Back To School

Last week I was given the opportunity to take in a few classes at Grant MacEwan Community College here in Edmonton thanks to my close friend Jessica who was rather timid about attending the first day of classes alone. So as a service to my friend I told her that I would go with her for her first day of school to keep her company. I reluctantly agreed to actually physically sit in on two of her afternoon classes that day: a comparative literature class and a statistics class.

The comparative literature class was, as one would expect on the first day of classes, a snoozer. The professor of the class, whose name I really never bothered to learn since I'm not a GMCC student, basically gave a run-down of how the class would be conducted for the rest of the year. At one point, the prof asked one of the students in the class to count off the number of bodies in attendance. There were 31. He remarked that that was odd since the class was only supposed to have 30 students. Naturally, I felt guilty about being the phantom extra body, but because I did not just want to bail on my friend I kept my mouth shut. Towards the end of the class a questionaire was passed out asking what kind of backgrounds in English we had at our disposal and, given my natural perpensity to brag about my glorious history garnering a Batchelor of Arts Degree in English, I told the truth. However, since I was the phantom student I made up an alias and made up my student I.D. number as well as a fake email address where I could be reached. The kicker was that when the question was asked if there were any suggestions for how the class should be conducted for the rest of the year I made a comment along the lines that the room we were studying in was rather cold and while it would be impractical of me to ask the professor to turn the heat up with natural gas prices being through the roof it might behoove him to provide his students with complimentary blankets and/or varsity sweaters from the lost and found (gently worn of course). So if you are attending a comparative literature class at GMCC and you have found an abundance of sweaters and/or blankets awaiting you each time you arrive for class: You're Welcome! And if you're the professor of a comparative literature class who found himself at a loss when it came to explaining why there were 31 students on the first day of class and now there seem to only be 30 it's because I dropped the class when I found out that since I am not a student at GMCC I don't actually get credit for going to your class.

The statistics class was a lot easier for me to blend in and not get noticed as it was significantly larger in size. Just to be sure to blend in, though, I did take notes and as a service to all of you out there currently enrolled in a statistics class and who may have missed the introductory class I will now transcribe my notes from said class as a benefit to you. Now remember kiddies, if I wrote it down in my notes then it has to be true.

My Notes From Statistics Class by: Michael Appleby

Statistics: What the fuck is it, man?
-what the fuck you can say about shit that's like diarrhea because it's all fucked up. I mean you can't even see corn or peanuts, but statistics clears all that up and you can almost see the whole fucking colon.
-the stool that makes you feel most relieved when you get off the toilet.
-statistics is the science of:
1.) collecting shit.
2.) analyzing shit.
3.) applying shit. (i.e. find out how many brits think that Posh Spice is the most unnecessary celebrity in existence as noted here)

Statistics: Why the fuck would you do that?
-so you can be up-to-snuff on porn purchases including abnormally large sex toys and garish lubricants with names like Fric-B-Gone
-making wiser porn purchasing decisions [author's note: there was a whole story that was told to back this up, but it was rather long and I was trying hard not to laugh myself into convulsions since I had no idea that statistics was such a dirty thing, but relaying the story now would prove to be a very painstaking process, but suffice to say it ends with somebody grunting like an ape before rolling over to take a nap]
-evaluate porn from a mathematical point of view. (i.e. decibels of moans, quantities of astroglide, etc. etc.)

Misc. Notes
-there can be more than two variables, but never three because three is a non-existent number in theory. It has been demonstrated time and time again and the number three was officially revoked by the International Council of Weights And Measures in 1918. The campaign to put an end to threes was spearheaded by one Sir Walter "I Hate 3's" Douglas, who had four children, officially, by unofficially it was 2+1
-For example, if you told me to meet you at the pornography store for some official statistical analyses at 3 p.m. what you are actually supposed to be saying is "meet me at the pornography store at one hour past 2 p.m." Never say three. It's completely wrong, statistically speaking. Being wrong makes you look dumb. You don't want to look dumb. Hey, is that a squirrel?
-Also, what is up with neck beards? I mean they're everywhere. Dungeons and Dragons 2+1 edition geeks wear them instead of scarves. See also: tit beards.
-Statistical pirates ruled Belgrade between A.D. 1237 and A.D. 1417 at which time they were ousted by a band of calculus barbarians. Damn barbarians. I said 1237 because three was still considered a real number back then. The 1930's, on the other hand never happened unless you say "1929 and 1+[whatever year in that 10 year span you wish to talk about]"
-Radio stations are dumb, statistically speaking. Possible term paper topic: Why I hate modern radio and all the on-air personalities who have the collective I.Q. of last night's rump roast: a statistical journey of whimsy and delight.
-A sample is what the urine test is so that you can't do drugs and drive and ambulance for a living.
-Nonresponsive people are the ones who don't answer any of the questions in your stupid polls. Punch them in the neck, it's in the name of science.

[author's note: the class ended at this point and I was relieved to be out of there because I forgot how boring it was to take notes]

Okay, I have to admit that towards the end there my eyes could hardly stay open. But now you know your shit for the midterm. I can't avow to how much of this information, if any, will appear on any of the upcoming tests or, dare I say, the final, but it's always handy to have around in case you find yourself cornered at a Hooters Restaurant by a bunch of statisticians and they want to make some sort of "conversation" with you on the topic of introductory statistics.

A Photographic Account Of My Recent Road Trip

Saturday, September 10, 2005:
The trip down to cowtown for this past weekend's poetry reading was quite a harrowing experience. The weather was absolutely not agreeable as you can tell by the picture of the cloud cover over The Donut Mill, which is where I stopped at the half-way point of my trip for an Oreo Donut and some hot chocolate, served by a girl who bore an uncanny resemblance to a very, very young Meg Ryan. Anyway, once I got south of Red Deer the mild showers that plagued the journey from Edmonton to Red Deer turned into full-on downpours. Every time I approached a tractor trailer on Highway 2 (which is now called the Queen Elizabeth II Highway now) I couldn't see but three or four feet in front of the nose of my 1977 Monte Carlo, which has a hood of about 27 yards so I guess I had pretty good visability considering, just a really big car.

Once I got to my friends' Jordan and Lori's apartment the drinking pretty much began since it was already getting on into the evening timewise. Because all I had had to eat up to that point in time was the aforementioned Oreo donut and a handful of Cherry Blasters (yum) getting drunk took no effort at all.

Jordan, Lori, Ian, Heather and I ate at F.A.T.'s Bar And Grill that night after a brisk, wet walk from the apartment. I got drunker and drunker waiting for a decent meal. Jordan and I split one of the best pizzas I've had in a long time.

We played poker when we got back from the bar and had more drinks.


Sunday, September 11, 2005:
Woke up the next morning with bad hangover. I started to flip through my bag of poetry to see what pieces I should present at the reading. The hangover made all my poetry look mediocre at best.

Jordan, Lori, Ian, and I went for some brunch, though I can't remember the name of the place where we ate (sorry whatever Calgary bar and grill you were; I just have a shitty memory sometimes). After that we did some shopping while we killed time before the reading.

In the shops I was able to pick up a copy of Alex Grey's Sacred Mirrors as well as Alex Grey's 2006 calendar. I also bought some kick-ass sunglasses and Skipping Towards Gomorrah: The Seven Deadly Sins And The Pursuit Of Happiness In America by Dan Savage.

Pictured above you can see me frantically trying to piece together a set of poems that could wow the audience gathered, which was bigger and more conservative in their appearance than I had hoped for. Reading from Sometimes Sinister began to seem a lot more daunting all of a sudden because the older crowd may or may not understand what I was trying to work with as far as a concept goes in that series of poems.


Here is me reading to the audience. This picture was taken by Lori at my request. The setlist I went with was a couple of charming pieces followed by two darker ones from the latter stages of Sometimes Sinister. It went as follows:

1.)"Wishing"-a poem I posted here for you a while back and can be found in the archives here.
2.)"Mehndi Vine Ode"-one of my latest creations. I'm not sure if this fits into the framework of Sometimes Sinister because it's more abstract, but I thought it would fit in well with the idea of an idealist being deconstructed after falling for the wrong woman, this poem representing an idealist viewpoint.
3.)"Chewbacca"-One of the funnier pieces from Sometimes Sinister that describes a roommate's wookie-like sex noises. This one shows the pragmatism beginning to rear its head within our protagonist.
4.)"Matt"-A poem that mentions Cleveland Steamers and Donkey Punching. If you don't know what these terms mean you might want to google them, but I'll just say that they are very raunchy sex terms. Given my older, more conservative looking audience, this was the one that I was most hesitant to read.

After the reading was over I was approached by some radio guy who recorded the show and said that he would be broadcasting it at some point, asking me for some contact information. I signed a couple of autographs, and finally met Selina face-to-face, one of the audience members from my Calgary reading two years ago.

It was all a success!


Here you see Pages Bookstore in Kensington where I read. I was up on the second floor it that matters to you. You can even see a few of the people leaving the bookstore who were at the reading. I would like to think that at this moment one or two of them would be turning to a lover or a close friend and asking, "Honey, what's a donkey punch?"

What's a donkey punch, indeed.

When There's No Time For Tits

Okay, first off, read this...

Click here.

Basically, for those of you who can't read the article or are too lazy to read the article or just don't give a fuck about any fucking article and are only here because the word "tits" appears in the title of this post I'll summarize by saying that there were women who survived the hurricane, but not allowed onto some rescuers' boat because they refused to show their potential heroes their tits. Yes, you read that right. Women were asked to show the hillbilly rescuers their tits and when they refused to do so they were not rescued.

Now for those of you who don't know me that well let me start off by telling you that I've been single for quite a while now or I've had relationships that ended quickly, but what's most important to state is that I'm usually in a perpetual state of loneliness. Now, I'm not saying that because I want your sympathy. I'm not saying this because I want some generous woman to read this, come over to my house and plant her cooch on my face. I'm saying it because insofar as non-incarcerated people go, I'm damn near the loneliest man in existence, but so what? It's suited me just fine. I'll be fine just going on being lonely.

Okay, Michael, but why are you going on and on about being lonely after you start talking about hillbillies and titties?

Here's the point.

Thank fuck you finally have a point!

As lonely as I am I don't go about my daily existence asking women to give me a view of nipples for every little favor I do for them. As such I don't ask women to "put them on the glass" when I hold a door open for them and I certainly don't yell out "show me your tits!" when I pull a chair out for a woman to sit on when we go out to eat. Why don't I do that? Because it's fucking rude, that's why! Holy fuck!

There's a time and a place to yell out shit like that and a definite method and a code of conduct to be followed. It's very, very rare to be in one of those situations where it's okay to ask a woman for a flash of her bodacious ta-ta's and I would have to say that the aftermath of one of the most devastating hurricanes in American history, if not the most devastating hurricane in American history, ranks very high on the long list of inappropriate situations in which one can ask a woman for a glimpse of her tits. In fact, I would almost go so far as to suggest that the aftermath of such a powerful hurricane, amid all the debris and rubble, it's probably the exact opposite of an appropriate situation to say, "Show me some titties!" But then again, that might just be me, Mr. Concerned Canadian Guy who got a boy scout merit badge in fucking manners! I would help old ladies cross the road and I certainly didn't ask them to show me their tits when I did so.

Which brings up another interesting point: Why?!?!?! Now, I might not be completely up to snuff on the destructive power of a hurricane the magnitude of Katrina, but I would suspect that most, if not all, the survivors looked at the very least a wee bit dishveled? I mean, you see footage all over the news of these poor victims of the hurricane wading in filthy water without homes and who have probably been wearing the same clothes for a couple of weeks and do you know what comes to my mind when I see that?

Tits?

No!!!! Even if I saw a poor refugee's tits I doubt that it could be a turn on, so why the fuck even ask for a show? If refugee tits were so hot then why aren't there more sex tours to Sally Struthers countries? That's right, because there are settings in which tits are really supposed to be furthest from one mind.

Don't get me wrong, I'm sure most, if not all the women in question, are absolutely gorgeous and they must have bountiful racks, but after a hurricane I would go out on a limb and say that they probably don't look their best. Maybe their tits are even a little on the less-than-centerfold quality side, maybe a little malnourished from being stuck on a rooftop for days, maybe dehydrated from lack of drinking water. Something tells me, though, that in non-hurricane conditions these women would look infinitely more stunning. Again, so why the fuck even ask for a show? Why not let the women get some shelter, some rest, some food, some water, and then ask them to show their tits? At least then they'll have all the strength they need to punch you in the testicles for being such a chauvinistic prick.

To the asshats who would refuse women a place on your rescue boat because they wouldn't show you their tits: are you really that hard up for a sight of some titties that you would refuse traumatized women the help that they need? I'll send you some porno mags just get them the fuck on the boat! Holy shit, now is no time split hairs when it comes to tits. There will always be time for tits later. As lonely as I am even I know that. I have a whole retirement plan built around tits being flashed my way. It'll be great!

So I would like to take this opportunity to suggest that we start a Rescuers of Hurricane Katrina Porno Fund so that everybody in the affected regions can be given the proper attention without having to lift their shirts as some sort of primitive payment. I'm putting together a benefit concert as we speak and I hope to have some big name acts on board. Hustler ain't cheap, people, those women need to be saved!

Sometimes Sinister

Tonight's a poetry night for sure. I'm leaving for Calgary tomorrow after I wake up and pack for an overnight trip. The reading on Sunday is filling me with a lot of anxiety because right now I think my goal is to be memorable, not necessarily well-liked, but memorable. As it stands I'm hoping to rattle off some of the poems I've written for my Sometimes Sinister project. I'm pleased to say that at this point in time I definitely do not have enough time to read half the poems I've written for that project so far (and that's not even counting the drafts that I'm not even confident enough to include in the project yet). So I thought that before I head out on the road I would leave you with a short piece from the project. I have a series of short poems written in prose-like blocks that list of ominous concepts and closing with the refrain: Sometimes sinister, like the way I love you. I won't transcribe all of those short poems for you here, but here is one of the ones that seems to have caught my eye just now as I was reviewing my work for my possible setlist for Sunday...

Sometimes Sinister

A bad idea. Nape hairs prickling themselves at premonitions. Feeling the long staredown with death through a complete absence of light. Hearing the axe remove itself from a block of wood. A neighbor's television set turned up too loud and muffled, though still audible: commentary on the latest round of prostitute murders. Creamsicle street light: rain, baby, rain. The semicolon suggesting there is more to the picture that is disjointed, maybe not even there. The way fingers twitch when they've clutched too many knife handles, too many gun butts, and now find themselves without something to hold. The masturbator's posture. Carpal tunnel.

Sometimes sinister

like the way I love you.

One From The Vaults

While I plug away at fine tuning my poetry for this weekend's appearance in Calgary please enjoy one of my older pieces. It's about one of my favorite game shows.

The Price Is Rant

You know what television show is great? The Price is Right. Goddamn I love that show. You’re probably thinking right now that there’s some sort of joke coming. You’re suspecting that I’m going on the record as saying that The Price is Right is a great show just so that I can be ironic. Maybe I am, but goddamn that’s some good TV.

But Michael, you’re probably saying out loud, Bob Barker is bringing so much light into the lives of so many people with his game show, why do you have to be so fucking mean all the time?

Bob Barker can have a spay-or-neuter-a-thon all he wants. In fact, he can line up all the house pets in America and sterilize them ‘til the cows come home, or I get laid, whichever comes first (and folks, the pun is fucking intended), though the cows coming home looks to be the pony to bet on in this race. Whatever. Big fucking deal.

Back to the point, though.

The best part of The Price is Right is that it’s not so much a showcase for all the great products being churned out by manufacturers everywhere, but rather that it’s a showcase for the people who play the games. Isn’t that awesome? I love how whenever I feel depressed about how shitty things seem in my life sometimes, I can always turn on the TV and there on The Price is Right there will be hundreds of people who are worse off then me. At least I’m not one of those fucking tools, one can easily think while watching that daily drooling parade of idiocy. Not only that, but those hundreds represent a demographic that could number in the millions. My fucking life now rocks! Thank you very much CBS!

I have to say that the people on the game show wouldn’t be that bad if it weren’t for all the fucking home made t-shirts. Each one of those ugly-ass t-shirts says the same goddamn thing:

[insert town, city, fraternity, military regiment name here] loves Bob Barker

Thank you, folks. I’m sure Bob can make the happiest corpse in the world now. Who the fuck cares what banal group loves him? That’s right, nobody. And believe me, we’re all fucking impressed that you were able to claw your way from Bald Knob, Arkansas to California to appear on a game show. In the grand scheme of the universe, of all the fucking great feats a person can ever hope to achieve I rank making an appearance on The Price is Right somewhere between getting your testicles crushed by transvestite ironically named Tiny and impaling yourself on a three-foot long dildo. In case you’re wondering how feats like that rank in the grand scheme of things in this universe among all the other great things humans have achieved, it isn’t very fucking high. Sorry.

But Michael, how can you just pick on these poor people who only come to win a Ford Taurus or a poorly made catamaran? They’re just ordinary people like you and me.

Wrong again. These are people who are setting humanity back oh, say about three evolutionary steps even while they are achieving. That’s just wrong on such a monumental scale. Think about it. You have the attention of millions of sofa jockeys across the world for minutes. That’s right, minutes. Millions of people are focused on you for minutes. How many times do opportunities like that come up for people? For most people, well ordinary people like you and me that is, there’s no audience of millions hanging on our actions in some pricing game. It’s a rarity to say the least.

And the best thing that any of these people can state, whether it’s on their fucking stupid looking t-shirts or when Bob puts the mic in their faces to ask them tedious questions about Gay Head, Massachusetts or French Lick, Indiana is “We love Bob Barker!” Holy shit! How terribly original and thought provoking and that, my friends, is fucking sarcasm. I’m sure Bob has been verbally fellated by just about every asshat under the sun, from Assawoman Bay, Maryland to Humptulips, Washington, at one time or another, way to squander the opportunity to make a statement again and again and again, morons!

Is Bob Barker really some kind of gold-plated god who has to be worshipped on a TV show for the better part of his adult life?

We love you Bob! Bob, you’re great! Bob, father my children; I need your perfectly coiffed seed to spawn!

Fuck you.

You see, there’s a reason why I’ve never been on The Price is Right. Believe me, I’ve tried. The problem is that my t-shirts never get past security. I keep thinking that if I could capture the imagination of millions for a few minutes I better give them something worth listening to. I better give them a message worth believing in. Does anybody really care if I love Bob Barker? No. Can I appear on a TV show without having to take it up the ass from the host so that he looks like some sort of modern day saint of sterilizing animals? You bet your ass I can’t! Fucking TV has gone to shit a long time ago.

Here’s a t-shirt message for you: Get Off The Sofas Of The World And Do Something With Your Lives, You Human Slugs; You Make Me Sick Enough To Puke Blood. Okay, maybe a tad on the long side. Or how about: Read A Fucking Book. Stop Spaying And Neutering Your Brains, Morons! Okay, a bit shorter, but still too acerbic to get past the quality control. I suppose all that’s left is: Edmonton, Alberta Loves Bob Barker. Holy shit! The people were right all along! They weren’t going on with the intentions of professing their love of Bob Barker; they wanted to say something decent, but couldn’t get it to fit on their t-shirts. I believe I owe the world a fucking apology.

So Price is Right contestants, I’m fucking sorry you lack the imagination to do something worthwhile with your t-shirt real estate. I mean that seriously from the bottom of my coal-black little heart.

I do wonder something about many of the people who wear these t-shirts to their big break on The Price is Right, though. Do they lay awake in bed for days beforehand thinking, Fuck, Bob is so totally going to fucking love my t-shirt. I bet he decides to move to Rough and Ready, California when he see how much we love him on my fucking t-shirt. I’m so fucking cool. Wow. The scary part is that I bet a few people out there really get hard dicks thinking about how awesome their Price is Right t-shirt is going to be. Mention the possibility of incorporating glitter into their design and I bet they jizz all over themselves. I’ll get a towel.

So here it is, The Price is Right will cheer you up no matter how bleak your outlook on life is. Sometimes life throws you one of those curveballs and you’re not sure how to handle it and it might even get so bad that you want to just slit your wrists and have it over with. Realize this, though, you can write The Price is Right, Tickets, 7800 Beverly Blvd, Los Angeles, CA, 90036, for tickets and see just how much worse things could be first-hand. I guarantee you that you’ll come away from that experience wanting to live just to line assholes up to knock them down.

Alex Grey

Last week I received a book that I ordered through an eBay store entitled Transfigurations by visionary artist Alex Grey. I've only had the book a week and I can't help but pick it up from time to time to gaze in awe of the tremendous art contained therein.

For those of you unfamiliar with the work of Alex Grey, he was the artist responsible for the mind-blowing cover art for the latest Tool album Lateralus, which featured anatomically based art painted on acetate overlays sort of like you would find in an anatomy textbook, but with a more spiritual slant to the various layers. That album cover was the first exposure that I had to the work of Alex Grey and since then I have been raving about his unique sense of style.

Anyway, I thought that I would take this opportunity to tell you that the price you would pay for Transfigurations is well worth it. Ordering it through a Canadian bookstore can get kind of pricey so it might be best to hunt for it online like I did. I had been looking for a good bargain on this book for quite some time so, naturally, it was a tremendous relief to find it and to find it at a cost that could afford.

I know that looking at the cover to the book won't really convince many of you out there unfamiliar with Alex Grey so what I will do is pass along a link to his website, which shows you some prime examples of what his work looks like. Make sure you take a peek at the Progress Of The Soul series as well as the Sacred Mirrors. Here's it the link.

Click Here.

It's only a couple more days before I head down to Cow Town for the big poetry event happening this weekend as well as to party with some of my Calgarian friends once again (I can never do that enough). If my posts get sporadic for a little bit here it's because I'm fine tuning some of the pieces that I plan on reading at Pages Books. For now enjoy Alex Grey.

Pearl Jam

Last night Jeff, Cory, Steve, and I attended the Pearl Jam concert at Rexall Place here in Edmonton. It was one of the best shows that I have ever been to. Not the best, but definitely up there with the greats (and I've been to a lot of shows over the years).

Pearl Jam played many of the hits from their catalogue, which is really extensive when you think about it. The setlist went as follows:

1.) Release
2.) Go
3.) Save You
4.) Spin The Black Circle
5.) Nothing As It Seems
6.) Daughter
7.) Evenflow
8.) Betterman
9.) I Am Mine
10.) Grievance
11.) Elderly Woman Behind The Counter In A Small Town
12.) Sad
13.) Corduroy
14.) Given To Fly
15.) Wishlist
16.) Animal
17.) Do The Evolution
--Encore 1--
18.) Love Boat Captain
19.) Crazy Mary
20.) Jeremy
21.) Porch
--Encore 2--
22.) Fucking Up
23.) Yellow Ledbetter

The highlight for me was definitely opening with "Release." Eddie Vedder's voice was very powerful during that song. And to open with it? Well, I just knew then it was going to be an amazing show. The crowd sung along with favorites "Daughter" and "Elderly Woman Behind The Counter In A Small Town."

One thing that I really have to commend the band on, though, is their practice of making bootlegs of their own shows available to their fans. Right after the show in Edmonton was done one could log on to www.pearljam.com and download the concert in mp3 format along with a collection of photos, which I found most beneficial since my seats were far away from the action on stage. The beauty of it is that it only cost me 10 bucks to get the download, which is a fair price for such a good quality bootleg.

Well, it's been a very special day for me I think and I'm getting tuckered out now. My ears are ringing and I've been to a spectacular rock show. In two weeks it'll be me raving about seeing System of a Down and The Mars Volta. The autumn of great concerts in Edmonton is now upon us. Hail, hail!

Sometimes A Picture...

An Observation

After I finished writing that last post I took a long hot shower so that I could reflect on what I had just wrote. And while I stood there basking in the hot water from overhead a thought occurred to me and I thought enough of it that I needed to get out and post it right away, to impart it on you, my readers.

And here it is...

If you look back into human history and in particular our history when it comes to our culture what names stick out? Certainly there are hundreds of greats in all the different media. Names like Leonardo, Ralph Waldo Emerson, William Shakespeare, Bach, Brahms, and Whitman come to mind. But you can literally name hundreds of them. Now, when you think about those great names would you say that they were held in a higher esteem than most of their contemporaries? Would you say that most of these people behind these names were consider intellectually superior to the people around them?

I bet you're saying yes.

And that's what is perhaps the most troubling thought that comes to mind with regards to the state of our current culture. Think about the more prominent names in our culture. Names like Kevin Federline, Tom Sizemore, Tom Cruise, Ben Mulroney, Martha Stewart. Are those the kinds of names that pop immediately to mind? In some cases, yes. You can once again name hundreds of people who are leading our cultural endeavours. Now ask yourself again are these names that came to your mind, are they considered intellectually superior to the people around them? Are these the people we have to look up to for our enlightenment as a whole? Are these the people who are going to represent us in the annals of history?

Maybe it's time for the intellectuals to take the culture back.

And I'm not saying that all our cultural output has to be high brow and hoity-toity. Far from it. Sometimes mindless entertainment has its merits. Sometimes, turning our brains off can be a good thing.

But where the fuck is the critical mass with this shit? When has contemporary culture not only skidded, but started to dig into the earth below it?

What I'm saying is that we have to strike more balance. We've been without a fair balance for a long, long time and we're setting out species back because of it. How many more marginally talented individuals get to be immortalized while the great thinkers fall by the wayside? It doesn't make sense the way we have things. Reverence is something bought now as opposed to earned.

Where the fuck is the balance? Kevin Federline, I'm talking to you. Martha Stewart, if you can hear me over the echo in your vagina, I'm talking to you. Paris Hilton, I'm talking to you.

Take your culture back, people.

How I Married My Way Into Fame: The Kevin Federline Story

Okay, show of hands. How many of you out there actually knew who the fuck Kevin Federline was until he took pure, viginal Britney Spears *snicker* and turned her into hillbilly hoebag Britney Spears Federline or Britney Federline Spears of Trailer Park Barbie (whatever the fuck moniker she goes by)? You see, that's what I thought. He was just some schlub living in a mobile home, drinking Colt .45 and probably fingerbanging his neighbor's daughter. Then out of nowhere like some sort of shitstorm blowing in Britney Spears somehow manages to convince him to settle down.

And you want to know something? I'm happy for their marriage. I truly am. I think it's great that they want to spend the rest of their lives together. I support their decision to pump out babies destined for criminal records. More power to them. People in love are just so adorable that I could puke.

What I'm really having trouble abiding with, though, is the news of Kevin Federline deciding that it's time for him to launch his career in rap music. What the fuck? No, I did type that out properly. Every time I mention it I have to do one of those double takes to make sure that I'm not playing tricks on myself. Holy fuck! I just had to do a fucking triple take that time because then I was sure that if I looked at it a third time somehow the words "career in rap music" wasn't reading "wasting oxygen."

Just move on, old man, move on.

Okay, now that I have my composure back somewhat...

Kevin Federline is all about the credibility, yo! You know that when he raps about popping caps and slappin' hoes you know he's talking from experience, yo! He's got mad flow and he's got skills to pay the bills! He's Kevin fuckin' Federline, yo!

Do you see how fucking ridiculous that sounds? And that's just me, middle class white boy from the suburbs talking.

Now, close your eyes for me. Shut out all the ambient noise and try to imagine for the sake of my argument how much more fucking ridiculous that would sound if it was coming from the trophy husband of an insanely rich pop princess. Oh, you bet your fucking ass he has credibility. Nothing makes the common people get behind you more than opulence. They just love to crank the tunes when they're rapping about being married to a hoebag teen idol in the twilight of her career.

If all you can contribute to the musical landscape is a bunch of party anthems, fuck you! Save your fucking breath because it's been done and it's been done by people I would much rather hear it from than you. If all you can rap on are the virtues of your life of excess, how great your fucking Hummer H2 is, how many Rolexes and Cartiers you strap to your skinny pasty white wrists, how many expensive designer labels you wear when you strut around the trailer park in looking for prepubescent girls to leer at, do us all a favor and shove it up your fucking ass. You have no intentions but the further corruption of the collective human spirit with your materialistic bullshit. You have no concept of how insulting your fame would be to anybody who has ever tried to amount to anything and you should just keep your mouth shut for the benefit of everyone.

This pisses me off. Time and the other resources of record studios are going to be dedicated to feeding some asshat who married his way into fame's ego? Why not, and this may be a stretch, dedicate those same resources to somebody who legitmately has something to say? Are we so bereft of talented artists with actual soul that we have to start asking relatives of famous people to step up and speak for their generation? I fucking cry thinking that hundreds of years from now the people of earth interested in their heritage are going to look to the media of our time and get the impression that ours was the most materialistic and shallow era because some fucktard was given a record contract because he was married to a corporate whore ex-mouseketeer.

That's not to say that there aren't other materialistic and shallow fuckwits holding back the progress of human evolution with their contributions to our culture, but shouldn't we finally draw a line somewhere and say No, we're not going to have any more of this bullshit. Just because you're married famous doesn't mean you're talented. If you want to contribute, prove your fucking mettle or shut the fuck up!

But Michael, Britney Spears says that he's very talented and if he's good enough to impress her then he must be good.

Seriously, step on a rake and pray that it knocks some fucking sense into you. He's married to her. Of course he's talented enough to impress her. He's fucking her. She's a nymphomaniac and she doesn't want to get cut off. You say shit like that to appease your significant other sometimes. Why not get the opinion of somebody who isn't sucking his cock?

Britney Spears: rap mogul? Britney Spears: rap mogul? What the fuck? I know that it's been a little while since Britney Spears has released any recorded material so maybe my memories of what she sang are failing me. Was she the girl who sang that "Oops I Did It Again" or "I'm A Slave 4 U"? She was? Oh shit, my mistake. Clearly, anybody who made a career with songs like those ones is definitely a power in the rap genre. [editor's note: I'm being fucking sarcastic for those of you out there with shitty sarcasm detectors]. Rap on, B-Ritney, rap on! Word up sucka fools. This be how we do that shit back in the mobile home community. Holla!

The bottom line is that record companies can blame their declining sales and the ever-increasing belief that their product is getting shittier and shittier on decisions like encouraging Kevin Federline to rap. I would much rather see somebody who needs to money and is driven more by the need to survive to step up to the mic because he/she is more likely to have something valuable to say. The last thing we need is more shallow bullshit polluting the airwaves and giving us a higher psychic price to pay, to borrow some words from Bill Hicks.

Kevin Federline, please stay home and have sex with your wife. Leave the rapping to somebody more deserving.

The Michael Appleby World Tour Schedules Its Next Stop

The life of an internet rockstar has its perks. Grandmothers send me to the mall to buy them cigarettes. Homeless people ask me for change, honest to god, change. Children laugh at me. Women spit at me. I get email from numerous organizations offering to enlarge my penis to mythic proportions. I get a severely reduced interest rate of 27% on my credit card while the rest of you suckers are probably paying like 84% or something like that (maybe I should look into that sometime). So yeah, being an internet rockstar is pretty fucking awesome.

However, part of being a big celebrity is going on tour. Tours are, for the most part, fun for me. It gives me a chance to connect with my fans all over the world. Grandmothers in foreign countries send me to foreign malls to buy them foreign cigarettes. Homeless people ask me for spare change in weird dialects and accents I'm not used to hearing back at home. Children laugh at me still, but they do so while wearing strange clothes that we here in Edmonton, Alberta just aren't used to seeing. Women spit at me, but they do so after I ask them a question as opposed to before. I get email from the same organizations so that pretty much stays the same what with my monstrous penis and all. My credit card interest sores because I'm on the road and not home paying my celebrity bills.

But as with all tours, they must be rigourously scheduled. Many of you who don't go on whirlwind tours probably don't have any clue as to what it's like to be me in that regard. I have to go dedicate the new toilet at the Esso in Red Deer's Gasoline Alley on Highway 2 southbound September 10, at approximately 3:30 depending on the availability of my ceremonial ribbon cutting scissors.

But what I really wanted to announce at this time was that my team of booking agents and publicists have finally got back to me with a new tour date, which means I'll be packing up the Monte Carlo and taking a road trip.

Where are you going, oh fearless leader?

Well, I am going to be reading at the 2005 edition of the Calgary Stroll of Poets festival. It takes place in the Kensington area of town on Sunday, September 11.

My reading is scheduled for sometime between 2:45 p.m. and 3:45 p.m. that afternoon at Pages Books (1135 Kensington Road NW). Tickets are not available because this is a free event. You just have to have to show up to hear me and some other people read some poems and act all elitist because we're poets and that's what poets do. I will be contacting the event organizers to see if I need to have my crack security team frisking everybody at the doors so that none of my "admirers" can empty out my eye sockets with an ice cream scoop and eat my eyes in hopes of somehow inheriting my unique and highly sought after twisted view on daily life much to the horror of my non-ice-cream-scoop-wielding fans who just want to throw panties at me and have premarital sex with me atop stacks of Robert Ludlum books much to the horror of book store managers (I'm still making monthly payments for those fish scented copies of The Matarese Circle).

So anyway, just to reiterate the pertinent information that somehow got washed away by "Robert Ludlum", "fish scented", and "sex" being used in the same massive sentence:

2:45 p.m. - 3:45 p.m.
September 11, 2005
Pages Books
1135 Kensington Road NW
Calgary, Alberta

Michael Appleby reads! Be there or be somewhere else! I should hire publicists who can come up with better slogans than that. I mean, Be there or be somewhere else?!?!?!?! What the fuck is Murray smoking that he would think people would want to come to any show being promoted that way? He should share.

Untitled

so yesterday on Mingus Tourette's website he challenged his visitors to look through magazines and pick a word or phrase or passage from which to construct a poem. This is what I came up with. It proved to be a rather fulfilling exercise.

untitled
never loud enough
always half tones
that move around me
but never sink in
her heart pounding
louder than anything
her vocal chords issue
lips shape
tongue licks
a breath pushes
always half tones
never loud enough
to register
never loud enough
to cause nausea
i wouldn't know
we were done
if i couldn't read
her mouth
or the way she
makes herself a feather
adding tears to her eyes.

On The Subject Of Tattoos

I admire a good tattoo. Something clever. Something beautiful. Anything that catches my eye really. And since these past few days I've been talking about the cock tattoo a la Tom Sizemore's "Heidi" and corporate whoring a la any fucking town that would rename itself Dish to earn a shitload (double entendre intended) of satellite receivers I thought it would be pertinent at this time to delve into a topic that has bothered me for a little while now --- the corporate tattoo. I first read of corporate tattoos in the pages of Adbusters a while back and I have been meaning to weigh in on the subject myself for quite some time. Now seems as good a time as ever.

What is a corporate tattoo? Well, it's basically a tattoo of a corporate logo or product that the wearer of the tattoo is paid to have. So while some people might go to a tattoo parlor to get dragons clawing their way up their asses or "Heidi" tattooed right above their cocks because that so fucking macho to have when you beat up your girlfriend, there are people who will get paid to have a tattoo of corporate imagery. It's basically like turning your body into a walking, talking, fucking billboard. So instead of paying an artist to give you something that makes a statement like I'm a rebel or I'm a free thinker you'll get paid by a company to make a statement like The Toyota Corolla is tops with me! or Insert corporate penis here with a black arrow pointing at your ass (yeah, you know you like it).

But Michael, there's good money to be made from getting a corporate tattoo and it's not like it's really that important, it's just parts of our bodies!

That's exactly what a prostitute is.

Even worse is the fact that some companies who act as the middle men between the corporations that want to brand people's asses and the people's asses being branded even have contracts done up that require the people sporting the tattoos to verbally endorse the products or corporations featured in the tattoos. It's kind of like the facial cumshot after the sodomy. Sorry if that's a bit graphic, but it just pisses me off that much. I mean, imagine talking to somebody who was under contract to talk at great lengths about the benefits of some corporate entity just because it says Mitsubishi on his ass. How much of the shit coming out of his mouth is his genuine thoughts and feelings and how much of it is corporate propaganda? Is there any way to tell without reading the fine print of the contract he signed when he got his tattoo? I didn't think so. You're now talking to a commercial.

Not only that, but imagine being a tattoo artist who basically makes an entire living from putting corporate images on people's bodies. How sad is that? Think about the great artists throughout human history. Leonardo sketching McDonald's golden arches. Van Gogh for Pepsi. I'm not saying that every tattoo artist is Leonardo or Van Gogh, but a lot of them are good artists who should be allowed to express themselves with a bit more freedom than what some fucking corporate contract clause would allow. On one hand it's nice to see an artist getting paid for talent, but on the other hand, it's fucking depressing to see an artist getting paid to be use said talent as part of a corporate juggernaut. Everything is a fucking dollar sign these days.

Which leads me to the rather recent phenomenon of average people selling off highly visible parts of their bodies for advertising space. I begrudgingly admire the inventiveness of one day waking up and thinking Holy fuck! My fucking forehead would be perfect to sell snoring remedies! I'm a fucking genius! True, he is a bit of a fucking genius, but a sick, twisted sort of genius at that. He got paid well to look like an asshat. Congratulations, asshat.

But Michael, he got paid over $37000 for the use of his forehead.

An asshat with over $37000 is still an asshat. When did selling dignity become such a virtue? I must have missed the meeting where all of humanity decided that money at any cost is the ultimate goal. When you see how the wealthy spend their money nowadays how the fuck can it be all that desirable to be a whore? Sure, you can buy yourself a jewel encrusted i-Pod or a pimp cup, but really, why?

Maybe I'm just losing touch with humanity as I grow older and more cynical. Maybe I'm reading too much into all of this and a tattoo of a corporate logo is still a tattoo and whoever wears it is to be admired as a free thinker and a rebel. Maybe I'm just saying all of this so that you're saying out loud No Michael, you're not losing touch with humanity. You're right. You're always right. And it's true, I'm always right. There are too many fucking corporate bitches.

One From The Vaults

Okay, I don't really have time to whip up something new. I have to be at work in a couple of hours and there's still a few things that I have to get done. So, in the meantime, here's one from the vaults. This is one that I haven't really sent out to anybody because, well, I'm not really sure why not. It's on the state of the television medium (a term I use very lightly seeing as how television is, by and large, a vapid cesspool of mediocrity. Enjoy this dip in the cesspool then. I have two days off coming up after tonight.

Alright, for me to go on record as saying that television equals shit is no real feat, is it? In fact, I’ve heard that in some corners of the globe there are office pools that have been formed based on the exact day I would finally make it known that I think television equals shit. For ease of sorting the winners from losers in those pools, it was November 3, 2004 at approximately 10:35 p.m. and 37 seconds. For the people who didn’t win their pools, you fucking suck. Anyway, I was thinking about it really hard for about three days and I came to the conclusion that television equals shit (sorry, I just had to repeat it for posterity and plus every time I say it I imagine that the members of Slipknot gnash their teeth for improving their marketing ploy of “people = shit”). And you know what? The fact that it’s so shitty on the airwaves fucking irritates me. Television is a medium that has a lot of potential for greatness. It’s a feat of human technology. It can communicate to millions and millions of people instantaneously. It can do all of these wonderful things to bring the people together around the world. It can let me watch Dr. Phil condescend to people every fucking afternoon. It can let me see who will be the next American Idol.

That’s it? That’s the pinnacle of our imagination? That’s how we make the most of our technology. I’m sorry, but that fucking sucks. I’m making a more valuable contribution to the human race just sitting here and jerking off into an old Spice Girls t-shirt (don’t laugh, it was a fucking gift and the person who gave it to me is what the French would call La Douche Bag). The more I think about Posh, Baby, Ginger, Scary, and Sporty simultaneously blowing me the closer I come to finding the true road map to world peace (and I just depressed the fuck out of myself because the memory retention to keep those names straight probably means something more valuable was unlearnt). Okay, probably not. Okay, definitely not, but it’s a daisy chain of the world’s assholes and fuckwits closer to achieving peace than any “World’s Scariest Diarrhea Explosions” broadcast.

But why is that? Why are there only a handful of tolerable television shows punctuating a programming grid that seems to be nonstop Paris Hilton fucking with people’s lives and entertainment gossip magazines shows that are really half hour fellatio sessions for whichever celebrity has a mediocre movie to plug or tragedy to profit from? It’s actually quite a simple answer if you think about it. The reason why we’re being spoon-fed right from the asses of network executives is because the advertisers who sponsor the non-stop scat parade want as many people in the world to stay stupid as possible. And I am loath to make a statement like that, believe me, because I hate sounding like some sort of hippy conspiracy theorist. I don’t wear tin foil hats and I don’t hold secret meetings down by the docks, but I sure as fuck know that stupid people are more likely to part with their money for stupid-as-shit products than people who have successfully completed a remedial reading class or two. So why give them television shows that might evoke thought? Why, indeed.

Now get this, in Germany, and I shit you not, there are plans being made to launch a version of the popular show “Big Brother”, which in America is a show revolving around locking up a bunch of assholes in a house and hopefully somebody gets naked for a web cam, that would go on forever. What does that mean. Well, the producers of the show would build a town and have contestants go to live in this town and live their lives and it would all be on television and it would keep going and keep going until they die. That’s right. So theoretically you could take a break from your own uninspiring life to live somebody else’s uninspiring life vicariously. This is the golden age of technology folks!

But Michael, you don’t know for a fact that the people who are going to be on this show are going to be uninspiring. They might get some cool, radically thinking people who could evoke tremendous amounts of dialogue about many of the issues that are facing this planet.

You’re naïve nature is almost cute. If it goes on television it’ll be cut to appeal to the lowest common denominators. Sure, some “Big Brother” contestant might accidentally say something that would make you think, but I doubt that anybody would actually see it on the air. They’ll probably cut to some mall denizen mid-20’s blonde bimbo berating her roommate for leaving the toilet seat up again. That’s your fucking entertainment, you fucks! Now, a word from our sponsors.

And the whole prospect of people participating in a reality television how until they die is kind of fitting in a way. If you think about it, watching a reality television show until somebody dies puts you that much closer to death yourself, which means I get to rifle through your stuff, so watch away. Now if they could find a way to follow them through their reincarnation as the cum stains they should have been in the first place I might just have to tune in from time to time.

So what does it all mean? What can we do to weather this non-stop tidal wave of feces that comes in through the cable? The beautiful part is that the solution is so fucking simple and it’ll make you a fucking genius too. All you really have to do is turn the TV off. If there are TV shows that you like, ones that engage you in one way or another, get them on DVD because everything is finding its way to DVD these days, or only watch TV for those shows and turn it off otherwise. You’re making yourself a mark for corporate America every time you let them talk down to you with their shows like you were some kind of fucking fresh from the womb placenta-wet newborn. Read a book or something. Hell, write a book. You’ll be doing more for humanity and feeling better for yourself.

Self Addressed Stamped Envelopes For All

I read recently on the Internet Movie Database that Echostar Communications Corporation, which operates the Dish network in the United States will begin a promotion that would see any town that permanently renames itself Dish receive free satellite receivers in every one of its households so long as the town applies for the promotion by November 1. Wow. That's so generous.

So let me get this straight, Echostar Communications Corporation, we sell, as a township, our collective dignity by giving ourselves a suck-ass name permanently and you, in turn, will give us free satellite receivers so that we have, at our fingertips, 500 channels of horseshit? Fucking awesome! Where do we sign up?

And you just know that the satellite receivers probably don't cost a whole hell of a lot to the company itself. Most of them are probably refurbished. Not only that, but Dish network is a subscription service, so while the receivers may be free, pretty much anything that you would want to watch with them will cost you. So the corporation gets to use your town as large scale advertising space and a big, old publicity stunt and you get to watch reruns of "Who's The Boss" and "The Price Is Right." Yeah, you have fun with that, assholes.

Let me take this opportunity to announce my newest promotion. That being that I will gladly supply a lifetime supply of self addressed stamped envelopes to every citizen living in a town that permanently renames itself Michael Appleby Town. Why the self addressed stamped envelopes? Naturally so that every single one of you can mail me money for being the magnificent motherfucker that I always am.

You see? It just doesn't sound right. That's essentially what's happening here, though.

I just hope that whichever towns do take part in this get all of their citizens together in one location for a huge group photo of the whole town posing with their free satellite receivers and yelling

We love "Who's The Boss?" and the "Saved By The Bell Channel." Don't call us corporate whores!

I would just love to look at a group picture of all those happy people with their happy little satellite receivers and have myself a good laugh.

Knobs.

More On Tom Sizemore

Not to get all nitpicky about people's turn-ons and turn-offs, but who the fuck out there is thinking:

Oh my god! Tom Sizemore has a sex tape?!?!?! I'm so getting that! I just about creamed my pants when I heard the news! Oh my god! Oh my god!

Am I that much a troll living underneath a bridge that I don't really care to see Tom Sizemore having sex?

Yes, Michael. Yes you are.

I thought that I might be.

Everybody Wants To Be A Pornstar

The other day when I was ranting about Martha Stewart's cavernous vagina I mentioned the rather contemporary trend of celebrities to have sex tapes "leaked." I say "leaked" because whenever stuff like that is "leaked" I get highly suspicious of how much of it was a "leak" and how much was in fact "futile attempt at securing another 15 minutes of fame." That's another story. What I want to get at tonight is something disturbing that I found on SomethingAwful the other night regarding a "leaked" sex tape starring Tom Sizemore.

That's right, gentle readers, Tom Sizemore has a sex tape.

If you read the little scene by scene review of the, what promises to be, infamous sex tape you will likely stumble over the same part that I did. That part is, of course, how Tom Sizemore has a tattoo above his penis that reads "Heidi" for the Hollywood Madam Heidi Fleiss, whom Tom Sizemore was involved with and later charged with beating up.

Now the whole notion of getting a lover's name tattooed on your body is, by no means, new. Tom Sizemore isn't the first man to take a chance on a relationship lasting forever by tattooing a lover's name on his body.

But here's the thing, if you're capable of beating your lover physically, why the fuck would you get her name tattooed on you? That doesn't make any sense. Because you love her? I mean, if you beat the woman, didn't it occur to you that maybe one day she'd stand up to you and leave your woman-beating ass? Then what would you do with a tattoo of her name? You should really ask yourself before getting a tattoo like that if you would ever beat her up. If you do you should not only not get the tattoo just yet, but you would probably be better off spending money on some therapy to address rage issues because that shit ain't right.

Also, you should ask yourself if you ever intend on starring in a sex tape. If so, you might want to find a different place for a tattoo of your woman's name than right above your dick. That's just weird, especially if you're going to be having sex with women who aren't the woman named in your tattoo.

That's a bold statement about the power of Hollywood monogamy, folks, isn't it? There you are on camera fucking two hookers and right above your cock is your girlfriend's name and she isn't even anywhere to be found. Not that I think you absolutely have to be monogamous. I'm a monogamous guy, but that's not for everybody. Apparently it isn't for Tom Sizemore either. Which brings up another little interesting point, if you don't really believe in monogamy (and if you're dating an infamous Hollywood Madam I can't figure out why you would even try for it) why get a tattoo of some notch in your belt's name?

Finally, if you're a big Hollywood celebrity who can afford hookers and cameras to make your very own sex tape to "leak," why the fuck can't you afford laser tattoo removal? I mean come on! You make millions! Are you hoping that somehow things are going to work out with her in the end, after you finished filming yourself fucking two other women? That's an interesting approach to winning her back after getting charged for beating her, but more power to you if you can pull it off. If you don't want to flip for the tattoo removal, why not at least splurge and get the tattoo altered to look like something other than your ex-lover's name? The nice thing about a name like Heidi is that it's also the title of a classic children's book, and a big screen adaptation. Why not alter the tattoo to look like the movie poster for "Heidi." Wouldn't that look much more appealing on tattooed on your junk than your ex's name? Okay, maybe not, but at least I'm fucking trying here!

In summation, if you're dating the infamous Hollywood Madam and you're capable of physical violence with her, try other avenues of showing your commitment first before you go and get the cock tattoo because there's a bit of a chance that things might not work out in the end. I mean, I really don't want to tell you how to do things, but it could save you a few bucks in the end. You probably could have got another hooker with all that money you saved. It might have been the coup de grace that your "leaked" sex tape needed. Not that I'm a connoisseur of sex tapes.

Snicker.

A Word About The Blog

Most of you probably won't notice this, but I've had to make some adjustments to the settings of my blog. It would seem that my comments are being spammed by automatic posters. Thanks to statcounter.com I became aware of hits to my page that were lasting 0 seconds from various locations from around the world and then I get comments posted by people who want me to check out commercial sites. To help combat the problem with automatic posters spamming my comments feature I have turned on an option that makes it so that whoever posts comments has to take an extra step in the form of word verification. It's a tiny inconvenience for those of you who share comments, but one worth it for those who would rather not be bombarded by spam. I apologize for the inconvenience. I guess this is one of those lessons one has to learn when you start out blogging.

Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

So last night (well, more like early this morning) I finished reading Jonathan Safran Foer's Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close. I have to say that I absolutely loved the book. It was hands-down one of the saddest, if not the saddest, book I have ever read. I was actually crying by the end of the book if you can believe that. I know you're probably thinking But Michael, you're a raging ball of testosterone; you don't cry. I shit you not, I cried.

The novel follows the quest of a nine-year-old boy by the name of Oskar who discovers a key hidden inside a vase inside his late father's closet. His father was one of the thousands killed in the attack on the World Trade Center on 9/11. Anyway, the boy, who was very close to his father decided that finding the lock that the key belongs to would keep the memory of his father alive just a little while longer. The key was inside an envelope with the word "Black" on it inside the vase and so Oskar decides that it must somehow be linked to a person with the last name Black. The quest, then, becomes to meet every person in the New York City phone book with the last name Black to see if they know the origins of the key and if they can offer any insight into the character of Thomas Schell, Oskar's father.

I'll leave the synopsis at that because I really don't want to give away the whole book. What I have given you is a premise. I will say that what absolutely killed me emotionally reading this book was how absolutely charming the character of Oskar is and his little mannerisms which make him a very dynamic and sympathetic hero. For example, when he does something wrong he punishes himself by giving himself bruises. He writes letters to renowned intellectuals for their guidance and to see if they are in need of protoges. The relationship that Oskar have with his mother is so heart-wrenching to read about at times because there appears to be this certain dichotomy between how the son copes with the loss of his father and how the wife copes with the loss of her husband, which makes for some rather tense arguments that are kind of uncomfortable to read.

Foer really does well as a writer here. I would have to say that this book really makes use of some postmodern techniques. Now I know that the term "postmodern" makes some people squeamish because it's usually synonymous with "pretentious" or "hard to understand," but Foer takes safe chances. He has a couple of pages of nothing but numbers as one character tries to tell his life story by punching it into a telephone keypad, and other pages were text is layered time and time again until it is almost completely blackened. What I like most is how he isn't afraid to change his P.O.V. in the book, sometimes adopting the voice of Oskar's grandmother, and sometimes adopting that of his grandfather. To readers who like their books very linear and straightforward, concepts like these sound like too much hassle to wrap one's head around, but Foer really makes it work in an easy-to-understand manner.

Now that the whole experience of reading Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close is done I am left actually missing reading it. It's the kind of book that when it's done you don't want it to be over. I guess that's a true testament to how endearing Oskar Schell is as a character and to Jonathan Safran Foer's ability to write. I highly recommend this book to everybody.

The Sometimes Sinister Mix That I Listen To Pt. 1

So I've decided to finally bring you the list of tracks that dominate my ears when I try working on Sometimes Sinister. As you may have noticed by the title of this post this is part 1, implying there will likely be more parts to follow. I'm calling this part 1 because I want to leave it open-ended enough to allow me to throw more tracks your way in the future in case I change my listening patterns somewhat to suit the needs of my poetry on this project. So without further ado, here's a list of songs that I listen to to get me in the mood for sinister poetry in no particular order of importance.

1.) "Someone's In The Wolf" by: Queens of the Stone Age album: Lullabies To Paralyze - This one started it all. I brought this track up in the ten songs that I am currently digging post from last week. Basically, the pacing is tumultuous and the guitar riffs are brutal. Something about Josh Homme's voice suggests apparitions howling through a forest at night.

2.) "Erased, Over, Out" by: Nine Inch Nails album: Further Down The Spiral - This track is a slow burn and has no real progression to it. It's almost drone-like with its sparse electronica and what sounds like distorted samples of somebody screaming.

3.) "A Warm Place" by: Nine Inch Nails album: The Downward Spiral - An eery and slow instrumental offering from Trent Reznor. I love instrumental pieces to write to because it's quite easy for me to be distracted by the presence of a lot of vocals, especially in terms of my cadence. "A Warm Place" seems rather romantic to me for some reason, but the bassline gives it a darker sheen.

4.) "Ripe (with decay)" by: Nine Inch Nails album: The Fragile - Nine Inch Nails music in general has a sinister quality to it. If and when I do a list of further listening into my sinister bend there will likely be more NIN music on there. Oddly enough, Amazon doesn't have this track listed on their entry for the album The Fragile, but I assure you that's where I cull this track from. I'm not sure if the track has been omitted or what. "Ripe (with decay)" is another one of Reznor's instrumental tracks and the guitars, while used sparingly, bring about this sense of urgency in my mind.

5.) "Divorced" by: The Melvins with Tool album: The Crybaby - I think it's funny how Amazon.com's editorial review of this disc mentions that the collaboration between The Melvins and Tool is "sleep-inducing." Granted, the song takes a while to get going into its topmost gear, but once it does I can't see how anybody could sleep to it. The vocals are indecipherable and littered with bone-shattering screams. The highlight of this 15 minute opus is a segment near the end with dueling drum solos. I suppose this could be a sleep-inducing track, a la Amazon's editorial review, but only if you sleep like a baby when somebody is screaming and following all of that up with dueling drum solos over a disquieting drone. I think Amazon's editor is a strange person if that's how he/she sleeps. Well honey, I'm getting a bit tired, lets queue up this mix tape I have of Texas Chainsaw Massacre's greatest screams and some Gene Krupa. That oughta help me get some rest. I think I should apply for work as an Amazon.com music editor.

6.) "Pink Maggit" by: The Deftones album: White Pony - Chino Moreno has some incredibly evocative lyrics. The lyrics to "Pink Maggit" are incredibly violent and evoke some very dark images. "I'll stick you a little / enough to take your oxygen away / then I'll set you on fire / 'cause I'm on fire / And I'm with you alone. / I'm so into this whore, / afraid I might lose her / so forget about me / 'cause I'll stick you." That's just the slower first half of the song. It gets harder and faster after that. And the coup de grace is an ending consisting of a heart beating.

7.) "You Think I Ain't Worth A Dollar, But I Feel Like A Millionaire" by: Queens Of The Stone Age album: Songs For The Deaf - It's almost hard for me to believe this is the same Josh Homme who sings songs like "No One Knows" and "Hangin' Tree," but that screaming is him apparently. The guitars are like chainsaws on this track, growling constantly.

8.) "Here To Stay" by: Korn album: Untouchables - Jonathan Davis can emote so much rage. Korn has fallen by the wayside somewhat since the whole rap-rock fusion died early in the aughts, but this song still gets my adrenaline pumping. The rolling bass line and the growling vocals do so much to convey rage.

9.) "Twist" by: Korn album: Life Is Peachy - Sometimes I wish that I could read poetry like Jonathan Davis sings on the track "Twist". That would make for an interesting show even though most, if not all of the words, would be garbled and enigmatic beneath layers and layers of growling and yelling. A short, but sweet track of Davis flexing some of the lower frequencies of his vocal range. So much testosterone.

10.) "Pushit" by: Tool album: Ænima - The lyrics to "Pushit" by Tool are oblique, but they seem to suggest a relationship that is sometimes sinister just like the relationship that I am trying to describe in my project. The lyrical highlight in this song from Maynard James Keenan is "If, when I say I might fade like a sigh if I stay / you minimize my movement anyway, / I must persuade you another way." Those seem to be the words of a man who loves a woman who could feasibly destroy him.

Well, there you have it, part 1 of a sometimes sinister music mix. Compiling this list has proven to be a fun little exercise and a nice little distraction for me. I might just look through my music library and see what I can do to put together some more songs that are worth checking out to put one's self in a sinister mood.

Dematerialized (In Waiting)

Waiting for the telephone to ring.
Waiting to get wind of your whereabouts
from anybody.

I could pace through the area rug,
through the hardwood floor,
through the basement cement,
into the core of the earth.

I could be melted by the magma.
I could be dematerialized
into the atomic structures

in this waiting.

And I'd welcome it.

Anything is better than this.

Watching the steam rise
from a sixth cup of coffee.

Pacing.

Not knowing.

Celebrity Genitalia

After this deluge of celebrity sex videos you would think that certain celebrities, as the result of starring in a sex video, would have rather notorious genitals. For example, you'd think that Paris Hilton's or Pam Anderson's respective hoo-hah's would be the talk of tinseltown. Maybe they are to a certain degree. However, one thing that I have noticed is that there is more and more talk about one celebrity's vagina more than any other celebrity's vagina. That celebrity? Martha Stewart.

Now maybe it could just be a Daily Show with Jon Stewart thing because, mind you, the only people I've seen really delve (pun intended) into the subject of Martha Stewart's cooch are Jon Stewart and Lewis Black. Jon Stewart devoted a whole chapter of his book Naked Pictures Of Famous People to talking about decorating the ex-con's po-po while Lewis Black likened it to an overpriced umbrella stand in a performance he called Lewis Black - Black On Broadway.

So what does all this mean? I'm not really sure. Maybe people affiliated with the Daily Show with Jon Stewart are fixated by conservative camel toes. Maybe Martha's mound is a comedic safety net; if you start to lose your audience you can just say the words "Martha Stewart's cavernous vagina" and no matter how bad you were bombing before your audience will be roaring.

Hmm... Let me try that.

Martha Stewart's cavernous vagina.

Okay, a few of you were probably chuckling a little, but I guarantee that anybody googling "Martha Stewart's cavernous vagina" are probably just walking in, saying, "What the fuck? Where are the jpegs, asshole?" and then storming out of here in huff.

And if it's not those first two possibilities it might just be something that is infinitely more disconcerting to me as a scientifically-minded individual and a lover of humanity. That possibility being that Martha Stewart does not, in fact, have a vagina because she does not spawn because she is in fact Satan. Now, now. Settle down people.

Michael, you're way off base here. Of course Martha Stewart has genitals, she's just a humble woman trying to fill the world with potpourri scented goodness.

Before you jump on your We-Hate-Michael bandwagon and run me down like a limping dog you should hear me out. When you think of banality, I mean so banal that your jaw could fall right to the floor in fits of yawning, who do you think of? That's right, Martha Stewart. When you think of the dark power of somehow going to prison and coming out much richer than you were before you started your sentence, who do you think of? That's right, Martha Stewart. When you think of the infinite source of potpourri in the universe who do you think of? That's right, Martha Stewart. As you might be just figuring out here, there's a pattern. Martha Stewart has some eery, eery powers at her disposal.

When you think of the power of becoming a convict and then an ex-convict with her own reality television game show promising to allow some hapless innocent the privilege of being an apprentice to an ex-convict, who do you think of? That's right, Martha Stewart.

Sorry, it's hard to break free of the pattern once you get on a roll.

Martha Stewart's cavernous vagina.

Wow. I guess it does work.

So, there you have it. I guess some celebrity genitals, by virtue of being practically mythical, are truly compelling.

10 Songs I'm Currently Digging

So I was logged into my Myspace account recently and saw this on my internet bulletin board, posted by a girl by the nickname of High Voltage!

List 10 songs that you are currently loving ... it doesn't matter what genre they are from, whether they have words, or even if they mostly suck, but they must be songs you're really enjoying RIGHT NOW. Give a short reason why you like each song if you can. Post these instructions, the artists, and the 10 songs.

I thought that the prospect of going through a list of 10 songs that I'm currently listening to a lot seemed like fun. So here is my list of 10 songs that come with my recommendation.

1. "Neighborhood #1(Tunnels)" by: The Arcade Fire album: Funeral - The lyrics to this song can be found here. I mention the lyrics because, to me, this is a very transportive song lyrically speaking. There's something incredibly evocative about the notion of a neighborhood buried by snow and people tunneling from window to window to meet up for a rendezvous in the middle of town, forgetting everything that they used to know. It's romance, I suppose, wanting to be alone with a lover after the world is drowned out. And the way the music moves! Wow! Incredible.

2. "All The Love In The World" by: Nine Inch Nails album: With Teeth - There's something rather understated about the first two thirds of the song, but then as soon as you hear the piano and the regular beat you just know it's building to something. I guess at first the song seems to be all about bitterness and resentment, but the fact that there's the aforementioned crescendo after the piano sounding out there's an affirmation.

3. "All These Things That I Have Done" by:The Killers album: Hot Fuss - For the life of me I can't figure out what this song is about, but damned if I can get the "I've got soul, but I'm not a soldier" part out of my head. It's too damn catchy. There are times when I could literally sing that part out loud to complete strangers even when there's no music playing at all and it's in a library or a funeral or somewhere completely inappropriate to sing songs by The Killers. Also, check out a pretty catchy chorus:"You know you've got to help me out." Bah. This song is infectious!

4. "11th Fret" by: Gordon Downie album: Battle Of The Nudes - "So this is fucking off by degrees and I suppose we turned out to be not-quite-hawaii" Once again Gord Downie flexes his obliquity with lyrics that jump from image to image at a torrid pace culminating in "a fleck of new snow on the eyelash of cow and we melt away, melt away, melt away now." I've been trying off and on to learn to sing along with this one, but it's always so hard to keep up with his delivery. I dare say that Gordon Downie is some sort of diabolical genius.

5. "Someone's In The Wolf" by: Queens Of The Stone Age album: Lullabies To Paralyze - I've cited this song as being part of a mix of songs that I listen to when I'm working on my collection of poetry known as Sometimes Sinister and, really, I should have cited this song as being the one that started me down the road to a collection of poetry that strove to be sinister. The guitar riffs are fuzzy and brutal and they suggest doom. Lines like "you don't find your way, the way finds you" have such bad connotations, at least in my eyes. And the crescendo is all about raw fear and it ends with the sound of a knife chopping.

6. "Worlds Apart" by: ...And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead album: Worlds Apart - Definitely not a radio friendly offering from Trail of Dead with profanity all over the fucking place, but when you look past the swear words there's a political statement overtly at work here. "Look at those cunts on MTV with their cars, and cribs, and rings, and shit. Is that what being a celebrity means? Look, boys and girls, here's BBC. See corpses, rapes, and amputees. What do you think now of the American dream?" Amazing stuff. It's just too bad that Trail of Dead doesn't get more recognition to their contributions to the landscape of modern music.

7. "Fix You" by: Coldplay album: X&Y - The latest single from Coldplay's X&Y is sad. Chris Martin has a great voice for this sort of song. I'm so glad that Coldplay was able to parlay what at first seemed to be a whole career off the song "Yellow" into a whole career of a much richer catalogue of music. I just love it when the whole chorus of voices start in with "Tears stream down you face..."

8. "Be Yourself" by:Audioslave album: Out Of Exile - I find it baffling that anybody could possibly hate this song, but I'm sure that somewhere out there somebody hates this song. Chris Cornell has taken a simple, yet powerful message and turned it into a song: "To be yourself is all that you can do". How is that for affirmation? There's something so positive about that statement.

9. "Lost In Hollywood" by: System of a Down album: Mezmerize - If there is one thing that I don't like about SOAD's latest album it's that Serj Tankian's vocal presence has been co-opted somewhat by the vocals of Daron Malakian. I suppose I just have a bit of a preference for Tankian's voice, which can almost sound like a Viking coming through the mists on his way to battle. "Lost In Hollywood" is the song on Mezmerize that best proves the splitting of vocal duties between Tankian and Malakian can not only work, but work extremely well.

10. "The Widow" by: The Mars Volta album: Frances The Mute - Is The Mars Volta pretentious? Quite possibly. That might also be why I like them so much. It's great to have the odd band come along who intentionally diverges from pop stereotypes to deliver an album, or in this case a song, that tries to become a genre unto itself. I can almost see this as a song being sung in a smoky jazz club with it's refrain of "cuz I'll never sleep alone", but it's not a jazz song. I just love acts who you can't name other bands that sound like them. Beautiful stuff.

So there it is. Ten songs that I'm currently digging. I still owe you a Sometimes Sinister mix, but I assure you it will be posted soon. I tweak it from time to time and I want to finalize it before I post.

Wishing

Wishing
And suddenly she just stops
and closes her eyes.
Silent for a moment.

I’m immediately dumbfounded
so I try to ask what this is
and she shushes me without hesitation.

Then her eyes open once more
and she sighs a sigh of relief
like all evil has just been purged
So I start in with my inquiry
and ask her what that pause was all about

I had to make a wish.

"A wish? Why did you have to make a wish?"


It was 11:11
That’s when you’re supposed to make a wish.

I had never heard of this before
so I press her for more details.

11:11, that’s when the clock is displaying all ones.
It’s the only time on the clock that has four of any one number.

I decide at this point that
she had just given me all the answer I would need.
I could ask for more information
on why the trivial matter of four numbers
would prove to be of any significance in the cosmos,
but I come to the conclusion
that wishing is what keeps her just a little more innocent
than she had led me to believe her to be.

“22 years old and still wishing?
What did you wish for?”

If I told you then it wouldn’t come true, now would it?

“I suppose not.”

Did you make a wish?

“Nope. By time I found out about this practice it was 11:12
and not nearly so magical.”

But what I don’t tell her
is that 11:12 is the only time on the clock face
that is 11 followed by 12
or three ones followed by a two
and probably just as significant in the scheme of the universe
so without stopping or closing my eyes
I go silent just for a second

and I wish that she’d never change.

A Simple Penile Concept

Sorry about the silence on my end for the past two days. I'm working a long stretch of nights at work and getting to my blog for an update is kind of hard to do when I near the end of these longer stretches because I'm generally exhausted, which means I sleep a little longer than usual. But that doesn't mean I don't have something I can post. Here is a rant I wrote a while back on the subject of penises. Some of you may have read it, but here it is again for those of you who haven't seen this one before.

Okay, here’s the deal. In order to be the owner and operator of a dick from now on you should have to get a fucking license for that shit! No, I haven’t forgotten to take my medication and, yes, I have given this plenty of thought. After all this medication taking and careful thought I have determined that it is about time that men are required by law to pass some sort of cock operating test and, upon passing that test, are granted licenses to own and operate their cocks.

But Michael, you own a penis. Why would you want to make it more difficult to continue owning your own penis? That just doesn’t make any sense.

That’s a good question, actually. I guess there’s a first time for everything. Please, let me explain.

The idea for the dick-licensing test came to me, oddly enough, while I was taking piss in a public washroom. There I was relieving myself into the urinal without a care in the world until I looked down and saw a fucking urine puddle on the fucking floor right at my fucking shoes! The first thought that came into my mind was that if I had caught the fucktard who had pissed all over the floor I would rub his nose in it like I would a dog who is being house-trained. How the fuck can a guy not hit a fucking urinal when he is taking a piss?

Now to clarify a little for all of my readers please let me explain to you a little about what a urinal looks like and how it operates. A few of you out there might be women and you probably don’t any real concept of what a urinal is. Basically, it’s an upright toilet placed against the wall about hip level. Some are full-length meaning that they stretch from about the level of your hip all the way down to the fucking floor. Others will maybe extend down to about the level of your knees. The important thing to keep in mind about urinals is that it’s a fucking vertical toilet. It’s basically a fucking extension of the wall. Us men are pissing against a fucking porcelain wall! When you think of porcelain walls you’re thinking of urinals. There you have it. That’s a fucking urinal.

So how the fuck can somebody not hit a fucking wall with a stream of piss? It beats the shit out of me.

Now, if we had some sort of licensing system in place we could look at instances of these asshats pissing all over the floor and do something about it. That something would have to some sort of fine or maybe even fucking castrations for repeat offenders. These are men who clearly have no fucking clue how to operate a dick and they clearly have no fucking business owning a dick. Welcome to the world of catheters, bitches!

Is that a bit cruel? I don’t think so. Us normal men have spent years perfecting the craft of proper penile usage and our good names are being besmirched by these fucking spastic morons with no real appreciation for a piss well delivered.

I think it’s infinitely more cruel to expect a normal man like me stand in a puddle of piss with semi-respectable shoes. Do you know how fucking embarrassing it is to walk around in public with your expensive shoes smelling like piss from having to stand at a urinal in a men’s room?

But Michael, there could be a good reason why some of these guys couldn’t hit the urinal. Cut them some slack.

Then they should clean up after themselves. They should take a bit of responsibility for their actions. Or they should be fucking castrated.

And chew on this, you fuckwits who piss and miss. When I see your fucking puddles at the foot of the urinal my first impression of you, as a man, is that you are a fucking moron. But think about it, if you had simply just whipped you dick out and pissed, say, all over the bathroom mirror, right in the middle of the floor, or even outside the men’s room like in a fucking ashtray or potted plant my impression of you, as a man, would simply be that you’re a fucking asshole, which is exactly 7 ranks higher in the grand scheme of the universe according to old Mikey here. So ask yourself, ‘Would I rather be a fucking asshole or a fucking moron in Mikey’s eyes?’ Do that before you take a piss. If you know you can’t aim worth shit, at least make that inevitable misfire look spectacular.

You see, there’s the beauty of the whole license system. Not only would it eliminate all these idiots and dolts who can’t tell the difference between a toilet and the fucking floor, but it could also eliminate all these idiots and dolts who knock women up, bolt and then don’t fucking help out the single mothers. Those fuckers are even more useless than the fuckers who piss all over the floor. For all I know those fuckers are the same fuckers who piss all over the floor. It would probably explain a lot about their cock technique in general.

The male penis is a peculiar anatomical feature in the sense that there is a definite art to its usage. Not just any old retard with a couple of testicles full of cum or a bladder to tap can whip his dick out and use it without thoroughly fucking things up. Yet, there doesn’t seem to be any shortage of retards who are whipping their dicks out and fucking things up.

What it all boils down to, then, is responsibility. Real men are responsible; they acknowledge the fact that there are consequences for their actions. If they aim their dicks at the floor when they take a piss and there will be piss all over the floor. If they ride bareback with that drunken desperate girl from the bar last night there will be a bun in the oven. Real men know this and they own up to it. They either fucking clean up the floor or they weigh the options with the mother-to-be. The knuckle-draggers and mouth-breathers who run away from their responsibilities don’t deserve their own dicks. It’s that simple.

And yet the women seem to always fall for those same knuckle-draggers and mouth-breathers while decent men like me fall by the wayside. Something’s not fucking right here!