The Tragically Hip's World Container

You knew this was going to be coming from me sooner or later. Many of you who know me personally out there know that I am a big fan of The Tragically Hip.

They're coming back to Edmonton to play a concert on January 14, by the way. Me? Row 31.

So anyway, that's not what I wanted to discuss. I didn't want to come online to brag about getting row 31 tickets to see The Tragically Hip in January. Truth be told, row 31 is not all that spectacular for a show at Rexall Place. It's good, but you're not going to win any medals for getting tickets for row 31. I got to see the Hip in a night club once. I should have got a medal for that one. But enough of this concert talk.

The new album by The Tragically Hip came out recently. It's called World Container. I would have done a review for you, my gentle readers, almost right after the fact had it not been for all of my recent computer problems, which you undoubtedly read about in my last post.

World Container is yet another strong outing by Canada's favorite band.

It's different then what listeners would come to expect from The Hip in recent offerings, though. The sound this time is a more concise rock record. There are more tracks here that a really indicative of a rock n' roll band's as opposed to a band fronted by an amazing poet. Don't get me wrong, the lyrics here are tremendous, "World Container" and "In View" are prime examples of that, but not in the way that the lyrics on In Violet Light or In Between Evolution are tremendous. Frontman Gord Downie, whom I am probably forever in debt to for almost literally making my head explode with lyrical appreciation over the years, doesn't canoodle the English language as much as he's done in the past, offering here a more sparse effort with his words, but it's more of an exercise in minimalizing than producer Bob Rock throttling the singer. I think that Bob Rock's production really sheds more light on the guitars of Paul Langlois and Rob Baker. Songs like "Family Band" and "The Drop Off" show off a couple of meaty riffs from Langlois that brought mind the old days of Up To Here.

So where does this sit in The Tragically Hip canon? I'm not entirely sure. I've listened to it a few times now and I can't decide entirely how it measures up to their previous efforts, especially In Violet Light and In Between Evolution. I think this is the kind of album that would win back any fans who have been alienated by the band's more esoteric direction with its latter albums, but it's not so straight-forward that the people who appreciated those colorful works could see it as a step backwards.

I guess I would have to say that this is the right album for them to do at this point. It's half way between old Hip and new Hip. It's calculated, laced with some really catchy songs and I don't think this could distance them from any of their fans, whether it's the arthouse crowd or the beer-swilling mullet-heads. And they might just get a few new fans (if there are any people who haven't heard them yet) to boot.

Thumbs up indeed.

See you in January.

What we have here are all flaws in progress
where all songs are one song and
that song is, DON'T FORGET

-Gordon Downie
"World Container"

Some Housekeeping Notes

First off, I apologize for the delay in updating my blog. Has it been 10 days since my last post? Already? Wow. Time flies when everything is fucking up around you.

So for those of you who aren't in the know, my computer passed away suddenly and tragically just over a week ago. On Tuesday I finally got a new computer and since Tuesday I've been spending my free time getting my new computer set up just right. I'll be getting back to posting on my blog with some regularity very soon.

Aside from that you should head down to the Raving Poets website regarding news about our imminent return to rock Edmonton down to its foundation. Starting Wednesday, November 1, and going on every Wednesday night in the month of November, the Raving Poets will be doing a new series of readings: Five Wednesdays One November. It takes place at Yianni's Taverna, Kazbar Lounge (10444 - 82 Avenue, Edmonton) kicking off at 8:00 p.m. each time. It promises to be a hell of a series because I'm sure I'm not the only Raving Poet who has had some time to put together a whole arsenal of ass-kicking, donkey-punching, mule-throttling work. Expect blood.

Now that I'm back, let me just say that it's great to be back. I think that I might one of those people with an internet addiction problems. I had the shakes bad. Now begins the morphine drip of my life.

Party With Britney And K-Fed On Halloween

Click here.

lYke OMG doodz, i'm So toTTally goin ta win dis conTest, yo! Gettin mY PartEE on wid Bee-Ritney and K-Fed on HallOween wood Make me da c00lest, yo! Partyin it up double-wide style, boyz!*

*I apologize for this brief, momentary lapse of character on my part. I read an article about how Britney Spears is asking people to whore her husband's attempt at music out to innocent friends and families (a fucking crime against humanity if ever one existed) with the promise of getting to party with Mr. and Mrs. Spears on Halloween in yon double-wide mansion and something just snapped in me.

We now return you to your normally sane and humble narrator.

Although one of those gaudy medallions would be really sweet. Okay, just one of you do me a favor and buy his stupid CD for idiots so that I have enough sales attributed to me to qualify for one of his replica medallions. I've always wanted to look like an upper-class white boy co-opting a culture I not possibly be any further removed from and a replica K-Fed medallion would be the coup-de-grace for my transformation.

On Newstands Everywhere

So today I was at Bonnie Doon Mall (shout out to all my Boonie Doonies out dere, hellz ya!) and I stopped by at the Coles Bookstore where I noticed the latest issue of Wired on their magazine rack. Since I have become a regular reader of Wired I had to buy it. That's what regular readers of magazines do.

And you know what.

The first letter in the Rants+Raves section of the current issue (October, 2006) is by yours truly. Holy fucking shit!

Sorry, you get your name anywhere in a publication that goes around the world and suddenly you're Tom fucking Cruise. Well, not really. But if you are interested in reading the letter you can buy the October, 2006 issue of Wired (I'll even autograph it for you for a nominal fee, except you Bonnie Doonies out there, hellz ya!) Or, if you don't read Wired you can check out the letter free of charge here.

Baby Papa Drama

Click here.

In what can only be described as surreal, two men have stepped up to the plate so far claiming to be the father of Anna Nicole Smith's baby with a third man claiming to have been asked to be the willing (or unwilling) sperm donor. Naturally, these men are all being portrayed as men after 15 minutes of fame by the website I linked to for the article.

And you know what? That's fucking stupid.

Why is that stupid, Michael? Don't you think that the average guy could look at the unknown identity of the father of Anna Nicole Smith's baby and see an opportunity to get a bit of notoriety at least for a little while?

Of course I think that. I just think it's fucking stupid.

Okay, so you have two guys stepping up to the plate on this one so far. Do you know what that means? One of these guys might very well have received the other's sloppy seconds. Think about it, only one of these guys could have had sex with Anna Nicole Smith first, that means that the other would have had to have had sex with her after the first guy. Now, since they both obviously had sex (allegedly) with her around the time that her little bundle of headline-seeking attention was conceived, one guy may very well have had the other guy's sloppy seconds.

And I think that's how the headlines should read from now just so that the media discourages any further men who think of claiming to have had sex with her just for the fame of being able to say that they had sex with a washed-up celebrity. I can almost read that headline now:

SOME ASSHAT HAD ANOTHER ASSHAT'S SLOPPY SECONDS WITH ANNA NICOLE SMITH:
HOLLYWOOD STUNNED BY THE REVELATION THAT ANNA NICOLE SMITH MAY HAVE HAD SEX WITH MORE THAN ONE MAN IN HER LIFETIME!

Although, you know? Maybe getting some fame now isn't such a bad thing. I could use some fame to really launch myself into that writing career I've always wanted. Publishers may be clamoring over each other to hand out book deals to these asshats and I'm missing out.

Maybe the best way for me to become an author is to step forth and claim responsibility for Anna Nicole Smith reproducing.

Album Cover Wars

Once again the fine folks at dailysixer have posted a video that I really want to bring to your attention because it's pretty cool. How many of the albums in this video can you name? Better yet, how many from the video do you have in your own collection?

The Calgary Misadventure

So you might be wondering why it's taken me until now to finally post something about my trip down to Calgary this week to participate in the Red Mile Revenge reading for October.

Well, to put it quite simply, the whole Calgary trip turned into somewhat of a misadventure. Now don't get me wrong because now that the misadventure is over I would have to say that I would not have changed anything about the trip at all. It was an experience.

Before I set out on the road Tuesday I thought it would benefit the driving if I were to swing by the local A&B Sound store and get some road music. I ended spending just over a hundred bucks on CDs. I'll probably be mentioning some of these new albums for my library before long, but in a quick summary sort of way I ended up buying music by The Killers, Queens Of The Stone Age, Beck, Broken Social Scene, The Dears, and TV On The Radio. When it came time to pay for everything I couldn't get my debit card to work properly so I decided to use my credit card instead. This detail plays a part in my story later on so make a note of it.

The drive down to Calgary was great. I grooved to the new Killer disc, stopped in Red Deer for dinner, and got to Calgary in what seemed like little or no time at all. In fact, the drive down was so good that it made me really look forward to the drive back, which I was going to be making at night when the Queen Elizabeth II Highway would be dead.

As per a visit I made to MapQuest before I left Edmonton my route through Calgary to my reading would involve driving south on the Deerfoot until I hit 17 Ave, where I would turn right and pretty much head straight to my venue. Little did I know that just giving a brief look at a road map is not the same thing as actually looking at it for longer than two seconds. I would have seen that the exit I chose really just led to a maze of roads passing through industrial areas, not nearly the straight line I thought I saw on the map beforehand. So after a number of random turns I found myself at the entrance to Stampede Park. And then...

My car broke down.

And I couldn't get it started again.

This was when I first saw how friendly the people of Calgary are. Not long after trying and retrying to get my car started again, a woman from the line next to mine at the gate offered to give me a push out of the way, which I took her up on because I was growing ever more embarassed by the sorry state of my car. The woman at the gate called the park tow truck driver over to take a look at my car to see what could be done for me.

The park tow truck driver looked and couldn't figure out exactly what was wrong with my car, only that he couldn't smell any fuel getting to the engine. His guess was that it was probably a problem with my fuel pump and that maybe letting the car sit for a while would benefit it enough to get it running again later. With the time that I had to wait I could actually go do my reading, but I would need a cab to get there.

I called a cab and it turned out that the venue was actually within walking distance from Stampede Park. I guess I wasn't that lost after all. Anyway, the reading went well. It was a smaller audience than some of my readings, but holy shit was Victoria's Restaurant a nice venue. And the food? Excellent. Wow! I think that if the Raving Poets ever hit the road for a one-off show in Cowtown we should really do it at Victoria's because that place totally rocked. For the reading I brought out "The Clifford Brown Downtown Scope", "Marionettes", which I dedicated to Selina Clary even though she couldn't make it down to the show, "Spectator Sport", and I closed with "Vitriol", a poem I had yet to perform for the people of Calgary for fear of being lynched.

Then after the show everything went surreal.

I got back to my car and tried it, hoping that the down time would have done a world of wonder for it. No such luck. The car still wouldn't start. So I called my uncle Keith, the only Calgarian mechanic I know personally. He said that I could tow the car to his shop and he would look at it in the morning. My aunt Tharon and uncle Keith offered to put me up for the night since it looked like I was stranded, but I really hate being more of a bother than I already am and uncle Keith was already doing more than what I required of him by offering to look at my car so I declined their offer and told them I would seek a hotel once the car was towed.

Second lesson in how friendly Calgarians are: my tow truck driver that night was Larry. He was very forthright with what was best for towing my car and along the way to where the shop was he pointed out all the points of interest in Calgary and we got to talking about the economic situation in Alberta was like, our war stories from our respective jobs, etc. etc. And then when we got the car to the shop where my uncle Keith works it came time to pay and it turned out that my credit card didn't have enough credit left on it to cover the entire tow. Stupid CD shopping binge! So Larry asked me how much cash I had on me and I still had sixty bucks kicking around in my wallet so we tried the credit card again, this time sixty dollars less and it worked!

Now the problem was that I was on the outskirts of Calgary with no money, a broke-down car, and no transportation to get me to some sort of lodging for the night. My plan was to basically spend the next hour or two walking back into town and to shelter. Larry, though, offered to give me a lift on his way back in because he knew that he would be passing by numerous hotels since his route back was right by the airport. So he drove me to the Sandman Inn.

At the Sandman the desk clerk asked me for my credit card so that I could get a room. I explained to her that my credit card had recently been sapped by a tow truck and my own CD-buying stupidity. She told me that it was fine if I paid up front with my debit card. Do you remember why I had to buy my CDs with my credit card in the first place? Yes, you guessed it, my debit card is a piece of shit. The desk clerk tried and tried, but could not get it to work. I asked where a bank machine might be so that I could just get some cash for the room because I had plenty of cash, albeit in my bank account. She told me that the nearest bank machine was a long way away in the Calgary airport. Then she decided to try the old trick of putting tape on the debit car stripe to make it work. And it worked. Oh yes, thank you Buddha for that one.

So I got myself a room, an expensive room because it was the only one left, a two bed smoking suite. And I tried to wind down, but I couldn't sleep at all because I began to worry that the car repairs would be more expensive than what I could afford. I was also worried that I was imposing too much on my uncle Keith. I was also worried about the cat that I was supposed to be looking after for my friend Nadine while she's on vacation. All this worrying meant that I could only sleep soundly for as much as one hour.

When I got up I checked out of the hotel quicker than any human being has ever checked out of a hotel (call me Guiness Book of World Records, seriously). I had a hike ahead of me. I had to find cash somewhere. So I walked from my hotel on Barlow Trail and McKnight all the way to 32 Avenue and 36 Street. I'm not 100% sure on those coordinates as I am a tourist in Calgary even at the best of times. It was a long walk that's all I know. It was probably three miles or so to where I finally found a bank machine and I took out a large wad of cash just to be safe. I then called a cab to take me to my uncle Keith's shop.

Once at the shop it turned out that the repair to my car was indeed the aforementioned fuel pump, which on my car is a rather simple repair. I apparently still had the original (and 30-year-old) fuel pump on my car so I can't really be upset at fate for making that part fail me at last. It took a few hours, but my uncle Keith and his coworkers got me on the road again for a very small fee compared to what I would have paid at some shop where people see suckers born every minute.

The drive back home was scary at best. Because of my lack of sleep I really found myself nodding off behind the wheel as I was getting closer and closer to Red Deer. When I got to Red Deer I was very tempted to just put down 60 bucks on getting a room at this motel that I passed just so that I could get enough sleep to make the rest of the trip back to Edmonton. After eating lunch, though, I found myself rejuvenated enough to make it back, though to ensure I stayed awake I put on some hard-rocking Queens Of The Stone Age and made sure to sing all the way back to E-Town.

Finally I got back home after all the walking, lack of sleep, lack of cash, and adventuring, and misadveturing, and it was 3:00 in the afternoon and I was just going to climb into bed and sleep because I didn't have to be at work until Thursday night.

But that wasn't to be because two hours after falling asleep I was called into work.

So I really didn't get much sleep until this morning. And now I finally have a day off and I don't intend to do anything but host a poker game and a hockey draft later tonight.

I'm glad the misadventure is over, but damn it was fun when everything was done. Thank you, Calgary, you restored my faith in humanity.

I'm almost wondering when the next time I'll be down the Cowtown way will be because I actually kind of miss it.

Brief Transmission

So today I have a day off of work (thank fucking god, let me tell you, with how things have been going at work lately) and today also happens to be the day that my friend Selina Clary puts on her regular monthly poetry reading in Calgary, The Red Mile Revenge. So I have a day off of work and there's a poetry reading in Calgary. If you put two and two together you must be able to figure out that today I'm taking a road trip down to Cowtown to participate in the Red Mile Revenge.

The show takes place at Victoria's Bistro And Bar (306 17 Avenue SW, Calgary) tonight (October 3, 2006) at 8:00 p.m. So if you are in Calgary and you want to come out to hear some killer poetry by me stop on by. Hell, even if you just want to hear some killer poetry in general and you happen to be in Calgary you should check out the RMR show happening tonight.

See you there!

The Bottom Ten, September 2006

10.) The Royal Family- I was watching one of those shows that listed the biggest heirs and heiresses in England and, of course, Prince William was named at number 1 because the royals are worth something in the neighborhood of 10 billion dollars. My reaction: Why? I mean, okay, I can see the family being worth that much through years of sound investments and proper financial planning, but I know that a good chunk of that fortune stems from the fact that somebody, somewhere attaches some sort of relevance to the notion of a royal family. How the fuck are these people still relevant? Can anybody tell me? I'm at a loss. The t.v. show that I was watching also made a huge point over how one day William will be King of England. Big fucking deal, asshole. It's too bad nobody really for real thinks that generations of inbreeding is grounds enough for giving you some real political power.

9.) The Conservative Knee-Jerk Reaction- Click here. In Frisco, Texas an art teacher basically lost her job because one of her students saw a nude sculpture during a field trip to a museum. Oh my god, no!!! Not a nude sculpture in a museum! Holy fuck! Who in their right fucking heads would dare put a sculpture of the naked human form in a museum? Somebody might see a schlong! Or...gasp! Titties! Oh merciful fucking heaven to mergatroid (or however the fuck you spell mergatroid)! Seriously, you fucking hillbillies, is the naked body such a crime in the art world that you could lose your job over a child seeing it? If that is truly the case then shouldn't parents be reprimanded for having mirrors in their homes where children might, gasp!, stare at their own genitalia? I pity the generation that's growing up so sheltered that they have no fucking clue what a schlong is only that it's the tool of Satan and all that is unholy.

8.) The Stork- Those same conservative parents are raising that generation of children to believe that the stork delivers the babies in the night. Just wait until the liberal post-secondary education system gets ahold of them and they flunk because they answer on exams that the purpose of the vagina (they call it the Hoo-Haw Hole or some other asinine name because "vagina" is a swear word) is to make potty and only potty. Anyway, my beef with the stork is that it's just a fucking shitty bird. Of all the things that the conservative right could come up with that magically dieliver babies in the still of the night they had to go with a fucking shit-machine white bird while Christmas gets Santa Claus, Easter gets an egg-laying bunny rabbit, and teeth get taken away by a fucking fairy. I suppose that you've pretty much exhausted the limits of the imagination with all that other shit so a fucking bird carrying babies is all that's left. What a fucking bunch of arbitrary bullshit. A man shoving his cock in some woman's cooch and nine months later a baby popping out sounds a whole bunch more miraculous than some fucking bird that probably shits on people's windshields as it makes deliveries. Fucking birds.

7.) Cross-Promotion Bullshit- Click here. Ahhhhh, Martha Stewart, where you have been lately? My bottom ten lists got lonely without your cold, evil overlord kind of embrace. What now, you ask? Well, Martha Stewart has openly invited Eminem to appear on her show because Martha and her cult are more into the music of Eminem than you would believe. I'll let that sink in for a moment. Do you think that this is an attempt on Martha's part to gain some sort of street cred, branching her appeal into the world of rap, or an invitation to Eminem to branch his appeal into the world of banal domestic divas? Probably a little from column A and a little from column B. I hope that this invitation is decline, or better yet, not even acknowledged because I fucking hate every one of Martha's publicity stunts. Although, she did serve time for being a fucking evil icon or something, maybe she gained an appreciation for rap music while being brutalized in pound-you-in-the-ass prison.

6.) Using The Word 'Diva' To Describe Anything- I should really punch myself in the balls for using that fucking word for anything other than complaining about people who use that word or try to make it some sort of label by which they live their lives. I'm a diva. You're a diva. We're divas! Fuck you! What the fuck is a diva? Seriously. It's just some amorphous, vague jargon that gets thrown around to justify prissy behavior and it's fucking time that people grew up and started taking responsibility for their actions. I demand Perrier Water because I'm a diva and I will be treated accordingly. You demand Perrier Water because you're fucking stuck-up and you have a disproportionately large ego. If you put it like that I might get you a fucking Perrier just to shut you up.

5.) Feuding Pop Princesses- Click here. Britney and Christina have finally settled one of the bloodiest, most violent feuds in pop music history. Indeed, their spat was one of the darkest chapters in modern history and will be long remembered by future generations. What did it take to finally settle this deadly conflict? A fucking crockery set? How the fuck did one attention whore buying another attention whore a fucking crockery set get deemed as newsworthy? Fucking crockery sets don't settle disputes; they don't settle shit; they only make crocks (whatever the fuck those are). Only fistfights and/or lesbian make-out sessions end feuds.

4.) K-Fed- You know what? I'm K-Fed up with with fucking douchebag. Oh, stop groaning, that was fucking pun gold! Click here. So while Britney and Christina attempt some sort of reconciliation over crock (whatever the fuck that is) K-Fed is out and about fostering brand new feuds with many of today's brightest stars by giving the songs off of his soon-to-be-released album titles that are the same titles as songs by other artists. All this because there's a possibility that people will confuse his songs for the songs by those other artists (which are undoubtedly better due to their %100 less K-Fed involvement) when they do things like download tracks off of iTunes. I guess it's sort of fitting that anybody dumb enough not to check who sings a song before they download it off of iTunes deserves to get to hear K-Fed sing.

3.) Spelling "Thanks" With An "X" At The End- Congratulations assholes, you managed to save yourself the time and effort of having to write that whole one extra letter. How the fuck are you not in NASA with such mental prowess as to say, Hey, you know, "-ks" sounds a lot like the sound that the "x" makes. Holy fucking shit! I could just change the "ks" to an "x" and people will still understand and I will look like a total fucking genius because I was able to economize my time. So tell me, genius, what are you going to do with that 0.00056 seconds you just saved with your clever respelling? Oh that's right, 0.00056 seconds isn't even enough time to let out a juicy fart.

2.) DVD Cases That Are Sold With More Than One 'Security Device Enclosed' Sticker On Them- The message behind 'Security Device Enclosed' is straight-forward enough for me that it only takes one sticker to convey it. Why the fuck would you put three of those annoyances on your packaging? Any real crimnal knows that the security device is in the packaging and not on the DVD itself so why not just steal the disc and leave its sticker-riddled packaging on the shelf? Instead you cover all the opening edges with the your stupidity and make legitimate consumers have to work to see your fucking piece-of-shit movies. Bravo.

1.) "London Bridge" By: Fergie- What a fucking terrible song! I know you're kind of expecting me to say something funny because I am a bit of a joke-monkey sometimes, but seriously, that song finds a way to transcend the art of sucking and manages to suck so hard that it implodes on itself almost to the point where I can listen to "My Humps" without vomiting out of ass. That's suck.

Spectator Sport

This is a brand new poem that I wrote after coming home from The Roar's big finale this past Saturday. I'm not sure how I feel about it in it's present form and I may yet go back and do some revisions to it. I was considering writing a part 2 to this piece in which the speaker admits that the only real reason he knows lovers need time to concentrate during road head is because there was a time when he himself received road head and was told that he was the worst participant in such an act. The punchline: being told that he was the worst when it came to road head made for an experience that was easily the worst thirty bucks he ever spent. I may yet write such a poem just because it makes me chuckle to think about a hooker telling her client that he sucks at receiving road head because how the fuck does a guy receive oral sex wrong? That's just plain bad sexpertise. I can't believe I just used the word 'sexpertise' without killing myself immediately afterward. Anyway, enjoy "Spectator Sport"

Spectator Sport
In the car ahead of me the
girl in the passenger seat
administers head to the driver.

I can tell

because she repeatedly comes up for air
before dutifully going back to work. And

I can't help but feel bad for the
poor girl

because I've been tailing
this car for quite a long time now and
still she works.

It's either a testament to her level of
dedication and
attention to detail or
it's a testament to the driver's
longevity with the hard cock, his
unwillingness to erupt.

I can tell

because I've been tailing
this car for quite a long time now and
still she works.

At the next red light we reach
I'm debating

getting out of my car and
running up beside theirs to
cheer her on,
yell at her words of encouragement
through a closed driver's-side window,

maybe tell her to breathe through her nose more,
stop coming up for air
because she'll never get the job done like that,

maybe start singing something sexy to
get the driver in the mood to splooge,
except that I'm almost dead certain
my appearance at his side
while receiving a

front-seat hummer, a
Honda Civic civil blowjob, a
suck-job in a sedan,

would kill any erection, and
consequently
make her work
that much more difficult.

Moments that I wish my
car horn played Marvin Gaye or
Curtis Mayfield,
hell, even any sort of peeler theme
over a soundscape of porn starlet moans,

something,

anything,

to put the exclamation point on an
erotic arc and
save that poor girl's time, neck, and jaw.

If the light turns green and the
car is yet to move
I won't rush them,

won't interupt them

because sometimes lovers just need to concentrate,
lose sight of an outside world
long enough

to find a rhythm that works.

-Michael Appleby
September, 2006

Fucking Restauranteurs!

Click here.

Fucking hell! Do I hate news like this or what? Jessica Simpson is set to open a new chain of barbecue restaurants built around a theme of her portrayal of Daisy Duke in the big screen version of the television classic The Dukes Of Hazzard.

But Michael, why do you hate this news. Jessica Simpson is one of the greatest entertainers on the face of the planet right now and it's only right that she should share some of her restaurant expertise with us little people.

Yeah, she's got restaurant expertise alright. I hate it when just anybody with a big wad of money just wakes up one day and decides, Oh shit, I should just open a fucking restaurant because I know what makes for a fine dining experience.

Jessica Simpson's plan: scantily-clad servers wearing hot pants.

The one word I can think of to describe this bold, new, exciting direction for eateries: original.

Nobody's ever thought of having scantily-clad servers before. Jessica Simpson is like some kind of fucking MENSA president compared to the rest of us for coming up with an idea like that. Wow, why the fuck has there never ever in the history of restaurants been a restaurant with scantily-clad waitresses?

You see, it's not that I hate scantily-clad women bearing food, but when that is your whole idea for a restaurant then you're just a pandering whore. What about the fucking food? What about the fucking ambiance? All you can come up with is a Hooters rip-off? Fuck you. There's all ready a Hooters.

If you're just going to do that at least have the tact and the balls to just have a Hooters menu and just slap a bit of black utility tape over the restaurant name. Then you look like you're just trying to be ironic. As it is you just look like you're a money-grubbing, intellectual-property thief. I mean I'm sure that neither Jessica nor her father Joe are opening this restaurant as some elaborate cash-grab, but rather because they both have a passion for providing the perfect dining experience.

A source told America's Life and Style Weekly magazine: "Joe's going to make a lot of money from this."

Well fuck me. This is just prostitution after all.

Newsflash Joe: you could make even more money if you charge patrons for blowjobs administered by scantily clad servers.

And I'm sure that if that were legal you would soon be able to call that guy pimp.

Anybody remember when Jessica Simpson first came onto the scene and the whole shtick behind her was that she was pure, vestal virgin promoting good moral values and a strong Christian upbringing? Yeah, neither do I.

Fucking hypocrites.

The First Embedded YouTube Video Used On Massive Missives. Mark This Day On Your Calendars, Folks!

I just figured there would be quite a few of you out there who would appreciate seeing The Tragically Hip's video for their new single "In View" from the forthcoming album World Container. Enjoy.

I Don't Think It's A Crime When Your Victim Probably Brags To His Friends About Being Victimized

Debra Lafave.

Debra Lafave. Most of you out there probably aren't familiar with who Debra Lafave is, only that I've mentioned her name twice in my little rant so far, which is two more times than I should given that I haven't established any manner of context for dropping her name like that.

Debra Lafave.

There, now it's three times, suckas, what'cha gonna do about it?

But seriously, Debra Lafave is the somewhat famous Tampa, Florida teacher who had sex with one of her 14-year-old students. Here's a link that goes to a hub of articles about the case and her recent television appearance with Matt Lauer.

Interesting to note is the fact that Debra Lafave received no actual jail time for having sex with her student. I've heard reports that it was because she was deemed too pretty to be in jail, where she would in all likelihood become a professional prison salad tosser or at least the prison tricycle (everybody gets a ride). However, that's not why I think she didn't get any jail time with her sentence.

I think it was because I remember what it was like to be a 14-year-old boy myself. In all likelihood there's a "victim" out there who gets to constantly brag to his buddies about how he got to have sex with Debra Lafave, a beautiful woman. I wish some beautiful woman would have had sex with me when I was 14-years-old so that I would have had something to brag about to all my buddies. I was socially awkward and pretty much single for most of my life up until I was... wait a fucking minute, I'm stil socially awkward?!?! Shit!

But then I thought about Michael Jackson, the last older white woman who was accused of having sex with a boy of around that age. To me, the accusations of him/her molesting a boy were more grave than the beautiful 23-year-old woman, so I thought why not go through my thought process for everybody on blogspot? That way I can make a jack-ass of myself and figure out why the allegations against Michael Jackson, while similar to the allegations against Debra Lafave, are more heinous.

Fuck it, I guess it wasn't that hard for me to figure out. Have you seen Michael Jackson? If I was a 14-year-old boy I probably wouldn't brag about having sex with a washed up woman like Michael Jackson because she really isn't a very attractive woman at all. So, then, is what Debra Lafave did a crime if the victim is bragging about being the victim of the crime? Probably, but it sucks. It just doesn't seem right for her to be punished if that was case, but you do have to abide by the laws of the land I suppose. They're there for some fucking reason or other.

But then, what about Michael Jackson. Well, maybe if she were to make a set of breast implants out of her recycled noses she might not invoke enough fear to be accused of impropriety so much.

Rust And Bone

I just recently finished reading Craig Davidson's collection of stories entitled Rust And Bone. I bought the book on the strength of a positive review written in one of the many magazines I buy on a regular basis (note to self: you read too many magazines).

After reading the book I have to say that I was quite impressed with what I saw in Davidson's writing. There were numerous instances in which I saw shades of Palahniuk. Stories like "A Mean Utility", "Friction" , and "Rust And Bone" show a Chuck P. kind of grit that I love to see in literature. Then stories like "Rocket Ride", and "On Sleepless Roads" show Davidson's ability to come up with an interesting premise. All in all, this a good flexing of some serious literary muscle.

If I did have any qualms with this book it was with the last story in the bunch. It seems to me that what Davidson was trying to do with the book was to show his range and writing ability. Mission accomplished very well, but one of the stories seemed out of place. The last story in the collection, "The Apprentice's Guide To Modern Magic" really seemed more like a story that could have been a novella as opposed to say a single-sitting short story, and its subject matter, a brother and sister who go on a quest to confront the father who abandoned them years and years ago, really did not seem to belong among a collection of stories about grizzled boxers, dog breeders, sex addicts, and drunks. Maybe that's just me. That's not to suggest that "The Apprentice's Guide To Modern Magic" was poorly written or not worth reading. It was actually a great story and I loved reading it; it just didn't seem to fit in with the other stories in the collection is all.

Rust And Bone is a great book, though, and definitely worth checking out. The jacket mentions that Craig Davidson is currently working on a novel about boxing and if his novel-writing ability is on par with his short-story-chops, readers will be in for quite a treat. Do check it out.

Cutting Edge, My Ass!

I was flipping through an old issue of Wired the other day and saw an ad for Nextfest, which is some sort of convention for brainiacs and the technologically inclined. Anyway, in the ad there was a picture of Hubo. For those of you who don't know what Hubo is, Hubo is a humanoid robot made by Kaist. And then the thought occurred to me, how long is it before we have the technology to have sex slave robots? Certainly it's not an original thought (I'm not really an original kind of guy), but it was my thought when I was looking at that picture of Hubo. Not that I think Hubo is sexually attractive. Well, okay, he/she/it is kind of hot, but where are the fucking orifices?!?!

Where was I?

So, yeah, there I was thinking, Wow, we've really come a long way with our robotic technology. We might not have sex slave robots yet, but it's only a matter of time. It's only a matter of time.

But now I wish to make my contribution to the field of robotics. Sure, I might not know shit about electronics (I still try to make toast with my DVD drive), and I sure as fuck know next to nothing when it comes to the field of programming (this site is as low-tech as a boot to the fucking skull), but I feel that I have a very valuable contribution to make to the field of robotics.

Namely, it has to do with the names that these robots are being given.

They're not sexy.

If we are ever going to achieve our lifelong dream as a species of one day creating sex slave robots we are going to need these robots to start having sexier names. Sure, we're still in the infancy of the field when it comes to articulation and whatnot, but we need to start thinking along the lines of sexy robot names because Hubo, as a name, only gives me minor wood. How the fuck am I supposed to sodomize a robot when it's sporting a name like Hubo, huh? Exactly.

So, brainiacs in the robotics industry, please refer to more porno movies before you decide on any names for your upcoming projects because so far the whole field of robots have been given dud names. There are likely to have been cavewomen who had sexier names than any of these robots. And cavewomen are the very antithesis of high tech. So how the fuck can the furry brow and knuckle-dragging cavewomen get sexier names than the fucking cutting edge robots? Huh? How the fuck?

Come on nerds, smarten up!

The Latest Calgary Trip

So on Sunday I gave my latest poetry reading in Calgary as part of the Calgary Stroll of Poets festival. I got a chance to read at Second Cup in Kensington and the place was packed. I am a bit ashamed to admit, though, that when I saw the type of audience that was in attendance I opted out of reading poems like "Vitriol," "Roll Call," and "Gnawing My Way To Freedom." There were a lot of small children and the last thing I wanted to do was to send families away with kids asking, "Mom, what's 'double-bagging' mean?"

The three poems I did pull out, then, were "Humidor," "Sorry States," and "Knot Garden."

The response I got was very positive and, like in past years, I even got to sign a book or two. Calgary always treats me well.

I think I might have to make an effort to read again down there in the not-too-distant future.

One From The Vaults

Antecedent
the realization that i am not the agent of euphoria
in this relationship.

fear is indeed capable of a slow evolution.

the woman and me, happy.
a slight drinking problem:
she has only been sober once
on all the dates that we have been on.

the woman and me, together.
serious.
a slight problem with paycheques
disappearing up her nose
when i am not around.

the woman and me, tethered.
dire.
an early grave for either one of us:

her from too much chemical indulgence.

or

me from worry, too much stress.

the realization that i am witnessing a car wreck
before it actually happens.

dreams of clawing at vinyl upholstery,
trapped, tied up, spotting a web of seatbelts
smelling gasoline
seeing rainbows on the asphalt.

waiting for fire.

-Michael Appleby
October, 2004

Upcoming Literary Events Involving Yours Truly

This month I'll be involved in a couple of literary events that you might want to check out, that is if you want to see me perform live, which you do because, come on, I'm totally hot. Alright, moderately lukewarm. Alright, alright, you pity me. There, are you satisfied?

Anyway, first up, is this coming weekend's Calgary Stroll of Poets Festival. The actual Stroll day is on Sunday, September 10. I'll be reading at the Second Cup in Kensington (338 10th Street NW, Calgary, Alberta, Canada, Earth) at the 2:45 p.m. show. So, if you are in Calgary and you are looking for an aural assault in the nth degree show up at the Second Cup in Kensington at 2:45 p.m.

Second up this month is the second annual Roar! The Roar is spread out over a few days in downtown Edmonton. I get to be one of the readers during the big finale of the festival. The finale is happening Saturday, September 23 at the Art Bar located in the Art Gallery of Alberta (3 Winston Churchill Square, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, Earth) at 8:00 p.m.

That is all. We now continue with our regularly scheduled programming.

The Bottom Ten, August 2006

10.) The Man Glossary- Here. Okay, so I'm supposed to call my sandals "mandals" because they are for a man? And then I'm supposed to call a male nanny a "manny"? Look, the whole gender war is fucking done like dinner except for the knuckle-dragging men and women who won't let the stupid son-of-a-bitch die. I mean for fuck's sake, the longer we keep drawing attention making up stupid-as-fuck gender-specific pop culture phrases the longer it will give people the impression that there's somehow a stupid discrepency between men and women in all facets of life. If you ask me "manny" is even more effeminate of a title for a man to give himself than "nanny". That might just be because Hulk Hogan was "Mr. Nanny" and Hollywood Hulk Hogan's entrance music was at one time "Voodoo Chile" by Jimi Hendrix and it doesn't get much more masculine than that.

9.) The Appearance Of Religious Icons In Foodstuffs- Here. Jesus appears on your shrimp's tail? Of course he does. You're a nutjob. The guy dies by crucifixion and rises three days later before ascending to Heaven. Then he waits over 2000 years to make his triumphant return in the form of a shrimp tail. Ah, just as the gospel of Red Lobster foretold! I'm so sorry to have ever doubted you.

8.) The People Who Buy Religious Icon Foodstuffs Off Of eBay- What's worse than the people who discover the face of religious icons making miraculous appearances in their food are the idiots who pay huge sums of money to buy that food off of eBay. I think that the religious right has entirely too much disposable income when they can buy some dude's half-eaten Jesus toast for thousands of dollars.

7.) People Who Have Some Sort Of Lucky Feeling About The Number 7- It's the number after 6, but comes before 8. Holy shit! I see why it's considered so lucky too!

6.) Chez Hitler- Here. Fuck. Indian Jews are upset that a new restaurant in Mumbai is built around a Hitler theme. You know what? I can see why they would be upset. I mean, it is Hitler. But come on, are you really that concerned? Sure, there's a restaurant named after Hitler, but do you actually think that a Hitler-themed restaurant is going to be a successful eatery? If there's one thing that makes me hungry it's thinking about the Holocaust and World War II. So why not just sit back, pay no mind to the stupid idea for a restaurant thus giving it no free publicity, and let it fail based solely on the fact that Hitler does not inspire hearty appetites and good eats.

5.) White Collar Crime In The Virtual World- Here. Okay, so this MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online RolePlaying Game) player created a virtual bank within the world of the game that he was playing and his fellow players invested their money with him and he absconded with it all. And you know what sucks the worst about all of this? I can't get the voice of Ogre from Revenge Of The Nerds out of my head as he yelled, "Nerds!"

4.)Revenge Of The Nerds- Here. I've ragged on remakes before. But come on, how the fuck can you find somebody to replace Booger? It cannot be done. So why even try?

3.) Shampoo- I'm almost at a point where I want to say, "Fuck washing my hair! Fuck everything!" Have you ever gone shampoo shopping? Good luck trying to find shampoo anymore. There's shampoo for all occasions out there, but never plain old fucking clean-your-hair shampoo! And when you go to the shampoo factory, that's right, all that shit comes out of the same tank. Fuck you, shampoo industry!

2.) Conditioner- My latest conspiracy theory is that the conditioner people are in cahoots with the shampoo people. They're busy plotting how they can fuck with all of us luxuriously-haired people for the rest of our lives. I'm onto you, you conditioner people. I have fucking eyes. I can fucking see.

1.) Automated Phone Calls- I checked my voicemail today and there was a message saying that in order for me to claim my free all-inclusive trip to Mexico that I had to press 3 now. Apparently the automated phone machine that called me didn't realize that it was talking to my voicemail. At that moment I kind of had this zen-like feeling because it was a machine that called a machine and for a brief moment they had a conversation, in English, but neither of them knew what the fuck the other was saying. It's time like these that make me think it will be a long, long time before any machine would ever be smart enough to hunt for Sarah Conner.

Hey Ya!

While doing some surfing around on the web I found a video of an acoustic cover of Outkast's modern classic "Hey Ya!" hosted on DailySixer which just has to be seen. I thought I would throw a link to it for you because I actually thought it was a pretty damn good cover. Here's the link for you...

Click here.

Like Cinderella, But With Underwear

Since I'm on the topic of this past weekend's Tool concert in Edmonton I should tell you a little bit about some of the great merchandise I was able to get my grubby hands on while there. Those of you who have known me a while know that I have a fairly extensive collection of Tool t-shirts and other band merchandise. So, naturally, when there's a Tool concert in town there's also a bunch of brand new Tool merchandise to buy in town as well. I bought myself a Tool hoodie with the album cover to 10,000 Days on it, a tour t-shirt, a long sleeve tee with a giant eye on the back of it, an album by Isis, Tool's opening act for the evening, a hat, a huge Alex Grey Tool poster, and some underwear.

That's right, underwear.

When it came to be my turn at the souvenir stand I took note of a pair of shorts hanging up on display with a placard that read: "Men's Shorts/Women's Panties $20.00" Since I had yet to own a pair of Tool underwear I thought, what the hell, and bought myself a pair.

I watched the concert.

I went home.

When I got home I surveyed all my new Tool loot. And you know what? There's really no way this could be men's underwear. At first I kind of felt like a tool for having bought them in the first place. Sure, the placard said "Men's Shorts/Women's Panties" but the pair on display really didn't look like the kind of underwear I would normally wear (I am a boxers man after all) and they looked skimpy, even on display.

But then I had an idea so good that you could practically see the little metaphorical light bulb shining above my head. And it was shining bright. It must have been like a 400 watt bulb the idea was so good:

I would hold onto these "Men's Shorts/Women's Panties." Not because I'm going to wear them. I don't think they would fit. I would feel self-conscious about the label inside them reading "ClassicGirl," and I wouldn't want my testicles to swinging back and forth, separated by a narrow band of cloth like those clacker balls you would see at the psychiastrist's office. I would probably need a psychiatrist if I started to wear these things. But I will hold onto them.

Why?

Well, here's the big idea I spoke of. Basically, any woman willing to wear this underwear must be into Tool. Or it's wash-day and she has no other underwear that doesn't have the word Tool written on the crotch. But more likely than not she's into Tool. If she's into Tool then she must be my kind of woman and I would give them to her so she could wear them.

Ah, you see? It's like a thoughtful gift from a guy to his favorite girl except the favorite girl isn't even there yet.

I could meet that girl and when the time was right I could get down on one knee and pull out the little jewelry box and give it to her. She would get a tear of joy in her eye and gasp just a little. She'd open the box and find... Tool underwear! And I would propose. I'd help her slip into the underwear (and then a minute later out of the underwear, if you know what I mean) and nine months later the next generation of Tool fans gets born. Like Cinderella, but with underwear.

How's that for an idea?

You're damn right I'm a fucking genius.

I've been going around since Saturday asking all the girls first what size of underwear they wear (I get slapped a lot) and then I ask them if they like Tool (I get slapped a lot more). Maybe this idea isn't so shit-hot after all. Luckily I can wrap a few ice cubes with the engagement underwear and reduce the swelling in my face from repeated slaps.

If nothing else comes of this I suppose I could somehow write a screenplay for a porno based on this. I mean a guy going around looking for the perfect woman to fit in this underwear that he happens upon sounds like the premise for a porno movie. Now there's another great idea.

I'm a fucking genius.

After The Great Show

On Friday night Tool rolled through town on their summer/fall North American tour. Needless to say I was ecstatic to see my favorite band play live again.

This was the second time that I got to see Tool live and I found it to be a completely different concert experience than the last time they came to town. This time around Tool put on more of a traditional rock show. I remember seeing them in 2002 and was struck by how dimly lit the band members were to draw attention away from the band and focus that attention on the video screens that up around the stage. This time there was better lighting for the band. Maynard still stood on a riser at the back of the stage while drummer Danny Carey's monster drumkit (quite possibly the largest drumkit in existence) was at the center of the stage with guitarist Adam Jones and bassist Justin Chancellor flanking the drumkit's riser on the right and left respectively.

The setlist that Tool had for this show looks remarkably short on paper:

Stinkfist
The Pot
Forty Six & 2
Jambi
Schism
Rosetta Stoned
Opiate
Sober
Lateralus
Vicarious
Ænema

And for as short as that setlist looks realize that it took around two hours for the band to get through it all. In hindsight I can name about a dozen more songs that I would have loved to hear them play, but this was still a killer set by any stretch of the imagination. The songs were performed with killer precision and they were loud. This concert was easily the loudest concert that I had ever been to. The band would sometimes segue with instrumentals between songs, allowing them to ebb and flow very smoothly, effortlessly. My favorite song of the set turned out to be "Rosetta Stoned" a song off of their latest album 10,000 Days that I had really not listened to very much.

Maynard had some sparse banter for the audience, greeting them with, "Calgary said to say 'hi.'" When the audience put forth its best We-Hate-Calgary boo Maynard replied with, "What, did they fuck your girlfriend or something?" Oh Maynard, you jokester. Later, during a pause in the setlist Maynard joked "How do you stop a dog from humping your leg?" The answer, of course, "Pick it up and start sucking its dick."

All-in-all this show was probably the best I had ever been to. It's tough to compare it to the first time I saw Tool because the concerts seemed like two entirely different beasts. The first time I saw them it was a multimedia art experience and this time was more of a rock concert.

It was an amazing show and if you missed it I pity you.

Don't despair too much. Maynard did hint that they would be returning to Alberta soon, though he did add that he would be one of the stormtroopers invading from America for our oil. Oh well, you win some, you lose some. I do hope they come back eventually. I would pay good money to see another show like that.

Tool

I apologize ahead of time for the brevity of this post.

I'm getting myself psyched up for the Tool concert that's happening in Edmonton tonight! I mean it's not as though I really need any effort to get psyched to see Tool again, but I'm just spending some time right now getting reacquainted with Tool's catalogue. That's some damn good music.

I'll post my thoughts on the show the next time I'm on. I'm sure I'll be raving about it.

For those of you who are going to be at the Tool concert tonight you might want to take a look at row 27 on the floor because in that row you're likely to see the happiest Tool fan in the world. See you there.

I think I need to change my pants.

More Than Meets The Eye

Click here.

There are a lot of people who, like me, got really excited when they heard the news that there was going to be a live-action Transformers movie going into production. And there are probably many more of you who don't have a clue as to whatever the fuck it is I'm talking about. You're sitting there, just scratching your head, probably dressed in ill-fitting boxer shorts and saying:

Michael, I don't know what the fuck you're talking about.

Transformers. You know. Those toys from way back in the day. You'd see a car or a plane or a dildo and then KABLAMMO! it's a fucking fighting robot! And, holy shit, did those robots have some adventures. Really, it was all subject to the limits of a child's imagination what those toys could do.

I made my Transformers engage in heated debates over existentialism. Starscream would quote Sartre and Optimus Prime would offer his rebuttal in the form of a gun blast right between the fucking robot eyes. Optimus Prime was never much for debate.

Anyway, I'm veering off topic with that. Back to the task at hand. So there you are, probably giddy trying to imagine what a Transformers live action movie would look like. Or, if you've just found out what a Transformer was you're probably changing your boxer shorts after shitting yourself because, brother, those little robots are everywhere. They could be right behind you right now. Made you look.

So, then you find out that Michael Bay is the man who's directing the movie and your expectations go from, "Oh my god I could just shit my pants I'm so excited to see this movie!" to"Oh my god, why, Michael Bay, why? Couldn't the producers hire somebody competent to direct this movie?!?!?!"

And then....

Why reading a little blurb about the upcoming Michael Bay movie "Transformers: The Movie" on CominSoon.net (Please, Michael Bay, don't fuck it up like you did everything else you've directed) I stumbled across news of a contest that the screenwriters for the film are having in which random assholes and idiots get to submit lines that Optimus Prime should say. The winner, of course, will get to hear Optimus Prime utter the winning line next summer when Michael Bay potentially disappoints all of us into a homicidal rage.

Okay, I can deal with the fact that it looks like at lease 0.02% of the dialogue in the movie will be written by somebody who probably has no business owning a computer or any sort of writing implement. Good for him. I hope he's enjoying being the proud owner of opposable thumbs.

What bugs me, though, is that without actually seeing the movie how the fuck would anybody know what Optimus Prime needs to say? I'm no expert on continuity, but you can't just have Optimus fucking Prime blurt out, "Oh Bumblebee, fuck me with your robot cock!" if the Transformers movie has no robot-on-robot sex scenes. I have a feeling that half the lines I've submitted already have probably been eliminated from the contest because the film isn't going to be pornographic in the slightest. But then again, I have about as much of a clue as to what's going to happen in the movie as anybody else at this point.

So not only does it look like there's the very real possibility that Transformers is going to be a huge let-down at the box office next summer, but it also looks like 0.02% of the dialogue in the movie won't make any fucking sense at all and could possibly involve the words: "robot cock." My fingers are crossed for all the right reasons.

Portrait

Portrait
A man has jimmied
open the door of the
janitors’ supply closet
in the men’s room.

A bottle of the blue stuff is missing.

The man
hunched
over one of the sinks,
scrubbing

the way a meth-head
might clean house

or an O.C.
checks and rechecks
door locks

frantic.

He’s scrubbing
because before this
he shit himself and
now it’s time
to deal with stains
to deal with odors
to deal with
one’s nagging humility.

The look on his face is
that of pure, fucking, torture.

Enough to make one wonder
whether it’s most appropriate to

laugh,

cry,

or vomit.

Ten Guests Over For Dinner

Okay, here's the deal. You get to throw a dinner party for ten people, living or dead. Those people can be anybody of your choosing. Want Napolean over for a fat, juicy steak? Done. Want to show Gandhi a thing of two about gorging one's self on mashed potatoes? Done. So who would those people be? This is not a new concept. Mike Gravel's old Dirtpuppy website had this topic before, but it's something interesting to talk about. I'll post my list and why the people are on that list. There is definitely a comments section, though, so please post who you would want to have a meal with.

So here we go (in no order of importance)...

1.) Chuck Palahniuk- Those of you who know me will find the inclusion of Chuck P's name of no surprise whatsoever. He is one of the most dynamic writers out there in the sense that there is a certain lyrical quality to his prose that cannot be denied. So while he is writing a great story like Fight Club or Choke there are just so many passages of those books that can be read out loud like good poetry. He is one of my literary heroes.

2.) Maynard James Keenan- Again, a no-brainer. Tool, being my favorite band, needs some representation at the dinner table and who better to represent them than their vocalist? His presence at the party would give me a chance to ask him for some of the meanings behind some of Tool's more abstract lyrics.

3.) Gordon Downie- When will I take some chances with this list, you ask? Maybe in a number or two. Gordon Downie, the lead singer of the Tragically Hip, as well as a sorely underrated solo artist, is a national treasure. He is one of the few singers who could release a book of poetry that doesn't make me shudder. He also seems like a good guy to just have a beer or two with, which could definitely come in handy at this dinner party.

4.) Allen Ginsberg- I imagine Mr. Ginsberg would have some of the most amazing stories to tell. The Beat Generation is full of names one could feasibly invite to a dinner party like this and no matter who you get you're going to get to hear stories that will undoubtedly become American legends. Ginsberg, as a man, seemed to be incredibly open to experiences so I doubt that there is one topic of conversation that he couldn't expound on at great length.

5.) Henry Rollins- Another man who can tell some incredible stories is Henry Rollins. If you've ever been to one of his spoken word shows you know exactly what I'm talking about. He's a cultural juggernaut, really.

6.) Bill Hicks- There is so much that I would love to talk to Bill Hicks about. He was a brilliant comic and social commentator who was shuffled off the mortal coil much too early in his life. More than any other dead hero out there he's the guy whose observations I miss the most every time I watch the news and see all the sad shit going down in the world. I have to listen to his CDs just to have him remind me that it's all "just a ride."

7.) David Cross- Maybe I'm loading up on comics and social commentators too much for one dinner. I imagine that with all the joking and such going on a the dinner table I would be launching food and beverages out my nose at an alarming rate.

8.) Wayne Gretzky- I suppose this is sort of an oddball selection to have on this list since he seems to be the only athlete, but he was a staple of my youth. Again, it would be great to just get some of his stories from the glory days of the dynasty Oilers. Not just the stories about what it was like on the ice, which seem to come up all the time, but the stories about what the team was like off the ice, what it was like to be a young phenom, what it was like to be the king of the world.

9.) Sarah Polley- Canadian eye candy who has a ton of brains to boot. Smart. Sexy. She's a total package. I think it would be great to get her and Gordon Downie to duet on "Courage." If you ever get a chance to check out her rendition of the Tragically Hip classic you should definitely do it. She took a great rocker and turned it into a haunting balad.

10.) Ray Kurzweil- He'd be there to tell us that no matter how bleak things look in this world of ours there is always the promise of a glorious future. He probably has the lowest profile personality on this list, but that doesn't diminish his role at the dinner table. He's a futurist, the best kind of futurist, an optimist.

So there you have it. Probably not a surprising list to most of you out there. Do take the time to come up with your own list, put it in the comments section, or, better yet, post it on your blog (if you have one). It's a good way to get to know each other.

Baby Tool

On a recent perusal of the Toolarmy website I found myself in the message boards. At that time I found a link to Baby Rock Records and, more specifically, an upcoming album of Tool songs redone as children's lullabies. In fact, they seem to have a healthy catalogue of similar albums set to be released, each dedicated to many popular mainstream rock acts, acts traditionally not associated with children's songs.

And all I can say to this discovery is: Holy fucking shit! That is so fucking cool!

It sounds a bit strange, but there were always songs in the Tool catalogue that I could imagine getting treatments as full-on lullabies. Naturally, I never actually expected an album with such treatments to get made.

Oh come on, Michael, what songs of Tool's could you possibly have thought would make soothing lullabies?

Well, first and foremost, I always thought that "Third Eye" off of 1996's Ænima would make a great lullaby. With lyrics like "So good to see you, I missed you so much. So glad it's over, I missed you so much," it has a certain soothing quality about it. Definitely songs like "Parabol" and it's follow-up "Parabola" off of my favorite Tool album, Lateralus, could be envisioned as lullabies very easily.

Unfortunately, because this album, and all the other albums in the Baby Rock Records catalogue still awaiting release, I haven't actually had a chance to hear what the final product sounds like. I'm very hopeful that they will come out sounding nothing short of amazing, though I'm guessing that the lyrics to many of the songs in that series will probably be omitted and there will be no vocals at all. That's just a guess and I hope that I am wrong because a lot of these songs have such powerful lyrics, which I think might account for why they lend themselves to lullabies so readily. I guess time will only tell what the albums sound like.

I'm pretty sure I'll try to track a few of these albums down nonetheless. Not so much for my own listening pleasure, though I could probably derive great pleasure fom being lulled into sleep to a lullaby Tool CD or a lullaby Radiohead, or, hell, just about any album out of that catalogue, but rather because someday when I'm a father myself I will want to teach my kid a thing or two about good musical taste and what better way to get them some proper musical appreciation than to start them out listening to a Tool CD geared toward children? How fucking cool would that be?

So, thank you to bastardometer for bringing this unique Tool CD and, indeed, a very unique catalogue of albums, to my attention.

The Rockabye Baby: Lullaby Renditions Of Tool CD ships on September 19, 2006. Other albums in the series drop throughout the fall and into spring of next year. Tool will be playing live at Rexall Place here in Edmonton on August 25 and if you look at row 27 on the floor at that show you just might see the happiest Tool fan in the world that night.

Humidor

It's been a while since I've posted any new poetry to the blog. So after so long here is something new. I actually had the first draft of this poem done a while back, but I've finally had a chance to sit down and revise it. I think it reminds me a lot of an earlier poem of mine called "Human Hot Box" in that it deals a lot with the same subject matter, but this poem "Humidor" takes that same topic, the smell of smoke in one's clothing, and romanticizes it. Anyway, enjoy.

Humidor
The smoke from your
cigarette isn’t the
smoke that haunts my clothing;
chokes, stifles, and drips misery
from coalminer lungs
like charcoal briquette flavored cola.

I’m in love with your smoke.

Every time you exhale in
wafting plumes,
blonde-haired, bespectacled mushroom cloud
erupting in
loveliness, a
figment of a steadily disappearing peacock.
Poaching Diane Fossey’s gorillas in the living room.
White stream meandering
up and over bulb of nose,
down the bridge,
into nothingness and
good thoughts

--seeming.

It tickles the
hairs inside my nostrils and ears,
fills me with old Europe or
what I imagine old Europe to be,
character-actor-type old men who
talk strictly en français and play chess,
pretentious artistic types who minimalize
facial expressions as effectively as
they do details,
broad-shouldered German ladies who
belt out tunes to
packed houses and
ask,
nay,
demand a hearty sing-along from a
receptive audience.

I don’t even know your foreign tunes.

Bar rooms suffocate;
casinos are nauseous, a
rainbow of stale odors and
creeping death, the
looking down the dark hole of
one’s own mortality.

You, I could sleep
inside your cloud and
feasibly dream of long
steamboat trips or
making love on the Seine, the
way it cusps and hangs in
wreathes
through these years in
your cosmopolitan sheath
can kill and
probably will;

call me a dead man.

Give me a tumor;
terminally in love with you.

The Bottom Ten, July 2006

10.) Carnies- What is a carnie? Well, traditionally they're sketchy looking meth addicts who always appear to be suppressing constant shrieking disorder. Right? Right. You go to the fairs and carnivals and they're supposed to reek of body odor and and they're supposed to have problematic body hair. Capital Ex recently happened here in Edmonton and I had a chance to check it out. And you know what? The carnies were actually people who didn't look like they were going to stab you while shrieking constantly; they actually looked like normal people. I don't know about you all, but to me that's a sure sign that the low unemployment rate is hitting businesses hard. Carnival companies can't even attract proper carnies; they have to hire normal decent-looking people. Part of the thrill of going to carnivals is not knowing whether or not some carny was going to shriek at you while picking at his/her face; it was a scary, thrilling experience. Now, not so much.

9.) Old People- One thing that the hot weather that always irritates me is that it inspires old people to get out of the house and go to air conditioned environments (i.e. where I work). Have you ever walked behind a pack of old people? Like creeping slowly toward the grave it is. And can you pass them? Oh fuck no! There is such a thing as courteous walking and old people have no fucking concept of what it is. They walk three or four abreast and passing them is impossible because they form this sort of solid wall of vericose veins, wheelchairs, walkers, prosthetic hips, and motorized scooters. Fuck! Single file, people! Most places of business would benefit from hiring a team of professional movers whose job it would be to spot geezers and cryptkeepers as they enter the building, pick them up and physically carry them to where they need to go, walking at a normal human gait. Insurance companies won't cover shit like that. I know because I've checked.

8.) Insurance Companies- Seriously, insurance companies, you have no fucking clue what it's like to constantly have to walk behind a flock of geezers. Please reconsider.

7.) That Guy With The Light Bulb Up His Ass- To kind of get back to the story I linked to quite brilliantly in my tirade on the media's handling of depictions of people flipping the bird, there was a prisoner in Pakistan who recently had to have a light bulb surgically removed from his ass. He claims that he had no idea how it got there; that perhaps his fellow prisoners drugged him and inserted it while he was unconscious. Yeah right, buddy, you run with that story. Anyway, if that is true it is my theory his cellmate did it to him because I believe if you insert a light bulb up your ass and then shuffle your feet to build up a static charge, said light bulb will actually light up. I believe the man's cellmate did it as a means of constructing a crude, but effective reading light for when he wants to read after lights out in the prison. Those prisoners, they're industrious like that. Somebody get that inventive man a job in the real world. We need people who think outside the ass like that.

6.) Firing The Technical Virgin- Click here. Years back a video made the rounds on the internet. In the video a woman made a joke public service announcement about how you can still technically call yourself a virgin if you only take it up the ass. It was pretty fucking funny. So anyway, the girl who appeared in the video went on to become the host of children's television show on PBS. She was recently fired because her bosses found out about the video, a video she made years ago. If you ask me, keeping the girl on the show would have only improved ratings because preschool children, the target audience of the show, are oblivious to the concept getting poked in the winking brown eye and many adults would tune in because they are fascinated by the that same concept. I'm many adults, aren't I? Seriously, though, there is a petition you can sign to help the girl out. Here's a link.

5.) The Madden 2007 Pay-Per-View- Click here. You mean I can pay $20.00 to watch a pay-per-view that previews an upcoming $50.00 video game? Where the fuck do I sign up? There's a new Madden game every fucking year and that's all well and cool, but do we really need a $20.00 preview of a game that is essentially the same as last year's version except with an updated roster and a scarier looking John Madden featured in the game? Fucking rights we do! Anybody who shells out $20.00 for this pay-per-view is a knob with too much disposable income and they should pay me an additional $20.00 for getting a chance to learn this fact from me. Contact me for my PayPal info, idiots!

4.) People Who Complain That It's Too Hot Outside- Okay, I'll accept it when somebody makes a passing comment about how it's hot outside, but leave it at that and only that. I fucking hate listening to people go on as nauseam, "Ohhhh, it's soooo hot outside. Tooooo hot." Spare me your complaints, fucktards. You're the same people who complain that it's too cold in the winter. Realize that complaining about the weather will get you nowhere. So why the fuck bother? Exactly.

3.) Banning Nudity On The Seine- Click here.

City hall has issued a decree banning indecent clothing to preserve the tranquility of the sandy beaches created on the banks of the River Seine every summer since 2001.

How the fuck does indecent clothing destroy the tranquility of sandy beaches? Last time I checked it's volume that destroys tranquility. Indecent clothing just gives men boners. I suppose it might create a lot of divets and such in the sand what with all those boners poking holes into the sand, but that's why God created rakes, assholes. Just rake that shit over. Don't take away our titties!

2.) Hangovers During Heat Waves- Worst fucking feeling the world, ever.

1.) The General Voting Public- Click here. This is why I don't take part in calls for the public to name shit. A bridge in Budapest might be named after Chuck Norris thanks to a website set up by Budapest's Economy Ministry. Okay, I dig the Chuck Norris jokes; they are pretty fucking funny, but come on. You're going to let a bunch of internet geeks determine how landmarks in your area of the world are going to get named?

Why won't they name a bridge after me?

The Weekend Summed Up In One Picture

I did survive.

Happy Birthday

I just wanted to say happy birthday to Jordan. A little late, of course. As is my custom.

The Shock Of The Finger

Watching MuchMusic tonight I happened to catch the video for the Red Hot Chili Peppers' "Can't Stop." I know what you're going to say and, yes, I swear I saw an actual fucking music video on MuchMusic, which is an anomaly given their round-the-clock schedule of playing second-tier reality shows and filler material that is thinly veiled attempts at fellating which ever pop star happens to big at a given moment. So, yes, I did see an actual music video amongst all that other shit and, while I was naturally in shock and finding myself having to stick fucking toothpicks in my eyes so that I wouldn't miss a single frame of one of the last music videos to ever play on a station that seemed to have a mandate to play music videos, I noticed on strang thing about the "Can't Stop" video that kind of bugged me afterward.

The video itself is actually quite well-done and has a very distinct visual appeal to it. What bothered me was one scene in which Flea, the Red Hot Chili Peppers' bassist extraordinaire, wearing an oversized purple plush hippopotamus head, gives a hand gesture, which is digitally blurred out. The hand gesture, I can only assume, is the extended ring finger, standing alone and proud which means, "I just had anal sex with your mother." I know, it's pretty shocking. I don't make up what these hand gestures mean, I just play along. Everytime I fuck somebody's mom up the ass I am, in observance of proper etiquette, required to flash the hand gesture of extending my ring finger to them and, usually, sticking my tongue out and leering at the same time. It's quite the sight to behold.

But, in all seriousness, the hand gesture, though could not be seen by me through the digital censoring, was quite possibly, the bird. That's right, the middle finger standing alone on one's hand, proclaiming to the world, "I'm mad as hell and fuck you, and fuck you, and fuck you, and fuck you over there too, you motherfucking fuckheads! Go eat a bag of bull semen!" Or something like that. Naturally, it's a good thing the hand gesture got censored out because I just don't think I could handle seeing that. It would just be too much.

Does anybody actually get shocked any more by the sight of somebody giving the finger? I mean, we live in a world where violence is in the news, it's on t.v., Dennis Franz showed his bare ass on primetime, Dr. Phil continues to have a career, and Barbara Streisand threatens world peace with the promise of a comeback tour. Is somebody giving the finger really that much of a faux pas that it has be digitally altered?

Well, yes, you stupid shithead, we have to censor that because we really need to protect the impressionable children of the world.

Wrong. You know what? There are probably some children who would see an image of somebody giving the finger and try it themselves, probably at very inopportune times too, like when they're taking communion in church or when they're servicing their priest (interpret that one how you will), or when an international dignitary decides to pay a surprise visit to their town or to just pop over for dinner out of the blue. And you want to know something else? Big fucking deal. It's a fucking hand gesture. Those same kids who are in that monkey see, monkey do mindset are too fucking ignorant to know that it means, "Fuck you, you fucking douchebag. Go shove a lightbulb up your ass!" You gotta love how I was able to work that link in. But back to the topic, it would then fall on the parents to make sure their children are properly educated as to if and when deploying the bird is appropriate. The kids are going to learn all about the finger by time they're in elementary school so, really, how long do you expect to keep them in the dark through censorship?

Secondly, the whole censorship of a stupid hand gesture becomes more a double-edged sword in the sense that when one is confronted by an image that is censored there is an added level of attention drawn to whatever piece of the puzzle is censored out. People expound on it. They go on the internet and find the uncensored, unedited image. They write a fucking blog entry about it. By censoring the image we are added emphasis to how important, cool, edgy, etc. the hand gesture is. Right now as I am writing this I'm flipping you off because it's just too fucking cool! I can't stop!

And finally, is there anything more adorable than a wee child flipping you off? Even when they're gesturing to me, "Fuck you, you fucking failed cumstain! Go fuck a giraffe!" even I can't bring myself to say anything other than, "Awwwww, isn't that just precious? He thinks he's big people!"

It Can't Be Said Enough

So today I kind of made a rediscovery. I say "rediscovery" in a very loose sense of the word because, really, it was a discovery that never left me. In fact, I've probably been blathering on and on about this so-called "rediscovery" to just about everybody I talk about music with. That "rediscovery?" The Arcade Fire's Funeral.

If you haven't had a chance to check this album out you have to do so.

What really struck me this time as I listened through the album was how this was an entire album of potential singles. I hate saying shit like that because when a person is a fan of a band or an album, I mean a real fan, they tend to have a bias when they make bold statement such as calling each song a potential single. But really, folks, as I was listening I found myself able to hear it as a song that could be played on modern rock radio until the public got sick of hearing it. I really believe that in four years time when everybody is doing that "Top Ten Albums Of The Aughts" or whatever else they call their list, Funeral is going to be one of the albums that becomes a staple for listmakers.

That's really all I wanted to say. I'm listening to the whole thing again. I'm obsessed right now. I'll post something more substantial later.

Until then.

Go buy the fucking album all ready, jerk-asses!

R.I.P. Syd Barrett

R.I.P. Syd Barrett.

Maybe Arranged Marriages Aren't The Way To Go

For those of you out there who are single, for those of you out there who kind of just bounce from lover to lover like an endless game of hot-sweaty human pinball with all that bumping and dinging of bells and climbing scores, what with that coy pillow talk and long licks with hot, wet...ahem....ummmm, where was I again? Oh yeah, for all of you out there who aren't married, but spend considerable time wondering why you aren't married, why it can't be as easy as just having your parents arrange for you a spouse with a hefty dowry and all your problems solved:

Read this.

A Springfield, Massachusetts man is suing family friends (well, I suppose they probably won't be family friends after receiving the lawsuit) who had arranged a marriage between the man's son and their niece. Why is he suing his friends, you ask? Well, to put it bluntly, their niece is an eyesore while his son is handsome. You just can't have a handsome man marrying something that looked like it just walked out of a Hindu sideshow. When the marriage was being arranged the uncle and aunt of the blushing bride-to-be didn't string together the sentence, "Oh, by the way, our niece is a homely, homely girl and by saying this now it is our disclaimer that your handsome son stands a 50% chance of fathering some of the ugliest babies that ever popped out of a human vagina." They didn't say that. Not once. So, naturally, by failing to say those aforementioned words, the couple is clearly guilty of fraud and worthy of a lawsuit.

Now, I will admit that I'm not an expert on the ins and outs of arranged marriages. My parents repeated tried to marry me off for $200.00 and three fourth round draft picks and a conditional fifth round draft pick, but thankfully the other team declined the offer. But in all seriousness, the girl had "protruded bad teeth, and couldn't speak English to hold a conversation," and to top it off her complexion was also brought into question. Woof. Throw the dog a bone. Fuck.

But here it is, why not let her meet your son, buddy? They might hit it off. They might not. Maybe your son likes the uglies. Some dudes are down with that sort of stuff. I mean I see guys with ugly, ugly girls all the time. Conversely I see beautiful women with ugly, ugly men. It leads me to believe that we all march to the beat of our own drummers no matter how fucking homely they are. Sometimes we just see past the barbecue stains, the gangrenous left hand, the cleft lip, the thinning hair, the ingrown fingernails, the superfluous third, fourth, fifth, and sixth nipples, and whatever else they have for maladies and we still get hard-ons and wet cooches.

And, hey, if the son is really that repulsed by the sight of the ugly fiancee all he has to do is reply "I don't," when the priest or minister, or whatever official oversees the ceremony asks him if he takes her for the rest of his life. I know that for an ugly enough woman I would definitely be willing to say, "I don't."

I mean, what the fuck were you expecting your friends to say about their niece, really?

"Oh no, you don't want to wed your son to our niece because she is like looking at a horse's ass right after explosive curry diarrhea. She's a fixer-upper and he'd best start by installing a paper bag over her homely head."

Seriously? That's what you wanted them to say?

Maybe you should have asked for a picture up front. Maybe then they'd still be friends.

You don't keep friends by filing lawsuits against them.

Battle Of The Cultural Monsters

Click here.

Have you ever seen one of those movies the revolve around a fight between two sides that you don't want to see win? A good example is a movie like Freddy Vs Jason or even any number of those Japanese monster movies where the two larger-than-life monsters square off in a fight that brings nothing but distruction to the Japanese countryside. Ooo. Ooo. Or how about Alien Vs Predator? The point is that I'm describing a movie where two evil, evil forces square off against each other and you just don't know who to cheer for or even why for that matter.

That's the story I have for you tonight.

Two sick, twisted, evil, revolting entities are, quite possibly, getting ready to do battle in a courtroom setting. And you know what? Much like the tagline for the aforementioned Alien Vs Predator movie: Whoever wins...we lose. The combatants in this fight for ultimate evil? Barbara Streisand and Barbara Streisand fans.

That's right Barbara Streisand. Barbara Streisand fans.

Whoever win...we lose.

Okay Michael, we get it. That crusty hideous 'diva' Barbara Streisand is evil incarnate. But her fans? Why, they're just a bunch of yuppie diva wanna-be's. Ohhhhhh, I see where you're going with this. They're evil because they're a bunch of yuppie diva wanna-be's.

Wow, you're getting good at this.

But no, not all of Bab's (I should almost punch myself in the testicles for referring to her as 'Babs') fans are yuppie diva wanna-be's. I'm sure there are fans of her work from all walks of life, but this story concerns a specific sect of her fans. The fans who could not only afford to throw away thousands of dollars to see the last shows she ever performed live back in 1999, but also afford the thousands and thousands of dollars it will take to sue the retired diva because she has just announced a new tour, thus negating those "final" live shows as being "final" live shows back in 1999.

So, there you have it, a bunch of Streisand's fans are threatening to sue her because they spent all that disposable income on tickets to her last shows ever just so that they could brag to friends that they got to see her last shows, which I'm sure led to numerous punches to the testicles and/or beef curtains because there is nary an evil force more annoying than somebody who brags about getting to see a Barbara Streisand concert.

On one hand, if Streisand wins the threatened litigation a bunch of people with too much money and who, for some insane reason, like Barbara Streisand, lose even more money, which is good because it would teach them all a valuable lesson about tying up the legal system with squabbles over what constitutes a "final" concert. On the other hand, if the fans win this battle, maybe Barbara Streisand will be forced to cancel her tour (it couldhappen!) and I won't have to listen to people at parties bragging about how they saw Barbara Streisand in concert, and it would probably cost the diva a lot of money, which she definitely has too much of.

So who the fuck is a guy supposed to cheer for here? Does my desire to see a bunch of yuppies humiliated in court outweigh my desire to see Barbara Streisand humiliated in court?

Whoever wins...we lose.