Thursday, March 16, 2006

Roll Call or: Why I Never Went To Many Parties In New Sarepta

Here's the poem that I used to wrap up the Raving Poets show on March 15. It was one that was constructed largely on my lunch break at work that day. It's sort of list poem I guess you could say. This is just a collection of hyperboles of redneck archetypes that I suppose you could say exist, although not so exaggerated as they are here, in many of the small prairie towns in Canada. It also gave me a chance to name drop my old home town of New Sarepta and although it's a poem that probably paints a rather negative view of New Sareptians (?), it was a great place for me to grow up and I wouldn't have changed it for the world. Still wouldn't. New Sarepta, don't you ever change. Ever.

Also I apologize for the formatting here. The lines should be broken in a sort of hanging paragraph format, which is hard to render in HTML.

And remember, none of these people actually exist. I just wanted to work with caricatures of character types I saw around me.


Roll Call
or:
Why I Never Went To Many Parties In New Sarepta
irradiated spermbag walking hard-ons following the weatherveins [sic] in their cocks in
winds of perfume and feminine hygiene products.
slopey foreheads, hairy dragging knuckles who call their lovers "bitch," "slut," or "sugartits."
5'6 mall creatures made 6'3 by baby blue lycra push-up bras, whale-tails indignant at you for staring at their breasts even when their nipples are poking you in the eyes.
militant homophobic single helix primates, lower echelon bottom feeders, testosterone bulls who call their friends "dude," "dudester," and "dudeness." Conversely referring to strangers and enemies as "fag," "faggot," or "cocksucker." Nary a shade of grey to be found.
greased mullets who spit when they talk.
razor-knuckled STD banks in their budweiser thread bare halter tops, masks of near-clown make-up and running open sores threatening to extinguish their home-rolled cigarettes on your forehead for even suggesting you have no desire to have sex with them.
mouths full of chipped chiclets looking for a fight, looking to score, knowing that in a place like this fighting and fucking are one and the same.
puke-stained flannel jackets floating almost disembodied through throngs, wildly gesticulating at this group or that group, tossing out beer from plastic cups until it becomes pale, golden rain.
overbearing glad-hands, complete aliens really, people you can't recall coming at you with "you old son-of-a-bitch" and not knowing if it's a term of endearment or some sort of redneck throw-down.
five ounce brains rattling around in 10 gallon hats.
shitkickers actually used for kicking shit.
belt buckles the size of pro wrestling championships.
wolf whistles punctuated by friendly gropes and innuendo as thick as sledgehammers to the face.

yeah you.
i'm looking at you, new sarepta.

where are the numerators
in this crowd of denoms?
the red-blooded humans
among the cromags?

my mind is starved
and this is a feast of crumbs.

Michael Appleby
March, 2006

Tuesday, March 14, 2006

What Motomaster Gadget Are You Going To Use For This One, Biatch?

The other day Nilos emailed me a link to a story that he happened upon...

Click here.

That's right folks, the Canadian Tire couple is no more! Canadian Tire has decided to go in a new direction with its advertising, opting out of the "demo-mercials" featuring the smug, condescending couple Ted and Gloria.

I've written about the terrible twosome before on this blog so it's very gratifying to see their trail of destruction come to end.

But you know what? I think that the end is too abrupt.

When I found out that their television days were numbered I thought that it would be best to sort of have a finale for their series of commercials. Over the years one got used to Ted's, "You stupid fucking idiots. If you had just bought Motomaster's [insert marginally useful gadget name here] you would be in such a fucking mess right now. I mean look at me. I'm doing this shit with ease thanks to Motomaster. How many fucking times do I have to tell you, just sell your soul to Canadian Tire and it will take care of the rest. You stupid, stupid fucking idiots." Or something like that. Ted probably didn't actually curse so much, but, hey, if you're going to be a smug condescending bastard to your neighbors all the time, why not be a smug condescending bastard with a potty mouth as well?

Anyway, what I thought Canadian Tire should do with regards to phasing out Ted and Gloria from the pop culture landscape would be to have a demo-mercial where Ted and Gloria are getting a divorce and they're in a meeting room with their lawyers hashing out the conditions. So anyway, throughout the meeting both Ted and Gloria start being all smarmy and smug, talking about Motomaster divorce kits or Motomaster briefcases. And, get this, they keep talking like they do in the fucking Canadian Tire commercials that their lawyers decide to team up and screw both of them in the divorce. So that in the final scene we see the two condescending assholes that are Ted and Gloria living in squalor, having been fucked by their lawyers, and fighting almost to the point of fisticuffs because they couldn't successfully get a divorce. Ted could say something like, "Yeah, I'll start with you, bitch!" putting a spin on the Canadian Tire motto before some more spousal abuse. Then fade to black forever on a dark chapter in Canadian television history.

Knowing how important the past decade of depicting Canadian people as being self-fellating, holier-than-thou jerks, Canadian Tire would probably have to get the rights to run a song like "Time Of Your Life (Good Riddance)" by Green Day or one of those other songs that always gets played when a long running television staple reaches its finale. It's probably the broadcast rights for such a song that is keeping Canadian Tire from actually putting together a demo-mercial for the Motomaster Divorce Kit and thus providing the closure that Ted and Gloria sorely need before they are officially history. Might I suggest to Canadian Tire that they just do away with the whole emotional song nonsense and just show the stuff that the people who despise Ted and Gloria salivate for?

Monday, March 13, 2006

Birthday Wishes

Happy belated 29th birthday to Lori. Your party was a blast this year and all of us should definitely get together like that more often.