Gallowmere

End of year agenda

Sun, 09 Nov 2008 02:16:49 -0400

So the year's about to draw to a close. I have this month left then next month I will be put through the time warp of exam season at [Miskatonic University] and intensive Christmas shifts at [Pages]. Planned for this year, I will squeeze in finally doing the oft postponed black humour essay to give heft to the musing sector. Expect it November 28th, and expect to tickle your mind black and blue. I've hidden my behemoth of a manuscript in one of the cushions of my padded cell. The plan is to slip it out very soon and take a knife to it once more and then shop it around to more publishers. Ideally, I'd like to see this in stores for Devil's Night 2009 (October 30th), but I think the gestation period for publishing books is around 8-10 months, and I haven't landed a publisher just yet, and there's no guarantee that I'll get one in time. But now I can free more of my time to these things since the US elections are over. I was obsessed. I got the doctor to surgically implant a slot into the back of my head so I could constantly plug myself into feeds of the latest presidential race coverage. Between learning about radicals that President-Elect Obama happened to cross the street at the same time with, to hearing Vice President-Elect Biden's wacky hijinks. From John McCain's hurtling descent down dotage lane to seeing [Spaghetti Western]'s dimwitted girlfriend Sarah Palin leave pundits arguing whether her IQ is in the double digits or single digits. It was a wild ride.The results are in, I'm satisfied. I don't expect President Obama to bring about a vibrant coloured Utopia. That would be foolish, and even if it were remotely possible, it would be a nightmare to me. The world will always be imperfect. What I see him bringing to the world is progress. It's already been announced that his transition team is looking at ways to undo many of the imprudent policies crafted by Dubya to appeal to the Christian right. I won't agree with the moves of this upcoming administration 100%, I'm sure there will be things I will shake my head at, but that could be expected with any one, there are going to be some tough decisions to make. I support Obama because I believe in the candidate, where in many other cases, people support a candidate because they dread the idea of their opponent winning. I mildly subscribe to that thought. John McCain, I have nothing personally against, other than that he didn't seem to have many principles. His campaign was all over the place, and I honestly don't know what all of his platform positions were because he was changing them up, as well as his tactics every day. However, I have deep hatred for Sarah Palin, reasons I've listed off before. One thing that I never mentioned that I should mention: She believes in banning books! Anyone who will ban any kind of book, whether it's Mein Kampf, The Holy Bible, or Winnie The Pooh, no book should be banned. In the words of Ronald Reagan, there I go again... This will be the last time for a while that I will pepper a post with political commentary. I mean, nobody expects Wolf Blitzer to rattle off about literature. But hey, I'm a junkie.

The 44th President of the United States of America is....

Tue, 04 Nov 2008 23:40:01 -0400

Barack Obama!!! I feel 8 years of tension being lifted from my shoulders. Be safe and don't let us down, President 44.

And then there was one...

Mon, 03 Nov 2008 01:13:27 -0400

Tomorrow is the day I've been waiting for since last summer. Election day USA 08! Tomorrow night, chances are that I will be ecstatic if all things go well. But over the last 8 years of being dealt major disappointments, I'm not popping open any champagne bottles just yet. This phrase may be too often bandied about by the "pundits and media elite" but it really does hold true: This is one of the most important elections in recent history. Though to the pundits, the words, "until the next one" could very well be added, I genuinely mean this. If Americans decide not to vote for the candidate with the the first class intellect and the first class temperament and instead choose an anti-intellectual military brat who graduated at the bottom of his class and a frighteningly stupid, irrational and corrupt hockey mom, the states most complicit in such a travesty should be nuked. Tomorrow I will either jump through the ceiling with joy, or blow a gasket. Obama '08 and for good measure, Obama '12 I'm Todd S. Gallows, and I approve this message.

Politically Incorrect: Part Deux

Tue, 14 Oct 2008 01:15:29 -0400

So I haven't espoused my political opinion in a while. I guess because Gallowmere is a Monocracy, there is no room for politics. Still I can't help but keep up with the political news in its neighbouring regions. Canada has an election coming up, apparently. Bland signs are all over my lawn. I don't know how they got there. They're all over the city. Roads and buildings are just made up of them. It's election day here, and I don't think I'll be casting a vote for any of the parties. I concede that I'm a total ignoramus in regards to Canadian politics, but the parties shake no earth form me in either way. The Conservatives are weak. The Liberals are a joke. And the New Democratic Party gives me nightmares of socialism. I couldn't call myself a liberal. I mean, I'm fairly liberal on social issues. I'm all for abortions, freedom of speech, keeping the government out of people's private lives, ending the war on drugs, gay rights, fair representation in courts, legalizing prostitution, stem cell research, and separating church and state. You see, while most of those things have nothing to do with me - I don't do drugs, plan to abort fetuses, I'm not gay or bi, and I don't have any desire to get down and dirty with hookers - I'm at least big enough to realize that just because I don't subscribe to those ways of life doesn't mean I should prohibit others from that. They harm no one. And as for "killing babies", it's a very nuanced issue. are we going to start making it illegal for men to misfire into condoms and for women to menstruate? It's hard to pigeonhole where I sit politically. I can't say I'm a liberal because I'm fiscally conservative. I'm against affirmative action and would like to do away with welfare. I know taxes are necessary, but they could at least be cut in half by eliminating unnecessary government programs which hardly work most of the time. While I'm a minarchist, I don't think government should be done away with, and I think they need be able to meddle in corporate affairs. A state ran by big business (which we're half way on our way to) would probably be less free than what western society is now while being run by big government. The only things which would be free in a Corporatocracy would be the advertisements tattooed onto our skin. In [The Obscure Opus] I take jabs at big government, amongst other things. In one part, I have a joke about a Senator proposing an oxygen tax, but I'm sure that in a Corporatocracy, they would race to that ASAP and capitalize on oxygen. First, maybe by saying it's sports oxygen with electrolytes, then they would figure out a way to have control of all oxygen and sell it in canisters in stores and/or have oxygen pumps which have to run into homes and bill people for it. In a Corporatocracy, instead of being taxed to death, we'd have to own stocks in companies which big CEOs could use to go skiing and get handjobs in Thailand. But while I'm all for people being free to do whatever the hell they want as long as it isn't directly affecting or harming anybody else or impinging on their freedoms, when it comes to certain issues, especially law enforcement, I'm a fascist. I strongly support the death penalty and think criminals should be punished even more severely than they are now. Some prisoners, like Canada's Paul Bernardo get to live quite lavishly given the circumstances... and off of our tax dollars. If I had it my way, the worst criminals would get punishments of medieval proportions. They would get fed to pigs, drawn and quartered, given weights on both legs and forced to sit on a sharp edge, given 1000 cuts, covered in honey then sent into a room full of bees, et cetera, et cetera. And as I have mentioned in other posts, I would restrict who could or couldn't have kids, because, as neocon [Spaghetti Western] says, "If you can't feed, don't breed!" On war, I'm a moderate. I believe sometimes war's called for, but not when a bunch of gristleheads just want to flex their cocks, as is what happened with this highly irresponsible war in Iraq. George Bush of 2000 had it right (shockingly) when he said that military force should only be used when it's in America's "national and strategic interests". That's it, plain and simple. The military should be used to defends the nation, and not just for the sake of action, and not to intervene in other countries affairs. America's going to shit, but they keep worrying about the other countries they have their thumbs in. It's like somebody whose house is going into foreclosure, roof's caving in, plumbing and power are all screwed up, has a rat infestation, whose daughter's a whore, son's a juvenile delinquent, having marital problems, but is concerned with counseling their neighbours' families and investing their money into the homes of everybody else except their own. Makes about as much sense, though of course with the American government there's the agenda of looting oil, and nation building, as well as meddling with a religious war that's been going on for centuries between Muslims and Jews. I often identify myself as a Libertarian, but ideally, I'm a nihilist; it'd be better if nothing existed at all. So less than 24 hours to make a decision (if I make one at all) and I have no idea where I stand. I might very well vote Conservative, or I might write in "Barack Obama" or "Ron Paul". I can't make it through Canadian news for more than a minute, and the political ads I've seen here are... cute. I've written it off. I'm not proud of this or anything. When something fails to catch my interest nothing in the world can force me to change my mind. As for America, that's another story. I'm hooked on this shit. I can't not pay attention to American Political news and the beef of it being this Presidential race. So much has been going on. It's been an exciting time, but has taken a farcical turn ever since Senator John McCain picked Sarah Palin. What's there to know about her? She's the governor of Alaska, wife of a secessionist, is a Christian whose pastor is a crazy Kenyan who hunts witches. She enjoys shooting wolves from helicopters, and taking her little kids to shoot the heads off of wildlife. She abuses her power by firing people over personal vendettas, and bans books in small town libraries which promote views and lifestyles which don't tickle her fancy. She also doesn't read newspapers, thinks she has strong foreign policy credentials because Alaska's near to Russia, is a puppet for spouting out neoconservative views force fed to her by Schmidt and Rove, and is highly anti-intellectual. She's so anti-intellectual that she makes George W. Bush look like Socrates. This woman is a disaster. I thought the idea of her as a choice was initially absurd, but I maybe there was something McCain knew that we didn't. Though, everyone seemed to know about Troopergate, and Juno from Juneau before he did. Nobody can dispute the fact that it was a purely cynical and political choice. He wanted a woman to snatch up bitter Hillary Clinton supporting feminazis who just wanted to see a woman in office, and to strengthen the conservative base with her "small town" values. She ignites holy wars in the pants of every doughy social conservative man in America as well as in the pants of [Spaghetti Western] in Canada. I guess she is fairly attractive for a 44 year old mother of 4 children and a retarded poster child for the pro life movement is who they would like to have whipping their pudgy asses with a crucifix while the moose loaf's in the oven. I wonder, if Hillary Clinton won the primary, and Obama supporters of African diaspora were embittered, would he have chosen Konservative Kristian Kook Alan Keyes to be his running mate? I gave this - I'm sorry, there's no other word for her - bitch a chance as I did for most candidates of both parties this election. Her big moment was the RNC acceptance speech she gave. I anticipated that since this woman is new to the scene, she would come in humbly, make a strong case for herself and address her qualifications, paint herself as a political prodigy, introduce Americans to Alaska politics and not subscribe to partisan bullshit. I couldn't have been more wrong. She proved to be a Class A bitch. She gave a snarky speech making hurling school yard insults at "her opponent" the whole time with horrid smirk she always has plastered on, and stabbing her fingers into the air. She looked like a goddamn villain out of a Disney movie, especially with those Tina Fey glasses and her beehive hair. It was decided that people would flock to her, an unknown for berating Barack Obama, somebody who's been on the national stage for the last few years and has overcome a lot more than she has. She had so many skeletons in her closet, and she had the audacity to come out with that arrogant speech. Fortunately team Obama-Biden are kicking ass and taking names at the moment. They couldn't have asked for the economy to be in turmoil at a better time. The gap widens in the polls, every day another state lights blue on the electoral map, and McCain looks more and more like an erratic old coot while Obama's veins run with arctic water. After Ron Paul lost badly to John McScary, it was Cool Barry's level headedness that made me first decide to really give this candidate a chance. I don't agree wholly with his views as I have said before. I agree with his views far more than I do with McCain, and now the thought of Sarah Palin going into office is enough to send a "cold chill up my spine" as lizard queen Cindy McCain once said. I mostly believe that he would be a good if not great President on his sense of discipline, levelheadedness, intelligence, and ability to find common ground. Will Obama leave this world spic and span after (should all things go well) two terms are up? Not a chance, but I do think he can reverse the mess Bush has made, and re-earn the respect that America once had worldwide. I think he will inspire many people of all races to see that it's not such a bad thing to be smart. I think an Obama era will launch the 21st century into the direction that it was supposed to be headed. Unlike Chris Matthews, I don't get a thrill up my leg when I hear Obama speak, but my admiration of his character can't be denied. And recently, I've noticed that some of my favourite authors are starting to jump on the Obama bandwagon as well. Daniel 'Lemony Snicket' Handler pretty much has a crush on Obama, and recently it came out that Christopher Buckley, a fellow Libertarian and the son of the late Conservative stalwart William F. Buckley has endorsed Obama. Christopher Hitchens has as well. Their opinions wouldn't sway mine either way on who I'd support, but knowing this makes me like them more, and also creates the feeling of finding out that your favourite High School English teacher is best friends with your Political Science Professor (substitutions may apply). I see him winning, and being spectacular. All signs point that way, but I won't rest until January 21st. The Neocons can pull any kind of trick within the next 21 days. Time will tell. I'll be hoping for the best. If Obama loses to McCain, and McCain dies and leaves the country he puts first to Sarah Palin, every American who voted for them should be made into slaves for the Chinese, and the states that went to McCain should be made into giant sweatshops to pay off the their debt.

Thummer Thoughts

Mon, 01 Sep 2008 11:35:29 -0400

August comes to an end, and so does summer. I don't have anything significant to say other than that I plan on sending off a barrage of manuscripts to publishers in mid-October or early November. As well, I have also regained confidence in believing about 70% of people are shit. I won't bore anyone with a lengthy diatribe, I'll save that for a book. Don't mind me too much, I'm just a borderline schizoid and think people are too panicky, ignorant, inconsistent, presumptuous, shallow and irrational. But again, not here for that. Instead I'll just ooze some of my thoughts into the thought depository. My brain pockets were getting a little too full. So I'll spill some of it here. A lot of trivial stuff. I watched The Dark Knight which I deeply despised. After seeing the movie, I felt as if I'd soaked in somebody else's murky bathwater for over two hours. It was a very bland movie, full of no real substance, yet acted as if it had some. It had an overblown yet aimless plot. It was nothing but a lot of explosions, incongruous action sequences, stilted dialog filled with tawdry lines which serve to be cherry picked as quotes people can use on their web forum signatures. Instead of a soundtrack it had intense thumps interspersed with subtle sounds of other instruments forming picayune melodies! Batman doesn't even have a solid theme song anymore, just a stock action movie beat. With the Danny Elfman Batman theme in 1989 and 1992, you just had to hear 5 notes and you could know it was the Batman theme. With this theme song, it sounds like the silverware is spilling onto the pots and pans. The movie was dark, but had no charm to it at all, darkness without a cause. It was just bad things happening all the time, so there was never any pace. It was just pornography, exploitation. No one could ever accuse me of liking things light. I enjoy materials which disturb me and are unrelentingly dark. But this was just haphazardly directed. A pretentious mess. I'll even go as far as to say that the Joker performance wasn't even that phenomenal. I preferred Jack Nicholson's a lot more. Heath Ledger was an up and coming actor whose movies (especially Brothers Grimm) I never cared for, but his performance was well executed. Speaking of performances, what was with Christian Bale's voice when he was Batman? It sounded like he was shitting gravel all the time. As a whole the movie as a product (and I stress the word product) was a well done effort. It was very manufactured, cold and gray. It made death look casual, but people say it packed an emotional punch. Maybe I'm missing something. What bothers me the most about it is that I can't understand why Christopher Nolan, who by this time figures himself to be some sort of film auteur thinks the Batman movies should be hyper realistic. For fuck's sake, this is a movie about a guy parading around in a bat costume trying to thwart the plans of a goth philosopher/killer clown. Get real. The movie was filled with so many far fetched elements and plot holes. If there was a city that chaotic, there has never been as chaotic as the ChicaGotham city in that movie. When Joker got caught, nobody could identify him. As if he's some sort of super natural entity? This guy didn't just start committing crimes out of nowhere. He would have to have a record. The police could have taken off his make up, and sent his picture around to different precincts and asylums and gotten the information. They probably could have found out that he was a homosexual cowboy. The movie rubs the viewer's face in shit for hours and then tries to show that humans are good because nobody on the boats blew each other up in Jokertes the philosopher's little sociological experiment? Then moments later squeaky clean district attorney Harvey "Half Burnt Face" Dent becomes a homicidal maniac and tries killing a kid just because his diseased looking girlfriend died. Batman who dodged running over Joker was able to kill Half Burnt Face with ease. And what was with the case they make for the Patriot Act? I could go on and on, but the movie should not be worth the energy. My opinion is in the minority. It will have zero impact on its massive box office revenue. And everybody and their mom will still jerk off over it, especially the comic geeks, even though it's nothing like the comic universe. Gotham city actually looks gothic, and not just like Chicago. And the Joker was an actual freak with white skin and green hair who had an arsenal of gag and toy themed lethal weapons, not a guy with "War paint". Comic fan boys can only say they like this movie because it's "adult" and not because it's faithful to the material. I will always prefer the two Tim Burton did, and his much maligned by comic book fan boys Batman Returns will always be at the top of my list. They were just funny and great to look at. I know I'm pretty much alone on this one, and though my fan base is clocking in at about zero right now, professing my thoughts on this movie will probably push it in to the negatives. The only other person I've spoken to who shares a dislike for this movie is The Prince of Darkness. He quite appropriately calls it "The Dark Shite". His brother The Hell Spawn also didn't like it and rightly pointed out that the tag line "Why so serious?" should have been directed at Christopher Nolan and the crew. The only other movie I cared to go see this summer was Tropic Thunder which was a hilarious Hollywood satire. It starred Ben Stiller as a Tom Cruise type, Jack Black as a mix between Chris Farley and Eddie Murphy, Robert Downey Jr. in blackface, and Tom Cruise in one of his funniest roles ever as a corporate asshole. I enjoyed it a whole lot. It reminded me of Hot Fuzz with its mix of action, comedy, and parody (though not Epic Movie style, thank god). I also gained a lot of respect for Robert Downey Jr., star of Iron Man (a super hero movie I enjoyed because it didn't take itself seriously at all) after catching an interview where he also had the balls to say that The Dark Knight was dark shite. Other things to come out this summer were a few downloadable games I purchased. There was American McGee's Grimm. I played the first episode and boy... what a let down. The game offers no challenge at all. It's basically running around and "darkening" things which are within your radius. A blind two year old could do it. And it wasn't funny. The Brothers Grimm fairy tales were riotous as they were with their innocently relaying the grim details of the story. They had to fuck it up with adding a wink-wink nudge-nudge jokey tone to the thing. I played the first episode and demanded my money back from GameTap. Next, there was Braid on Xbox Live Arcade which was a quick experience but a very refreshing and entertaining one. It's basically a platform game which superficially plays like the NES Super Mario. But as you go along you realize you can control time. First you realize it can help you get out of death, but then you find out you have to use the abilities to solve all sorts of brainwracking puzzles which involve reversing time (while other objects remain unaffected), slowing down objects within a certain circumference, and a level where your forward movements propel time forward and backward movements reverse time.It also has little notes you can read before entering levels and at the end of the game which provide profound introspective insight. Then there was Bionic Commando:Rearmed which I had been waiting for for quite a while. It's a remake of a game I used to play on the Nintendo that came out 20 years ago. You're a soldier who can't jump, and who has to use an extending bionic arm to grapple onto walls and floors to swing across the levels. Simple and fun concept beefed up with new graphics and extra features such as 2 player co-op, death matches, bonus levels, hidden items, more weapons, and challenge rooms. They also revamped the soundtrack, and changed a few things up. My favourite feature of the original NES version was the shocking end where you find out the last boss is Adolf Hitler. The original Japanese version did indeed have you fighting a futuristic faction of the Nazis, but Nintendo in America was against featuring Nazis in games at the time, so they were renamed "The Badds" and Adolf Hitler's name was changed to "Master-D". The surprise appearance and ridiculous name made it that much funnier. Then to top it off, he calls you a "damn fool" which was pretty taboo for the time, and when you kill him, there's a graphic frame by frame animation of his head exploding. Good times. I recommend the game to anyone who can get it. It's on Xbox Live Arcade, PSN, and PC for download on things like Steam. I'm also now looking forward to their retail game sequel of it which will be in full 3D and feature state of the art graphics. I was skeptical about it before, because the producer guy behind it at first seemed like an out of touch corporate tool, but I've learned that he actually knows what he's doing and he actually gives a damn. And not that it's a selling point, but Bionic Commando will be voiced by Mike Patton. The man is a madman musical genius. No books I'd want to read came out this summer, not too many books come out in the year that I'd want to read. The only book coming out this year I want to read is Death with Interruptions by Jose Saramago. It comes out in October. Still, it doesn't mean I didn't do any summer reading. I read Boomsday by Christopher Buckley - funny, satirical, Libertarian. I read Satan Burger by Carlton Mellick III - bizarre, trashy, entertaining. I read The Trial by Franz Kafka - surreal. I tried reading The Crying of Lot 49 but discovered I don't like Thomas Pynchon and threw it in the incinerator. The latest book I started reading is Geek Love by Katherine Dunn. I took a break but I have to get back to and finish off. So far it's the best book I've read all summer. Contrary to what the title may convey, it has nothing to two with two geeks falling in love at a techie convention and having a Star Wars wedding. It's actually about a man who owns a freak show and his wife who's a geek - a circus freak who bites off chicken heads. They decide to breed a family of freaks so each time she gets pregnant, the husband concocts cocktails of drugs, radioisotopes and arsenic for her. The result is a family of children including a boy with flippers for hands and feet, a pair of Siamese twins, an albino hunchback dwarf, and a baby psychic. Page by page it has starkly dark and twisted material, more secrets are revealed, more bizarre things happen. I'm enjoying the book profoundly. I was just taking time off to focus on editing mine. I'm going to take time off of doing that again though, so I'll finish off the book before school starts next week. It reminds me a lot of the last book to really blow my mind, The Wasp Factory. Both books are "weirdly imaginative". They're both about strange families with dark secrets and sinister experimentation. And both are bizarre while being mostly grounded in reality. There are a few mildly super natural things in Geek Love, at least what I've read so far, and The Wasp Factory had supernatural elements, but they weren't actually there, and it was done to comment on people believing in superstitions. I'll finish it soon and deliver the verdict. Sheesh, that was a long one. I should start blogging again more frequently so I can have shorter single subject posts. Would be a good idea, wouldn't it? But until then... See everyone in hell!

A Gallow Birthday to me: Dark tea time for the soul.

Sat, 09 Aug 2008 23:59:59 -0400

"It's my party but I'm waiting for someone to start it. It's my party but there's blood on the ceiling, the carpet!" ~ Peeping Tom, Mojo It's that time of the year again. Now, since my first birthday, the tradition's been for me to go out and ring the big bell in front of my isolated house on the hill. And once again, that's exactly what I did. The amount of times I ring the bell is in correspondence with my age. So today, I rang it twenty three times. You can do the math to guess how old I am. Normally, an over eager news crew invades my house and trepan me for any brain juice containing thoughts on birthdays, life, and death. Ironically, I always hear that the people who come to ask me about my life end up dead. This year, however, I waited day and night for them to come, but nobody showed up. I even wanted to throw them a party, which, believe me, is pretty out of the ordinary. I had everything, arsenic cake, anti-freezies, toe-nail cheesies, cyanide cider, and mouldy pizza. I had maggot confetti, bowel balloons, and even a human pinata. The pinata was the hardest to come by, I had to find a dwarf who would let me stuff him full of candy and suspend with a meat hook for people to beat open. I rented a clown who told me he wanted to be the next John Wayne Gacy, I even had a tub of glue made from a pony I rented five years earlier. Nothing though, nobody came. I had to eat the cake all on my own, share cigarettes with Pedo The Clown, and constantly tell him that I didn't invite anyone under the age of eighteen over. He then asked me if any of them had children. It was only a matter of time before I grew tired of him, slit his throat and stuffed his penis (which turned out to be a balloon folded into the shape of one) down his throat. People like that disgust me. They should be kept as far away from children as possible, put in registries where everybody in the neighbourhood knows who they are, given pink vests in prison, and given gas which rots their flesh. Clowns are the scum of the earth. Jorge the dwarf complained about his back, so I busted him open and snacked on the candies which came raining out of every bloody gash. Now it's normally a journalist's job to prod me for my thoughts on this, that, and whatever but nobody came. So I guess today you'll just get it straight from the source, no filters. People tend to interpret me in all sort of ways, so news you get of me is probably highly distorted. I will give you the opportunity to misperceive me for yourself. A one time offer, my friends. So I'm twenty three. I sure don't feel it. For quite some time, I've been a cross of a five year old, and a fifty year old. I suppose I will never feel my age until I do turn fifty. And even then it'll probably be something else. I'll probably think I'm twenty five and start buying sports cars, leave my wife (if I dare to get married) and casually copulate with Korean super-models and dominatrixes. Or the notch might get turned back even further and I may find myself in a crib, in a diaper, drooling all over myself. Only time will tell. Till then, and until death, I live day by day trying to make some sense out of this thing. Though the answer I almost always come back to is that it makes no sense, and that people try to make sense out of it with delusions such as fairy tales, work, relationships, and politics which are all fine and good with me. I wish I was never conceived though I sure don't wish I were dead. So I'll occupy myself with things to make it all go down that much easier. I do wish to accomplish more, shoot for the sky, and, as my emotionally distant and out of touch father often tells me - not deceive myself. Though I guess that's exactly what I am doing anyway, by pretending any of this means something and enjoying it. Ambivalence is a splendid thing. A life of apathy would just be vacuous. It seems that a lot of my life has to do with dwelling on death. Not that I am a death monger, even though I am a staunch supporter of abortions, euthanasia, and the death penalty. But I often find humour in certain deaths which I find ironic or absurd, I often contemplate the ramifications of the deaths or pending deaths of others, and I am always curious about how I and when I'll die and what I will accomplish before that. I want to live long, but only if I have my dignity, though sometimes I wonder if I should try to live as long as I can, even being reduced to nothing but a mound of flesh connected to a melange of machinery just so I can say I outlived my enemies and detractors. But I often think of immortality as being utterly boring. There is only so much somebody can enjoy out of life. After a while, you'd just want to spend eternity banging your head against a wall. I can't say I get why the idea of heaven appeals to people. An eternity of lobotomized bliss? I'll pass. Eternal tabula rasa is more my kind of thing. I have to say, that as a Christian, I did enjoy the idea of believing the people I didn't like would roast in hell while I sat in heaven sipping pina coladas, but I don't need that sort of satisfaction anymore. I can just give them hell on earth. Oh! Someone's at the door! See everyone in hell!

Hot and bothered

Fri, 18 Jul 2008 02:39:19 -0400

I think I'm going to start spending my summers in Siberia. It was 34 degrees Celsius here today, felt like Fahrenheit 451. Traipsing outdoors, the sun rained hellfire upon me and fried up my brain like eggs on drugs. To make matters worse, it was humid, air so thick you have to chew it to inhale it, it's like walking through stew. By the time I got home, I was steaming hot and everything inside of me seemed to be swirling. It was as if I had just come back from jogging up a mountain only to be chased all the way back down by a cougar. From then on, I felt lethargic. My brain is on slow-mo, I think that thick air seeped into my head. An internal body waxing would be more pleasant. Weather like this should be illegal. The weather left me not wanting to do a single thing, it made me wish I'd been aborted. I just had to lie in bed with everything swirling around and inside of me, staring, hearing impish laughter in my head, feeling defeated and intellectually impotent. The summer usually does slow down my productivity. Which, I mean, to be fair, most people in the summer don't care to do anything major anyway. It's supposed to be the time to act like a buffoon and sleep until noon. But if I'm not doing anything creative or at least saying I have something in the works, I get antsy. I want to do something, but the heat makes them seem unpleasant. Some people like summer, because concomitant with the heat come the summer movies, most of them lately featuring superheroes. The new Batman movie's been released today, I'm not really a fan of superheroes or superhero movies. I doubt I will like this better than Tim Burton's Batman Returns which did not at all feel like a superhero movie to me, but rather a surreal black comedy. The villain in it was The Penguin, played by Danny Devito. When Max Shreck proposed he run for office, he said that his big issue could be to "End global warming, start global cooling!" I'm all for that. Now, I'm... an agnostic when it comes to global warming, but I'll do whatever it takes to diminish heat. If I were an American, and any of the presidential candidates made global cooling their main platform, they would have my vote immediately. They could put the last stakes in their economy, spread their military out so much that a Mickey Mouse military like Canada's could march right in and have a 10 minute coup d'etat, they could legalize cannibalism and bestiality, I wouldn't care, as long as they got rid of heat for good. Welp... See everyone in hell (it's cooler there than it is here)!

Another one bites the dust (George Carlin)

Mon, 23 Jun 2008 03:01:47 -0400

Source: The Globe and Mail People die every day. It certainly is a strange and fascinating phenomenon; death. Everybody's lives ultimately revolve around death. Whether people choose to produce memes, spread genes, or sit around eating nachos and wanking and playing World of Warcraft all day, people do everything they can to make life worthwhile until time runs out. Since death is such a natural part of life, it's never surprising to hear that somebody dies. No one is guaranteed much in life. They may not be guaranteed wealth, fame, the spouse they want, kids they like, or even happiness. Though, at the end of it all, everybody can rest assured that they will rest in peace. But yet, I'll take this moment to comment on the death of George Carlin. I just discovered this news, and find it very unfortunate. From The Globe and Mail:

LOS ANGELES -- Comedian George Carlin, a counter-culture hero famed for his routines about drugs and dirty words, died of heart failure at a Los Angeles-area hospital on Sunday, a spokesman said. He was 71. Carlin, who had a history of heart and drug-dependency problems, died at Saint John's Health Center in Santa Monica about 6 p.m. local time (9 p.m. ET) after being admitted earlier in the afternoon for chest pains, spokesman Jeff Abraham told Reuters.

Upon discovering the news, I said to myself, "This is a joke, right?" But, it settled in that it was the real deal. I can literally list the few stand-up comedians I actually like: George Carlin, Bill Maher, Bill Hicks, and Dave Chappelle. Michael Richards split my sides with his grand performance in November 2006. But that's only one act he had. But George Carlin was one of the greatest of the greats, in my opinion, and it's only that. I found his acts hilarious and incisive. With his barbed wit, he tackled one of the most prevalent threats to our environment; bullshit. From dissecting silly semantics, to tearing the absurdity of faith and religion to shreds, to ridiculing the banality of life and consumerism, to skewering the political circus with his stark skepticism. And of course, his doses of vitriol were always seasoned with "shits", "fucks", and dirty jokes. He was one of the true free thinkers, and a man who wasn't ashamed to admit he didn't believe in anything. I got to see him perform almost exactly two years ago. I got my fair share of knee slappers. There was a lot I have learned from his technique and from his bluntness, though I of course will never be able to carbon copy it, nor would I want to. As I said of Kurt Vonnegut, as I've said of many, as I hope someone will say of me, I don't think George Carlin will miss this place very much. It's interesting while it lasts, but once it's over, there's no need to go back for more. George Carlin (May 12, 1937 - June 22, 2008)

Grimm Fandango!

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 00:46:43 -0400

So my friend [Drilbitt Darko] notified me that a game titled American McGee's Grimm is coming out on July 31st on Game Tap (and hopefully Xbox Live Arcade). It's apparently going to be an adventure game split into 24 weekly episodes where you revisit the fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm. Only, things have gone horribly wrong; everything in the world has become PLEASANT! It will be up to the player to restore darkness and misery to the world. It seems like it will be fun and hilarious, though I admit, I will be cautious with my hopes. American McGee as a gaming "auteur" is pretty hit or miss. I liked his debut project "American McGee's" Alice mostly for its dark atmosphere. It had great environments and great music. A dark, demented, and surreal take on the classic tale. The game was lacking though. The gameplay was absolutely pedestrian, and it was devoid of humour. It was basically something pretty to look at, and not much else. It's now in the works of being made into a movie which promises to be a nightmare, but for the wrong reasons. It's currently set to be directed by whitebread director Marcus Nispel. He's known for directing the forgettable remake of Texas Chainsaw Massacre. He made a few other games which did little to tickle my fancy. The latest one I played was Bad Day L.A. My brother got it from who knows where. But the game tried to be too funny and came across as obnoxious doing so. The gameplay was a joke, funnier than the ones that they tried to execute in the game, but that's not saying much. So I'll see about Grimm. I will at least try one episode out. I owe them that much. I'm a huge Brothers Grimm fanatic. Needless to say, I take great influence from them. They're the great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grand daddies of black humour. Reading their stories tickle me black and blue. Their utter imagination, the way things don't always workout for the characters, the way the... grimmest things can happen yet still be told with the sweetness and elegance of a gingerbread house is legendary. I can only wish I had their skills in crafting wickedly funny tales of woe and wonder. From stories of dimwits taking men off the gallows and sitting them by the fire because they look cold, to stories of mice jumping into soup only to stop short and have their fur and skin singe before making it in, to stories of women requesting their husbands be buried alive with them if they die before them, to the original versions of the sanitized Disney animations. Yes, the original version of Cinderella where her wicked step-sisters chopped their toes off to fit into the glass slippers, and where in Little Red Riding Hood, the big bad wolf is hacked to death and his brother drowns trying to seek vengeance upon Red. As my co-worker [Olga Leichenbestatter] once said, "Everybody dies in German Fairy Tales" Nobody can beat them. The only person I can think of who, in the last century, came close to them was Roald Dahl. Edward Gorey could do it too, but he had his flavour. Tim Burton can capture it in his movies, when he's on the ball. Speaking of movies, I refuse to watch that movie Terry Gilliam did of them starring the late Heath Ledger. It looks atrocious, way too... silly. Terry Gilliam, like American McGee, is really hit or miss. But again, I'll find out at the end of July. Finding out about this has been in good time, because just a few weeks ago, I pulled out my collection of Brothers Grimm Fairy Tales and have been reading a tale or two a night, laughing myself to sleep. The game will hopefully be just the right amount of chocolate to go with the blood. In other news, I have a somewhat complete draft of [Obscure Opus] done. This is my umpteenth draft, and I'm fairly confident in it. I am going to need to go back and fill in some gaps. A lot of parts I left myself little "will finish later" chunks, so I need to polish those over, and I also need to do some more research and legitimize those parts which feature facts, or quasi facts. Amazing what happens when you write about characters who know things you know absolutely nothing about. But as one character in the novel would say, "It's a business." But at least, the way I have it now, is that if I were to drop dead, somebody could pick it up, and have a grasp of the story. Oh, and to follow up with this entry's politically charged predecessor, I should express my elation that my "homeboy" Barack Obama won the nomination. It was the inevitable, I'd say 4 months ago, but now it's all but concrete. A few hours ago, he got the much awaited nod from Al Gore. I don't think John McCain has much of a chance. I was right on my speculation that his primary platform is not being Barack Obama. He's modelled his website to resemble Obama's logo, and he even plagiarized his slogan. Where Obama's slogan is "Change we can believe in", McCain's is, "A leader we can believe in." On Barack Obama's nomination night, McCain gave that atrocious speech in front of a lime green background where he punctuated his lines with, "that's not change we can believe in! Heh! Heh! Heh!" He also can't resist messing up. Whether it's mistaking Sunni and Shiia, or direly contradicting himself. He's a disaster, and I sort of feel sorry for him... when I'm not laughing. As well, I was close to right with my speculations about Bob Barr, he was my second choice of who I thought would win the nomination for the Libertarian party. He's got a very low chance of winning, but I hope he will suck away votes from John McCain, and also help increase the viability of the Libertarian party, even if it's just by a bit. Ron Paul's apparently having a rally of his own which will be held on the direly dismal convention for the Republican Party this year. It's being held for disenfranchised republicans who have little in common with what the party stands for these days. I'm not sure, but I think it may also be working as a rally for the Libertarian party, boosting Barr. The only thing I ever liked about the party was its emphasis on fiscal conservatism, but that's been sent down the crapper. I sure as hell didn't care for the paradoxical philosophy of admonishing aborting fetuses but condoning the slaughter of people of other nations for unjust and uneconomical reasons. And of course, the evangelical pandering was rather nauseating. They've become way too fascistic and paradoxical. From having people like William F. Buckley and George Will as their leading intellectuals, they've turned to ignorant blow hards like Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, and the whole Fox Brigade. It's my theory that those dimwits don't actually believe in what they're saying and they're just irresponsibly saying what their crazy viewers want them to say to generate ratings. Oh well, "It's a business!" See everyone in hell!

Politically Incorrect

Fri, 16 May 2008 02:30:54 -0400

Holy hell! It's been a while, kids! Two whole months since I've made a deposit to the Gallowmere thought bank. It hasn't been that I've been intellectually impoverished. Sometimes the reason as to why I don't make posts here is because I very well am intellectually broke. This time, however, it's simply neglect. I've been getting some things done here and there which should be pretty beneficial, and which I hope to make public soon enough. Also, I've been spending loads of my time having affairs with other people's novels, and playing Grand Theft Auto 4, I admit, I wasn't that crazy about the ones which came out the last generation, this one is a major step up. The story is what gets me, and its phenomenal satire. It's really addictive and immersive, but possibly over-hyped. I have almost exclusively done the missions, and have yet to explore the "sandbox" features of virtually fucking prostitutes, running over them, and getting my money back. The rest of my time has been spent embracing my political junkie habits. In past posts I've made little political musings, making fun of political figures and inserting colourful candor on what I'd do if I woke up to find myself as the President of the United States of America or even more preferably, some sort of world dictator. Considering this, and finding myself obsessively keeping up with the mainstream media's coverage of the 2008 Presidential race, I figured I as might as well weigh in on where I lightly stand. First off, I have to comment that I find it deeply embarrassing (though I'm not sure on which end) that I'm 99.9% more interested in American politics than I am in Canadian politics. Canada is where I reside and where I was born. And I would rather live in Canada than America any day, Canada's much less exciting than America is, but it's also a lot less fucked. But things being fucked and things being exciting go hand in hand I guess. Canadian news, politics, and media are only useful as sedatives. The major undertone I get from the political scene is, "Should we be the 51st state(Conservative), or show we try and carve out our bland national identity(Liberal)?" I've been into politics since 1996 when I was in the sixth grade and my class kept up with the race between Bill Clinton and Bob Dole. For Social Studies we kept up with American politics, and learned a lot of the terminology. The icing was put on the cake when I got to visit Washington DC that summer. Back then I didn't have any political affiliation. I liked Bill Clinton, because he seemed like a "nice guy", and I never saw what business of the nation it was that the President got a blowjob in the oval office. In 2000 when I was in an American High School, I had an excellent English teacher, [Mrs. Pacino] who themed our course on Libertarian Literature. In her class I was introduced to Vonnegut (I still shed an imaginary tear for the guy). Vonnegut was a socialist, but he wrote the anti-egalitarian satire Harrison Bergeron. We read short stories about corporal punishment, corrupt schools, and transcending stereotypes. We also read the dystopian novels Fahrenheit 451 and 1984. 2000, the turn of the millennium was an election year. It also marked the beginning of things going to shit for America. My teacher was Pro-Bush, because she was all for limited government which is what Bush, that societal virus, that dimwit, that two-bit Texan, that doubletalking fucktard was all about in his election. I admit, I liked the idea of less government and a less controlled state. Yet, I didn't like Bush. I still didn't align myself with a political party. I used to say he's a "scary guy" who would want to go around the world picking fights and starting wars to try and impress his daddy. Who'd think I'd ever be right about anything? Teachers of mine have either really hated me or really loved me, and [Mrs. Pacino] was one of the ones who fell into the latter. She was a great lady (not because she loved me, honest!) but I bet now she must have shoved that Bush 2000 pin right through her heart. Her whole class was all about limited government, anti-censorship, privacy, freedom of thought, individuality, and all that libertarian jazz. Yet the man she voted for and whose name she wore on her chest turned out to be a fascist of the worst kind, choking the juice out of America and not to mention the world. Him and his camarilla headed by puppet master Dick Cheney. He proposed the Patriot Act, having people snitch on each other if they're being possibly "unpatriotic". Giving authorities the right to listen in on your phone calls and see what you're checking out from the library. I mean, to be fair, if I had my phone calls listened in on, they would only be treated to a load of nonsense, but it's my right to not want third parties listening in on me as I give a friend advice on getting rid of a bad case of crabs. He said he was a "uniter, not a divider" yet America now seems more divided than ever. Though, to his credit, he has united Americans in his own disapproval. His approval rating is around 22%. I'm sure he hasn't scored that low since his college days. He's a compassionate conservative who handled 9/11 like a drunken first grader, and couldn't even locate Louisiana on the map during urricane Katrina. And most of all, I thought Republicans were supposed to like money, but now America's facing a major recession. Their economy's gone to shit. Everybody's going broke except for oil barons. And people have to think, he comes from a family which has its roots in the oil business. He gets elected, and the price of oil skyrockets. Coincidence? I think not. Now their dollar's in the stinker. That one affects me on a mundane level because now that their dollar is pretty much leveled with the Canadian Dollar I get an onslaught of half educated customers coming into my store to upbraid me and my coworkers about US/Canadian prices. Also, now that their dollar sucks, I won't be getting as much for my books the fine day my royalty cheques come in. I'm a capitalist pig, I'll admit it, so I'm more than pissed off about their economy falling since I depend on theirs more than I depend on the Canadian economy. Prime reason, I have a strong interest in ideas, and intellectual property is not Canada's richest resource. People put him in office twice... TWICE! Because he's a gristle-head just like most Americans. He's the guy they could have a beer with as opposed to the eggheads he was up against in 2000 and 2004. Let's be frank, macho assholes are more fun to be around than pragmatic eggheads. Cold hard facts are normally not what people want. People want to have a good time. Action movies with tenuous plots and lots of explosions and CGI do much better than documentaries or movies with thought provoking stories. And George Dubya, the party boy Texas cowboy is more of the kind of guy Tom Nobody can relate to. I have friends who are gristle-heads and I admit, they're fun to be around... in small doses. But more things can be accomplished with the eggheads, the pragmatists, the responsible people. Though, if I had it my way, I'd make it so that stupid people wouldn't be able to vote. In order to vote, people should be given tests each term where they answer questions regarding policy. They would be asked questions about the ideologies of political parties, chiefly the ones they're registering for. I've heard people say they want to vote for Hillary Clinton because she's a woman. So what, though? So was Maggie Thatcher, and look how kind and maternal she was. If a vagina equipped people with finer deductive judgment abilities, more women would've known to not sleep with dumb Joe schmoes off the street and have their babies. And more recently, it has become obvious that during the democratic primaries, she's become the favourite amongst "White working class voters with no education" especially ones who live in "rural areas". In other words, she's secured the redneck vote. She seems damn proud of it too, she as much as said in interviews. Good for you, Hillary! You know how to appease to one of the most repugnant of constituencies! I mean I'm sure there is a niche of people of that demographic who are actually half decent, but, to do some Jeff Foxworthy shtick: "If you're white, working class, live in a rural area, cling to guns and religion, and think Barack Obama's an African sleeper cell double agent related to Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden... you might be a redneck." I don't think Hillary herself is a redneck, even though she sure as hell plays the redneck game to court their votes. She even goes as far as trying (to borrow a line from The Wasp Factory) to "out-man those around [her]". Talking about shooting guns with her dad and immediately "obliterating" Iran. She tries to paint her democratic opponent Obama as a pansy because he wants to be diplomatic. She relentlessly throws dirt at a candidate who's in her own party. And one of her endorsers went as far as to claim that she has "testicular fortitude". A label that she was happy to accept. Having macho assholes in the office is what got us into this mess. If I can go off on a tangent, I have to say, I never got the concept of feminazism when it equates women acting like they're as big of dicks as some of the most reprehensible men can be. What progress. And to top it off, she'll pull all that macho bullshit, but then show that she can cry like a dear matriarch. I don't really hate her I guess. But I'm not the most fond of her. She voted for the Iraq war and only came out against it later when she figured she would need a platform. I don't know how good her judgment is just for that. And I don't trust her motives. I will at least give it to her that as she has come to the realization that her campaign clock is ticking and ticking pretty damn loud, she's starting to show signs of relent. I just hope she doesn't get picked as VP though, she'll probably try to poison Barack's tea, or something. And yes, I admit have some "bitterness" towards her because I am a self confessed Obama supporter. I like Barack Obama. I don't even know why. I'm not really an Obamaniac, but I like what he stands for. Though the fact that there are Obamaniacs says a lot. For a change, he's a candidate that people who support him actually like. For a while, it's only been that people would vote for the candidate who wasn't "the other guy". I'm sure that McCain voters will mostly be voting for him because he's the Republican, or because he's not Barack Obama. Reasons I'm for the guy are: I like some of his approaches to foreign policy; ending the war in Iraq as soon as possible, and actually trying to be more diplomatic with "enemies". He seems good on social liberties, though, of course, he will be raising taxes and possibly instituting more government funded programs, and he supports things like affirmative action which is a menacing form of egalitarianism, and something which sacrifices the legitimacy of people who do work hard to get where they're going. But I've bought into his buzzwords of "change" and "hope". Also, while he is African American, or at least 50% African American, he does very little to make an issue of it. Which is refreshing. The race card is played out. Platform-wise he's a close to Billary McClinton, but at least he's not as much of a special interest whore. And I think he'll stick more to his word over Hillary Clinton, the master panderer. Also, when he is wrong about things, he doesn't turn on the spin machine as much as Hillary does. Of course he's full of shit about some things. In almost any job, you have to be full of shit to a certain degree. Lying is an essential behaviour of survival, like eating and fucking. I'm full of shit in my day job. If I could be honest, I would have given loads of customer lip, constantly saying, "The customer his seldom right!" and I would insult the loads of shlock and hokum they bring up to the counter. And in writing, I'm almost 100% full of shit as I am doing nothing but making things up from page to page. It's only when things cross the lines of ethics and venture to the territory of deceit where things go wrong. Some of his bullshit came back to bite him in the ass with the Reverend Wright imbroglio. I think he's an atheist or agnostic, first of all. I have no evidence, only a hunch. Just the fact that his dad was a Muslim turned atheist, and his mother was an agnostic. He's all for separation of church and state, and at least acknowledges atheists and "nonbelievers" as people unlike daddy Bush who said he doesn't think atheists should be considered Americans. Finally, when asked of his faith, all he said was, "I'm a member of Trinity United Church." Not a Christian. Hell, I'm still technically a member of [Mount Hopeful] Seventh-Day Adventist church even though I don't believe in any of that, and haven't been there in years. Being a member of something is different from believing in it. But it's only a hunch. People have made all kinds of claims about him based on hunches, lunacy, or downright malice, and I won't dignify them by repeating them. I think that the reason he found membership in a prominent black church was as a means of political expediency. Let's face it, most people in America are of religious faith, and the faith most people normally are of is Christian. So I'm guessing that he joined the church to kill 2 birds with one stone; to show religious membership, and for street credentials with the black community so that he wouldn't seem out of touch. I don't blame him for that, no harm is done in feigning religious faith. Yet, Vonnegut comes to mind again. In his novel Mother Night, there's a line "We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be." A lot of people are now going to associate him with the ridiculous thoughts of his racist, antisemitic, and downright loony megalomaniac of a pastor. It will haunt him come fall when he's up against the GOP, and possibly his 2012 election should he win this one. Yet if I were an American Citizen, even though I do have a soft spot for Barack Obama, and know and "hope" that at the end of the day, he's more than likely going to win the presidency, I'd have to vote for the nominee of the Libertarian party which is looking most like Wayne Root. though Bob Barr seems like a viable candidate. However, I'm not sure how Libertarian it is to try and have a man impeached because he was getting oral in the Oval Office. I really liked Ron Paul who is a Libertarian running as a Republican. Sort of how Hillary is a Republican running under the guise of a Democrat. Ron Paul comes across as a bit of a kook, and I don't doubt that I do too. So of course, a lot of his views coalesce with mine. He wanted less taxes, more civil liberties, doing away with stupid government sanctioned organizations (the MPAA and FCC would definitely be in there), ending the war in Iraq, and having a less imperialistic/less interventionist foreign policy. But John McCain, a man whose name always makes me think about that Canadian brand of tacky heatable eatables (which I am known to eat more often than not) won the GOP nomination. He's lost his mind. He's beaten and worn out. In 2000, I liked him when he was the Republican candidate against George Dubya. I think he's a good man, and a war hero who's been through some tough shit. If he won the nomination back in 2000 and went on to win the election, I don't think America would have been in the mess that it's in now. But now, he's put in a tight spot. He can do nothing but pander if he wants to win this election. But now, he wants to continue the war, carry out Dubya's policies, and his so-called differences from his Republican predecessor are dubious. His views on the economy are embarrassing. I guess they would be when he gets to live off of the wealth of his young(er) trophy wife. He hasn't really been getting attacked much because of the big (but waning) competition between Obama and Clinton. A lot of people, especially in Canada seem to genuinely think or have at least thought that the entire election was exclusively between Obama and Clinton and that other people were like third party runners. More people are interested in those prospects than the old war vet. Once the spotlight is on him, his blemishes will start to show. He's got his share of dirt which is pretty much being ignored only because of the sensationalism of the Obama/Clinton battle. I'm not very worried about him at the moment. Hel'l probably keel over before it reaches November, anyway, and people will be voting presumably for Romney and his Magic Mormon underwear or maybe it'll be Cunnilingus Rice who can be the Republicans' answer to the titillating idea of a black and a female running for office; she's both in one neoconservative package. Throw in the fact that she may or may not be a closeted homosexual, and the Republican Party suddenly has the facade of being the more progressive half of the party of one since the days of when Lincoln freed the slaves and a group of democrats started the KKK. In America, and maybe even in my country, they should hold a referendum. One where the only way people can vote is by proving they know what they're voting for. It would mean when people register to vote they would have to understand the voting process. There should also be larger attention given to the other political parties. And most of all, for god's sake, I hope campaigning will one day stop being the Hollywood farce it is nowadays in America. I find it entertaining, yet ridiculous at the same time. I mean, at the end of the day, maybe that has a lot to do with why I gravitate more towards their political news than Canadian political news which is so remote. I admit, last year when I voted, I didn't know much about the parties I was given choices to vote for, the only reason I voted is because people who I see who don't vote are usually just ignorant slackers. So I voted, but I submitted a spoiled ballot. Then there are people who don't vote are the whacked out conspiracy nuts. I mean, I'll be the first to admit, most of my views are far from ordinary. But if you hear what some people have to say, or if you dare to search the underbellies of the internet, you'll find some startling theories. My favourite has to be the reptilian agenda. My niece's mother is religiously invested in that lunacy. Every time I see her, she has a new conspiracy theory to share. She and my brother were both victims of the [Lunatarian Religio-philosophico-politico Sect] which had some kooky ideas. That religion was a pastiche of many religions, new age philosophies, conspiracy theories and mysticism. Somebody whose ideas the cult leader adapted from was David Icke whose school of thought professes, "the more outlandish the claim, the truer it is!" When I asked her what her thoughts were, she said she doesn't even bother watching the news because it's already preset for Hillary Clinton the Reptilian overlord to win. And when she wins she's going to initiate the new world order, one where people are microchipped, and there will be robot police patrolling every corner of the streets. The democratic nomination is slipping from beneath her feet more and more every day, but I won't get ahead of myself and say there's no chance in hell that she can win the nomination still. But I doubt my conspiracy nut ex-sister in law knows that. I would like to see where America gets the money to fund such programs, unless she's implying the reptilians are actually the Chinese who are currently picking up America's massive tab. I hope she doesn't think that. I'll leave her to not voting, uninformed people shouldn't vote. Being a Libertarian, I am highly skeptical of big government. What convinces me more than anything that the earth hasn't been hijacked by reptilians? Because most governments are inept! People in general are dufuses and power whores. If you put them in power, these features are magnified. It's the same the same thing that happens when you see idiots getting instantly rich, they do things like buy spinning rims for their cars, and TV screens in their toilet bowls and snort coke all day. They become overwhelmed and do things just because they can. This war was nothing but a cock flexing done exercise by a bunch of indifferent chicken hawks and avaricious oil barons. Oh, one more law I would make: If you're in my generation (18-35) and you support this ridiculous war, or if you vote in support of the war, and you're fit to join the army, then you should be automatically drafted upon dropping your ballet. There's no reason as to why you shouldn't be out there risking your life if you're willing to have other people your age do so. And if you're not in good enough shape, then you should donate yourself to an alternative fuel plant. That would solve America's fuel problem, fix the overpopulation problem, and also help boost its economy! Soylent Fuel! Oh, and it would also help improve the gene pool. Win win win! See everyone in hell!

A Confederacy of Nutcases

Sat, 22 Mar 2008 02:50:11 -0400

Now, there aren't too many soft spots in my cold black heart, but there sure is one for lunatics. They really colour my life. And while I don't believe in any of that New Age Law of Attraction mumbo jumbo, sometimes I find a lot of things to convince me that I'm a weird magnet. The last couple weeks, I've had a high concentration of weirdos filling up my crayon box. Loony #1: Last Monday, as I came home, I heard the phone ring. Caller ID displayed "No Data". I answered, "Hello?" "Hi, did you call my number?" A confused voice of early puberty asked me. Obviously, I didn't if I had just gotten home. I said, "No." I was ready to hang up, when he decided to ask, "Are you black or white?" I don't know what significance the question had, he must have had some "clever" and "acerbic" answer lined up if I answered either. So, on the spot, I said, "I'm green." He guffawed, "YOU'RE GREEN?! BWA HA HA HA HA HA HA!" And he hung up. It was so random and... pointless. If it was a crank call, boy have kids lost their edge. Back when I used to do them, I used to have a cast of characters I'd be and I'd actually provoke fierce reactions. Kids these days. Too much Youtube or something, who knows. Loony #2: This is a Loony I know personally, the account I'll give isn't too recent, but I just have to share stories like the ones she's generated. My mother, for as long as I can remember, has kept around this religious nutbar of a friend named [Sister Sister]. Now, [Sister Sister]'s life, if I wanted to include all of the crazy shit that she's been involved with, I'd have to write it into a book. But in short, she's a Bible Thumping nutcase, who from time to time hears God profess her doom. She has four children but only loves her most dysfunctional one who has spent the last decade of his life in and out of prison. Her husband is a blind clinical moron (his IQ is in the 50s) who used to set fires to houses when he was younger. And as a hobby, she sleeps in cemeteries. I mean, I could go on and on with that, but I guess she would believe that God made other lunatics so that they can share some of the spotlight. Anyway, the other story about receiving a weird phone call reminds me of another night a few years ago. I'd gotten home at 5 AM, after an exhausting day where I had already encountered enough loonies. I plopped down on my bed, not quite awake not quite asleep. Soon enough I was hearing the phone ringing . So at such an hour, it must have either been someone calling to seduce me over the phone, threaten to kill me, or to let me know somebody's kicked the bucket. But nope, it was a withered woman's voice, "Hellooo... is your moooother theeeere?" I told her that it was 5 AM, everybody else was still asleep. After hanging up, I turned my ringer off, that's the last voice I would like to hear at 5 AM. It was the night that she had wed her blind and moronic arsonist of a husband, so I could only imagine that she was calling my mother to inform her of their passionate and sinful wedding night. Another night, I was awakened at 2 or 3 AM to hear her pleasant voice tell me "OUR LIVES ARE IN DANGER!". She was having another psychotic episode. She said that she had earlier claimed that she was being told by a voice named "God" that she would be dying very soon and that all of her children would be eating out of the dumpster. I wasn't the only person she did this to. She apparently called her children and her ex-husband to inform them as well. I recently heard that she has slipped once again. That said, I can expect a deranged phone call any late night now. I wonder what good "news" she'll have this time around. Loony #3: So I've been spending my afternoons in the [Hell Hall Library] of [Miskatonic University]. This has been my most productive environment yet. An outlet for my laptop and limited distractions go a long way. I mean, there is still the internet, but let's be real, it's not very becoming to be cackling hysterically at the weird shit on Snuff X in such a setting. And even though I've been writing faster, I haven't been as fastidious. I cringe at a lot of what I produce, but the fact is that I've been making steady progress. I'll give it the old bufferoo soon enough, no biggie. Anyway, last night, I was heading home after another successful session when I found myself being treated to some real knee-slappers. The bus was running late so we all stood around in the bracing cold weather waiting for it. Most of the people were there as fairly pedestrian pedestrians. However, there was one guy who stood out like a gray pubic hair. It this guy in maybe his late 20s or early 30s in goth-punk attire. A skull shirt with sleeves his thumbs poked out of, red and black cargo pants with an abundance of pockets, and a spiky collar. I truly admire the whole alternative/extreme type of aesthetic even though I probably wouldn't go that far. I prefer to stick to black dress shirts, slacks, and sweaters. Reason, I've never felt young so I might as well dress ageless... but dark. Then a friend of his came, a 40 year old boozer, backwards baseball cap, old brown jacket and filthy jeans. Goth-punk called out to him, "Hey Budday! You got here just in time!" Upon opening his mouth, I learned that he has one of those voices which make him sound like he's got a bad case of constipation and is forever trying to squeeze it out to no avail. Boozer made his salutations and they moved on to engage in smalltalk. How was I to know that I was in the presence of the Abbot & Costello of the 21st century? I got on the bus, and not long after, the dynamic duo came on. There was a good amount of vacant seats, but of course, they sat right beside me. A pocket of Goth-Punk's was wet, liquid was seeping out of it and pooling on the seat between us. I noticed the scent, but before it registered, he pulled out a 40 ounce bottle of beer. Goth-Punk and boozer started sharing the bottle right on the bus. It didn't take long for the booze to do its job as a social lubricant. The two of them got to chatting. I didn't pay much attention to begin with. I was off in my own world thinking about what I'd produced for the day, plus I thought what they had to talk about was just run of the mill gristle-head chatter. But soon, my ears started wandering to their conversation. I heard Goth-Punk say, "I love it when I rape girls. And you know what? Girls love it when I rape them!" Boozer nodded along with him. He decided to explicate his point, "They'll go 'Don't! Stop! Don't! Stop! Please don't stop! Please! Don't stop!'" He had my full attention. Not just because the conversation was so outlandish, but also because they were louder than anything else in the bus, even its motor. He continued to say, "Oh, and guess what?" The Boozer couldn't guess. "I fucked my friends mom the other day!" This far into the conversation, I was nearly in tears. I was hardly able to contain myself. Holding in my side-splitting laughter was as hard as holding in a gallon of piss. He went on, "I was fucking her and she was going wild for me. I was shocked that someone in her 60s was such a beast in the bed! I was fucking her, then I got my cock in her ass!" Boozer was reminded of something. "Oh yeah! You know what? This girl I was fuckin' the other night was begging me to fuck her in the ass!" Goth-Punk said, "No shit! She wanted you to?" Then revealed that even he has his inhibitions. "I don't know, when a girl tells me she wants it in the ass, I can't do it man!" They were pretty much the centre of attention. Everyone else was in shock, disgust, or amazement. There was one guy who sat across from me who sat there unabashedly laughing his ass off as a spectator. Then the bus driver went on the PA and said "Contrary to popular belief, the [Public Bus Ministry] does not have a Liquor License! NO DRINKING ON THIS BUS!" What a killjoy. Goth-Punk said, "Ooookay there, budday!" He then took another sip of beer. Boozer, the obvious straight man decided to convince him that it wasn't such a good idea. After that, the little show they put on lost its momentum. After they got off the bus, one viewer raved,"This is the best bus ride I've ever had!" And boy was he ever right. I kept it all in, hardly, and by the time I got home and reached my padded cell, I had exploded with laughter. I could hardly pull myself from the floor, laughing the way I did. I will make certain to find out when their next show is. But for now... See everyone in hell!

Dead Sexy

Fri, 22 Feb 2008 00:23:44 -0400

I've mentioned my friend [Spaghetti Western] on here before. He's in the death business, a mortician in training. The guy's a riot, he's got enough crazy stories to fill a library. Some of the best and most shockingly hilarious gems he has to share are the tidbits of morbid facts he gets from work and people at work. They tickle me black and green. He may or may not write a book about all the weird things that occur or tie into his industry sometime in the future, so I won't write him out of a possible career. I admit, I'm more than tempted to use these stories in my fiction some day. But tonight I have to share at least one of his stories. It has to do with necrophilia. Voltaire, not the dead author, but the living musician has a song called "Dead Girls" about a necrophiliac who claims to do the nasty with the dead because they will never hurt his feelings or reject him. Not in the list is catching an STD. I doubt Voltaire would have thought to include that. He didn't need to delve that deep since it was a whimsical and darkly comic little song, and not an academic study on the topic. Besides, how many words rhyme with infection? Confection? Affection? Didn't have any protection? Fuck off, the question was rhetorical, try finding something that rhymes with that now... Anyway, the story goes: A girl went to see her doctor because she was growing black stuff around her mouth. The doctor took a sample, and later on contacted the girl. He asked her to think of who she had slept with, and if any of them possibly worked in the death industry. Thing is, the black stuff was fungus. It was fungus she got from somebody who had been a necrophiliac. It grows in the bodies of the dead, and if somebody has intercourse with them, it gets onto, and possibly into his body. From there, it can spread to the person's sexual partner(s), living or dead. So I guess there are downsides to necrophilia too. So to the necrophiliac, you'll have a second reason to wear rubbers when you need to go bump in the night with the cold and stiff so you don't get the fungus, and also so that 9 months later, you don't wind up seeing a basket at your doorstep with an undead baby calling you papa. And yes, it's safe to say that most if not all necrophiliacs are male. It's hardly heard of for females to sleep with the dead, and I imagine it would be a lot harder to pull off, especially without pulling something off the corpses, unless they want to, you know, have impromptu zombie dildos. But hey, somebody can transcend that stereotype, some woman may break new ground, no pun intended. And to be fair, I think more women engage in bestiality, though there are certainly cases of men doing it. My mother said that when she was a kid, growing up on a farm, her neighbour borrowed her goat for breeding, little did she know that he wanted to ram it. See everyone in hell!

No more Tea for Todd

Mon, 18 Feb 2008 12:36:47 -0400

I have a dark secret to reveal... I have an addiction. I've had it for four years now. It started innocently enough. One late night, I needed something to keep me up. I'd experimented with the pink pills, those things had me wired for hours, but as soon as they wore off I was stricken by a bout of drowsiness which was less than forgiving. I could have gotten a concussion, the way my head slammed down on the desk as I passed out. There was always the Columbian stuff, black and bitter like poison, but I would have rather given someone an enema with my mouth than drink that stuff again, and besides, whenever I had it, my sweat would make me smell like a teacher's lounge, and I would be as spry as a spring chicken. So it came down to Substance T, an upper which wouldn't send a jolt through my system, and which wouldn't cause a shock when wearing off. Also, the taste of it is agreeable. So I snagged a baggie of the stuff, and sooner than I knew it, I was addicted to tea. Earl Gray, orange pekoe, green, English breakfast, Chai, peppermint, fever grass, hell, even chamomile. I started with one cup in the morning, one at night. Then it escalated to three, then four, then five... then I would just make a cup at any given moment. Tea, tea, tea, tea, tea, tea, tea, tea, TEA! After a while, drinking it didn't even deliver the effect I wanted. I could have had hot water in a cup and felt the same thing. I just needed my tea. But recently, I've noticed that I've been feeling more tired, and of course, my head's full of clouds. I can live with the fact that I almost always have my head in the clouds, deep down, I like that fact. But I can't bear having the clouds in my head, having them constipate my thoughts. So I decided to come off of that vice for a while. I've gone a whopping five days without even glancing a bag of the stuff, and I feel more at peace. Not some sort of New-Age-ish zen thing where I'm at peace with the world. I will always be a loathsome and cynical son of a bitch, but I am more... contained with it once again. I've been able to channel it into the [Obscure Opus] and now the draft crackles with all the piss and vinegar it did when I started it that aeon ago. I realized a few problems with the "plot" of the book and have thus, added a few more chapters. It's not much of a plotty book, as it is, I'm not a person who craves hyper-kinetic, break-neck plots to be thrilled by a story. I prefer slow paced character development, quirkiness, introspection, and outre philosophical musings, which is what the book's been rife with. But even some of the best books for pulling such feats off still manage to keep readers at the edges of their seats to some extent. After finally deciding to finish Iain Banks' Complicity, and realizing how gripping and thrilling the final act of it was, all while still being stark and thought provoking (though a bit too aggressively left wing), I realized I could use a lot more pacing. Not to say [Obscure Opus] didn't have a climax. It's always had one, which is, at least, I hope, a real mindfuck, though that will be up to the readers to decide. But the way the climax ensues, things just start to pick up instantaneously. I realize I'll have to weave a lot of tension and events which help lead to the climax in a better, and more steady pace. If I'd been guzzling tea, God and Hans the Aryan Easter Bunny only know how long it would take me to figure that out. Anyway... See everyone in hell!

How mean art thou?

Fri, 18 Jan 2008 16:10:28 -0400

Mirror, mirror on the wall, who's the most misanthropic of them all?

You are 60% stereotypically misanthropic. Whoopie.

You're a grump. A grouch. A malcontent. Good on you. But certain sentimental cues can make you occasionally forget that humans are your natural enemy and must be discomfited as vigorously as possible.

How stereotypically misanthropic are you?
Make a Quiz

Apparently I'm not. I scored a 60% on that fun and innocuous web quiz. 60% is certainly misanthropic, but I won't be winning any awards for cynic of the year being 40% off the mark. What a bummer... On a side note, there may be a treat in store for me. The other day, a couple customers came into [Pages] bookstore. They've been regulars for years. They're an eccentric old German couple. They always shoot the shit with my boss [Amber Danielewski], and often bake cookies for the staff. They asked her that day what cookies she'd want them to bake for her. She mentioned some kind of cookie that has raspberry filling in the middle. The wife replied, "Oh, well we only make those around Easter." [Amber Danielewski] understood. Then the wife of the couple gleefully added, "We like to put little Swastikas on them!" [Amber Danielewski] said, "Oh, well I don't want them." She went on to explain that Nazis made her relatives dig their own graves then used guns and bullets to knock them into them. The husband of the couple's response was, "Oh, you need to get over it!" Then there was long awkward silence... Who knows what will happen, maybe by some freak accident, they will forget or think my boss was joking, and they may drop the cookies off. They'll more than likely be in the trash before I get in, but I'll snatch them up anyway and wash them down with phenol. Nothing lifts away the dread of not being the world's biggest misanthrope like cookies smothered with hate symbols!

Some rules are made to be broken.

Wed, 09 Jan 2008 00:55:13 -0400

So on new years day, I made a few resolutions. "So what?" most may say. Making New Year's resolutions much like birthday wishes and one night stands are just things which are good for the moment, but should be forgotten right after. I, however, plan to stick with mine, my New Year's resolutions, I mean. Furthermore, I decided that I may have to break one of them. The resolution in question is this one:

2) Read more

I am going to have to put reading on hold. I'll still be doing reading of some kind because classes have started back at [Miskatonic University]. But I won't be doing any other extra curricular reading anytime soon. All is not lost though, I'm breaking Resolution 2 for the sake of strengthening my chances of following through on Resolutions 1 and 3. Here's what I said:

1) Finish my novel

Not having my mind taxed by the extra burden of having to read will free up a lot of head space, and help me with prioritizing. So far, it's been working. I feel less cluttered in the noggin. Getting work done on a regular basis helps me to fulfill Resolution 3. That was:

3) Talk more about writing

Makes enough sense, no? Having work done will enable me to talk about my book and writing more frequently. Over the last few days, though it's felt like running barefoot up a steep hill, I've been able to meet my quota of 2000 words per day. I've been keeping up with it so far *knocks on wood*. If all things go well, I should have this all done by January 30th. This will be the completion of draft... I honestly lost count, maybe this is the 8th or 9th. For the sake of it, let's say 8.5. So that's not too bad. Plus the quicker I get this book done, the quicker I'll be able to afford the time to read as I please. When I have time to read, and when I finally finish churning out a good enough draft of [The Obscure Opus] then all things will go well, and by going well, I mean total misery, doom, gloom, and anarchy for the world. See everyone in hell!