Sexiness And Fast Food Commercials Do Not Compute

In the news today was this. Click here. Oh, for fuck's sake, it's just a little tiny article about an ad campaign in Japan for McDonald's restaurants designed to be sexy. I swear, some of you people too fucking lazy to keep breathing sometimes. For those of you who actually took the time to read the article, thank you, for letting me save some time and space by not making me recap it all for you.

So there you have it, McDonald's is launching a new sexy ad campaign in Japan. I'm not entirely sure how you people think about it.

Michael, a hot chick in a dress made to look like Ronald McDonald's iconic costume is still a hot chick. She can dip my Man McNuggets any day.


It's called pornography, people, it's all over the fucking place on the internet. If you're that hard up for some sexy women, many of who don't wear even a single stitch of clothing, look that shit up. It's so depressing seeing people turning to McDonald's commercials for titillation. I mean, seriously, there's not really much that can appear in a commercial that could possibly provide that much stimulation, erotic or otherwise.

Not only that, but consider the possibility that if it comes from McDonald's it's probably swimming in grease, making you obese, and giving you heart disease. Chew on that while you try to ogle the sexy woman in the ad. If you think hard enough you might just hear her arteries clogging. How's that for sexy?

And no matter what, all this seems like some sort of response to a Burger King ad that featured Paris Hilton fellating a Whopper, or, at the very least, dry humping it. She sure as fuck wasn't eating it because I've snapped into Slim Jims with more meat than her. It's kind of like an arms race between burger superpowers. What I don't understand is why the fuck would McDonald's even break a sweat trying to one-up a commercial featuring Paris Hilton. News flash world: Paris Hilton is a media whore and nothing she does is worth batting an eye at unless it's finally to eat a damn sandwich already.

But Michael, Paris Hilton only wants to spread joy to the world through her lovable antics and free spirit.

Shut up. It's people like you who allowed this media monster to become as big as she is. And now we have every fucking greasy ass burger joint paying homage to her bullshit with ad campaigns that have nothing the fuck to do with food. If you really want to impress me, you fucking burger magnates, why not start by paying your acne scarred front line workers a bigger piece of the profits and research better food preparation techniques so that your clientele doesn't have to die young to enjoy your "food"?

It's great to see that the money is being earmarked just right with these greedy assholes.

The Bottom Ten, September, 2005

Here at Michael Appleby Technologies Inc. we are always looking for new and exciting ways to indoctrinate you, the masses. Tonight we present to you the first of what we hope will be many top ten lists. This list, however, is the bottom ten. The bottom ten what? Who the fuck knows. So sit back and enjoy the best of the worst.

10.) Signing one's name with an 'X'- I've come to the conclusion that there is good pretentiousness and bad pretentiousness. Signing your name with an 'X' falls into the latter category because it's been done before and probably by better people. This does not apply, however, if your name is Xavier, Xerxes, or Malcolm X.

9.) Neckbeards- See also: titbeards. I mean, seriously, it ceases to be considered facial hair if it's only sprouting out of your neck and/or man-breast.

8.) Answering machine messages that go "Hello?"- It was funny the first 3000 times this was done by clever assholes everywhere. Now it's time to move on.

7.) Wazzzzzzzzzup- Conversely, this is a fad that died altogether too quickly and I could easily listen to this another 3000 times before I might begin to think You know, maybe it's just not that funny anymore. We really need to bring this one back for an encore.

6.) Rock Star: INXS- Although it's great to see a Canadian guy winning the competition there's a part of me that gets the heebie-jeebies thinking that if Michael Hutchence wouldn't have committed suicide there would have been no justification for the competition in the first place. What's next? Renaissance Man: Leonardo, the reality t.v. show in which we, the audience, decide who gets to pick up where the late great Leonardo da Vinci left off when he kicked the bucket? You see? You can't just have a television audience pick some random fool to take the place of an artist. Once the artist is gone he/she is gone. That's it. It scares me to think that someday after ol' Michael Appleby suffocates while performing cunnilingus for 17 hours straight in a futile attempt at setting a world record some asshole is just going to take over my blog and write bottom ten lists of his own and they'll probably suck ass. Fuck. I've got to make plans to live forever.

5.) Ashlee Simpson- See also: titbeard. It ceases to be considered a singer when it's caught mid-lip-synch.

4.) Hand soap in public washrooms that is dispensed pre-lathered- I can't help but wonder about who is standing on some assembly line in a factory somewhere lathering soap up on his hands, scraping it off with a butterknife into a baggy, and then shipping it off so it can be placed in soap dispensers in public washrooms everywhere. One day somebody is going to find pubic hair in that pre-lathered soap and I'm going to seriously consider giving up the practice of washing my hands entirely.

3.) The television commercial advertising the genital herpes perfume- Okay, this one is obscure, but you can google a combination of the words genital, herpes, commercial, perfume, and bottle together to find a more in depth description of the commercial. Basically, though, some woman gets a romantic gift from her lover and it would appear to be a nice bottle of perfume until you see the label reads "Genital Herpes." First off: Worst Gift Ever! Secondly: The Genital Herpes fragrance would probably enjoy brisker sales if Britney Spears actually made an appearance in the damn commercial. Genital Herpes is one of her products, isn't it?

2.) Remakes- It seems like 67% of major box office releases these days are remakes of older movies. Only 12% of those remakes are actually tolerable. Of those 12% maybe 2 are movies that won't drive you running right up to the big screen and pissing on it out of spite. I swear, Hollywood, give me a million dollars and I'll deliver to you a memorable script about a man who finds forbidden love with conjoined kangaroos. I'll even write a part in it for that delightful scamp Andy Dick; he loves to appear in just about anything.

1.) Nascar- Yeah, okay. I get it, you guys love turning left so much you made a whole sport built around it. You never really get to appreciate just how densely populated (double entendre intended) the south really is until you watch a Nascar race on t.v.

Cockposturing

Listening to Matt calling down after me

in the stairwell.

Matt, whom I came to visit tonight.

Matt, who bawls remarkably fast

for somebody’s who’s permanently numb.

Matt, whose apartment reeks of pot.

Matt, whose front teeth I knocked out

with the base of a lamp

shaped like Elvis.

Matt, whose loud music drowned out the screams.

Listening to Matt calling down after me

in the stairwell,

he’s almost gurgling the words:

You fuck!

You fuck!

You don’t know how to take care of a fucking woman!

You gotta keep that bitch on a leash!

You hear me?

Remember how I told you that I hadn’t seen her in weeks?

Huh?

You remember that shit?

I fucking lied!

She’s come for lines two or three times

and I even gave her a free one

for leaving your psycho ass, you fuck!

And I watch the tiny droplets of blood

being sprayed out of his mouth

rain down the middle of the stairwell

most likely laced with an STD or two.

And he knows that I can hear him

from three of four flights down

from the ceasing of my footsteps.

You fuck!

You don’t know who you’re fucking with here!

Yeah, you fucking hurt me!

But you know what?

I’ll fucking kill you!

I’m Krakatoa, motherfucker!

I’m fucking Vesuvius

all up in here!

You don’t know who you’re fucking with!

You don’t know who you’re fucking with!

I’ll Hiroshima your fucking ass!

Be prepared, motherfucker,

Be prepared.

Listening to Matt’s cockposturing

calling down after me

in the stairwell of his apartment building,

wondering if I should just turn around

and pay him another visit.

System Of A Down / The Mars Volta 09/20/05

Last night I was in attendance at Rexall Place here in Edmonton as The Mars Volta and System Of A Down took the stage in concert. The air was pretty electric last night with a crowd that was going rabid with raw energy. Both bands put on huge performances and I recalled many times feeling like the bass of the drumming was going to implode my chest. I had a great view of the whole crowd and the stage and I especially loved watching all those crazy people jumping over the boards to join the general admission people on the floor much to the chagrin of the event security team, who tackled and manhandled them all. Between watching people getting nabbed by security and the absolutely hynotizing lighting it was a treat. Hands down, for me, though, was when System Of A Down played "Prison Song," which was punctuated by strobing lights and Serj Tankian's bellowing at its best.

If you remember a comment that I had made in a previous post you'll know that I didn't like Daron Malakian's voice very much on the latest SOAD offering Mezmerize, but I have to admit that hearing him sing live has really converted me. What I could hear last night was a nice foil to Tankian's bellowing and now when I listen to Mezmerize I'm not as put off by the screeching of Malakian. Malakian was featured prominently throughout the SOAD set, introducing many of the songs almost like a balladeer were performing classics from their catalogue and even a couple of covers in the form of Neil Young's "Hey, Hey, My, My" and Dire Straits' "Sultans Of Swing."

It was a beautiful night to be sure.

A Very Special Post

Massive Missives has no passed the 1000 pageloads milestone. That's right, 1000 people have loaded up this page (may god have mercy on your souls). A lot of laughs have been had. Tom Sizemore has been berated. We've learned that Kevin Federline is a douche-bag. But, most importantly, you've given me something to brag about around the water cooler at work.

Hey guys, guess what, my blog just passed 1000 visitors yesterday!

Who are you?

Bless all of you who have made this experiment in my own vanity worth it.

Here's to another 1000!

World Records

For me to go on record as saying that many of the world records we read about or hear about in the news are odd, at best, and probably not even worth wasting time in learning would come as no fucking surprise to anybody.

Bravo, assclown, you've just made a revelation! World records are sometimes weird?!?!?! Stop the fucking presses, Michael has made a most brilliant discovery!

Shut up.

Somewhere in Serbia a new record has been set for the world's largest hamburger. How big is the burger, you ask? Well, the fucking thing weighs in at about 62 pounds or at about the combined weight of the Olsen twins.

It's shit like this that bugs me. The world's largest hamburger weighs 62 pounds? Why is that even considered a hamburger? Who the fuck is going to chow down on a 62 pound hamburger? Does he want fries with that clogged artery? Okay, okay, I get it, you've made a giant fucking hamburger and it's pretty much impossible to anybody to fit in an above average mouth. Even the biggest fucking mouth in the world (Joan Rivers according to The Michael Appleby Book Of World Records) couldn't get that down and since it's Joan Rivers she'd probably self-induce vomitting shortly thereafter. The point is, though, shouldn't a hamburger technically be considered something that one person could eat in one sitting, possibly two if he takes part of it home in a doggy bag or shit like that? Anything more than that transcends the hamburger status and becomes...well, I don't know what the fuck it becomes, but it's too fucking big to be a hamburger.

If that can be considered a hamburger I'm just going to slap two sesame seed buns on either side of a fucking cow and call that shit a hamburger, extra rare. There's your world record, bitches, hundreds of fucking pounds depending on how big the cow is.

See? See how fucking obscure and pointless some of these records get? Why the fuck would anybody need to know this?

And the especially sad part is that there are people who get paid way more money than I do to sit around and measure all these world record hamburger attempts and put it down in some fucking book for a year before somebody goes Oh fuck, I can just dump three jersey cows into a giant woodchipper, make a patty out of that shit and voila, my name's in the fucking book. Then the whole process of me getting pissed off about this kind of stuff making the news starts again as the world record people go to some obscure town to verify the existence of a three jersey hamburger and to weigh it all out. And since nobody can eat it because it's too fucking big they'll probably just toss it out in the garbage after a few weeks after it attracts flies by the thousands. And if you listen closely you might just hear the stomachs of, literally, millions of people who can't get a fucking quarter pounder with cheese in their countries.

But at least we have that world record hamburger to ponder for another year.

Corporate Scum

Click here to read an article I discovered while browsing on Fark.

For those of who yet again prove to be too lazy to click the links I provide I'll sum it up a little. Basically, a Winnipeg man is currently perfecting a peripheral that would attach to a car's engine and, through a series of chemical reactions, provide a supply of hydrogen and oxygen to the engine's combustion chamber, greatly improving fuel mileage and making for a much cleaner, environmentally speaking, burn. In fact, the numbers that the man tosses around in the article are so impressive, at least to me, that it almost seems too good to be true. Reading stuff like this makes me very excited and optimistic for the road ahead for humanity.

But then there's the cynical side of me that speaks up. Is better fuel mileage really what the big oil companies of the world want? I mean, could it be that if we could squeeze more and more miles out of a tank of gas that the oil companies would lose money based on the fact that our repeated trips to the gas pumps as it is are keeping them swimming in the moolah?

That's what sucks. We are on the verge of a technological breakthrough and, in all likelihood, the people who profit most from our willingness as a whole to allow ourselves to remain in the dark ages are also the people with enough power to see that technological breakthrough not reach the gas-pumping simps. Are we to have faith in the morality of these millionaires and billionaires? Are they more likely to see to it that we buy more gas more of the time or do what they can to help the environment and pocketbooks of the mass of consumers?

Maybe this is just another sign of how our system fails us.

Remember what it was like when you were a kid and trying to think of what the world would be like in the year 2000? I used to imagine flying cars and people living on the moon. Was I out of touch with reality on that one? You bet your ass I was.

But now I think that it was probably technologically feasible for us to be at that point. We could have had flying cars and cities on the moon. It just wasn't in the best interests of the corporate scum who profit the most from the way that things are.

That's what you get for thinking with your bank accounts.

Time To Weigh In On The Teddy Bear Debate

For those of you who are not from the Edmonton area let me fill you in, first, on what the whole hullaballoo is about the teddy bears.

Michael, what's all this we hear about teddy bears in the Edmonton area?

Calm down. Calm down. Let me get to it.

So anyway, in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, or its more apt name The Event That Made CNN Forget About Natalee Holloway, local radio station 96 X decided that the best way for Edmonton to help the survivors of the natural disaster would be to start a teddy bear drive. Are you with me so far? Good. After pushing and pushing this thing for a while Edmonton came up with over 1 million teddy bears to donate to the hurricane ravaged city of New Orleans. The problem is, though, according to a column in the Edmonton Journal by one Paula Simons, is that teddy bears aren't really high on the list of priorities for survivors of Hurrican Katrina. In fact, teddy bears are probably the furthest thing from the survivors' minds. In fact, receiving teddy bears as some sort of consolation prize for losing their houses and their livelihoods might just be enough to send them into a murderous frenzy of cannibalism and wanton destruction of public property. In fact, this is the most I've ever used "In fact" to start a sentence. In fact.

So naturally there is a debate going on in the media. It's 96 X radio versus the Edmonton Journal of the newspaper community in an all-out battle to the death over which medium is more pious than the other. Or something like that.

Okay, maybe not.

But what bothers me is that nobody came to me to ask what I thought of the whole teddy bear debate. Nobody came knocking on my door and asked, "Michael, what are your thoughts about all this teddy bear bullshit going on right in your community? The public has a right to know!"

Seriously, you want to know?

YES!

Okay, here it is. I'm all for the teddy bears, actually. I don't even think that 1 million teddy bears gathered so far is even nearly enough for the affected area of New Orleans. I think we need hundreds of millions before we've proven that we are innovators.

Here's why.

Did you know that the average teddy bear can absorb roughly twice its body weight in water? That's a fact. So try to estimate how much 1 million teddy bears weigh. It's a pretty impressive mass to be sure. What I think we should be doing with the teddy bears is dropping them en masse right into the heart of the flood. Presto! We have instant absorbtion. Why, with enough teddy bears and B-52 Stratofortresses dropping them as super-absorbent payload over New Orleans we'd have that whole flooding problem licked in no time.

You see? That's why I'm an outsider of sorts. That's why I never get invited to all the cool parties. It's because I sit at home and think about shit like this. I'm an innovator, an inventor.

If you bombed millions and millions of teddy bears on New Orleans you could have everything soaked up and then with a team of bulldozers working around the clock you could have all the soggy plush pushed right into the gulf.

This is why I'm never put in charge of large public projects. If I had had my way, I would have had a teddy bear, pancake mix, and Bounty Quilted Quicker Picker Upper drive for the survivors of Hurricane Katrina because once we get all that water soaked up we can begin to rebuild a great, great city instead of engaging in wars of words in the media.

So the message I'm trying to make, then, is that survivors of this horrible disaster are, by and large, faced with a very daunting task of trying to rebuild their lives. How is nitpicking over what is and what is not suitable to donate in the media really going to help them? Last time I checked when you take time to really start debating something like this, it's basically time that could better be spent actually helping the people who need the help. At this point there are people who are grateful to take whatever they can get.

For anonymous:




















For Jordan:
















That'll be $200.00 each, you dirty, dirty people.

Vapor Trails

Stain of last night’s nosebleed

on your pillow.

Sinking.

I was thinking of something else,

dreaming:

awash in light

you and I floating

in a religious triptych

angelic sort of way---

not really choking each other out.

not hung up on mortality.

but perfect holy bodies

making love to eternity.

Wrinkled bed sheets.

Ransacked drawers.

Sinking.

Knowing instinctively

your shoes will have walked away;

your toothbrush

has found its way from my cup.

I let my guard down

just long enough

for you to steal away

and the stealth your steps

were made of

was almost of floating

in a religious triptych

angelic sort of way.

I’ll wash the pillow

and the stains on its case,

stand on my balcony

and look for your footprints

in my morning dew.

No notes.

No lipstick on my mirror.

A half-eaten bowl of cereal.

Just like that

you’re vapor trails.

Gone.

One From The Vaults

Last night at work some coworkers and I began a discussion on the morality of prostitution and since I have very little time to hash out something brand new from my brain for you folks and since I'm also just a generally lazy bastard, here's a rant I wrote on the subject of prostitution.

Prostitution And You:

Why We Smell Ass Every Time We Inhale

It doesn’t take a slide rule to figure out that humans, in general, have their shit all fucked up when it comes to certain facets of their existence. It has been demonstrated, time and again, that sometimes our priorities are completely wrong, that we are capable of making wrong decisions, that we believe some of the idiotic things, and so on, and so on. Really, a person could dedicate a whole series of books to everything that humans got wrong since the beginning of time and I’m one hundred percent positive that even after reading that whole series of books there would still be fucktards who still make the same fucking mistakes because they are just that fucking dumb. One thing that has always baffled me has been the way most of the free world approaches the subject of prostitution.

Prostitution, in essence, is the sale of sex. That’s it. Selling sex is not only frowned upon in most of the free world, it’s illegal. How fucked up is that?

But Michael, it’s an immoral act to sell your body for another’s sexual gratification.

Wrong.

Newsflash morons: if you’re having sex you’re paying for it. What exactly is the difference between exchanging sex for money and, say, exchanging sex for dinner and a movie? What exactly is the difference between exchanging sex for money and, say, exchanging sex for a wedding ring? What I’m getting at here is that directly, or indirectly as the case may be, sex is costing you something. At least with giving over cold hard cash for a fuck you’ve basically admitting to yourself, and to the whole world, that you understand how the sexual world works. It’s very rare to find an individual whom you can just ask for sex in exchange for nothing at all.

You see, nobody wants to look at it that way, though. People want to fool themselves into thinking that they are not whores. To them, being a whore is something filthy. Well, to avoid being a whore, then, you have to just give orgasms away for nothing at all. And, my friends, when you just fuck somebody for free, no strings attached, no dinners at expensive restaurants, no engagement rings, no cab fare for a ride home, when it’s just sex and nothing else, that just means you’re a bunch of sluts. Dirty, filthy sluts. And ask yourself: would you really want to play hide the salami with somebody who just goes at it with no expectations of repayment? We’re talking some seedy, seedy sluts here. You’d probably catch gonorrhea from having one of those fuckers breathe on you. Yuck.

Now I know that there are probably a million internalized dialogues going on here trying to re-establish the who dichotomy between getting paid for sex with cash and getting paid for sex with a fucking wedding band and what may very well be divorce papers a few years down the road given the current social climate we find ourselves in. There might even be a few of you whose minds I just blew because it’s not often when you find out that sex comes with a price tag almost always and that we’re all part of the sex trade even when we say we aren’t. So, fucking, what? Who gives a shit? So we’re not as pious as we like to think we are. That’s not really news to me. You just have to change the way you look at the world.

But Michael, what my spouse and I have is a magical, wonderful thing that goes beyond sex. You can’t equate what happens in our marriage bed with what some filthy whore does for a handful of nickels and punch to the gut.

If sex is part of the marriage, it’s part of the deal. It’s still costing you money, directly or indirectly. Just accept it. I’m a whore. You’re a whore. We’re all fucking whores. Big deal.

So then, here’s a good first question. Why is prostitution frowned upon? Why are we not celebrating the whore as a profession? We’ll give fucking medals to a soldier for napalming hundreds of innocent people in some fucking war that doesn’t make any sense, but what do we do with the men and women who put their health at risk to sell complete strangers the satisfaction of an orgasm or two? We put them in jail. How fucked up is that? We can fucking give a ticker tape parade to hired thugs and murderers for the state, but goddamned if we’re going to buy a fucking cake and throw a surprise party for a hooker. And I’m not saying all this to belittle soldiers or our armed forces because they’re doing what they’re supposed to do, what they are hired to do. I will, however belittle the state that tells them to do some of the shit that they are doing because that’s just fucked up.

But now I’m getting off track. Back to the point.

You know what I would like to see? An international prostitution day. We have days set aside to celebrate just about every line of work under the sun, Secretarys Day, Proctologists Day, maybe even Circus Elephants Ass Wipers Day, but no Prostitutes Day. That’s a fucking travesty. These are people who, as I have already stated, put their health at risk to bring a bit of pleasure into the world.

Which brings me to my next point. Why are so many legal jurisdictions prosecuting the solicitation of sex? Prostitution is known as the world’s oldest profession. Many people know that when you say the words, “The World’s Oldest Profession,” they know you’re talking about whoring. Do you know what that means? It’s been around a long fucking time! So how the fuck are you ever really going to stop it? The civilized world has had thousands of years to brings whoredom to an end and has anybody ever successfully stopped it? No. Will they? No. So why the fuck bother fighting it? Am I the only person who sees a total lack of fucking logic here? I can’t even begin to wrap my head around the sheer ego of any lawmaker who thinks he has the power to wipe out prostitution. What gall! What ego!

Chew on this you egomaniacal fucks who think that one day we can live in a world where nobody sells sex disregarding, if you will, my earlier point about all of us selling sex one way or another. In most of the free world selling sandwiches or bookmarks or toothpicks is perfectly legal. Now if somebody, say, was selling sandwiches or bookmarks or toothpicks at astronomical prices that would be perfectly legal too, but perfectly insane from a business standpoint since sandwiches, bookmarks, and toothpicks are relatively low-priced consumer goods. However, say this certain somebody who was charging these completely ridiculous prices for cheap goods was kind enough to just have sex with whoever would be generous enough to shell out like $200.00 for a sandwich. The way I see it if I ran a business where I was selling sandwiches, bookmarks, or toothpicks for hundreds of dollars per and my livelihood depended on me moving this merchandise I would probably be grateful enough to my paying clientele to have sex with them. And it would all be perfectly legal since I would just be giving sex away for free! Last time I checked there was no law forbidding private entrepreneurs from social fraternizing with their customers. And if somebody is dumb enough or friendly enough to give an entrepreneur hundreds of dollars for a sandwich more power to them.

But Michael what of the children? Somebody has to think of the children!

You know what? Somebody does have to think of the children. That’s why I think the only sane, ethical way to approach prostitution is to legalize it and regulate it.

That’s right. If you legalize prostitution you can establish rules for its practice. You can establish a minimum age for licensed prostitutes.

But Michael, the pimps will always have child prostitutes as long as there is a demand for them.

Yes, but you know what you can do with a regulated system of prostitution? Whatever the fuck you want to kill the competition. It’s a free market system. So, if you wanted to drive the pimps who push the underage girls and boys into whoring undercut their prices so that the demand goes down. Make it unprofitable for them to continue operation. Can those private pimps who abuse children avow for the cleanliness of their merchandise? Most of them can’t. But you can. Give licensed whores health benefits; make STD testing mandatory and regular; make condom usage mandatory. Ask yourself, “If I were a customer looking for a whore to have sex with would I go with the government sanctioned brothel with workers who are STD free, licensed, and as cheap as fuck or would I go to the shady guy in the alleyway who can’t avow for anything regarding his prostitute and charges too much since he’s a private entrepreneur trying to stay under the legal radar?” You’re a fucking dummy if you’d go to the alleyway.

But no, our society maintains its head-up-its-own-ass stance on prostitution and continues to fight a battle that can’t be won since, in one way or another, we’re all guilty of prostitution. What a bunch of fucking hypocrites we make sometimes. It’s all quite comical.

Mehndi Vine Ode

I want your picture down on this page / so

I can veil you in my words, / soft,

platonic words / scrawled

carefully by careful digits /

calculated words / to

make you fall / in

love with / me

Shoulders: / swoon / beneath “swoon”

wilt / most lovely / in my shadow, /

where I scrawl / clumsily, /

tumble

down

noiselessly

between / infinite stalks / of your hair.

Coming up for oxygen.

I don’t want to / breathe,

but blow ink / through henna red teeth

and / paint splotches /

high

on the insides

of your thighs. /

A Rorschach.

Dip nib into / navel /

or moistened / orifice: /

refill.

And back / for another verse.

I want your picture down on this page / or

your nudity / down as a page might be / and

my words, / soft cover

where only / my eyes /

Can pry.

-Michael Appleby

September, 2005

Back To School

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

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

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

My Notes From Statistics Class by: Michael Appleby

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

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

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

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

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

A Photographic Account Of My Recent Road Trip

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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


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

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

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

It was all a success!


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

What's a donkey punch, indeed.

When There's No Time For Tits

Okay, first off, read this...

Click here.

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

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

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

Here's the point.

Thank fuck you finally have a point!

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

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

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

Tits?

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

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

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

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

Sometimes Sinister

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

Sometimes Sinister

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

Sometimes sinister

like the way I love you.

One From The Vaults

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

The Price Is Rant

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

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

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

Back to the point, though.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fuck you.

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

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

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

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

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

Alex Grey

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

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

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

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

Click Here.

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

Pearl Jam

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sometimes A Picture...

An Observation

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

And here it is...

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

I bet you're saying yes.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Take your culture back, people.