One From The Vaults

INTERNATIONAL ROPE SHORTAGE!

Officials Somberly Consider Legalizing Pot In Hopes Of Stemming Crisis

In my travels and daily activities I will, on occasion, encounter people who are staunch supporters of legalizing marijuana. When I do meet these people it is usually at parties where many a joint is being passed around and, get ready to be shocked into shitting your pants, these people are high when I meet them. You can change your pants now. You can tell which people I am talking about if you just bring up the topic of legalization around a bunch of pot smokers. They’re the ones who cough uncontrollably for a moment or two like they’ve just been asked to take stage and they take stage and have no qualms about launching into a 30-minute tirade on the virtues of weed.

Now, don’t misunderstand what I am about to say. Really, I am in favor of legalizing pot because over time it has demonstrated more benefits than drawbacks. The way I see it, tobacco and alcohol have demonstrated more drawbacks than benefits, and yet those are drugs which society has deemed safe enough to be legal. So why not make pot legal? I believe I know the answer to this question now and it came to me over a number of years of listening to these soapbox speakers. It’s the fucking legalization activists themselves who are keeping pot from being deemed perfectly safe from a legal standpoint.

I mean have you ever really listened to somebody who is really, really high try to make a sound argument as to why he should be allowed to enjoy mary-jane without the man coming to bust him? Try to piece together a coherent sentence or two. Sadly, these are the same kinds of arguments that are thrown around at pot rallies too. Why? Because everybody is fucking high!

Dude, let’s like totally rally to extol the virtues of weed!

Sounds good. How do you propose we do that?

Let’s like go to the Legislature and get totally fucked up. That’ll show them!

Keep thinking that, hippy.

And the worst, the absolutely fucking worst reason why marijuana should be brought to the realm of legal acceptability in society has to be the fact that hemp is capable of producing a mighty fine rope. That’s right, you heard it straight from the horse’s ass, you can make some great rope from hemp cord. Wow. And you know what else? That’s considered one of the best virtues of weed. Meanwhile, the person who is most likely spewing on and on about how pivotal rope is to the stability of the free world is Tommy Chong high. That’s really fucking high.

That’s right, dude. You can like totally make some great rope out of hemp, man.

Okay, so you readers out there must be dumbfounded like me by a statement like this. I mean, it’s not so much the fact that “some great rope” can be made out of hemp. That has, indeed, been demonstrated in the past and I’m sure they still make lots of great rope out of hemp in parts of the world where the growth of cannibis is not so tightly scrutinized by the government. What blows my fucking mind more than the puffs of smoke being blasted into my face during the tirade is the fact that the world must be in some sort of rope crisis if we have to consider the legalization of pot. When the hell did this happen and why has CNN not informed me of this international rope shortage?

The only way to find out just how devastated the rope industry is might just require me to take a trip of the vehicular variety to the local hardware store. I mean, wow, we are standing on the precipice of legalizing fucking cannibis to secure a more stable and readily abundant source for rope. I bet there must be the fucking apocalypse outside with all that shit being left untied.

Stay here, I’ll be right back. I’m going to scope the crisis out for myself.

[intermission]

Okay, I’m back. I sped to the hardware store like a bat out of hell. I tell you. I was expecting to have to be able to beat back hordes of shit-grinning fucktards who want to buy all the rope before me. So I asked the first store clerk I saw if I was in time to be able to secure myself some rope, precious rope. I was exasperated, frantic. He could see the manic look in my eye. And you know what he did?

He fucking laughed at me. He laughed and laughed and then he stopped to catch his breath before he laughed some more. Then he directed me to an area of the store where there were spools, I shit you not, of rope. Glorious rope on, honest to god, spools! There were all kinds of rope to be had and not one whacked out rope-crazed crack whore tried to beat me down to get at the prize. You can change your pants again. The apocalypse of ropedom was just a figment of the pro-legalization movement’s collective imagination. There was rope. There was even steel cable available. And chains, too! Fucking chains! I had to change my pants to be quite honest.

So, what’s the message behind this bullshit satirical article? The message is this: Potheads, our rope situation is good. Technology has us set for all of our tying-shit-up needs. It even has us set for all of our kinky bondage freaky sex needs as well. So what the fuck?

I would much rather you argue your point honestly. For instance, you might want to mention that the primary active substance in marijuana, THC, gets you totally high, man. At least you would be more true to your own reasons for wanting to see weed made readily legal. Tell me how it improves diminished appetites, reduces nausea in chemotherapy patients, or to treat glaucoma. At least these are qualities an average guy like me can look at and think: wow, this shit can’t be all that bad after all.

This whole rope approach to your arguments is moot. I saw so much fucking rope in that one hardware store that I’m sure the rope supply in many of the other hardware stores around town is healthy as well. If anything, there’s too much fucking rope! Somebody oughta make that shit illegal! Too much fucking rope and not enough shit to tie down with it! I’m like totally starting a petition, dude. Sign your name down below, you fucking hippies.

The Bottom Ten, October 2005

10.) People Showing Their Disdain For Gas Prices By Riding Horses Everywhere- Okay, yeah, we get it. Gas prices are high. The sky is blue. Grass is green. Where the fuck are you going to park a horse? If I go out to my car one day to find horse shit on the hood I'm going to be royally pissed off.

9.) Jessica Simpson And Nick Lachey's Will They Or Won't They Break Up Saga- How many different magazine covers have been besmirched by this long-running story? 1.7 million. I counted them. How many times have I had to be admitted to the emergency room for breaking my jaw yawning over such a non-story? 1.7 million. I should sue Nick and Jessica for medical costs and for making the "drama" of the world so fucking boring.

8.) The Comeback Of The Care Bears- Is this proof that evolution is, in fact, cyclic as opposed to linear? Does this mean that given a long enough span of time we're all going to be walking around dragging our knuckles on the ground and struggling with the whole making fire deal? A chilling thought. Maybe fads should just stay dead after they've died and I wouldn't have to sit around and ponder these things.

7.) Coffee Shops That Have Branched Into Selling Music- I just get weirded out thinking about one day going into Starbuck's to buy CD's. Can't CD's be sold in record stores anymore? Am I going to have to go to HMV to buy my coffee now? The whole world is going plum loco methinks.

6.) The Proposed Book On Fitness By Dick Cheney- Excuse me, Skeletor, but aren't you like a hard coughing fit away from a pine box? Unless your fitness advice to me is to do the exact opposite of you I'll keep my health and well-being in my own hands, thank you very much.

5.) Martha Stewart Opting Out Of Her Recent Trip To Canada For A Pumpkin Regatta- She must have heard my plans of waiting for her at the border and pelting her with rotten crab apples. It's funny how we go to great lengths to extradite working class criminals and how we would just about kill ourselves to bring a white collar criminal into the country. I would have prayed for her pumpkin to sink under the weight of the massive ego it would have been carrying.

4.) Fox Canceling The Simple Life- Okay, if I made top ten lists this would have been number 1, but since I only do bottom ten lists (for now) this will have to settle for number 4. Don't ask me how my ranking system works. I'm glad I won't have to watch rich, smarmy cunts treat people like shit for a living anymore.

3.) Turkey Leftovers- Turkey is good the day of Thanksgiving, but a week later it's like shoe leather.

2.) Beer Commercials That Remind How Sad My Life Is- Okay, you're the singer in a band, but whatever you do don't sing. I wish I was the singer in a band who wasn't supposed to sing. Sigh.

1.) Martha Stewart In General- So bad is she that I just had to bring her up for an encore. I saw a clip of her talk show while watching her interview on Larry King and all I can say is that the new facade of being warm, funny and personable is still just a facade.

As promised, here is the poem I performed at the inaugural Roar on 24th festival. This is a version of the poem that has been polished a bit more. This is, in fact, a second draft of the poem. The original was a prose poem. I think this version, while appearing to be more lyrical adds stresses to lines I want stressed and has some more color to it with regards to detail. Enjoy.

Ode To Frosty

"The mayfly lives only one day. And sometimes it rains."

-George Carlin
Napalm & Silly Putty

The worst.
The absolute worst
are the snowmen
of a mid-spring surprise flurry.

The kind that
leave a millimeter of snow
freckled green
with life coming below.

How fucking sad is it to be one of those guys?

Right from the moment of your erection---

“Erection”: a misnomer if ever there was one.

Mid-spring snowmen
being closer to one of those
sloppy seconds sex
floppy half hard-on’s
than actual throbbing cocks.

You look like shit
An upright melting tower of shit.
Your snow is half mud,
half dead leaves from last fall,
and some early lawn clippings
thrown in for texture.

Oftentimes
these sad-sack snow guys
don’t even have proper faces
when they are made
on that fluke spring day.
They’re given
these hollowed out pits for eyes
and a gaping, horrified pit of a mouth,
permanent silent shriek.

Like they took their broken tree branch arms
with crooked stick digits
and gouged out their own eyes
so they wouldn’t be able to see
how pathetic and short
their shitty stay in the world really is.

Tree branches for arms?
Jesus,
you can’t even masturbate properly
with a tree branch.
I know; I’ve tried.

There you are,
a droopy brown lump
on the side of a suburban yard,
spending your lifetime
wishing the weather had stayed warm all along.

Dying just a little more
as the lifetimes of shitty sandcastles are set to begin.

Everybody’s a fucking Picasso sometimes.

Sex Tapes And The Sex Stars Behind Them

Okay, seriously, I almost wish that I was making this shit up.

That's right, folks! Britney Spears and Kevin Federline might soon be coming to a porn store near you, starring in their very own sex tape!

Michael, why do you always go on and on about who's starring in which sex tape? I mean, I've been visiting your blog since day one and I've pretty much read every post you've ever written and I even bought an autographed jizz-stained t-shirt on eBay that came with a certificate of authenticity guaranteeing that the aforementioned jizz was 100% Michael Appleby jizz, and it seems like every third post revolves around some washed-up celebrity sucking cock on camera like it was a matter of life and death. Doesn't anything else happen in your little world?

No, but thank you for asking. The reason why I go on and on about sex tapes is that I find them a fascinating facet of celebrity. My theory is that celebrities record themselves hiding tubesteaks and eating hairy tacos not so much because it's the kinky thing to do, but rather because it's the most widely accepted manner of securing one's self an additional 15 minutes of fame. Does this mean that Michael Appleby will one day grace the celluloid when it looks like the world has finally given up on him? Who knows? For now I'll just bide my time perfecting my cum face a la that timeless poem by Mike Gravel.

But here's what's bothering me about the whole Britney and Cletus sex tape fiasco. If you read the article you will see that this is, once again, another case where somebody in the couple's entourage is threatening to "leak" the tape to the public. Every fucking time, it seems, some assistant or professional ass-kisser or ball washer or spineless douchebag who walks in the shadows behind the celebrities gest access to the sex tape and makes a copy to leak. Well, maybe not in the case of Tom Sizemore, who appears to have distributed his video his own damn self since nobody would want to make a copy of that, not even the hookers who are paid to latch onto his cock. What gets me is that the sex tape is just laying around waiting to be copied or the sex tape is entrusted to somebody in an entourage like it's no big fucking deal.

Now, I admit, I haven't really been fortunate enough to take a camcorder into the bedroom with me so I can't say that I'm speaking from experience on this one, but why the fuck would you just leave a sex tape laying around where people who are relatively much poorer than you have access to it? I mean I may not have starred in many sex tapes yet, but I sure as fuck know that I just don't go around to just anybody and say, "Hey check it out, it's me giving some lucky whore a pearl necklace." That's just fucking stupid. It shouldn't even be a threat to be "leaked" when it's coming from somebody whose claim to fame is being in an entourage. It should just be considered "leaked" as soon as you just leave it sitting on the coffee room table next to "Maid In Manhattan", "Uptown Girls", and "A Walk To Remember."

Don't mind me, Mr. and Mrs. Cletus. I'm just dusting around the double-wide for you. What's this video? Spearing Britney? Let's just pop this into the old VCR and see what this is all about? Oh my fucking god! My eyes! Mr. Cletus is giving Mrs. Cletus an Angry Dragon! I'm so sorry, Mr. and Mrs. Cletus, I didn't realize that it was a video of you two being intimate with each other. I'm so, so sorry.

But you know that in the back of his mind the assistant is thinking Ka-Ching!

Are we actually suppose to believe that this is how things went down? Seriously? Come on! Everybody knows that the promise of a sex tape getting "leaked" from a currently has-been pop princess is just the kind of headline grabber that puts people back in the spotlight.

Michael, you're just being too cynical. Britney and Kevin (it's Kevin, after all, not Cletus) are fine, upstanding people who really have no real need to so shamelessly chase fortune and fame. They'll be famous forever in our minds!

Keep telling yourself that.

I wouldn't have any problems with Britney and Kevin releasing a sex tape. I mean after seeing footage of Tom Sizemore brandishing a Heidi tattoo anything is a step up. You could have video footage of William Shatner smearing whipped cream on his nipples begging his viewers to call him a naughty boy and I would still say, "Well, I still want to wash my eyes out with bleach, but at least it wasn't Tom Sizemore's tattoo."

But please, enough with the bullshit, "Oh my god, my personal assistant is going to sell our sex tape!" It was original the first 3 dozen celebrities who used it, but now it's wearing thin. If you can't bear to tell the truth that you're just struggling to be talked about again at least make up something more fantastical to keep people like me entertained. Make up some shit about expert computer hackers using CGI video effects to make a fake sex tape for profit and not to believe any frame of their bogus "video."

I'm almost kicking myself for giving up that truly original premise for releasing a sex tape when I could have used that one for my own sex tape.

Seriously, folks, I was held at gunpoint by a team of angry trekkies and forced to perform cunnilingus on a crack whore on camera because of comments regarding William Shatner, nipples, whipped cream, and the term "naughty boy."

Michael Appleby Returns!

Oh my god! I almost lost you guys for good. Friday night after I got home from work I booted up my computer and got this strange message about my internet connection saying that I had little or no connectivity to Telus. So naturally that meant I couldn't log onto the internet to do anything. I couldn't check my email. I couldn't update everybody's favorite blog. I could hurl insults at Kevin Federline. I couldn't do anything at all!

After a number of frustrating phone calls placed to Telus technical support I could accomplish nothing with regards to restoring my connection and things were looking bleak because (gasp!) it was beginning to look like an anomalous hardware problem which would require an actual technician to go through my shit. I would have, of course, gone that route and hired a technician to get things running again, but it would have meant waiting until (gasp!) Wednesday since I have a couple of day shifts to plow through at work.

I had all but given up hope.

That's when I remembered that Windows XP comes with System Restore points. God bless you Bill Gates, you are a saint! After a quick restore to the last checkpoint before I had the problems with my connection I found myself back online and downloading porn faster than the speed of sound. Seriously, the porn stars are moving quicker than their moans and groans are heard. Wow!

So, anyway, it's good to be back where I belong. I apologize to anybody who was trying to get in touch with me and could not because of the aforementioned computer problems.

The Roar, since you are naturally asking, was a success. There was so much great poetry to take in and it was difficult to get around to see all the poets whose work I wanted to hear. There was a shitload of poets performing all over the place. My contribution to the whole festival went by quickly and was, by and large, rendered invisible, and rightfully so, by a finale show jam-packed with talent. Sheri-D Wilson was stellar. Ma Fletcher was unforgettable. Mike Gravel was transcendent. Francis Wiley? Well, he was beyond any words that I could possibly use to describe what he did behind the mic. Wow.

I promise, though, that I will post the poem that I performed for the large audience that was on hand at the finale. It's nothing spectacular, but on a less ethereal evening it might have been remembered by somebody.