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!

A Study In Canadian Obnoxiousness

Canadian culture is a funny thing. On one hand we're rich with a plethora of genuinely stimulating artists and works. And on the other hand we're rich with Canadian Tire commercials. For those of you among my readership who don't live in Canada you'll probably be unfamiliar with Canadian Tire. It's a chain of hardware and household goods stores. I believe they call it Canadian Tire because it is, in fact, Canadian, but don't hold me to that until my team of researchers get back to me from their laboratory. I also believe it is called Canadian Tire because no matter which Canadian Tire store you walk through, it's guaranteed to smell like Tires. But what I really want to talk about here right now is not so much the Canadian Tire stores, god bless them, but rather the Canadian Tire couple.

"The Canadian Tire couple?" you say?

The Canadian Tire couple is this married couple featured in most of the major Canadian Tire advertising. They're in all the television commercials and they can sometimes be seen in the catalogues and in the mailout flyers. They're all over the place in Canada. I'm even tempted enough to say that they are quite possibly Canadian icons. How fucking sad is that? A whole nation of generally bright, gifted people represented to the world by two fictitious characters from a series of television commercials. But more on that later.

Here's what really bugs me about the Canadian Tire couple and you just knew that something was going to have to bug me about these asshats. What bugs me most is that they are quite possibly the most obnoxiously smug couple on the face of the earth. Seriously. I suppose it was destiny that two people so vain would somehow get past their self-love and coalesce into some sort of freakish superpower of self-admiration and verbal masturbation.

Here's what happens in every Canadian Tire commercial that ever gets to air...

1.) Canadian Tire couple invites a neighbor over to their house.
2.) Canadian Tire couple proceeds to show off some new gadget available exclusively at Canadian Tire that makes life infinitely more convenient.
3.) Canadian Tire couple ends with some fucking joke or prank that they find mildly amusing.
4.) I vomit through my eye sockets.

And there's always one point in each commercial where one of them, depending on who is showing the new product off says to the neighbor, "Oh Tom, or whatever the fuck your name is, you lead a life of so many complications while I Canadian Tire couple member can go about my normal business of polluting the broadcast signals thanks to this ever-so-fucking handy new gadget available exclusively at Canadian Tire stores and online at www.canadiantire.com. Why you don't just kill yourself faced with all the inconveniences that you face on a daily basis is beyond me." Every fucking commercial is just like that.

Ask yourself what you would do if you were constantly talked to like that by one of your neighbors. After a while you'd probably snap and and impale them on a couple of rakes. I wouldn't blame you. And why Tom, or whatever the fuck his name is, keeps going over to that house to be talked down to like that is beyond me. He must be a glutton for punishment or he's slowly compiling a list of reasons for him to slit his own throat from ear to ear and leave a suicide note that reads:

I didn't have the new Motomaster Mechanical Dildo Caddy. I'm just not good enough. Good-bye world.

And really, a lot of the products that are featured are essentially nothing more than mechanical dildo caddies anyway. I remember watching them expound on the virtues of a fucking portable DVD player for 35 minutes once. A portable fucking DVD player! We're not talking about essential technology here. And it's so convenient too! You can hang it from the ceiling of your car and keep children amused and it folds right up for ease of storage! Available exclusively at Canadian Tire stores or shop for it online.

You see, when I start talking like that you wish there was an internet technology that allowed you to punch me in the nuts. I thank god that you don't have the technology for that yet.

And now to get back to this whole Canadian identity thing. Isn't it sick that we, as Canadians can look to the Canadian Tire couple as pseudo-cultural icons? How fucking strapped for icons are we in this country that we would let a couple of condescending jerks represent us in the eyes of the world.

"Gee, world, you wouldn't have the problems that you do if you would have purchased the Motomaster Mechanical Dildo Caddy available exclusively at Canadian Tire stores or shop for it online. I guess you're up shit creek, you fucking morons."

I suppose if there is any solace that can be taken in all of this it's that we're not the only country in the world that sometimes gets perceived as being a bunch of smug assholes once in a while. It's funny how the actions of a few can dictate the image of the whole.

And of course it just occurred to me that most of you in the world outside of Canada probably aren't aware of who the Canadian Tire couple is. If this is the case please let me know so that I can create an army to wipe out the scourge of these pissflaps before they become an international epidemic of mediocrity. There may yet be hope.

A Sucker Is Born Every Minute

First off, let me apologize to those of you who happened across this same piece, or at least a piece that I wrote that is remarkably similar to this on my MySpace blog. I posted what is about to follow there, but for some reason I couldn't see it published after I finished posting it and so it may very well be lost. Maybe it'll surface later. It's impossible to say at this point. I did want somebody to read this, though. So I'm going to try to rewrite it now from my memory. Enjoy.

Yesterday, I got my very first cell phone!

"Wow, Michael, welcome to the 21st century, retard. The rest of us have had cell phones for years. Why bother bragging?"

Well, I'm not really bragging. It's just nice to finally be part of the contemporary world of cell phone users I suppose.

I must admit that pushing myself just a little bit closer and a little bit closer to a brain tumor has so far proven to be fun. I can almost feel the cancer cells hatching!

Anyway, not all has been perfect with the whole cell phone ownership experience so far. The one thing that I've become readily aware of has been how the service providers really like to gouge their customers.

"Wow, you really are a fucking genius, Michael. We've been getting gouged for years and you're just figuring out that the customers are getting gouged now? We are in the presence of genius, sheer genius."

Sarcasm is such an ugly color on you. But seriously, there's something more that I want to get at. I do have a point that I want to make.

Like many cell phone users in the modern day world, I like music. I like a lot of things in fact, but for the purposes of this little tirade I really like music. Some of you who know me have probably noticed me listening to music at some point, talking about music at some point, or just generally dancing like a madman even though there's no music playing and I don't seem to have any pants on (forget that you ever saw me doing that). Anyway, as a fan of music I thought that it would be fucking balls if I bought myself a ringtone off the cute, little internet connection that my cell phone enjoys.

My choice of ringtone? Snoop Dogg's "Drop It Like It's Hot". Some of you have probably heard of this song. Some of you may even like this song. Some of you may have even downloaded this song for your own ringtone (I salute you, my "Drop It Like It's Hot" ringtone brothers and sisters!). When I got to the download screen on my cell phone they had a screen that said you are about to download this song and it'll cost you three dollars plus a service fee for files of a certain size. I figure, sure, why not? I like the song and it would sound pretty fucking cool playing every time somebody calls me on my cell because who could ever get sick of that song? Don't answer that. It's a rhetorical question.

So I agreed to the charge and started my download. I was quite excited to have on my phone this pimped-out song that I could impress total strangers in crowded movie theaters, sold out concerts, hospital rooms, and all these other places where cell phones are not only welcome, but openly encouraged. The song downloaded and I played it for the first time.

And you want to know something? I didn't get "Drop It Like It's Hot", I got the chorus of "Drop It Like It's Hot" not nearly as "Drop It Like It's Hot" as the cell phone internet led me to believe. Let me clarify that a little. I paid three dollars not for the song "Drop It Like It's Hot" but for the chorus to "Drop It Like It's Hot", thirty seconds of "Drop It Like It's Hot".

"So the fuck what?" you're probably asking out loud, maybe shaking your fist at your computer screen in frustration at my pettiness.

Well, when I am on my computer logging onto the big people's internet I can download "Drop It Like It's Hot" for about a dollar or two at most. And you know what? It would be the whole song! Think about it. I could spend two dollars and get the whole song off the internet on my desktop computer or I could spend three dollars to get thirty seconds of that same song on my cell phone. What a fucking bargain!

There is, indeed, a sucker born every minute as the old adage goes.

And you just know there's some guy sitting by a pool somewhere in California right now and he has a computer that just keeps track of how many times poor saps around the world click yes to agree to download "Drop It Like It's Hot" for three dollars because it makes him three dollars richer. Right now that man is smiling because he just got my money! That bastard!

The worst part of this whole life lesson is that I probably still haven't learned my lesson. No wait, scratch that, the worst part is that I'm still such a newbie when it comes to cell phones that I haven't figured out how to change my ringtone in the first place and so I'm stuck with the default ringtone until i can figure out how to annoy people with the chorus to "Drop It Like It's Hot" over and over again while people phone me more and more. It's amazing how popular I am.

Corpses And Their Jewelry

I have a beef. Those of you who knew me before I started this here blog know that sometimes I like to rant about things. The beef I have today has to do with internet spam.

"Oh great, you're going to rant about spam. Way to challenge yourself, you fucking idiot."

Yes, I'm going to rant about spam, but please hear me out before you pass down judgment.

Back in the infancy of the internet, back when Al Gore, the only man who had the gonads to claim responsibility for inventing the internet, invented the fucking internet, it was really no secret that at some point in time this new technology would be utilized as a means of commerce. There were tons of new spaces for advertising. Email was a new avenue of communication with customers on an individual basis. And honest to god kilobytes of porn could be paid for with a credit card! Now that the internet has been around for a while and has had some time to evolve for me to start bitching about the evil commercial side of it all is about as intelligent as smashing my testicles in with a ball-pean hammer (ha ha, get the pun? I'm so fucking clever!). I could see the commercial dominance coming one day. That's what the business world does; it looks for ways to best suffocate new technology with consumerism. You can't fault the tiger for being a tiger. And you can't fault the whore for being a whore.

What I can find fault with though is ignorance.

Case in point. Today, I received an email that was designated as spam by my ISP. Big fucking deal, right? Not really. But, what I found rather intriguing about this one piece of spam that was sent to me was the subject line. It read:

"Tupac prefers Rolex and Cartier"

I'll let the sink in for a second.

For those of you who aren't in the know on who Tupac is, or was, click here. Basically, he was a prominent rapper of the late 20th century if you're a bit too lazy to read the wikipedia thing right now. What's important to note, though, is that he was a murder victim. That means that he's dead. One might argue that the large volume of posthumous album releases by Tupac Shakur suggests that he is, in fact, still alive, but for the purposes of my argument, and as it is generally accepted by the whole world, he is dead.

Now, if you read that subject line from the piece of spam that I received again you might notice what I noticed first. The wording of it isn't Tupac preferred, but rather Tupac prefers, which means, if my calculations are correct, that somebody has dug up Tupac's corpse to find out which brands of watch it recommends. This, my dear readers, is how fucking sick and twisted the advertising world has become.

That's right, folks! We here at Bling Bling Emporium have spared no expense in exhuming the remains of late great rapper and poet Tupac Shakur to see which Bling is best for you! After numerous hours of getting the maggot-infested carcass to try on different brands and styles, we found that it responded most favorably to Rolex and Cartier! That means, folks, we're having our first ever Tupac Shakur Rolex and Cartier Summer Blowout! Stop by our website www.corpsebling.com for these amazing deals! But hurry, once the maggots and bacteria finish decomposing the body this sale is over!

Okay, okay. So that's probably not what happened. At least I hope it isn't. I have a lot of respect for the work that Tupac did and the fame he was able to secure himself in his lifetime, so it's definitely best to let the dead have some rest, don't you think? The alternative, though, is just as disconcerting to me, though.

I can accept the fact that I'm going to be bombarded with advertising all over the internet. As a human being living in the developed world I have learn to come to terms with the fact that everywhere I go and everything that I do will be linked to some sort of corporate entity always. I'm okay with that. No use fighting.

But come on! Couldn't you lazy fucks at least do some fact checking before you try to hawk your goods to me? I mean, this isn't even a case of Tupac being recently deceased just before the spam was sent to me. He's been gone nine fucking years! That's almost a decade! I mean, hey, if you really want my money that badly at least inspire me to want to give you my money because you are selling quality products endorsed by celebrities who don't have earthworms tunneling through their eye sockets right now, not because I pity you and your obvious mental retardation. I mean is it so hard to find a living breathing celebrity willing enough to whore himself or herself out for Rolex of Cartier watches? Apparently it is. If you're going for the whole pity dollar approach at least find a way to use the technology we have to turn the 'R' in 'Rolex' backwards and maybe the 'e' as well, you know so you can work with that whole dumb kid with a lemonade stand vibe. Then, at least, you'd really look like mental dwarves instead of incompetent jackasses.

Also, keep sending me some more offers for penis enlarging pills, morons, they really work! I mean seriously, have you actually counted the number of different people trying to sell bigger dicks in an average day's spam? There are 13 million different things that you can try to sell on the internet, 12.999 million of those things are penis enlarging pills.

The Difference Between Performance Poetry And Written Poetry

So earlier tonight I was at the Iron Horse to take part in the latest poetry reading by the Raving Poets. The last time that I was in front of an audience was late June. I was really excited to have another chance to perform because opportunities to have captive ears are fewer and farther between than they used to be.

Now, if you remember back to my last post I was commenting how I want to get away from censoring myself as a poet. The sad part for me about tonight's performance was that it was very much a regression for me and after it was over I felt bad. Why was it a regression, you ask? Well, the poem I read for the crowd at the Iron Horse was from the Sometimes Sinister series I mentioned last post.

I guess that first off I should delve a little bit into what Sometimes Sinister is about. The series of poems that I am working on revolve around a clean cut man who falls in love with a woman who has substance abuse problems and a lifestyle that is, for all intents and purposes, bent on self-destruction. The man still goes forth with his courtship of this woman on the belief that he can turn her life around and change her ways. However, as the relationship blossoms the protagonist finds himself struggling to hold onto his own sanity and sanctity, finding himself getting into fights with her friends, doing everything in his power to protect his lover, and generally having delusions of grandeur. Without giving away the whole story I thought that it would be pertinent to give you a synopsis of what I am working with here.

But back to tonight's performance.

The poem I read was titled "Question" and it will have a place later on in the plotline. In the poem, the protagonist and his lover are holed up in the bathroom of his house because he has become quite paranoid of her friends who don't seem to ever leave. In the poem the lover asks our hero if he would marry her and the poem focuses on the hero's thoughts regarding the marriage proposal. So to get myself back on topic with regards to the regression in my work, I actually omitted a stanza from the poem consciously as I reading it for the audience. In essence I censored myself and what made it doubly bad is that I had almost just finished posting on my blog that I wanted to stop censoring myself, or that this whole exercise in being sinister with my work was an attempt at freeing myself as a poet. I felt very hypocritical after I sat down again. I really don't know how to explain it.

Maybe I should post the poem here so you can see what I did. It might better illustrate my point.

Question
Maybe the whole moral of the story
is that nobody is meant to be saved,
nobody is meant to be changed;
we’re all more static than we’re willing to admit.

Superheroes don’t exist in the real world.

The comic book writers failed us in that regard.

With you laying in the bathtub beside me,
sheltered by my duvet,
nesting on layers of blankets
to make fiberglass just a little more hospitable,
I can’t tell if you’re talking in your sleep
or if you’re gripped by drug-induced hallucinations
or if you’re talking from some other subconscious place
when you say:

Will you marry me?

And when I whisper to you, “yes.”
it seems too loud in these shitty bathroom acoustics.

But you say nothing else after that.

Maybe you are asleep.

I can almost sense the way your body is positioned;
in my mind I see you draping your arm over the side of the tub,
reaching out for me in the pitch, trying to touch me.
Giving up, you slump back down.
I hope.
Or I see with my bat’s sense of sonar.

And I bide my time sitting on the toilet
in the dark facing the one point of entry into this,
the safest room lately,
by carving K.H. + T.C. in an arrowed heart
on the front grip of ole Double Barreled Redeemer
with the tip of a bowie knife.

I wonder if it’s all subconscious really, your question
And I wonder if my answer is just as illusionary.
I wonder if the real us is somewhere far off,
picket fences and wildly fertilized lawn
that needs mowing twice a week.
If we’re hammock naps and picnics in the park,
parents of happy children who are as bright as they are beautiful
instead of shotgun bathrooms and withdrawal jitters.

-Michael Appleby
August, 2005

So, then, the part that I omitted was the stanza that starts "And I bide my time sitting on the toilet". I suppose I did that because I was really worried about the audience reaction to the implied violence inherent in the imagery of the double barreled shotgun. Before I started reading this poem I did throw out a bit of a disclaimer that it was all strictly fiction, but I found myself really worried about what taking this poem out of the context of the whole plot of the series of poems would mean for the presence of a shotgun and a bowie knife. So I omitted that part. I think it took one of the more sinister images I have planned for the whole series and I think that's kind of why I feel as badly as I do about my reading tonight. The whole point was to be sinister and I couldn't bring myself to do that in front of tonight's audience, even after a disclaimer. Ugh. That's bad.

For those of you reading this and wondering about the specifics of the poem you can ask me anything you want. I will tell you this right off the start though, this is still an early draft and I do intend to tinker with it some more. The only other thing that I can offer you before I go hang my head in shame is that I can't quite remember what I have the characters named, but that when I drafted it I gave them the initials K.H. and T.C. arbitrarily. So if you know people with those initials and you're about to give me an earful of your verbal vengence save yourself the effort because I haven't actually given them names just yet.

But I'll leave you with that for now. Feel free to berate me in the comments all you want for being a great big hypocrite. I deserve it.

About "Sometimes Sinister"

Sometimes Sinister is the tentative title of the longer poetry project that I am working on. It's a series of poems that is designed to tell a story. My goal with these poems is not necessarily to explore each second of the plot in great detail, but rather to poetically explore the thoughts of the protagonist as the plot winds on. I am making some significant progress, though it is hard to gauge exactly how many poems I still need before I am done the series because I have not been writing the poems in a linear manner. That is to say that I have been writing poems and deciding after they are written whereabouts on the plotline they belong. As I have accumulated more and more poems for the series I have found myself wanting to explore certain points in the plotline with the poems a bit more.

I won't give away the plot just yet, but what I do want to talk about is how the series of poems itself is an attempt on my part at writing something darker and more sinister than what I have typically written and performed for audiences in the past. That's part of the reason why I have tentatively titled the series Sometimes Sinister. The title descibes the plot line of the poems, especially the nature of the relationship between the protagonist and the woman he loves and at the same time it wants to describe my body of work as a whole.

The idea for attempting a project such as this came to me earlier this year. I attribute it to the culture that I have surrounded myself with and I think it might be pertinent to talk about some of my strongest influences.

1.) Nunt by: Mingus Tourette - This collection of poetry really taught me a lot as I was reading it. First and foremost I learned that there is no need to censor one's self when it comes to writing poetry. Really, I was probably saying that a long time before I ever read Nunt, but as much as I said that there was always a degree of restraint that I exercised for fear of alienating my audience. Nunt really put the whole idea of restraint into perspective. Tourette's brutality and his stark images created something that was truly beautiful, something that brutality and stark images shouldn't create, but there you have it. That's just what he did. He took grit and made jewelry of it. Secondly, there was a narrative style to the poems in Nunt that got through a lot and didn't get muddled with too much flowery language, making for a book of poetry that didn't alienate me as a reader. There definitely needs to be more books like Nunt

2.) Johnny The Homicidal Maniac by: Jhonen Vasquez - The antihero of Jhonen Vasquez's graphic novel (is this considered a graphic novel) is to be lauded, at least by me for the purposes of Sometimes Sinister. What Vasquez has done is create a protagonist who is as violent as he is complex. I wish I could do half as much with my protagonist with poetry as Vasquez did with Johnny The Homicidal Maniac in panels. I should be that fortunate.

3.) Fight Club by: Chuck Palahniuk - Anybody who knows me knows that I'm a huge Chuck Palahniuk fan, having turned a lot of my friends on to his writing over the years. In actuality I could have probably named any one of his works as an influence and I'm sure that most, if not all, have influenced me here in some small way, but Fight Club deserves special designation here because what I culled from my multiple readings of the book and multiple viewings of the movie is a lyrical style that can be graceful while it's being gritty. Chuck Palahniuk has an attention to detail that is almost clinical and it makes for a vivid reading experience. I would love to be able to use refrain like Palahniuk can use refrain.

Those are my primary literary influences. Certainly I could have extended this list to include a great number of other books. Who knows? Maybe I'll post this and just remember another title or two that absolutely has to be included here and I'll have to go back and redraft the post to incorporate them. I'm going to call this a post for now and when I get one done I will post a mix of songs that I listen to to get me in the mood for writing the poems in the series. There is one song that sort of triggered me to sit down and start writing that goes by the name "Someone's In The Wolf" by Queens of the Stone Age if you want one track to check out right now. There are other songs, though, and I'll get back to you with those.

My intention is for this to be the first of a series of updates on my progress with the project. Hopefully, this will give me incentive to stick with it and not let it fall by the wayside like I do with so many other things in my life.

For now, though, good night and I'll post for you again soon.

Nine Inch Nails

Today I've been walking with a bit more spring in my step because I found out this morning that one of my favorite bands is coming to Edmonton this fall. What kind of band would make Michael step a bit more lively and grin like a jackass all day like he did today, you ask? Well, Nine Inch freakin' Nails, buster! That's right, Trent Reznor and the boys will be coming to Edmonton on November 16, and I'm going. Woooo! I was tempted to talk about how I was walking on gumdrop trails and singing, "Tra la la la la la" everywhere I went all day before breaking the news about the arrival of one of the premier hard rock acts in the world because that's good contrast. Anyway, what's even cooler is that one of the opening acts is none other than Queens Of The Stone Age! This show is going to kick my ass! I'll see you all there I reckon.

It's been a good year of live music in this little town and I take all the credit for it. What many of you don't realize is that I had to keep wishing at 11:11 each day (a ritual taught to me by my friend Jessica). Why 11:11? Because it's all ones. I know it doesn't make much sense, but that's just how the universe works I'm afraid to say. You all thought that you had to work and scrounge and sweat away the best years of your lives to build a good nestegg when all along it was just making wishes at the proper times and poof, Nine Inch Nails are coming to town! Fucking awesome! Looking at my clock I see that 11:11 is nigh approaching so I should definitely get my next wish ready. Tonight I'm wishing for some bitching sideburns! Sideburn City here I come!

See you suckers in the A.M.!!!! Michael out.

I Am My Own Worst Enemy

So today I went to a bookstore and spent quite a while just browsing through the vast selection of magazines and books I've never even heard of. Specifically, I went there to pick up the latest issue of Kitchen Sink because a letter that I wrote to Kaya Oakes about an article she wrote in the last issue was being published. Anytime you can go to a major bookstore and purchase something that has your name attached to it, written by you, is quite a thrill. Minor victories to be sure.

But standing among those racks and racks of literature it dawned on me. I am my own worst enemy when it comes to my writing. Those of you who know me know that I dream of someday making a career of my writing. It takes a lot of hard work and motivation to attain that dream, but it is attainable. I think that one of the major problems I have as a writer is that I make the whole process of writing more complicated than it has to be. I'm always going out to buy books and magazines on making me a better writer and I read them and then I get frustrated because they make the whole thing seem like some sort of mystical journey that I'm too much of a cynic to believe in. All I need to do is just write. That's all. I don't need all this peripheral crap and all this time spent buying more and more peripheral crap bogging me down. I mean, for fuck's sake, is buying an expensive pen and thick stock paper going to somehow transform me into Henry Miller? No. So why the fuck do I do it? And believe me, I have good ideas in my head for written works, but they're only in my head because I'm too busy wasting my time to get them down on the paper.

I am my own worst enemy.

Next time any of you see me in a bookstore buying books on writing practices or in an office supply megastore or some sort wasting more money and time on selecting just the right pen and expensive paper please do me a favor and kick me in the ass. I sorely need it.

One Week To Go

Date: Tuesday, August 9, 2005
Time: 8:00 p.m.
Place: The Ironhorse Pub (8101 - 103 Street, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada)
What The Fuck Is Happening: The Raving Poets return for a one-off poetry show! A twenty reader open mic poetry reading with backing by the Raving Poets band.

Be There.

Oh. And this is a test post for my blog. From here I should get some tweaking done and make something respectable of all this. If you're visiting me thank you for dropping by and please keep dropping by because I do plan on making this better yet.