in at tea parties with the brother and sister. Sat at the kitchen table when the children ate their meals.
She even wore a birthday hat to the little girl's fifth birthday.
But soon, the games got boring. Mandy never talked.
Mandy never had to put away the toys after the children played. Mandy didn't even have to do dishes or clean up the dirty mess she made when the children got to bake their own cakes.
That was when the game "Abusive Parent" was born.
The children just watched a T.V. Special about child abuse. The family-oriented film played out like a horrific nightmare. How could a parent abuse their kids, thought the children, and they shook their heads, baffled.
You see, the children were blessed with two very wondeful parents - a King and Queen who would never lay so much as a pinky finger on their kids.
To the children, child abuse was a horror movie. Just like Freddy Kruger, Jason Vorhees and Michael Myers. Something fake, amusing, entertaining.
And a very, very fun premise for a dramatic game, starring none other than Mandy Walker as "the victim".
"Mandy's been very, very bad," the Big Brother said one day to Little Sister.
Both siblings took on parental roles with Mandy.
Correction.
ABUSIVE parental roles.
Both abusive parents were "concerned" about Mandy's lack of enthusiasm she was demonstrating towards her chores.
Big Brother asked Little Sister what the proper punishment should be for such a bad person.
Little Sister said she should be thrown into the corner.
With that, the Brother lifted Mandy by the hair - and backhanded her across her little button mouth - and threw her head-first into the corner.
The Little Sister and Big Brother immediately burst out laughing.
"What's that?" Big Brother asked, cocking his head at Mandy.
"Did you hear that?" he asked Little Sister. "Mandy just told us she hates us."
"You're going to get it," said Little Sister, as she made her way towards Mandy, plastic baseball bat in hand - and proceeded to beat Mandy on the head, arms and legs.
"She's had enough!" Big Brother commanded, and the beatings subsided.
"Poor Mandy," Big Brother said. "She's crying."
The Big Brother and LIttle Sister would cater to Mandy after that. Treat her to icecream and tea parties. Everything was fine for a few more weeks.
Until one day....
Little Sister screamed for Big Brother, to come quick. Big Brother was writing a story about a haunted furniture cabinet that lived off human flesh, and was about to devour a real estate agent who was going to sell the cabinet to an antique store - the short story was called "THE CABINET".
Anyway, Big Brother dropped his number two pencil and ran to Little Sister's room.
The room was a complete disaster - covered in torn magazine covers, doll clothes, Little Sister's clothes, blankets, toy tea cups, dinky cars and Little Golden Books.
Mandy sat in the center of it all, her baby doll dress smeared with the same magic marker that was covering the curtains.
"I just walked in here, and found her like this," claimed little sister, furious with Mandy.
Never liking it when anyone made his little sister upset, Big Brother walked over to Mandy, grabbed her by the hair and yanked her, so he was nose-to-nose with her.
"YRRRRRR gonna DIEEEEE, bitch," he said, and began pummelling her face with his fist. He knawed at her nose with his teeth and back-handed her across the room.
"Get her good!" Little Sister encouraged from the background, squealing and clapping her hands. And Big Brother didn't disappoint.
He yanked Mandy up from behind the toy box she tried to hide behind, lifted her soiled baby doll dress up over her head and tore the panties from her plastic arse.
He smacked her bare doll ass as hard as he could over and over, while Little Sister sneered in the background, toy machine gun in hand.
"What did you say?" asked Little Sister to Mandy Walker, who lay in a twisted heap on the floor. She walked over and pointed the barrel of the gun at Mandy's eyeball and began to apply pressure.
"Did you hear that," began Little Sister. "She said she thinks she's prettier than me."
"Oh really," Big Brother stated, going into his sister's craft box to retrieve his sister's crayola scissors.
"We'll see who's pretty after I get done with ya, bitch."
The Little Brother had just seen a film called Mommie Dearest, which was about the life and times of Joan Crawford - and the abusive nut case she had been. In one particularily disturbing scene, Faye Dunaway - who does a stellar job portraying the fucking looney train wreck Joan Crawford was - cuts her daughter's hair, after believing the daughter was mocking her.
Little Brother began cutting into Mandy's hair, clump after clump of her beautiful blonde locks fell to the floor, while the brother beat her in the head with the scissors, at times yanking out fistfulls of the golden hair. He was trying his hardest to recreate the amazingly horrific scene from the film, and doing a fine job.
Mandy sat in the chair, infront of the Little Sister's vanity, her face dented from the children's blows, her hair a choppy, clipped, short mess - and her peach coloured panties around her ankles.
"Put her in the box and lock her there until morning," Little Sister recommended.
Little Brother shoved Mandy into the toybox, "accidentally" slamming the lid on her head, and latching it shut.
"You'll stay in there until you've learned your lesson, bitch," he hissed.
With that, Little Sister made her way to the kitchen to get herself a big glass of chocolate milk, and Big Brother went back to the living room floor, to finish his story about the flesh eating cabinet.
In the weeks to come, the children watched a made for T.V. movie called "Little Girl Lost: Tales of a Teenage Prostitute".
The girl in the movie came from an abusive home, and took to the streets to become a prostitute.
The children thought a prostitute was a tough chick who wore lots of make up, skanky clothes and hung out in dirty alleys.
Interesting concept. Basically a prostitute was a very, very bad girl - who didn't dress very nice at all - and took rides from strangers - something both children knew was very wrong.
Then one day...
Little Sister screamed for Big Brother. Mandy had been bad again. This time she got into Mother's wardrobe, and tore one of mother's nightgowns.
"You little slut," the Big Brother said. "You wanna be grown up!?! HUH?!?! YOU WANNA BE GROWN UP!?!? You wanna look like a whore! FINE! you'll be a whore!!!"
(he was reciting word-for-word some lines from Little Girl Lost: Tales of a Teenage Prostitute")
with that he tore the clothing from Mandy - until she was naked, exposed.
He found the most frilly, tiny garmet from his mother's assortment of night clothes to dress Mandy in. He found an old pair of costume fishnet stockings and put them on her - like a shirt - he cut a hole in the crotch to put mandy's head through - and her arms went in the legs - like sleeves.
THen, with crayola markers, he smeared fire engine red lipstick over her lips and navy blue across her eyelids, like eye shadow.
"Look at her," he said to Little Sister. "She's a little whooooooooore!"
"Kill the whore!" Little Sister said.
The beating Mandy Walker endured that evening was legendary. It ended in the tool shed - which the children had full access to.
Mandy was ultimately sawed in half with a hacksaw. She never made a sound.
No one even heard her scream.
Her desacrated remains were stuffed into a double garbage bag and she was left out by the side of the road, to be taken away with the rest of the trash.
Why the two children turned on poor Mandy will forever be a mystery.
The Little Sister went on to excel in school, took a keen interest in gymnastics and ballet - and developed an obsession for Smurfs.
The Little Boy went back to writing stories about household furniture gone insane, and took a healthy interest in riding his new BMX bike, playing Nintendo and female rock-n-rollers.
And they all lived Happily Ever After.
THE END

it's all true. i swear to god.
hearts and farts,

dan

All Apologies

Sorry bout the little black hole there, brothers and sisters.
I was gone. Ka-Put. Invisible. Hiatus.
No Bye.
No Aloha.
I'm back. My car has been rescued from the confines of Devonshire Mall.
I may very well have been as well. Rescued, from Devonshire Mall.
But more about that in another post.
This one is for celebration. I can write again. I'm free.
My Snow Day ended in an all day booze fest, in which I steadily drank Martoonies from 3 p.m. until 12 a.m. like a true gold medal champion in the olympics of alcoholism.
To show just how much of a trooper I could be - I also cooked a spaghetti dinner, completely tanked and ended up at the downtown sometimes-coffee shop, sometimes-live music venue, sometimes-booze-hole - Phog.
I downed beers by the pint-full, talked to strangers and promised to play bass with my favorite singer, regardless of how insecure I am about my playing (not to mention how in awe I am of this particular songstress).
It was a great night and I ended up getting tanked the next day too. At my staff work party.
It was a Christmas party, although I was positive good ole Hex-Mas happened on December 25th. But whatever. Beer was flowing, the shots were free and I got to talk to all my drunk co-workers about Jesus.
Merry Christmas, indeed.
I also sent a CD called WAVE to my friend in Toronto, on Monday.
I attached a few poems I wrote about what a Wave is - to the CD.
Metaphorically speaking of course. We're kinda artsy-fartsy like that sometimes.
It was mainly for his birthday - he's turning the big "3-0", and me being the big "2 - 7" can relate, because that wave is not far off from crashing into me and knocking me off my neon surf board and washing me up on a faraway shore. Or washing me BACK up onto the mainland.
One or the other.
A wave can destroy entire islands.
A wave of paranoia.
A wave can say hello.
A wave can say goodbye.
A wave to ride and go with the flow.
A wave to crash off of or to carry you away to some unknown, creepy place.
Regardless - you can't stop a wave from coming. People come and go - regardless if you want them to or not.
That's kinda what the CD was about, the songs I picked to go on it - and the poems I stuck to the jewel case as a cover and inlay.
Facing the inevitable. We all gotta do it.
Best to smile, and wave hello. Welcome it.
It's funny how it's the same gesture - a wave - to say hello or to say goodbye.
The same universal gestures and two totally opposite meanings. But maybe not so opposite.
Ah fuck, I digress.
But - on my Snow Day - Life Partner Wayne and Friendus Maximus Faustine and I were sitting around the dining room table staring at the glorious glow of snow, discussing (of all things)birthdays, playing scrabble and smoking pot.
Both were sure I had told them I was afraid of getting older. I said that can't be true. They insisted I had told each of them (on seperate, and numerous occaisions) that I was afraid of getting old.
They were right. And wrong.
It's not even that I'm afraid of getting old. I think I'm afraid of everyone I know getting old. Including me, I guess. But, that's not it either.
I always thought birthdays were kind of stupid.
So what's the big deal?
Your mama squeezed you out of her "you-know-what", she bled, they cut the chord and you started screaming and shitting everywhere until someone stuffed a big brown milk sopped nipple into your toothless mouth.
Disgusting. White babies are so nasty. They all look like a squished snail - or JackNicholson in the Witches of Eastwick, when he's in "Devil form". Just ugly as sin.
But this isn't about babies. It's about birthdays.
What's a birthday? Celebrating another year? Your own special day? Sure sure - that's all great and if someone wants to celebrate - I'm totally for it.
But me - I've always felt like the pressure is on, when it's my birthday. Like - everyone asks where I want to go for dinner, what bar I want to go to, what shots do I want to do - and I always feel bad, asking for a shot of "bloody fuck" or "purple passion" or "jizzim shot" - whatever.
And even though I love giving gifts to people for their b-day...I always FOR REAL get embarassed and never know what to do when someone gives me a gift on my birthday. Like - people always say "You didn't have to do that" - but for real - I ALWAYS think it SERIOUSLY.
Don't get me wrong - I'm always totally touched by getting a b-day gift.
But I never make a big deal of my birthday and am baffled that other people DO make a big deal out of it. Or even any deal at all.
Maybe this is innate, and it's my own way of wanting to SKIP the birthday, not get another year older - not even acknowlege the day as my birthday, and hence - stay young forever.
It's a fucking shame we can't stay in our prime for eternity. Our backs have to go. Our knees start to crack and we start squinting and getting reading glasses just to make out the fine print on our fucking birthday cards.
I used to buy my dad running shoes for his birthday - now I am buying him a snow blower so he doesn't have to hurt himself shovelling snow.
It's shit like that - that depresses me.
Another part of life, the inevitable.
The biggest wave of all. Smile, here it comes.
Hearts and farts,

dan

Snow Day

I woke up bright and early this fine Saturday morning - around 8 a.m. and hopped in the bath tub, to take (what we call in this house) a "tubbly".
I was irritated, my head slightly throbbing from one too many Martoonies and I was cringing over the fact that my car was still stranded at Devonshire Mall, which leaves me with no way to get to work, save for calling a cab or waking Life Partner up to drive my stinky ass.
(We had curry stir fry last night and I smelled like a souvenir shop).
That was when I saw the blinding, glorious, white light illuminating from outside.
Away to the window I flew like a flash, tore open the shudders and threw up last nights Martoonies all over the carpet.
Just kidding.
But I got excited.
Mountains of unwalked-on snow. Everywhere.
Cars were just soft cottony shapes, like sleeping giants curled up all the way down the street. The sky was the same colour as the ground, everything looked like it was just floating or suspended in crystal white space. Beautiful. It felt like the whole neighborhood just fell into a frozen sleep and I was the only one awake.
I love shit like that.
That was when an idea sparked in my head. I could call work and tell them my car has been snowed in, that a plow came by and my car is now virtually buried under a wall of snow. They'd understand, they'd have to. And then, I'd have the entire day off.
I quickly ran upstairs, brushed my teeth and got my work uniform out - just in case they didn't fall for it.
Then the phone rang.
I never recieve calls before 10 a.m. - so I was a bit concerned about who it could be.
"Hello?" I answered, wondering in the back of my head if maybe there was another terrorist attack, like 9/11 - because that was the ONLY other time my mother ever called me so early.
It was work.
"Hi Dan. Listen - if you don't want to - you don't have to come in today."
At that moment - I was so happy - I got an erection.
Maybe a little too much info there.
"Oh...why?" I asked, trying to sound concerned, like I had full intentions of coming in.
"Well...the roads are awful, we're going to be slow - I figured if anyone would want the day off, it would be you," giggled my lovely boss, Erin.
God, she knows me so well it's frightening.
"Well...yeah - that's cool. Awww...now we can't have our Saturday morning coffee together! It's not gonna feel like saturday!" (Maybe I was pushing it now).
"You'll live."
And I sure as hell would. SATURDAY OFF WORK!!! If that doesn't scream "excitement", I don't know what does.
I started thinking about Snow Days in school - how rare they were.
I could sit around and be useless ALL DAY and not even feel guilty!
I could go and get my car towed, and see what the hell was wrong with it. Or I could fix my bathroom sink so I actually have running water that I don't have to shut off when it's not in use.
But these aren't really Snow Day type things...
What I really wanted to do - was make a mix-CD for a faraway friend. I wanted to play Grand Theft Auto and cheat with the code so I can get the tank and blow up the entire city. I wanted to watch my Indiana Jones collection that I got for Xmas. Now THAT'S a Saturday Snow Day thing to do.
I eyed my martini mix, and my bottle of 12 year old Rye...then noticed it wasn't even 10 a.m. yet, so I quickly wiped that thought out of my mind.
I think employers would be doing their employees a great service, by RANDOMLY calling them on off-days - and giving them the day off. I think it's good for the psyche.
Even if one's job isn't necessarily stressful, sometimes - just to hear the words "You have the day off" when you are preparing yourself for another day trapped inside the hum-drum of work - is just like someone lifting a thousand pounds of pressure off the top of your head.
I plan on being useless today. Fuck my car. Fuck my sink.
A great snowed-in song is Lisa Loeb's Snow Day - off her first album - which is such a classic. I always forget how great it is. It seems her entire career has been eclipsed by Reality Bites and the song "Stay", but her album "Tails" - is seriously a post-grunge, acoustic masterpiece. It's total fun. It's totally "1995" for me.
I suggest - anyone who has this album - put it on today. Or at least download the song "Snow Day" - it's worth a listen, and songs are always the best when they reflect the current status of things.
Album review of the day - is The Best of the Ronettes.
Phil Spector was a genius producer. His "wall of sound" production style and sound - is just the best, crunchiest, most satisfying music I've ever experienced. Elements of indie-garage rock, classical, motown, handclaps, doo-wop....Ronnie Spector's vocals remind me of Cyndi Lauper, Belinda Carlisle, Kim Deal and Kathleen Hanna, when she's not huffing helium.
Sparkly, rhyhmic guitar songs with crazy deep drum beats and jangling bells - about walking in the rain, staring into the sunshine and falling in love.
These songs - written back in the 60s, have a refreshing naive and innocent vibe that just isn't around in music anymore.
Hopeless, tragic, sad, happy, stupid songs about falling in love and breaking up.
Today - love songs about breaking up or infatuation are cynical and angry - or packed full of self-pity and resentment.
The songs of the Ronettes are nostalgic, helpless, classic tunes about love, at its most simple.
Eighteen tracks - and each one is a keeper - from the opening hit "Be My Baby" to the heart-breaking "I Wish I Never Saw the Sunshine".
They don't make them like this anymore, and it's a damn shame.
I also heard Phil Spector was arrested for murdering someone. Maybe this is old news.
Crazy shit though.
happy snow day!
hearts and farts,

dan

The Adventures of Shitbanger

Cars suck.
At least, my cars have always sucked.
The first car I ever owned - I was sixteen years old - was a 1984 Ford Taurus. I bought it off my parents after they had enough of its bullshit.
It was a car - I didn't give a shit. I've never been a grease-monkey who was into cars and "rims" and "valves" and "cylinders".
I could give a shit if a car has three, twelve or sixty-eight "cylinders", whatever the fuck a cylinder is.
Too light to be grey, to ugly to be white, this piece of shit coughed and farted me all around town back in my beloved highschool days.
It met its demise around 1998, when the fumes inside the car got so bad - I used to open up the doors at red lights to let the toxic air out of the car so I would stop getting dizzy and light headed.
That was when I bought the car of MY choice: a 1987 earth-brown Mustang. This thing was fucking sweet. Low riding, a tape deck that worked, bucket seats - it was like a moving couch - and people always commented on how great it was.
It was just a cruising car. A fun car to drive around in. It was all mine.
My own Mustang - my own private rock-n-roll machine.
To date - this is the "coolest" car I've ever owned.
It never gave me much trouble...until the end.
It started smoking out of the dashboard. The back seat started reeking of gasoline. Sometimes, small licks of flame would tongue their way out of the front heater vents, darting towards the sickening smell of gas.
I literally had to blow as hard as I could to put the fire out - while driving - so it would just SMOKE and not actually flame.
This thing was nicknamed "The bomb".
"Dan...your car is 'the bomb'," my friends would say.
But she was my pride and joy. I drove her everywhere, blaring my very own mix-tapes.
She was mine.
Finally the poor girl buckled under pressure and just conked out one day - WHILE I WAS DRIVING.
It just stopped.
*Click* was the sound it made, like a sickly sweet goodbye kiss - and that was it. I was coasting down Ouellette Avenue, powerless, left helpless and frantic, trying to steer the car onto a side road to avoid a traffic jam.
I then bought a 1991 Dynasty - in 2001. I hated the car at first. It was white, boxy, kind of a boat...but it ended up being the most reliable car I ever owned.
Nothing was ever wrong with it.
I called it "The Mother-Fucker Mobile" because it was kind of pimpish and just...big and awkward and it didn't fuck around. It was point A - to - point B - right down to business, without flinch or failure. It wasn't all that pretty, but it took me where I wanted to go, and that's all I ever expect a car to do, so that was good enough for me.
In 2003 - I was home after a day of working - and I got a phone call from an upset woman.
The conversation went a little something like this:
Me - "Hello?"
Her - "Hi, is Dan there please?"
Me - "Yes, speaking."
Her - "Hi Dan. I just want to let you know - the police should be at your house any minute."
Me - "Excuse me?"
Her - "I've called the police on you and they should be by any minute to talk to you."
Me - (laughing) "Oh is that so? And why, may I ask - did you call the police on me?"
Her - "Do you drive a white Dynasty?"
Me - (a little worried) "Um..yes..what the fuck is this about?"
Her - "Well - I just saw you and your friends drive by in your white dynasty - and whip a brick through my car window. Three of us saw you do this - we were on the front porch. Your phone bill was strapped to the brick, with your name and your number. I called, asked for your name - asked if you drive a white dynasty - and you just said that you do. The police should be there any minute."
Me - "What the FUCK ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT? I've been sitting here for the last six hours watching t.v."
Her - (talking to people at her house) "It's some dumb kid..."
Me - "Some dumb kid?? Honey - I'm 26 years old - I didn't vandalize anyone's car - and if I was GOING to put a brick through your window, do you think I'd fucking tape my God damn FUCKING phone bill to the brick?!?! Now if you don't tell me who the fuck this is - how you got my number and HOW you know what kind of car I drive - the only person who is going to be calling the cops here - is me."
Her - "Well...all I'm saying is - I got a brick through my window - I SAW someone in a white dynasty drive by - a piece of paper with YOUR NAME AND YOUR NUMBEr was on the brick - I called the number - and you answered, saying you drive a white dynasty."
***(At this point, i was totally puzzled. I didn't think it was a friend, and I didn't think the person was fucking with me. I SERIOUSLY did not know what was going on.)***
*that was when Wayne looked out the window and asked: "Dan..where is your car???"
I stopped dead in the middle of a sentence, telling this bitch I hated her and she needed to go to fucking hell - when I looked out my window.
Where my car had been - was an empty parking space. It was gone.
Dead gone. Invisible gone. Then I remembered I left my phone bill in the car, I was planning to mail it. (Yeah, I still mail my bills. Online banking scares the bejesus out of me).
I told her I had to call the police and call her back because it appears my car had been stolen.
So yeah - basically - someone took it upon themselves to JOYRIDE my boxy, old man's car - a white fucking 1991 dynasty - and smash some bitch's window in, and tape my phone bill to the brick - just to mind-fuck everyone.
Clever little mother fuckers.
I ended up getting great insurance money for the car.
So what do I do?
I go out and buy a 1993 aqua green Cavalier. A Z-24.
"Sporty-sporty".
Big fucking mistake.
This car - nicknamed "The Shitbanger" - has clunked out on me so many times, it makes Chitty Chitty Bang Bang look like a fucking Rolls Royce.
From oil spills to an in-car fire as I was entering the Windsor-Detroit tunnel on the way to a Le Tigre concert (I had to run into Burger King to ask for a REALLY BIG cup of water to put the fire out) this fucking piece of shit banging put-put is more lemon than I can handle, and I like lemons. But this is an exception.
It's nickled and dimed me to the point where I'm just sick of putting any more nickels and dimes into it.
Right now it's parked at Devonshire Mall, motionless - hopefully on fire and dying a slow and horrific death ALONE in the cold, bitter weather.
Apparently, Shitbanger couldn't handle the snow and decided to fuck off again. It started yesterday. The thing sounded like a Go-Kart, but I drove it anyway.
After a particularily bad-ass day in Waitress Hell (aka Margarita's) I limped to my car, hanging onto broken splinters and shards of what my 27 year old life has become.
I was excited to just go home, have a martoonie, and relax.
Maybe even watch Jackie Brown on the Diva network.
Instead, my car backfired and died. Ka-put.
Done-sville.
I had to call for a ride home, and wait with the 17 year old skaters and 11 year old mall rats in front of the Bay for Wayne (Life Partner) to come get me.
This could be the last straw. No more clunkers for me.
But at the same time...can I afford to LEASE a new car?
"Zero percent financing, zero money down" blared an obnoxious sign on the ride home. I stared with an envy/disgust combo at the shiny new cars, polished and undriven.
If the public transportation system was better in Windsor - I wouldn't drive a fucking car. I'd take a bike to work in the summer (something I should do anyway) and take the bus in the winter. I voted for the Green Party. I could ride a bike, cut down on pollution.
Hold hands with Father Environment, and kiss the plump, milky nipples of Mother Earth.
But - the fucking transit system is such a piece of Hell - I can't bring myself to even set foot on a bus, let alone utter the horrific phrase: "May I please have a trasnfer?"
That's just sick.
I got the kinda ass that's just made for Vinyl interior. What can I say?
So...this could be car number four that's bitten the dust while under my control.
My fourth car, destroyed. Gone. Reduced to a piece of crap. What the fuck does that say about me as a driver? Or as a responsible car owner?
Yet at the same time - I've never even driven on the 401.
I've never been in a car accident.
I don't even drink and drive anymore.
I fucking hate cars. But I need them.

So help me God, I need them.

hearts and farts,

dan

Drunxxxxxxxxxx

I was drunk when I wrote my Sylvia post. It seemed like a good idea at the time.
Oh well. Off to work.
But first - an album review.
I've been listening to the Ladybird Sideshow album, Live at the Orange Lounge. It's fantastic.
It's made up of four song-writers from the Toronto area. Janine Stoll, Erin Smith, Lisa Winn and Melissa McClelland, who I am a huge fan of.
It's live - but fantastic quality. The crowd sounds small - and I think they were told to shut up while the ladies were singing.
Lots of songs about New York - moving on, being famous, not being famous. Really cute - mostly acoustic, a little bit Indigo Girls/Ani DiFranco-ish - and that gets annoying - but it's a decent collection and it sets a high standard if they sound THIS good live.
I'm curious to hear more.
Dan

My Vagina Monologues, Chapter One. Sylvia.

This is part one of a series of memoirs I'm gonna write about chicks in my life who made an impact, but who I no longer speak to.
Not that I am necessarily on bad terms with them now. We just fell apart as the years went by for reasons....hell - no reason.
And all kinds of reasons.
Ask yourself about people you still hold in a fantastic light, would still consider friends if you saw them out one night - but you never call them and they never call you. And you haven't spoken in years. Why not? There really isn't any reason...but there are. You just moved on, grew up, fucked up. Whatever.
This is about a girl I went to the prom with.
Her name is Sylvia. She was a year younger than me.
She came to my school when she was in grade 10, and had a thick polish accent.
She was gorgeous, absolutely beautiful - but in a way that seriously caught my eye.
I couldn't stop staring at her when she walked down the halls. She dressed in long flowing skirts with cool stripes, sported a messy bleach blonde pixie cut and reminded me of some chic euro-model chick. The kind of girl who just emanates a really interesting and intelligent vibe.
Guys drooled all over her - from the popular group of serbian mafia members - to the hockey jock Spitfire boys (who probably did circle jerks in the locker room, i'm sure of it)...everyone wanted a piece of Sylvia.
She ended up dating one of the Spitfire guys for a bit. I didn't want to date her - but I really did want to talk to her. She was just one of those people who you always saw around the hallways...would always kinda smile at...but you never knew who the HELL she was.
I was worried she might just be another pretty face, who was used to guys swooning over her -and had an ego packed so tightly that remnants of her cool personality would be long gone.
Anyway, by the time my O.A.C. year rolled around, Ms.Sylvia and I shared a class together.
Writer's Craft - which was..obviously - a writing class - and she decided to take it in grade 12 to fast-track out of highschool.
I still had not uttered a word to her - maybe the odd nod in the hallway - that was it.
About two weeks into the course, our class had to workshop our stories - my piece was chosen to be read aloud. It was this story of how I used to go to the corner store and try to steal porno mags when I was ten years old. In the story, I described how I even went as far as to forge my father's signature on a note that read: "To Whom it May Concern: Please allow my son, Daniel - to purchase a Penthouse Magazine for me, as I am ill and unable to do so for myself. Sincerely - Angus MacDonald."
Pathetic plan, but fuck you - I was ten years old.
Anyway, everyone loved the story - and afterwards - Sylvia approached me, saying she thought it was hilarious and wanted to tell me.
She let me read one of her stories, which was a psychedelic tale of drug use and hallucinations written to the tune of Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers.
I was totally hooked. The story was self-depricating, sarcastic, witty, funny, hilarious - I was in love - literally - with this girl. And it had nothing to do with her looks - it was HER - I just thought she was the coolest thing.
We started chatting here and there between classes or on our "spare".
We smoked joints now and then behind the bleachers and laughed at all the football players and their bitches.
We talked about music forever. I made her a mix tape of David Bowie, Bjork and Tricky but never gave it to her, for fear she'd read too much into it.
I went to her house a few times and saw her room.
She was a fantastic artist. I remember - one piece in particular consisted of a piece of velvet cloth draped and pinned up in a frame, with fragments of smashed mirror positioned all over the cloth. It didn't do much for me.
But then I sat down on her bed and looked at it from a different angle - and saw it was a man and a woman dancing, the mirror and the cloth lined up perfectly to form this picture. The corners and edges of the mirror were the sharp jaw and cheek bones of the man...the cloth was the woman's flowing gown...it was beautiful.
I timidly pointed this out to her, and she smiled and told me what she saw. She didn't correct me. She just accept my interpretation and gave me her own. Not even what she MADE - it was just what she SAW.
She didn't have any intent in the piece except for people to take it for what it was.
It was SERIOUSLY the first time I ever REALLY looked at art - and realized it for what it is or was. There was no intent behind it. It was open to interpretation.
It just - WAS. It was whatever anyone wanted to make of it. No right or wrong answers.
It was and still is one of the strongest works of art I've ever seen - and that's the truth.
We smoked a joint that night on her back patio while her parents were out and talked about PJ Harvey. I got paranoid and asked her if I sounded like a Gameshow host when I was high and she asked me what a game show host is supposed to sound like.
Then we talked about t.v. and how fucked it is and how much we HATE IT.
I told her how I had never seen a single episode of the Simpsons, Seinfeld or Friends and (although she hardly believed me) she told me how she never saw the Wizard of Oz, The Shining or Some Kind of Wonderful - three of my favorite movies.
In the weeks to follow (this was winter of my final year of highschool) we went out to the Eclectic Cafe (now Phog Lounge) for coffee and chess games (which I never knew how to play) and I let her read some of my writing there and she told me she was blown away by it and said she wished she could be a guy for a day, to know how we come up with the shit we do.
We did a writing excercise. Across the street from Eclectic is a bank, but on top of the bank are apartments. Some of the windows are lit, some are not.
We each chose a window - an apartment - to write about - and wrote a few paragraphs of what we thought was going on inside that apartment, behind the window.
Then - we read each other's and tried to guess which window the other was writing about.
Stupid shit - but it was fun as hell - we spent HOURS doing it.
Anyway, more weeks went by...I didn't hang out with her MUCH at school, still just smiles in the hallway.
At a drug awareness conference, Sylvia was called up to the front to accept an award from the Chief of Police. She found me in the audience, held my eye contact and we both started laughing. The piece she won the award for - she had painted while stoned.
It was just the kind of shit both of us found funny..the sheer irony of EVERYTHING - EVERY SINGLE THING - and how nothing was what it EVER seemed because every single person ALWAYS had a different take on it.
In class one day she passed me a note that asked me what I thought of proms. I told her (I had gone to two proms, prior to this) that they were stupid and cheesey. That the best part about them was getting high beforehand and sneaking booze into the bathroom to drink in stalls with a friend.
She wrote that she always wanted to go but didn't know who she would want to share that experience with.
I wrote back: "Me!"
So we ended up going to the prom together. Ironically enough - I ended up getting nominated as a Prom Prince - and was up for King. Go fucking figure.
She made me a really cool corsage or boutineer (however the fuck you spell it) to wear on my tux made of dead dried roses and spikey thistles. It was fucking awesome.
We were "the weird couple" at the prom.
We felt like two stupid kids - who didn't fit in - but everyone was watching us, scratching their heads thinking "what the fuck...." and the two of us SOAKED UP and THRIVED on that kind of attention.
This chick who could have any "hot" guy she wanted - was with me.
And me - the quiet geeky kid who only spoke up in cheesey self-penned drama skits - was nominated as Prom PRINCE and had the infamous Sylvia as his date.
It was just a surreal day all around.
I didn't win prom king (like I gave a shit) and to this day - I still have no idea why or HOW I was even nominated as one of the Princes.
We ended the night in a hotel party that went out of control.
I'm talking about couches out the window, ceiling tiles torn down and fires on the balconeys.
We smoked pot in the room and Sylvia told me I was just like Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights - something I still don't know whether or not she meant as a compliment.
But I just took it for what it was. Looking back - I take it as a compliment.
Regardless - we had a great time.
Summer was coming and it was time to go to University. Sylvia told me she was going to move away to B.C. to study fashion design and do some modelling.
We had a very unclimatic goodbye at her house one afternoon. I was moving on to other things, we hung out with different people. I gave her a hug and drove off, without looking back.
I was getting ready for university, saying goodbye to other people.
And that was it. She was gone.
I haven't seen her since, and that was about nine years ago.
I still wonder what she's doing, if she's back, if she's okay, if she's in B.C....i'm sure she's gotten into something interesting. Or nothing much - like me.
By now the two of us were supposed to be in films, me writing novels and screen plays - her designing dresses for my actresses to wear.
I hope she turned out okay - and I'm almost sure no matter what - she did. Even if she is still JUST HER - in a B.C. coffee shop somewhere or at some pretentious art show - perhaps even her own - doing what she does best - being herself and charming the pants off people with her surprisingly raunchy and spot-on social commentary and wit - then she's doing just fine.
God knows I haven't changed much.
Then again - maybe I have.
Anyway...
Miss you, Sylvia.

Suffer the Juicers - Hell is For Consumers

I am a producer, not a consumer.
I choose to produce rather than consume.
That's 50% bullshit.
I buy into things I shouldn't every day - things I don't even REALIZE I am buying into.
But the important thing is, I try.
Fuck it.
You know what? Scrap that bit about me being a producer and not a consumer.
I'm a total consumer.
I try to play the part of being so earthy and granola-esque, yet I have a 53" screen television set in the middle of my living room and a three-compact-discs-a-day buying habbit that I'm just not ready to kick for AT LEAST another fifteen years or so.
However, I decided to start juicing, part of my granola-esque earth-boy image I try to nurture.
I figured - I rarely eat vegetables, I don't take any vitamins, I NEVER EVER EVER EVER EVER eat fruit.
It can't be that healthy to live the way I live. One home cooked meal a week from mom and dad on sundays - the rest of the time - it's frozen dinners, extra hydrated carbohydrates and the odd salad.
So I scored a juicer for Xmas from mom and dad.
Excited about my new mechanism, I made a manic trip to the grocery store yesterday and bought up nearly three quarters of the produce (there's that word again!) section.
Here's to me NOT being a consumer.
Anyway, I scored celery sticks, tomatoes, mangos, grapes, apples, carrots, peaches, strawberries, raspberries and a big fat fuckin' pineapple that looked just like Frenchie from the movie Grease.
Anyway, I've been juicing ever since.
It's hypnotic.
There's something glorious and triumphant about the way this little gadget reduces carrots into delicious juice in seconds flat - right before my very eyes!
I felt like Jack Lalaine, the 196 year old body builder who hasn't died yet. He juices everyday.
I envisioned myself at the ripe old age of 90, six-pack rippling through my tight grandpa t-shirt, telling crowds of people in a matter-of-fact-wisdom-filled tone of voice: "It all boils down to juicing."
I'd be the next Brad Pitt, my love-handles and man-boobs disappearing faster than I can say "JUICE IT!"
Anyway, in two days flat - I have consumed (there's that damn word again!) nine carrots, three mangos, eight clementines (two of them not juiced - they just taste so darn good!), a mini-basket of raspberries, an entire box of strawberries, two tomatos, six apples, one and a half peaches and a celery stick the size of a horse's cock.
Not good for the tummy.
You know, it's no fucking wonder these juicing...people... lose weight.
Eating that much fruit and vegetables in such a short period of time is equal to abusing laxatives.
My healthy fruit and veggie mixtures caused a trip to the bathroom so violent, for a few agonizing moments I actually thought the toilet was raping me.
I was worried I shat out my lower intestine, maybe even a kidney.
I cursed the juicer through clenched teeth, cursed Jack Lalaine, hoping the fucker would die of a shit attack similar to the one I was experiencing.
The moral of the story is - it's okay to live off the earth - but even the natural goodies nature provides us are only beneficial in moderation.
Pepperettes, chili dogs and Salisbury steak with gravy will give you the shites.
But so do fruits and veggies, regardless of what some century old steroid case will tell you on infomercials.
No word of a lie: I'm getting up to go the bathroom - AGAIN - right now. Be right back.
Kay - I'm back. Fuckin' Jack Lalaine.
I have to go now. I'm not even in the mood to write anymore.
album review:
Tracy + the Plastics - Culture For Pigeon.
Great album, for sure her most mature release to date. Happier songs - I think she finally found someone to love - and it shows. She's not as bitter. I think she is laughing at herself a WEEE bit more than usual, which is a good thing.
Like an electronic tidal wave of synthesized riot grrrl party drugs - it starts out like brand spanking new baby heart beat - and ends with a violent heart attack. But the good kind.
If you buy it - it comes with a bonus DVD which is...fucking shitty. It's the artist doing her "thing" dressing up in costumes and conducting an interview with herself, as herself - and all her alter egos (Nikki and Cola) who are dubbed as "the Plastics".
But despite the name - this is indeed a solo record.
hearts and farts,

dan

My Life as a Boner

Although I wasn't much of an outcast in highschool, I was in grade school.
To a degree.
They called me boner.
Danny MacBoner, a not-so-clever play on my last name, sung to the tune of the t.v. commercial for Molly McButter.
Hopefully this brand of butter has been discontinued, because it brings back horrific memories.
Now, they didn't call me Boner like the cool friend of Mike Ceaver on Growing Pains. He got away with being called Boner. He liked it. He was a frat boy in training - he earned his nick name by constantly making bumbling and hilarious mistakes.
I earned mine by not wearing underwear with my jogging pants in grade five.
Something about the cheap material of Sears-bought jogging pants (Sears has really come a long way since 1988, I might add) accentuated my...endowment.
I'll never forget the day...probably around Christmas time, because we were studying "Bonham Carnivale" in French class. We were all lined up to go to class, me proudly at the head of the line (for perhaps, the last time in my gradeschool career), when this fucking bitch - and I WILL publish her name - it was Heather Phalher - eyed my crotch up and said "Danny's got a boner - pass it on."
It spread like wildfire through the line. "Danny's got a boner - pass it on. Danny's got a boner pass it on. Danny's got a boner - pass it on."
By the time we got to the French room, the entire class was doing one of two things:
Either staring at my crotch, trying to get a glimpse of this now legendary and supposed "boner" I had popped - or singing "Danny MacBo-NEERR!" in my face.
Fuckers.
I tried to play it cool - (and for the record - I *didn't* have a boner) - and laugh it off - hoping it would be lost and forgotten in the horror of Bonham - but unfortunately - it stuck.
For the next two and a half years - I was to be referred to as "Boner" or "Bone". People would constantly check out my crotch to see if there was a bulge ...it was horrific.
I mean, I understand Darwinism, and survival of the fittest and natural selection - and how there ALWAYS has to be some kind of ranking of cool kid to geek kid in schools - that's just the way life works...but fuck man.
Kids can be evil - and I was never mean to anyone. I never picked my nose and ate it.
I never smelled like anchovies or wore teddy bears on my shirt.
I just wore a fucking pair of jogging pants without underwear one day and it made my wiener look big. KILL ME.
Either I was the first person in the world to have a natural crotch bulge - or the other kids in my class were cursed with needle dicks - but something made my crotch interesting as hell to my fellow peers.
Ironically enough - Spandex shorts came in style that VERY SPRING - and all the boys in the class had bulges (trust me, I looked) and none of them wore underwear, but do you think they ever got the "Boner stigma" that I was crucified with?
Fuck no.
"Danny MacBoner" was written with chalk on sidewalks around the school - on my notebooks - on OTHER people's notebooks for that matter.
I tried to pretend it didn't bother me by giving little nonchalant "Shut up you guys" to the brats and cunts who branded me with this nick name - but - to no avail.
It bothered me, and they knew it.
On "Picture day" - a few of the kids were talking about my boner (what else would they be talking about?) and the very obviously gay photographer from Jostens picked up on my nick name.
"They call you boner?" he asked, a small smile on his lips.
I rolled my eyes and felt my face go red. He asked if I wanted to be his helper all day and I said sure - anything would be better than sitting in class with The Fuckers.
Then he molested me. JUST KIDDING!!!
No - he was a nice guy - but he seriously thought the boner thing was funny - which in retrospect - it is very amusing. I wouldn't be writing this little memoir of the whole experience if it wasn't. But at the time - when you're 13 years old and EVERYONE is laughing about things that are going on between your legs and it BOTHERS YOU FOR REAL...it's not something I'd wish on anyone.
Grade eight rolled around and it didn't get any better. Worse in fact. I was thirteen, on the cusp of highschool and I had high expectations of myself as the cool kid in a John Hughes film, having nostalgic prom stories, house party experiences, and dates to all the school functions, someone to hold hands with in the hallways while everyone else ooohed and ahhhed over what a cute couple we made.
This wasn't going to come to light if I had to go into a highschool environment as a Boner instead of a Danny.
I was unlucky enough to go to a Catholic school, where they taught us wonderful and useful things like how the only way to prevent HIV infection is by not having sex and how Ouija boards are something we should never touch because God gave us all free will, and for us to allow a spirit to move our hands across the board and give over this free will, is just wrong.
I mean, for crying out loud - they could have just told us Ouija boards were fake and stupid. Basically, that one comment made me believe in ghosts and got me afraid of the dark - a phobia I hold to this very day, but that's another story.
Nice fucking Catholic School that let the nickname go on too, eh? Everyone from the substitute teachers to the fucking photographer who only came ONCE A YEAR knew about it and knew it bothered me in a bad way.
Apparently it was okay to crack jokes about a kid's big fat dick - but heaven forbid we touch a fucking Ouija board. What a joke.
Anyway...
The point is - 95% of my class were going to attend Catholic Central highschool.
Aside from the fact that I thought the entire religion thing was a stupid concept, this also opened an opportunity for me to rid myself of these fuckers - and my nickname - forever.
I chose to attend W.F. Herman, a *gasp* Public School.
I pictured dirty protestants and out-of-control satan worshippers running around the school like monkeys, hanging from the light fixtures and firing guns at all the teachers. Grafitti and spit coated walls, and the hallways covered with torn notebooks.
"There might even be Mowhawks," I thought to myself.
It sounded like fucking HEAVEN.
All the repugnant little fucks I shared my gradeschool experience with would be missing from the picture -and that was all I needed as incentive.
I would have gone to highschool in Detroit if it would have relieved me of the horror that was being called Boner.
And so it was - I enrolled in a Public School - and it made the last few months of Catholic Grade school hell a bit more bearable knowing I'd be shooting two big middle fingers to all these fuckwads shortly.
That summer I prepared myself. Bought some Edwin jeans. Some doc martens. A B-52's t-shirt from the concert I attended. Got a nice dark tan. Bleached my hair blond. I was ready.
A whole new me.
I made my way through the cafeteria, a few days before the school opened, for picture day.
Guess who the photographer is?
The fucking closet case from Jostens. No word of a lie.
I sat down, trying not to make eye contact. But he remembered me. I spent the entire day with him not even a year ago.
"Hey! Look who it is!" he lisped.
I smiled and said a prayer (the remnants of my Catholic teaching crumbling to bits) that he wouldn't bring it up..."Please god...please god...i got rid of all those fuckers...please, not the gay photographer...don't let him ruin this for me..."
He steadied the camera, focused the lens...
"Okay, get ready to smile..."he said.
Relief began to course over my body.
"Now...say 'cheese'..."
Only he didn't say "Cheese".
He said "Now...say your nickname..."
And it just came out: "BONER".
*I* said it.
*SNAP-FLASH!*
Luckily no one was within earshot, and had anyone been within earshot - I may very well have been arrested for gay bashing that photographer.
Weeks later I got my student card. It was also the picture that was to go in the year book.
It was horrific. My hair a coppery orange...my t-shirt not fitting completely right.
But the worst part: My lips...pressed together in an unatural looking way.
He snapped the picture at the exact second I was pronouncing the word "Boner".
He caught the "B" sound I was making.
So yeah - even though I was free of the nick name in highschool, my first year book picture of my highschool career is ruined with the reminder of what I once was back in my gradeschool days.
If it ever works out that I have kids by some medical miracle or adoption thing - and I learn he or she is calling someone a mean nick name - rest assured the child will be punished.
Parents and teachers need to have a NO-TOLERANCE for teasing. Abolish it.
It's going to take time - a long time - because kids are mean and some of it is just natural.
But two and a half years?
Once again - let me publish her first and last name: HEATHER PHAHLER.
If you're reading this, you fucking bitch - I want you to know - I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you.
If anyone who knows her is reading this - tell her I hate her and tell her it sounded like she was a heartless cunt in grade school.
I hope she got pregnant by the time she was sixteen.
Fucking Catholic.

hearts and farts,

dan

So it begins...

Last night, the butterflies in my stomach started fluttering up a hurricane, and fifteen hours later, they still haven't stopped.
I'm not nervous. I didn't eat any burrito supremes or chili dogs with extra jalapenos. I didn't drink any coffee or take any caffeine. I'm not even lucky enough to JUST have diarrhea.
It's much worse.
Just a relentless, shakey, horrifically nauseating feeling coursing through my tummy. It makes me wanna do shots of Pepto and pace the room until it goes away. But I've paced from here to the moon, I'm on my 4th shot of pepto and my 5th tums of the day - and the damn butterflies are still doing their dance. Someone get me some Raid already.
It will pass, I'm sure. Always does.
Saw the movie Napoleon Dynamite last night. It was really cool, very different.
It was a peak into the life of "that really weird kid" we all had at our highschool. The one who is TOO weird to even be considered geeky. Just someone that no one really talks too. He's not even necessarily likeable or nice to people. A victim, but not a victim - just an all-out spectacle.
I remember a few guys at my school just like Napoleon. Three come to mind immediately.
Chris - this poor kid who everyone made fun of. Wire rimmed glasses, tall, obscenely skinny with REALLY bulgey elbows and knobby knees. Jogging pants, t-shirts, moon boots.
He had a very strange way of leaning forward while he walked - and he walked very quickly. He was afraid of everyone - even if I walked by him in the hallway (and I was never the image of intimidation, even when I did shave my eyebrows off so I could look like David Bowie) he would dart out of the way, crashing into a locker, to avoid even coming CLOSE to other students.
I always thought in the back of my head - if there's ever anyone who is going to bring a gun to school - it would be him. And I probably wouldn't have blamed him, the way some of the assholes treated him.
The other two - Paul and Steve - were brothers. Both were in the "Christian club" which in itself probably made them socially reclusive.
Both wore VERY white running shoes, jeans that were always VERY VERY dark blue - and always too long. The jeans bunched up at the bottom, making their feet look even more humongous, contrasted against their skinny legs.
And always golf shirts. They were mean to everyone - but probably only out of defense. When you're used to constantly being humiliated and tortured by everyone all your life - I'm sure it's only instinct to grow a thicker skin and a not-so-nice demeanor.
I never uttered a single word to any of these kids - but I always wondered about them. What they did when they went home, what they liked to do - what fun was for them.
It would be shallow of me to believe their lives to be just a string of tortures.
One of them sewed the leg of a science class frog to the frog's stomach and laughed hysterically, to the disgust of everyone in the class.
Maybe that's the kind of shit they did for fun.
Another one brought a small metal vile to Outdoor Ed class. He dropped it, and it broke open - and he immediately ran out of the room.
That's when the smell started to seep around the class.
It turns out - for some reason - packed into the vile - was shit.
He brought a vile of shit to school. Wrap your little mind around that one, brothers and sisters.
And I'm not even making FUN of him for it. You don't make fun of people like that.
You just wonder "why".
I've tried and tried to figure out reasons why - but - no dice, thus far.
That's one shite story even I can't figure out.
But the movie was interesting because the director obviously had the same kind of obsessed interest in these TRULY alternative and unusual kids.
I remember girls with nose rings and striped stockings (and boys with shaved eyebrows) who tried to pride themselves on standing out and being different - with two middle fingers raised at a world who rejected them for being "soooo alternative".
Meanwhile - the REAL different ones - were the Pauls, Steves and Chrises of the world, who had no niche to fall into and were the true outcasts who were accepted by no one - not even each other.
If anyone had the right to raise two middle fingers - it was the Napoleon Dynamites of the world.
I also saw the film Open Water - about the two divers stranded at sea.
The shakey camera work made me sick to my stomach (or perhaps that was the butterflies) and if that didn't get me nauseated enough - the fact that it took the husband and wife film-making team two and a half years to make that movie put me over the edge.
I appreciated the emotions the filmmakers were catering to.
People, like myself - who are afraid of being stranded in the middle of the ocean, people who are afraid to be in a swimming pool by themselves for fear of a portal to another dimension opening up and sharks coming out and eating them.
This thought has gone through my head many a day in my parent's swimming pool - which would cause me to swim for the ladder at break-neck speed - taking shelter on the wooden deck from any phantom sharks lurking just millimeters beneath the baby blue pool liner.
The shark encounters looked real, because they WERE real. It had frightening elements - a terrifying "what-if" scenario played out and put to film.
I just didn't find the characters likeable. I found myself rooting for the sharks to finish the yapping and bitching couple off because they were just flat out annoying.
When I want to see unhappy couples bickering, I watch Judge Judy.
Anyway, I gotta run.
Album review of the day - Green Day's American Idiot.
Unfortunately, I left this album OFF my best of 2004 list - because I didn't own my own copy yet, so I forgot to consider it.
It is phenomenal, and I know many-a-music-snob have a problem with Green Day because they get a lot of airplay - or others say "they're not really punk" etc etc...
This is not about "what is punk" or "what is pop".
This is about a SERIOUSLY fantastic rock and roll album.
The sounds on this album range from the Beach Boys to Meatloaf to Queen to the Sex Pistols to Le Tigre, complete with a cameo by Kathleen Hanna.
It's handclappy, it's catchy - all the songs blend together - and it's a concept album with a storyline.
Not a lot of bands or artists do this anymore - and for a band like Green Day to pull it off so well - is an achievement which should be applauded.
I've always been a lurking fan of the band. I owned four albums before this one - the most popular ones - Dookie, Nimrod, Warning and the B-Sides (it was a freebie from Columbia House) - but this new album has put me over the edge. I'm a real fan now.
Worth picking up - it's a fantastic piece of rock-n-roll, an indictment of our times, or just a fun album that should be listened to loud, with a half decent and original story to guide you through the entire, marvelous thing.
That's all for now,

Hearts and farts,

dan

Wild Was the Night

Happy New Year, brothers and sisters.
The year two thousand and five greeted me with iced martinis smeared with pineapple juice, bouncey music, a walk through Willistead Park in the dead of night, suspicious green herbs and magical mushrooms.
The night was energetic, a total release. Drama was high and low.
Friends calling from faraway, strangers passing through the house to use the telephone, lost on their way to parties - and a full Scottish band, complete with bag pipes, drums and an audience of about 15 - on my neighbor's front lawn.
Ridiculous and fantastic.
This New Year's eve rocked.
We saw the ball drop at midnight, but I was more preoccupied with the frying pan and wooden spoon I hid behind my back, which I banged the hell out of when the clock struck twelve.
I made a total ass of myself on camera - made out with a pillow the way Molly Shannon did as Mary Catherine Gallagher in the movie Superstar.
Did my bestest Anna Nicole Smith impersonation - on camera.
My friend said my drunken performance was so unbelievably bad and horrific - she dubbed the tape "blackmail material".
I refuse to EVER watch it. But I don't care if anyone else does.
So much for blackmail.
Karmen made vegetarian chili and Julie and Danielle brought all kinds of crazy goodies - garlic sauce, sausage, crackers, cake, cheese - we're talking decadent shit here, people.
I just want to say - thank GOD we chose NOT to go to some stupid bar downtown.
I never really understood the appeal.
You usually go to your favorite bar on New Year's Eve...but you have to pay to get in for some reason.
Same people, same music, maybe a few party streamers from the dollar store strung up - and a free glass of cheap champagne at midnight.
The line up for drinks is neverending, there is never anywhere to sit - and it's shoulder-to-shoulder jam packed.
Top it off with an extra long wait for a cab ride and a last call that comes too soon.
I never have fun at bars on New Year's Eve.
We played a sloppy round of Cranium last night (God, we're getting old) but I kept cheating so we said "fuck it" and packed it away. I sucked back martinis so fast in the beginning, I thought I was going to have to be put to bed after a well-deserved spanking from all my friends, but I was one of the last men standing in the end.
I have vague memories of talking about religions at 3 a.m. and found out one of my bestest friends in the entire world used to go to...the Windsor Christian Fellowship.
Small world.
The chili saved me from alcohol related catastrophe. Rice sucks up everything.
This morning in bed I farted and thought I shit my pants. Wayne grunted in his sleep, but did not wake up.
While on the topic of farts, Faust told me she farted so bad at my house once - she thought she was rotting. I never knew. I bet she would not have told me her one and only fart story (I'm so proud to say it took place in my house) if she had known I was going to go ahead and post it on the internet, being the bloggy little bitch I have become.
I see People Magazine has named "bloggers" with the much coveted "PEOPLE of the Year" title.
Very nice, but very over-rated. The more of these blogs I read and write - the more I don't understand them.
Is it another arm extending off the public's obsession with reality? Reality television, chatrooms, cell phones that take pictures to capture moments, and now - an online venue where anyone can log on and get to read the everyday, humdrum and trivial thoughts and rants of the average joe. Or do we enjoy seeing things through different perspectives? Would this make reading multiple blogs by various writers, a mind expanding experience? Or am I over-rating it now?
Is there even a point to my own blogs? Or is there supposed to be a point?
Maybe that IS the point. Maybe not. So much indecision, and it's only the first day of the year.
I suppose I should be making some sort of New Year resolution...but I just can't bring myself to do it.
I do, however, have a New Year Want List.
MY WANT LIST FOR 2005
I want a new job - preferrably at a small news paper or at a radio station - but I would also like to work at Sears or the LCBO.
I want to lose weight and tone up.
I realize in order to do this I have to do some work. LOTS of work, on my part.
Which is why it is a WANT and not a resolution.
I'm not making myself any fucking promises.
I want to release a zine or start a magazine.
I want to learn how to play bass better.
I want to get a haircut.
I want artwork for my livingroom.
I want a wedding ring with diamonds.
just kidding.
I want a Mazzy Star reunion tour.
I want to do more poetry readings.
I want to better myself in short - and the sad (or I guess happy, depending on how you look at it) thing is - I could have ALL of these things (save the Mazzy Star reunion) - to any degree of shittiness or perfection I desire, if I just got off my plaid pajama pants clad ass and DID SOMETHING.
What's stopping me? Laziness?
Ouch.
It hurts to say that.
But we always hurt the ones we love the most.
But if I love myself the most - why don't I give ME what I want - starting with the things on My Want List.
It only makes logical sense. I wouldn't be doing these things unless I REALLY wanted them.
So why aren't I doing them?
Is it because maybe I don't really want them? Of course not.
Fuck it.
If anyone wants a fucking GREAT album - go out and buy an album by a band called the Arcade Fire - called "FUNERAL". It's fucking fantastic. Piano jams, trippy sounds, hand-clappy - all around fantastic dance songs that SHOULD be heard. Smart pop. It got so much critical acclaim I was almost deterred from buying it at first. But at the same time - EVERYONE I spoke to - from close friends with great taste in music - to strangers I met in a drunken round at the Loop - told me to go out and buy the album. So I did - without even listening to it. And it's great.
Reminds me of Blonde Redhead, Pixies, Polyphonic Spree, Broken Social Scene, Guided by Voices...an all around fantastic album that is one part indie-rock, one part space-rock, one part stoner-rock. They were all right. It's beautiful.

hearts and farts,

dan