(Originally published July, 2006)

I don't believe in the existence of a personified force of creation--a god, in other words. Nor do I believe in any absolute concept of right and wrong. But on collection day, when the crows are ripping up my neighbour's garbage and not my own, I have to think that if such a force does exist, it is watching out for me at that moment. Peace.

Don't read this.

Once upon a five minutes ago, the English language needed yet another portmanteau; a verb, denoting the sights, smells, and tastes (yes, tastes) associated with performing oral sex on a homeless person. And so, from this dire need, hoblowing came into existence.

THE END

Your lot in life.

When you bitch and moan about your life, some people will tell you to stop that, because things could be worse.

And they're right; your lot in life could be worse. You could be the lookout for some guy who makes his living exclusively by robbing mentally retarded people.

I hope that makes you feel better.

Clown Haiku

Open mouth, gaze fixed.
Wants to take you behind tents.
The clown will touch you.

A little story

(Originally published June, 2006)

An intelligent species of life once found a strange planet. Upon analysis, they found something that they needed--the ingredients to make carbon dioxide. Unfortunately, most of the ingredients were trapped under the planet, in liquid form, and the rest was floating around in the atmosphere. This intelligent species wanted the ingredients, badly, but realized the tremendous amount of labour required in extracting them.

This planet had two other things that interested the intelligent species--materials to build crude processing machines, and sentient life. This life, however, was not quite ready to take on the task of helping. Though their brains were well developed and their digits were opposable, they lacked the brain structures to conceptualize machines. But the intelligent species had mastered genetic engineering, and soon, a new species was born and ready to turn the planet into a carbon dioxide processing. And so, this created species fulfilled its destiny.

A similar idea occurred to me when I was 21, around the time that I started smoking a lot of pot. The idea seemed plausible at the time and it scared me. But pot does that to you--gives you the notion that every idea you have under its influence is so profound and meaningful. Anyway, the idea is that life on Earth was either planted here in rudimentary form, or somehow modified, to suit some extra terrestrial species' needs or wants. Like this planet is a kind of free growing garden, or something. So if that actually happened, those responsible will come back eventually. Maybe they're from a similar planet that fostered carbon based life. They're probably going to want to eat us.

But holy shit, will they be surprised! Look at the mess; our species has poisoned every form of Earth-bound life, including itself. They'll fly in low and get a good whiff of all that smog and soot and industrial effluence. They'll wonder why we collectively do not behave like animals--nomadic, with a cyclical population pattern--but more like some sort of yeast colony. And then, knowing that something is brewing, they'll get the fuck out of here before they too become poisoned.

So relax! If those aliens do come to harvest us, they'll know better once they look around. If we continue trying to control the planet and worshiping our toxic machines, we'll be fine!

P.S. I am aware that you can find strains of similar ideas in science fiction. But at the time I had the 'alien garden' idea, I was not a consumer of science fiction, nor did I consciously draw from others ideas.

The following is a list of shameful things that I have done in an effort to get laid:

1. Pretended to like Nickelback
2. Um....
3. Err....
4. Uh...

Really, that's the most shameful thing I can think of. Take it from me, kids--no amount of carnal pleasure is worth debasing yourself. Unless it works.

Here is a haiku that I wrote. On the surface, it is about the life of a night-shift factory worker who tries to support his family. If you delve a little deeper, however, you will find the central character a man frought with internal strife and regret:

Torn from daylight sleep;
My new infant cries aloud.
I should have pulled out.

While "new infant" is somewhat redundant, I liked the flow of the phrase and the soft consonant and vowel sounds. And what should the central character have "pulled out" of? That's up to the reader, really, to determine the exact meaning. Classy, classy poetry.

Dexterity Disruption

(Originally published July 6, 2006)

Have you ever tried to wipe your ass with a bandaid on your index finger? Using toilet paper to wipe, not the bandaid. But have you tried? That little piece of plastic is very disruptive.

I never realized how much I rely on sensory data from the end of that finger until I tried to wipe my ass and couldn't feel it. My poor finger felt like a rafter lost at sea. Rather than risk a feculent finger, I just got him out of the way while the other three did the dirty work.

The well begins to dry up

I have some old entries, from another blog, spanning from 2006 to 2008. One at a time, I'll post most of them here, to satisfy my ridiculously large fan base. Think of it as a way for me to distract you from the fact that I'm not terribly productive when it comes to writing, or even when it comes to thinking, for that matter.

So as not to overload you with awesomeness, I'll try to stagger their release a bit. This means that you'll see an old entry, then a new one, then perhaps two old entries, then a new one. And so on. Yes, I'm diluting my fresh ideas with stale crap.

Over and out.

Cat food, cat food, cat food...AGAIN!

Maybe two or three times a month, I buy my cat a can of soft cat food. Today was one of those times.

In the supermarket or variety store, I am given essentially two choices of soft cat food: the "pate" kind, and the runnier stuff. The pate has some semblance of meat, whereas the runny stuff looks like it might come out of the back end of your dog an hour after begging for scraps at Thanksgiving dinner. I usually choose the pate.

So today, I'm perusing the pate foods. I come across a green can, bland and innocuous- looking, and I pick it up for a closer look. As a consumer and cat owner, I'm familiar with cat food names, which are usually too fancy for something an animal is just going to thoughtlessly inhale and then shit out a short time later. But the name on this green can simply confused me. This particular flavour of Friskies cat food was called:

"Chef's Dinner"

Now, what do you infer from that name? Does it seem to imply that the chef will eat the cat food? This name is probably the product of a marketing department's attempt to make the food gourmet-sounding without actually using that word. Perhaps some marketing research told the good people at Friskies that consumers were no longer falling for the 'gourmet' line of bullshit.

Regardless of motives, the word choice is wrong. "Chef" in the possessive form tells the reader that this cat food dinner, in fact, belongs to the chef. Picture yourself at a restaurant, having just ordered, and waiting for your food. Your food. Do you ever once, in your thinking about the upcoming food, consider that food to belong to the chef? No. The chef might cook the food, the chef might prepare the food, but it does not belong to the chef. From the moment you ordered the food, you entered into a contract to buy the food and have it prepared by the chef. It is yours--your dinner.

Here's a more sinister possibility: perhaps this possessive phrasing is intentional. Maybe Friskies is finally marketing to the countless poor, elderly people across this continent who find themselves in their twilight and scarfing down cat food. From this perspective, "Chef's Dinner" almost gives this horrifying economic state an air of class and dignity:

"If this stuff is good enough for a chef, perhaps things aren't so bad after all. What would you like for dinner tonight, Orville--cat food meatloaf?"