handfulofwires 2010 - social conscience meets irregular coma

2011-06-08T14:32:00.002-05:00

Incase you haven't figured it out, I've been running a new blog at http://milliondollarcuffs.org. It's been there for a few months now so if you're still waiting for posts on here you're AN IDIOT!!!

2010-11-07T23:33:00.003-05:00

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Living Forever Is The Only Way You'll Know.

By Tm Bmb.

THE SKINNY.

Things To Do:

Create map of Red Tie project.
Create idea cloud for SLC YourUnderground.
Pro bono advertisements for local convenience store
New banners for Million Dollar Cuffs and H/O/W
Write H/O/W blog on CDIY story.

THE DIRT.

A lot of people pass by me these days and call me gay. They call me queer, or a faggot.
I don't know what it is about me. Maybe I dress too eccentrically.
Snipe explained that when you wear a suit, or dress proper, you are allowed one eccentricity. You must dress as plainly as possible, but you can have one exclimation point. Or a question mark.
A nice ring, a tie pin, a weird hat, a belt buckle, whatever.
The moment I had any money, I began loading myself up with eccentricities.
I covered myself in so much faux pas that people try to eat me.
Eat me or call me a faggot.

Sorrow broke her leg when she hit the ground
When I violated the egg I found

I'm trying to get myself back into this blog. I've had it for so long that I forget what I've said.
I forget what stories I've told you. I know I've repeated myself.
I'm trying to find a new format, or design, or structure so I will be interested.
I'm going back to THE SKINNY THE DIRT and maybe I can build on that.
EXCITING SHIT.

SK

2010-10-29T15:59:00.003-05:00

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The Roar of the Liquorbrain was Lionesque.

By Stilts Bangar.

I haven't written on here in a dog's spell.
There's nothing I can do that now. I haven't felt compelled to come to the table with my wet cards and sandwich crusts.
I feel like the food's covered in curious worms and the cards are dried in wear curvatures, so here it goes.

This is the third day of not smoking any cigarettes and not even a fucking one and this is the truth, probably forever.
My Phillipino girlfriend drew me an elephant in my favourite colours. It's a special one, and it's supposed to bring me good luck. I plan on having it tattooed on my somewhere. Here's a hint: it's my fucking face, asshole.

Awhile back I got really drunk and did a bunch of speed and got a girl's number. I learned that when I'm on autopilot I'm capable of incredible things. My sobriety fucks everything up.
At the same time, I wrote her number down wrong, lest I would have been penis deep in her maybe an hour later. Instead I pissed in plain view. We got kicked out of
I was single then. Everything was urgent. I spent all my money trying to prove something. A friend of mine spent $1000 in a week.
He spent a thousand dollars on submarine sandwiches.
We were banned from 2 seperate venues for starting fights. One of them was because of a friend's red pants. The other was because we were talking in British accents and it made someone furious.
I'm trying to get a job at an ice cream shop. I'm wearing a tie and drinking whiskey. There's nothing I want more right now than a cigarette. I would kill you for one, definately.
An old Chinese man was flying a kite by himself at the bottom of a hill. He gave me a sideways look.

Tom with the Hair was drinking rum one night. He thought it was a good idea to chase it with milk. I pointed at him and told him it was an omen. Then we played Nazi Zombies.
Later that night someone gave me the nickname "sex hair," and someone on the street called us faggots. Then it started to rain. We went to an Irish bar and listened to everybody stomp on the wood floor. A friend dared me to switch off a girl's Insulin box.
I don't drink milk because of shit like this.

I'm gonna get my internet shut off cause I'd rather spend my money on Greek food.
I stopped smoking to save money, but now I'm spending all my cash on condoms.
What a country!

This is Stilts Bangar signing off!

SK

2010-10-29T15:53:00.002-05:00

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ThEMusic - Oct.29/2010.

By Yawni Code.

Slaine - The Religion
Bloody Beetroots - Cornelius
Cradle of Filth - Beast of Extermination
Twiztid - What I'm Feelin'
Sabac Red feat. Ill Bill - When The Lights Go Out
Fall Out Boy - I Don't Care
Cubbiebear - Punch Pretty Women For Fun

SK

2010-09-30T19:37:00.002-05:00

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Son of a Motherfucker.

By Wicked Stripe.

I've fallen into old habits, but I have money now so it is masqued.

Nothing happened during Homecoming. I lost a ring and walked around with pills in my shoe. Before I moved them into my shoe, I was stomping through a house party with a bag filled with liquor and drugs, wearing a tie that everyone had something to say about.
I need to dress more ridiculously. I've begun down this road, and there's no beginning to the road. The beginning was great, but the beginning is over. I need to end up looking like some scarecrow space pimp.

The previous night we were hanging out at greasy MyBar. The dance floor is the size of a bale of hay. Me and some of the others passed a dirty playing card to each other with our mouths. I walk around this world like everything is new to me, so odds are you've done this before.
I'm pouring Crown Royal into a coke bottle and I don't know why.
I walk outside and it's always a gale force wind. Some message is trying to be delivered but I'm a total son of a bitch.
A son of a motherfucker.

I write more in Million Dollar Cuffs these days, because I've got something to prove.
To you, I don't need to prove nothing.
I've got 2 orders of business cards and both of them have typos. Remember when I ran my own business? Remember when we lived in a crack house? Remember when I went to chef school? Remember when I was young and could get away with this shit?

Everytime we go to a grocery store drunk I feel like I need to steal some cheese.
There's nothing better than brie and being drinked. This I tell you now, and you look me in the eyes and tell me I'm lying.

I'm psyching myself up to quit smoking again. It's like breaking up with a long term girlfriend; it'll take me a month to build a case in my head. I feel confident I can do it. It's costing too much money, and you have no idea how bad my lungs and throat are.
It's hilarious and you would hate me.
It has to be after this weekend, though. Of course.
Because I'm going to be drunk and on drugs and yelling at the sky like it was a robot that turned into a baby.
Somewhere up there is a Starchild, and I can't let that shit slide.

Everytime I go out, I need to decide who I am going to be that night.
I need to choose a personality. I usually end up sticking with it.
If I go into any social situation blind, I collapse. I don't know what to do with myself.
I started this life out being shy, bitter, and artistic. Everyone hates those people.
Somehow I've convinced everyone I'm not that person.
But I need to keep a very impressive collection of masks, lest I risk being discovered for the manic depressive ego maniac that I am.
I feel myself becoming tired of all of it. I don't know what I'm doing right now. I feel like I'm losing my mind again.

SK

2010-09-24T12:32:00.002-05:00

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The Homecoming.

By Dani Compose.

The following is a deleted post from my other, school-related blog, Million Dollar Cuffs. It was redacted because you're not supposed to promote illegal activities, and certainly not illegal activities in response to an illegal activity.

I'm going to preface this by saying that this blog entry is rated R, for language and sexualized language.

In the schitzophrenic burg called Kingston, there are 2 schools that you need to know the names of.
St. Lawrence College and Queens University.
The best way I can explain it is that they're siblings. One is the nerdy brother who wears bowling shoes and gets erections at inappropriate times, and one is the liability of a sister, who experiments with all things and gives it up too easy.
St. Lawrence College is the sister.

Every year Queens University has a big event called Homecoming. I tell you now that Queens Homecoming is this weekend. It's for Queens students, present and past, to congregate and drink and watch a football game and wear letterman jackets.
The thing is, it also attracts people from miles around - even from the wonderful United States - and most cool people from St. Lawrence.
Because, at the end of the day, there are no rules. It's the Somalia of beer.
As a result, police are also brought in from miles around. Officers on horses, in cars, in SWAT vans, and maybe a helicopter. I've been going for many years, even before I was enrolled or lived in Kingston. The streets were packed with people, sluts and fights sprung from every corner like ghouls, and mistakes were made at an impossible speed.
It was like Mardi Gras in the fall, and if that sounds lame, then you're maybe half right.

Homecoming is an old tradition for the university, going back something something whatever.
It's a big deal. Everyone talks about it, everyone gets jazzed for it, and everyone plans for it.
There is, however, a thick pool of bitterness that exists beneath this, like a grimy water table.
Most Queens students will tell you that all the misbehavin' that occurrs during this weekend is on the part of St. Lawrence students, and tourists and those people who have no true anchor to the event.
They don't want their hot sister up in there selling blowjobs for high fives, or ruining the big job interview by having cocaine explode from their bra.

What they fail to realize, and what I hope to sell you on here, is that St. Lawrence has a tradition of its own, and it's equally as valid.

Ruining Queens Homecoming.

It is absolutely important that representatives of St. Lawrence show up and have that coke shoot from their bras. Draw a penis on a car. Throw a punch at some guy's popped collar, miss, and fall in the garbage. We absolutely need to stomp into the festivities like a skeletonized Santa Clause falling through a chimney in August.

St. Lawrence students will shoulder none of the blame for any of this. If anything goes wrong, someone in the university will be fixing the ladder. We college people have zero liability, and it's the most important thing in the world that we abuse that, because we will never have a homecoming of our own. Queens built a great, fancy snowman, and it's our job to go and piss on it. It's the law of nature; it's inarguable.

Might I suggest deception!

Get together 10 of the smallest, drunkest girls you can and parade them around telling everyone they're in Economics. Throw on your salmonest polo shirt and tell everyone you're trying to be a scientist. Wear your plaid shorts.
2 AM rolls around. Guess what? Those weren't bare legs, they were flesh-coloured pants. Rip those pants off like you're living in the 80's. Break out the firehose connected to a vat of creamed corn. You go ahead and you creamed corn that whole campus.
I want you to make it so St. Lawrence college is classified as a police state.
There's no war like an academic war. This is our Pearl Harbour.
We're Japanese now, by the way.
Fly yourself into that ship. Your government just pumped you full of crystal meth because nobody knew what it was yet, sat you in a plane, and told you to figure it out.
You're patriotic, you're manic, and you're not from around here.

For colleges everywhere.

SK

2010-09-18T21:59:00.017-05:00

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Sex Brass.

By Tm Bmb.

I've gotten three girls pregnant four times.
These things, you can accept. I like watching people get used to things.
I like watching myself adapt to inarguable truths.

Bwtchr had a bedframe. I've had so much sex on floors and broken mattresses; I freak out on a nice bed. I'll go to town on it like a town tackling some nonsense. The frame was black metal. There's precious few things more satisfying than grabbing hold of a frame or headboard during the thing.
She had her own room in the crack house we lived at. The Parliament Brothel.
This blog goes back to 2005. There are years where I only posted a couple things a month. I don't know what I've said. I mentioned more than once that this is the lamest part of stream of consciousness, to cover my tracks. I have a lot of stories, but if I repeat myself, you'll see the cracks.
As if this thing isn't all cracks.
This fucking guy.

So, she had her own room in the crack house we lived in for a year. When we fought - and we had evil, sick, dark fights - we could be seperated. But you know as well as I do that it wouldn't help.
It was the sex that frusterated me the most. She never wanted to go all night. She never wanted to make a big deal of it.
Maybe a million people need to tell me to shut up.
But you know as well as I do that it wouldn't help.

Maybe I shouldn't complain. When you're young - so young - your goals are so managable. All you want is that one girlfriend, or that one experience. Something that will signal that you're headed in the right direction. Steps like stones along a narrow stream. Everything's so clear up until you breach something and end up in a lake. Surrounded by the world, every angle holding successes of equal merit. You did that one thing - that first time - and now you just need to keep doing it. Some people don't need to. Some people like relationships. I like those people.
But I need sex. And if you can't keep up, then I will resent you very quickly. It took me just a little bit to figure that out, but everything's alright now.

Cadence had the lust in her just like I did. We broke out the toolbox and got to it. Rode the lines of pain and explore how long 2 bodies could angrily hate being alone.
That lust was symptomatic of worse madness. It's usually the case.
I've got a worse madness in me somewhere.
The one before her too. Same story. What stupid nickname did I give her? Something to do with her red hair. But maybe I wasn't that clever. 2 girlfriends in a short burst, both of them coworkers from the sex store I worked at. Both of them liked to get it like criminals.
Stories to tell at the wedding.

She ransomed a book of mine. Tried to use it as leverage. To this day I don't know what she wanted from me. The book cost me $100 and it was about mythology. I told her she could keep it.
And when we saw each other again, it didn't take much for us to fuck. Because it's all madness and blackness and wrongskulled senselessness.
Just 2 bodies expressing their fury regarding being alone.
Hair like the nile, whatever that means.

Some people want to have a big penis, but it's more trouble than it's worth. It can make the other party bleed. It can cause a shriek in that decibal that has you triggering the hazard lights. It can cause problems. Sex is the last place you want to use restraint. I've had people put the kaibosh on the act for this reason. That's the last thing in the world you want. It's below death and poverty, I promise you.

It's more of a burden, though. Because I've got this cool special unique body part, and I feel like I have to use it as often as I can, otherwise it's a waste. It becomes an obsession. I fucked a girl who found the prospect of me being in porn attractive. The things that emerge when you get people talking during tenderized moments. Everybody dies, though, and these things don't truly matter. It's obligation, and it's to feed my ego. It must be fed, otherwise it turns on me and I become violent.
But what else am I here to do? What else do I have to offer the world?
What else am I good at?

If I had a mind to boast, I could be all about that. I could walk around being a genius and I could have a book written about me. That would be great. I could make something of value, instead of writing stories structured on madsanity, selling myself and practicing all manner of abuse to get the most I can from this ironic life.

You show a drunk girl a bottle of vodka and you might as well have flashed a thousand dollar bill.

Having sex on floors, for me, is like having sex in cars: I always get caught. I've had sex in a car only twice, but that's because the police always end up catching us. And then I need to talk myself out of being arrested for fucking a non-hooker.
Last time I fucked on a floor I got caught. There's no cool way to go about salvaging the situation. It's like being caught up in a dice game: you'd rather be caught gambling properly.

So many girls like being hit in bed. To connect this to where I was going earlier. Getting it like criminals.
They'll never mention it unless you get them talking, and you absolutely must get them talking, otherwise you're not doing it right.
Hit, choked, cursed at. Everyone's a monster during the right sex. Good sex will make you horrible. It'll make you a stereotype. You'll leave with marks on your body, you'll smell like something new, and you won't be able to function properly.
I go out into the world fully intent on wrecking the hell out of vaginas. Some people treat sex like gassing up a car. Every sex should be like a 9/11. You've got something to prove and you're trying to impress god.
I have a drawer filled with handcuffs and nipple clamps and condoms and a ball gag. There's also a stethoscope.
Because you never know.

This is the text exchange that occured as I was writing about my terrorist sex:
Anonymous Number: Hey sexy.
Me: Who is this?
Anonymous Number: We fucked once.
Me: You're going to have to be more specific.

I'm being haunted by fuck ghosts. I am a fuck ghost pimp.
Don't you never forget that.

I don't know why I started this post. I must have had something to say.

SK

2010-09-15T10:00:00.006-05:00

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Cop-Blocked.

By Wicked Stripe.

I'm checking in. I'm checking it out.

"Serious People, Serious Gloves" is done in first draft form. 250 pages of some of best shit I am capable of doing. If you don't like it, you're either from the future or a total bitch.

What am I going to do with it?

I'm going to do all I can.

School started last week. I'm in Kingston at St. Lawrence college taking advertising.

I'm in a computer lab right now because I don't have internet. I'm making comics; "Human Error," first appearing in "Vilume."

I'm going to tell you all about how I spent too much money and saw the end of the world through a new lens.

I met Jacob standing outside having a cigarette. We pointed at each other because we were the only ones wearing leather jackets. He told me he stole his from his friend. I told him I stole my hat from my friend and bought my leather jacket for $20. We wandered around talking about having sex with women.

The first night we all went out, we wandered the club area called The Hub. We were too drunk; a bottle of vodka, half a bottle of whiskey, some shots of something else. I was so drunk I bought a bottle of Coke Zero.

Coke Zero is an impossibly bad product.

We went to 2 keggers, both broken up by the police not 10 minutes after we arrived. I called it being cop-blocked. Cock-copped didn't sound as good. At the same time, cop blocked could be anything. You imagine a cop putting up police tape barring you from a sandwich. You imagine a cop gently pushing your shoulder as you try to walk into a barn. You imagine a lot of things. At the top of the list there is not you being all mackin' and then the flashlights showing up.

We're not allowed to smoke cigarettes within 10 metres of the entrance to the school. There's a sign by the front doors that reads "we share the air." There's a parking lot by the entrance and I just find the whole situation shitwirey.

That's a word I just invented. It's exactly what it looks like.

Like a mushroom cloud in the vaguest shape of a penis.

The next night we hit up the clubs. The bars. The all over. I dragged my body forward with zombie strings. We were climbing walls and drinking in shrubberies and yelling at commerce students. A group of men were standing in the parking lot of Pizza Pizza, holding a slice of pizza aloft in the air. Everyone was chanting "pizza! Pizza! Pizza!" There were 2 small girls huddled in the crowd with a look of fright upon their faces. I threw my finger at them: "Hey! HEY! Look how terrified they are!"

Everyone that night was looking for a fight. We watched women claw at each other like they were dogs. I saw people exchanging cash. One night I heard someone say "This isn't Sparta, this is madness." That's about all you need to know about anything.

I've never talked on this blog about girls I've slept with unless we're in a relationship, so if this blog sounds a lot like me drinking and not fucking then you're barking up your father's tree.

I met a girl with Amsterdam Bicycle glasses. She said to me: "I can tell from your skull ring that you're a badass, but you also smell like babies." Nobody would know what to do with that on their smartest, sexiest day.

The third night we went to someone's house on a street that had no sounds. I don't think anyone else lived on the street. Someone was playing guitar on a couch on the sidewalk. I was drinking Jack Daniels; I was wild eyed and manic. I was panicking like I was trying to win a panicking contest, sitting alone on the couch, chain smoking like it was something to do.

I sat around the back yard on top of a see-saw picnic table. A 300 pound man with his face covered in piercings heard me when I said I was weirded. He called himself Big Blue. He offered me a pill of something on the free. I absolutely took this pill. He claimed that he went to prison for 5 years because he cut the hands off a pedophile.

He said the pill was the mother of MDMA, but you know it was just speed.

At 4 AM we went to another house. 5 adults had brought a malnourished stripper home and each one was trying to get up in her nest. It was like watching a gang of raccoons fighting over an ear of corn. We rubbed our faces as the drugs began to wear off. A cab driver told us about all the sluts he had sitting right where we were. I don't know what to do with that information now, but at the time it made me furious.

I need to buy a bass guitar and finish this mess. You can just go ahead and tax a butt.

2010-07-12T11:47:00.014-05:00

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The Coke Key Betrayed Me.

By Yawni Code.

My last days in Toronto-Dot were a blur of drink and drug and anger and sick.
And as near as I can tell, it was all triggered by my key snapping.
And this is the story of that key and the anger it unlocked.

We did cocaine off keys in filthy washrooms, in the back of weird basements at night. They were always weeknights, so there were no normal people out. Supermodels don't exist at 4 AM on a monday.

I showed up to one drunk as hell and shaking from all the stuff in my brain. The doorman through an alley was trying to outsmart us with circular logic, like the shitty modern world's version of the gatekeeper at the gates of the emerald city. I countered with with a barrage of lies and half-truths. Somehow he let us in, if not because my story made sense, then because he could see in our eyes that were full of the stuff of life and the shit of death.

There were pooltables with weird stains on them. In the corner there was a small TV with a red screen playing Russian news. There was a confusing poker game going on, and as always, there were serious Vietnamese people involved. I don't think they were drinking, or on anything.

They were there to play poker in silence.

I always used the same key to do bumps of coke. I had a keyring full of exotic keys. Some of them I had simply for the sake of appearances. I could have used any of my useless keys and this blog post might not exist. We could all be dead right now. Everyone is in a coma. It's a junkie's matrix.

I never used the other keys. I used my house key. Everytime.
In my defense I was a raving lunatic when I made these impossibly bad judgement calls.

I'm a bag of sores run through the prism; regime
I'm the cream in the light of a skeleton scream
When I leave this world I will dream of coils
I will drink my tea on a beach of oil

The key was never completely clean. When I put it into the keyhole, the grains of cocaine would become jammed inside of it. The lock would get progressively more difficult to turn. One day, as I got home from work at 2 AM, the key bent and snapped off in the lock as I drunkenly - furiously - attempted to get into the place where I hang my hat.

I slept in the hallway that night. I left crazed messages on Raver's machine. I ruined my knuckles pounding on the door. I spent half an hour throwing rocks at his window.

It was a bitter omen.
If you ask me now, I'll say it's a sour metaphor.

We went out drinking one night. It was a going-away party for one of the people at work. They wanted to throw me one, but I said that was dumb and retarded and I'll bundle mine in with the other person's. During the party, nobody knew it was for me. Later on that evening, while we were smoking wijjd in the most well-lit part of the alley with cops all around, we got into a fight with a homeless man. He unzipped his fly and started taking his shirt off. He was yelling at us about how the streets were a jungle and he was a lion. From the way he was disrobing, it seemed - to everyone - that he was going to fightrape us. It's exactly how it sounds.

It's so easy to get away with everything in this life I don't know why anyone does anything.
Everyone's one vital organ away from a transformative half-suicide.

The cops looked to be leftovers from the G20 summit. A week leading up to the weekend of the G20, the gates were up, the police officers were wandering around, and nobody would shut the fuck up about it. People likening it to a police state despite them never experiencing a police state, people saying how surreal it was while having little to no grasp on what surreality is.
If you put an abundance of any one thing in an area, people are going to talk and never stop.
I was out of town that weekend, when the cars were being lit on fire and the windows were being smashed. People complaining about police officers because people are retarded.
I will defend police officers because, like most institutions in life, the front-line people talk all the shit, often times for decisions made by their superiors.

Officers who are staring down a bunch of hippies calling them the scum of the Earth, 12 hour shifts, citizens complaining to reporters about how cops having shotguns is unacceptable because... police shouldn't have weapons, apparently. Then you burn their cars and throw rocks at them and then sue them when people get arrested. Everyone in Canada complains all the time about everything. Everyone's the worst.

I went to what I will call a Jamaican MDMA party. We all had to leave early because someone's baby was upset in the living room.
I saw Iggy Pop and the Stooges give a free concert downtown. I wandered the city with people, all the time drunk, all the time miserable. If presented with the option, you have to piss on a church. I spent all my money. Nothing truly exciting happens when you go out with your palm facing the sky. People made plans and then cancelled. Walking around in the rain. Slept on the hard wood floor after I transported my bed to Kingston. Stayed behind in the city for a few extra days, spent some of the best time with Tal on the floor. Don't worry, you don't know about her.
Sent Rokski to live in a barn with other cats on a friend's farm ranch thing. I'm trying to go back to college, this time in Kingston, this time for Advertising. I'm in Kingston right now.

Nobody gains anything from stories of debauchery. I don't know why I tell them. I must be trying to prove something. I have so many of them, but none of them end up like the movies. Doing ridiculous things is a lot like going to the movies. Explaining a movie to someone is the worst thing a human being can do.
The benchmark for a good night out is if you go to at least 3 locations.
And it's never a great night unless you fuck someone or get in a fight.
Everything else is spitting feathers.

I suppose that's all I have to say. Nevermind.

SK

2010-07-04T17:43:00.003-05:00

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Anatomy of a Ghost.

By Joker Grasshopper.

Humans have been populating the unknown ever since we could identify things. Populating the unknown with creatures of our own invention. Even the things we fear, and the monsters designed to kill us, are composed of symbols that come from our stupid idiot heads.
The laws that govern the unknown, too, are of our invention.
All mythology and religion seems to do this. Angels and giants and monsters and the living dead; all of them familiar.

It seems that as our understanding of the universe - its laws, its nature, its repeating enigmas - expands and focuses, there are fewer unknowns.
But, at the same time, that is totally wrong. I shouldn't have even said it.
But it's been said and I can't unsay it.

The more we know, the more abstract our existence becomes. We crack open a rock and see how it is composed of layers. The universe gets more and more bizarre the further we stick our faces / penises into it.
The laws we discover lend to the notion of uncertainty, and waves of perceptice truth, and circumstancial life.

At the end of the day, there are still shadows.

I watch a muse sigh and tie a rope
Slither, sparkle, chew
I watch the news like I watch a hole
Slither, sparkle, chew
I'm a wig in her world of ties
Slither, sparkle, chew
She washes her cuts when we close our eyes
Slither, sparkle, chew

And there will always be shadows.
And there may not be witches or ghouls, but there can still creep vague, alien enemies; things that may only half-participate in the arena of physics we can understand.
And these creatures may have no concept of us, or of what they are doing.
But they may react to us like matter and anti-matter. They may step from the darkness and cause us to fall into some infinity where our intelligence becomes a mechanism of torture.
So ghosts are still a fair culprit.
Ghosts can still be in play here.

I don't believe in ghosts, but you must understand: I hate ghosts.

A ghost, traditionally, can't hurt you, or kill you or even affect you physically.
That's what demons do.
Aside: Bloody Leena told me how to rid my life of both; internal and external.
Candles and holy water and matches in glasses of water. I need to steal a candle from a church.
We stole a ladder from a church before so it's not like I'm crossing a threshold here.
She has a pocketful of old Romanian spells. My Ukranian grandmother was aware of them, too.
I feel like I should have known this a long time ago, but this is all new to me. Everyone knew about this shit the entire time
I've been here for 23 years, unaware of how to deal with a demon living in my basement.
I could have had a demon beside me until now.
It's like walking around with tomato sauce on your shirt.
There's no spell check on this computer by the way and I don't want to edit this so blow me with your mother's ass.

But still, ghosts. Worst case scenario is a ghost screams at you.
That's not even a thing.
But still. There are shadows.
Populated by creatures of my own invention, out in the corner of the house I'm in.
Creatures grown stranger from my knowledge, however limited, of how the universe is structured.
Monsters composed of blurs and radiation, dealt in fractured movements, simultaneously existing and not existing.

They live behind closed doors, out in the dark.
They might be capable of anything.

SK

2010-05-19T02:33:00.005-05:00

JDDKELLENERIVEYY%7456390895

The Midnighter New Yorker.

By Marcus Detonated.

Rokski is my 2 year old cat. I say 2 years roughly - savagely - because I got him as a kitten from a weird warehouse place, intended as a gift to an ex girlfriend. We broke up, she moved to the United States, and I ended up taking care of him. It's not like I minded; the stupid idiot cat meant a lot to me, and still does. I have a soft spot for animals. The soft spot is called the brain.

Roski fell off the roof when he was a kitten. We brought him up there while we had some sort of BBQ, back when we were climbing up through the skylight of the Sherbourne crack house. He chased a butterfly off the edge, undoubtedly because the butterfly was trying to pull some lame shit and Rokski was gonna put the kaibosh on it right quick.
He fell 3 floors. When we ran down to get him, he was looking at us like "what's up." We ran him to the vet and spent all my money. He survived, somehow. That fall would have killed a man. A man of God. A man of action. A man of war. Any sort of man would have died. Rokski survived and continued to not ever give a fuck.

He is an outdoor cat, climbing up rooftops and disappearing for hours at a time. He would come back with a chipped tooth, or soaking wet. We never knew what he got up to. I once went looking for him and saw him trying go give some girl cat the business. I gave him a high five. I like to think he knew what was going on. Sometimes people would get him high and he's lay there like "what." Not even in the form of a question. More like a demand. I'm trying to paint a picture for you here.
If Rokski were a human he'd punch you in the face like it was something to do.
He likes to sleep on piles of papers. I like to think it's because it's the closest thing to sleeping at the office. He's desperately trying to get work done, but he doesn't live in that world. I need to give him credit for making the effort.
If Rokski were a car he'd be a plane.
If Rokski were in a band he'd be the manager with crazy mafia ties.
He acts like a dog and never makes any noise, except when you say hello to him and he meows like "supp." That's gotta be worth something. It's at least worth a damn.

My time with Rokski is coming to a close, though. I am moving back to Kingston and nobody I know is willing to take him. I can't let him stay with me where I'm going. Everyone hates cats, and I don't think they can say why. They're old, from another time. They probably hate Chinese people too, and can't say why. Greener pastures with spiky landmines, their time. A horrible time. But I'm not here to judge. I'm here to rock.
Hair like the nile, whatever that means.

He said paradise ain't nothin' but a pair of dice /No hubris to defend the end / He said paradise ain't nothin' but a pair of dice / They sang the ballad of the snow bastard and wept

My options are limited. I want to put him up for adoption, but Bloody Leena - a long term vet assistant - says that dogs rule the adoption racket and nobody wants cats. I had a conversation with Snipe about how we treat cats in this culture like the rest of the world treats dogs. Cadence, a total Jamaican, said that her people would look at us driving dogs around in cars and wonder aloud if we're all insane. And it makes sense, if you think about it, even for a second. We glorify dogs here. I've never seen an alley dog. They're really no different than raccoons, but we've decided they're man's best friend, and projected abstract human characteristics like honour, dignity, and loyalty, masking what is most likely dependence and universal animal obliviousness.
In the event that I can't find a home for Rokski I might have to put him down. This troubles me deeply. My soft brain can't get a grip on it.
Such a sad way for a warrior like him. He needs to go out in a fight, or a fire, or an airplane disaster.
The thought of this cat in someone else's home, looking out the window and wondering where I am, fills me with sadness. I am projecting, you see. But there's no escaping it.
I don't know what to do about this.

I might look at Rokski staring off into space. I might describe it as a state of longing.
"You got that right, cat," I might say.

I spent most of the day mailing and faxing documents to receive a shady loan. To celebrate I drink cheap whiskey and call girls I fucked. Then I might find someone to see Iron Man 2 with me.
All this might have happened.
All this can be yours.

If the loan goes sour and I get my legs broke, you'll hear from my superhero alias, The Midnighter New Yorker.
My legs are to me what Bruce Wayne's parents were to his bodylife.
Which is to say, I call my legs mother and father.
If you cross my i's I'll shove my mother so far up your ass you'll turn Catholic.

Our internet is cut off so I am drafting this in a notebook.
Which means I'll have to do a second draft when I type it all out.
Scary, I know.

The children of the church were burning under the moon / We pissed as their legs fell off / We drank our liquor as the wind went grim / We spat and laughed and coughed

CDIY keeps moving along. I've become more visual, more connected to how I think and solve problems. I'm trying to develop a way to utilize my strengths.
The Midnighter New Yorker could be the man for the job.
I really hope I get my legs broken.

SK

2010-05-06T01:09:00.003-05:00

LSSFERIREVDJJ%3478675588

Never Wanted to Dance.

By Tony Mewes.

For the past couple weeks I have been going out a lot. I've been spending money I shouldn't, without thinking ahead. That is why the rent is late, and that is why I am in debt to my friends. When you're out having fun you feel invincible, and you begin to say to yourself, "I'll worry about that shit tomorrow." And the problem is that you do.
And I don't know why I am doing this, because I've always been good with money. I've been in charge of things like paying rent to the landlord, and paying electricity bills. I've always been a good liar and I've more recently become good at convincing myself that I am right, or owed something.
And I realize how dangerous this is, because this is how Judas and other retards act.

But I haven't had fun in a long time. I pretty much went from one shit relationship to another, so I wanted to fuck around like a philistine. I convinced myself I was owed that.
I reconnected with old friends and made new friends and all that.
But there was a fever to it. It was desperate, and I don't think anybody noticed that, except when I expressed my desire to take things one step further, or make it weirder or crazier.
People can smell that, and it doesn't smell good.

We would go out to clubs, or dance bars, or wherever young freaks go. Places where the drinks are too expensive and the music is all about putting something on something else.
I've never been good at dancing, because like most things in life, I didn't start young. The longer you wait to start something, the harder it becomes. I never got good at dancing, so at this age I might as well write it off.
I only dances when ecstasy was involved. You can't get me drunk enough to want to dance, because the drunk man is still aware of his surroundings. He may choose to ignore them, but that depends on how much of an idiot he secretly is. No, you need to put me into a headspace where I want to fuck or punch the world. Then I will go to the dancefloor, and I will be able to act like nobody is watching. Because I always feel like people are watching me.

Paranoia, guilt, and fear.

Going out with people who like to dance is difficult. You don't want everyone to see you dance and think you look like a dumb son of a bitch, but you know if you just stand there, they're definitely thinking that. And you're not there to spend money, either, so you have to do something.
You have to do something, man. Everyone is looking at you and laughing.

And heaven forbid you're trying to get laid or something. Clubs are full of guys like that. Guys who go there alone and walk around. Those are the pickup artists. Those are the people who are not happy with their lives, but wear nice shirts.
But human beings can read agendas. Agendas can easily cross over into desperation, and we all know that everyone hates that.
The only agenda that seems to work is going out to have fun. if you go out to get something, or someone, you can fail. If you remove failure, you're a genius. That's how it works.
But if you don't have fun dancing, then you're fucked. You're a transient. You don't belong there. You're just a drunk guy trying not to be 90% of the population.
And I guess that's 100% of my life.

Paranoia, guilt, and fear.

I've been obsessed with the number 3 for as long as I can remember. Things sound good in threes. I'm sure I'm not the only one who thinks that. Everyday is a constant wash of paranoia, and guilt, and fear. The paranoia of everyone watching you, secretly hating you, privately thinking you're a desperate idiot. Thinking you're some sort of joke. Then there's the guilt of even feeling this way, because these are the things that pass as severe problems in the land of plenty, and we have so much to be thankful for, right? Who am I to complain when there are starving, hopeless, tortured people outnumbering those reflective people who just happened to be born somewhere else?
"Who the fuck do you think you are?" you imagine them saying.
And then the fear that nothing will ever get better. The fear that your best laid plan is a fool's errand. The fear of numbers; statistically, someone is more likely to crash their dream than fly it. For every successful person that tells you to follow your dreams, there are 100 more that tried, failed, and will tell you to grow up. And neither one of them is truly wrong.
And so, there: the most real fear of all. The knowledge that there are no absolutes. And, testing that, maybe there is an absolute. But you will never know what it is. Religions are stories, and stories are medicine.

Paranoia, guilt, and fear.

So, I can't dance. I can go out, and I can drink too much and do too much coke and grind my junk on girls and get in fights, but it doesn't mean anything, and I am trying to run from my life.
That's a sad way to carry on for an extended period of time.
So now I am running away from that, too. Running to Kingston. Running from the depression, the desperate loneliness, the paranoia, the self loathing, and maybe the fear. Running to be with a family that, in reality, thinks I am a fucking loser. I am running towards an uncomfortable situation, one that will make me feel gross and slimy. I hope that will help things.
I doubt it, but all I need to do is make it to the end of June.

SK

2010-04-28T02:15:00.005-05:00

DHHLOVILAVALRYY%8366674509

Kingston.

By Dani Compose.

Some of the most interesting stories I have concern my falling outs with friends. Judas is the most recent, but we can go back to Saint. We can go back to lots of other people, but I never feel good talking about that. I remember I told a story once and a lot of people got pissed off at me. The nicknames don't work at all!
I forget what I've said, too. I'll maybe get to that in the coming days. I'm trying to get a lot out of my system. This time, not because I'm planning suicide! HAHAHAHAHHAHA!
It sounds so lame when you say it. You do, or you do not. There is no try. Yoda said that.
You know Yoda? Have you ever seen Star Wars? Corpses have seen Star Wars. Don't even pretend.
I hate you.

I'm planning on leaving Toronto at the end of June. It's not something that I want to do.
The past 5 years have been nothing but a hurricane, and I have a lot of debt attached to me. I can't afford to stay in the city anymore. I need to move back to Kingston for a spell and get some things sorted out. First off, I need a new computer. I am using Cadence's old one, and it's garbage world. I also need music equipment if I wanna start doing that again. When it comes to CDIY - in the world of pitching expensive ideas - you need to have a certain float. I need a good suit. I need money for business lunches. I need a car. I've gotten this far pretending to important people, and I think I've taken that as far as I can go.

The plan is to stay with my Baba, as she lives alone and I can take over her basement. I can also help her out with things and keep her company. A couple years back she tripped and fell in the bank and broke her ankle. It took her a year to recover. She fell again and broke her other ankle, and then she was living in a retirement home for a bit because she needed nurse supervision. Nowadays I think she has someone come by from time to time.
She's of an older generation where the wife really didn't do much. She hasn't been to post-secondary institutions, and she never learned to drive. Her husband died shortly after I was born so she's been relying on her children to get her around.
Everyone thinks I am trying to take advantage of her by moving back, and there's nothing you can say to wash that off.
The interim plan is to train to become a bartender, make money, start with music again, and sort out this CDIY business. I need more equipment (a computer/laptop, most urgently. Then a sampler. New mic, new bass. Etc. ETC!)
I also wanna travel. I sound like such a fucking mid-20's guy right now. Music and traveling. Mackin' on broads, keeping it easyreal. I'll kick you out of my home if you don't cut that hair.

It's so hot today. I got up at 9 AM, which I never ever do. I got paid this morning and wanted to get an early start to the day to take care of bills and other errands.
I was up and walking around by 9:30. It felt so strange to be out; the sun before noon has a different look about it. It reminded me of Kingston, back when I was growing up there.
You only get early starts on the day when you're elderly, or when you're very young. When you're a kid, life is still fun and full of adventure. Sleep might be the worst thing in the world, besides snakes and dentists.
Somewhere along the line, though, you begin to hate life, and loathe the idea of taking on another day. At some point, all you want to do is sleep. During these times you feel like a piece of shit if you wake up before noon. You can't function without 8 hours sleep. Save for nights of alcohol and chemicals, I can't get going without that sleep. I need it like a paleolithic philistine needs some sauce.

Back when I was a kid in Kingston, as I was trying to say before I became engorged by my own thoughts, I would be up early to hang out with friends, or go play hockey. Since my dad was a coach, we played hockey a lot, or were somehow involved. If we weren't practicing at the rink, we were down at the rink while he did some form of paperwork, or we were out behind our house by the old abandoned factory playing ball hockey. I enjoyed those days and wish I had stuck with it.
So, I guess what I'm trying to say is that I like these early days. When I have 2 days off in a row and I don't get home at 2 AM the previous night from closing at work. I like the feeling of the early sun. The problem is that it's not even noon yet and I got everything done that I needed to do. Maybe I'll get some chicken balls from the worst Chinese restaurant downstairs.
It's such the worst, though. You have no idea.

It's 11 AM now, and the sun is beginning to get angry. I'll play some shitty bass and eat some shitty chicken. That's what I call a Friday!

SK

2010-04-22T19:08:00.002-05:00

OSSHEVICAKHWW%5678488882

I Have A Drinking Problem.

By Tm Bmb.

I find myself writing on Twitter more than this thing, which is a shame because I like this blog more. I like developing ideas, regardless of how stupid idiot they are.
We had our electricity shut off the other day. I had to take a shower by candle light. Going to the washroom by light of a flickering flame is something nobody should ever have to do, but some people do it every day. We should have gotten a window in the thing, but then everyone in the world would be able to see us washing our bodies, and some people have mixed feelings about that.
Not me, though. I'm an exhibitionist. I fuck in store front windows.
I have a thing for mannequins. A penis thing.

I've been giving out bulk copies of Voice in the Horse to people at work. They seem to like it. I have maybe 7 copies left. Sometime in the future I would like to do a third print run of it. I would also like to get some physical copies of Vilume out there, maybe give them away as gifts too. I like Vilume more than I like Voice in the Horse; the scripts, the comics, the poems and the play at the end. It's a massive thing compared to VITH's 120 pages.
Since CDIY shut down it hasn't been available as a download anywhere. Maybe I'll get an account for some file sharing service and put the PDF up for anyone to grab. I just want to have people read it. I'm very prooud of it.
But that's not why I called.

Over the past few months I've been drinking a lot. It's the only substance I like to do anymore, although I've been dabbling in coke a bit lately. I've only ever dabbled in coke. I can't ever get excited about it.
I've been drinking pretty steadily for weeks now. I don't know why. My aunt made a comment to my mom about it, allegedly. By and large my extended family is full of nerds, so it's my job to keep it real and fuck bitches and throw my body against the wall.
It's a dirty job but somebody's got to do it.

I've never liked beer. I like whisky, and that's it. Drinking is a shit addiction, and I don't know why I do it. When you drink all the time and chain smoke, you wake up feeling like a motherfucker. You don't eat that much, either. I find it curbs the mood swings most of the time. I am able to be who I want to be when I drink.
After one staff party months ago, a friend remarked "I've never seen you smile so much." I didn't know how to take it at the time, but I've broken it down. And it's true. I'm the nicest guy in the world when I drink, and I'm at a point where I want to meet new people.
I guess it ties into my falling out with Judas.

Judas; the most ironic name I could have chosen for this situation. I don't know why I gave him that nickname all those years ago. I thought it was funny because he betrayed his faith on his own terms, and then started hanging out with me and Snipe. He would eventually grow to be crazier than either of us. I don't know if he retreated from that in the past year, or followed it to its logical conclusion of self-parody and delusion. But I won't talk about that here. That's a story for another time.

The older you get, the more you are able to accept that which you cannot change.
You can never change people, but you can encourage and tolerate people. You can grow WITH people. You can only live alongside people, and maybe align your dreams and love with them. I guess that's how marriages work.

Sometimes people change and you can't deal with it. This will happen with greater frequencey, up until a point where everyone is so old that they come to terms with death and humanity that they can truly accept others. I don't know when exactly that happens, but it does.
I think that's why relationships suck so much when you're young.
I don't know how some people do it. Maybe they're just smarter than I am.

It's my day off and I am drinking right now. Went to the park and smoked cigarettes. I thought that thrusting myself out of my comfort zone would help me be productive. I've written a lot of songs lately, but haven't concentrated on CDIY. I'll get to that in a followup blog post.
So... tonight. So, now. Now I need to find something to do to take my mind off my crippling, manic self.

SK

2010-04-10T19:11:00.002-05:00

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The Honesty Box.

By WM Dimes.

If I'm ever feeling down on myself, or blue, or shit, or fuck, I go onto Facebook (Awhoahey) and check the old Honesty Box. For those who don't know (assholes,) the Honesty Box is an application where people on your friends list can send you anonymous messages, positive or negative. Hopefully sexually-driven, often strange and alien.
But here's the best of the bunch, because nobobody uses this shit anymore and the last message was sent over a year ago.
If you've ever wanted to see someone maturbate through a blog, then you've come to the right place.

- you are a genius with the writing and things
- Kind of a dick sometimes, but that is also your special charm.
- i love you like a victimless murder. mwahahahaha.
- you infuriate me
- the best i've had in bed
- Classy
- rude, provocative & one sexy mother fucker
- These lines are not secure!
- Clever... Perhaps *too* clever..
- god bless your blog
- i saw a customer today who reminded me of you. i remember you hardly would look at me when i spoke and you youre shifty eyes made you look confused.
- creative but frustrated. and oh so angry.
- you have a way of making a man feel shiny and new
- Hmm, well I've never known you all that well, we've only met a few times and it was quite awhile ago, before you got into the drug use. But from what I saw of you, you were a pretty funny and interesting person, perhaps slightly insane, but in a good way.
- deviant and sly, quite an interestin' fellow
- well ... you smell kind of funny.
- I honestly think you have something to offer this world. But you going to waste it all away if you don't pull yourself together. And smile even though it hurts.
- You're that rare breed only found once every millenia.
I'm still trying to decide if that's a good thing or not, though.
- nick the prick.
- facebook fucking sucks

And, finally, the thing I want writ large on my tombstone:

- You're like the universe chuckling to itself.

Anyway, that's all. Thanks for asking.

SK

2010-03-29T14:41:00.005-05:00

KZZWILKVOVIDJJ%3478666590

Moon of the Plant Robots.

By Kincer III.

I did some digging and found this blog post that I never published. I think it was before I went on vacation. I went looking because I had a second one lined up that referenced this one, and the whole situation stunk and I didn't like it. I was watching "Farewell, My Lovely" so this is me being a PI. This is as far as that train goes.
So I'm gonna smash them together, but be warned, it's a whole cup of mess.

I've been living in this city for close to 5 years now. I know this city very well, I've seen it change, transform, break down, and betray itself, I've met and slept with a bunch of people here, and I've had some great times here. I've had some of the worst times of my life here. I was committed to hospitals here and I was committed to people who tried to destroy me here. I surrounded myself with some amazing people, and some amazingly deceptive people.
I've got stories to tell, but no patience. I love making up stories, but I hate writing them down. My I'm getting close to my mid-20's now, so my brain has begun to shrink. My knowledge is going to die, and I guess this is where freestylin' thrives.
But that's not why I called.

I feel like I need to get out of this city for good. I need to go somewhere else. All of my happy friends have settled down and have plans. I know a lot of people who hate this city. I know a lot of people who followed through and left. A few ex girlfriends left the province after we broke up, but I like to take credit for that. Don't ruin this for me.

I thought I had something but now I don't. I can't confront this city the same way I used to. I feel too tired for most of this life now. But, there was an earthquake in Haiti, which means I don't have any right to complain (editor's note: nobody gives a shit about Haiti now.)
Fucking earthquakes are like space. Making you feel stupid for being you. Because you are. We all are. (Editor's note: earthquakes are like space.)

In the future when they bring around those robots made out of vegetation to run everything, then we won't have to worry about this sort of shit. Once we get that New World Order that everyone hates because they think they won't be able to listen to The Killers or go to art museums or whatever. As if art isn't based on culture, and culture doesn't owe most of itself to simple geography and what has come before it.
What a radically mundane way to look at it. Half the people in the world don't deserve what they have anyway. They're the ones that will complain, of course. Everyone should probably die. Let our creations carry our legacy. The human race can't pitch itself worth a cunt.

I once said that heroism is a cult of death. Like humanity itself, we are trying to redeem it through talks of peace, and information and truth. I don't think heroes are capable of truth, and I don't think humanity is capable of peace. At least, not without new, weird systems to enforce it.

So let's talk about vegetation robots. Let's talk about that for a second.
We can make them our heroes. We can model them in our image. Every network seems modeled after the human brain, and once we can effectively replicate it, we can make a nation of plantbots, put them on the moon, and have glorious, insane wars. Wars of sacrifice and romance. It will be like looking into a dream, or a mirror in the fog.
We can resign our heroic cult of death and non-truth to another planet, populated by our creations, and use our society to unlock what it is, collectively, that makes us like this. Then we can make new systems. Then we can sidestep the plantbots and become something else.
Maybe we can fully come to terms with our mortality. Maybe it'll mutate into something new under humanity's collective lens. Maybe that'll change everything and we'll create new, strange, horrible heroes.
Perhaps the internet will reach a total equilibrium at that point, and the heroes we conjure alone in our thoughts will be collected through a massive engine, and then we will have to stare at it. And then maybe we'll eat it. It will be a brand new world.
The robots might have leaves, and acorns on them. They'll bleed and yell and hate and love.
We'll have cameras up there. They will be very powerful, I assume; able to kill aliens. All types of aliens. But only if the aliens strike first. Maybe they won't strike first if they're as cool as I think they will be.

Maybe they'll outlive us, and our cult of death, obsession, lies, and romance will be the only trace of us.
Wouldn't that be incredible?

SK

2010-03-25T15:31:00.005-05:00

PFFFERREVAIWUU%2878564400

Pop Journalism.

By Dig Domino.

I got a twitter the other day. It's going to be the home to all my zinger and whoa-nows.
So I am going to say this here, and say this now for the record: I am not a qualified professional.
That being said I'm going to say shit.

I like the idea of crowdsourcing, and trending and all of that. It tied into micro-investing, and micro-loans, and other systems that take advantage of the sheer number of people connected to the internet, and the number of people willing to contribute a little bit to a grander picture.
Charities do that too, but I think we can all agree that Chile is the New Coke of catastrophes. It didn't take long for everyone to go back to Haiti.
We know Haiti. We're comfortable with Haiti.
Shame on Chile for getting that earthquake. Sweeps week is over.

I also like blogs. I like that blogs challenge the old-guard of journalism and reporting.
Anyone can say anything. And we can watch them, over the years and entries, develop a style and a focus. And we can crowdsource that to see what is going on, and we can analyze that shit like it's going out of style, which it is, because it's the internet. But everything comes back.
I mean, look what the internet did to Hitler!
It's a good time to be Hitler, dear readers.
Beautiful.... sexual readers.

So, in that sense, blogging, and when I say blogging I refer to Tumblr, Digg, Blogs, and Twitter, is a form of Pop journalism. Writers can write; and they are good writers. They might be the most qualified people in the world. Most journalists have personal blogs where they can speak of thing of interest. I think we're entering an era of truer human interaction. I think it started with Facebook, where people weren't afraid to use their real names anymore.
It probably started before that, but fuck off, its just an example. Just calm the fuck down.

And we see that carry over to Twitter, where, sure, it's a fashion statement like most things - most things that anyone talks about - but there's a good movement there. It's a piece of a really neateriffic puzzle. People don't feel ashamed to go on record and say what is important to them, and damn the consequences. I see people becoming more comfortable with the internet, and people have been playing around with it for a long time. They say the next step is more dynamic categorization systems, and new systems that let us find what we need. Find what we like.
Like in my rockstar entry, they said the internet killed the rockstar. I say it made them into real people. I like where this is going, this world of unashamed, excited, contributing people. And those people are beginning to create in ways that they could not before.
And it's happening quickly.
Like the English language, we're pulling from everywhere and messing with it as we go.
I'm trying to Learn french. That's a blog aside.

Where before news stories had to be structured because people read stories a certain way, and they want the important shit first, I see we are beginning to challenge that. We still use that, but there are more alternatives now. Twitter is a system of headlines. Cracked is a system of lists. blogs tend to be a system of free-thought, maybe sometimes rambling.
I think these are all valid, and all have their place, and all need an equal share in this new world of free information.

Until Viacom puts the kibosh on that shit and they try and convince us that the honeymoon's over.
But we all know whose dick they can suck.

SK

2010-03-17T15:57:00.007-05:00

IDDBELALILFAA%7656782250

We Are Abstract Machines.

By Stilts Bangar.

I'm drinking a big bottle of Crown Royal in an empty apartment.
Of course I'm going to listen to Radiohead.
By the way I'm trying to learn the bass guitar.
SOMEONE SUCK MY COCK.

Best Thing To Say #1: When someone is telling a bad joke, or lame anecdote - "What is this, amateur night at the holocaust museum?!"

My family has a motto: "You don't get something for nothing."
Since birth I have been taught to be wary of kindness, and be paranoid of fortune.
I feel as if this has coloured my view of the world. Coloured it something sour like lemons.
It's gonna be a glorious day.

We live in abstract times. I think this is a good thing. I think it is good that people question themselves and flirt with self destruction. This doesn't permeate into every religion or culture, but it's there. I think it is the culmination of knowledge, and what occurs when you see ideologies at war. When you see it in real time and when you read about it. It's like when you see your mother and father fighting. How's a guy supposed to get married now?
But it's the truth. The truth is ugly. We've convinced ourselves that we're not ugly.
I believe that humans embody conflict. Conflict is the child of freedom and imagination.

And I believe both are crucial to a healthy society and life. I love democracy and I love the Western world. I think it's the only way to do it right. I like the search for balance, and figuring out where people desire control and where people desire to let representatives handle the details. I don't like to deal in absolutes. So I love North America.

I don't think we should run from this conflict, and these betrayals. Everything is perpetrated by humans and we are all human. We can learn from thee bastards that steal from us. We can learn never to make the same mistakes, and we can elect.
But I think we should identify that it will become more difficult for our children. The only way to make it easier for them is to make it more difficult for us. I don't have all the answers. I am just being introspective... and outrospective?
Let it be known than I have been drinking.

We are abstract machines. We love conflict and love. Love makes no sense. We invented poetry to describe that what does not make sense; that which comes from within. Those reactionary things. We invent crazy ways to govern our fear, all of them valid; all of them mythology.
We need our mythology. We need our heroes and villains, but we can control them. We can elect better ones. We can create better systems. This is the culture we have all created, and it can be great if we don't get lazy.
It's so easy to become lazy.

If we are abstract machines, and we have created a landfill of information, and a clusterfuck of ideologies, and a revisionist history and war, the I guess we have to run towards that. This is what we are, and what we have always been. We have always been war. Internally, we might fight against our temptations. We might fight against our emotions, or our addictions, or our instincts. We will rebel when we are young. We will rebel against our superiors. Governments rebel. This conflict manifests itself around the globe. We fight to survive because without a fight there is no survival. There is just existing. Humans can't just exist; I don't think we know how.
We prove our position through yelling and fire and stories and fucking and hate and love.
Sometimes we wish we were trees. Machines composed of love and hate cannot stand still.
Not that we'd be able to if we were given the chance. That's not possible.
Not even a little bit.
Which is why there will never be peace; just a war for peace.
Let it be known that I have been drinking.

We pretty much have to come to terms with that, otherwise we're just wasting time.
If we carry on believing we are forest nymphs locked in the bodies of corporations, or couches that make songs, we're not going to get anywhere. We are what we are. We love communities. We are tribal by nature. We make babies, make art, take what is not ours, conjure systems to explain everything, and dream. If you want to stop, you need to identify what is going on.
We're all assholes. Either save the world or fix it. There is no god, there is no meaning. We have control here. I'm an alcoholic. What am I going to do about it?
Use the guts that are in my blood.

SORRY IT'S JUST BLOG TALK.
It's Irish Christmas today. I need another drink.

SK

2010-03-11T20:24:00.003-05:00

EIIUTOPEEXFKK%4898000003

The Unsustainable Rock Star.

By Kincer II.

For the first three days of the vacation, I slept in my suit.
On the plane to Miami, before takeoff, I was reading a magazine about money. I looked up and they were spraying green slime on the wings. I assumed it was for terrorists.
The cheap rum I bought at Puerto Rico might very well be poison. It is making me sick and irritable. I am going to drink all of it.

While staying at the hotel in Miami we met a stray cat. I named it Miami Cat. When I would go out front to have a cigarette there was a crow hanging out by the ash area. I called it the cigarette crow.
Between leaving my cigarette and walking to the elevator, I imagined a conflict between the two. In the wonderful expanse of my infinite imagination, it was Cigarette Crow Vs. Miami Cat.
And that's all I'm going to speak on that.

Ain't nothing but a suffering
The mammals can't wish
The only criminal's the hate
Upon the chickens and fish

One of the dudes from some band I would probably never listen to named Kasabian was quoted as saying the internet killed the rock star.
hold on, I just remembered this is the internet right now. So here's the quote.

“I think – especially in the last three or four years – the internet’s taken a stranglehold and killed off the myth of the rock star now. You know when you used to buy the records and there was the myth behind them? There’s too much on blogs now and I think it’s killed it off. Nobody’s surprised by an interview anymore or anything. It’s quite tragic.”

I love systems. I love looking at systems, and smelling them and touching them. What I find doubly fascinating is unsustainable systems. For example: oil. Everyone knows oil will run out. It's a non-renewable resource. A child could tell you that we will run out of it. Yet we have built our entire society upon this thing that will run out. And we've let corporations have their way with it. And the corporations' brothel, the free market.
But that's too serious; this is music. This is about the myth of the rock star. And, yes, I believe that truth is the enemy of mythology, but at the same time I don't believe in absolute truth. So if the myth is that the person is cool and mysterious, and the truth need be nothing more than them talking, than that was a pretty fucking unsustainable system.
I do think it's funny, though. Now we know to what degree our heroes were employees.

I believe that heroism is the cult of death. It's bizarre to me that you can be some sort of mythical hero by singing a song about a girl. I think that these music employees have been made mysterious by living in another world, connected to ours by a bridge of money. And now the world are colliding, through the construction of an alternate bridge (internet) and the destruction of the original bridge (money) as well as the undeniable fact that the worlds are being drawn together through consumer electronics and the affordability of becoming a musician.

I love this shit. Trim the fucking fat. Don't pay people to be rockstars ever again. Pay them to make music. If they're mysterious, so be it. This is the best thing to happen to this joke of an industry in a long, long time. The giants are suffocating and the birds in orbit around their dicks are falling with them.

Fucking rockstars. You expect to build a mythology on the go by electing some dysfunctional tart, pumping them full of praise and promises, and having them sing songs for the people by seperating them from the people, in an age where information is becoming increasingly commodotized? And you expect them not to talk to the people you put them there to entertain? Who's in charge of this shit?

SK

2010-03-08T13:12:00.004-05:00

UDDVEGETASXX%7267782345

Stingrays and Hitler Minnesota.

By Dani Compose.

Just a thought: Those people who are complaining about the "iPad/iTampon" jokes being juvenile, are the same ones who type "Micro$oft?"
JUST A BLOG THOUGHT. NOTHING TO SEE HERE.

So I got back from the week long vacation. We were on a big ship and went to all sorts of sunny places, walking round giving white people a bad name. When's the last time you saw a Peruvian in a fanny pack? Riddle me that.
Riddle me it right now.

I uploaded a bunch of pictures, but I didn't take that many. I did a bunch of stuff, but there aren't any real juicy stories. Not once did I shout "Wow! What a scoop!"
My 13 year old cousin was stalked by an 18 year old from Minnesota. He bragged to her about how he was directly related to Hitler, and how he had bi-polar disorder and had to take medication. Obviously I named him Hitler Minnesota. My little cousin befriended him at first, but after a failed make-out attempt on his part, and 2 days of creeping around in the shadows and following her, she was scared to leave her room. I was wearing a suit and he said I looked too fancy. One day I screamed on him on the main deck during a movie. I guess it was loud, but smoking cowboy cigarettes have that effect on me.
It was a Kanye West / Taylor Swift situation, where upon surveying the room, I was the bad guy.
I gave them the Kanye Shrug, and then the Shaq Face.
Security got involved, but I got off scott free. They wanted to drag him off in handcuffs. I got no comeuppance. I am uncomeuppancable.
One day Hitler Minnesota will become a serial killer. When that day comes, let it be known that I made his parents aware, and I've done my civic duty. Someone find that kid and put some lipstick in his eyes.

We went to feed some stingrays too. They eat fish and hate feet. Then we went snorkeling in a reef, but like the movies we love here in Socialist Republic of Canuckistan say, it was dead due to the PH balance of the water being too high. It was all dead plants and weird grey stuff.
They said it was beautiful; I said it was a holocaust. I also told everyone the ship we were on was unsinkable. I was also drunk the entire week; here in Canada, we call that situation a Librarian's Cocktail.
I bought 3 bottles of rum at $1 a bottle and it tastes like black licorice. I met a bunch of really great people, many of them from Toronto. And, AND, I got to sit next to a genuine Republican and hear them talk about Communist Obama and his plot to give those shitty poor people and their kids health care. I was giddy as a ho.
I spent something in the field of $400 on whisky. Great free pizza, shit free caesar salad. The ship rocked back and forth most of the time. I got sea legs. That's what they call sea legs, right? When you're standing in a store on land and you're stumbling into racks of glasses?
being in a gym when the boat is throwing shit around is scary, but that didn't stop me, because danger is my middle name, and you can't spell business without danger, and business is good.

They allowed smoking nearly everywhere on the ship.
The first night I was sitting alone in a piano bar, wearing my suit, drinking my Jack Daniels, smoking a cigarette, and listening to a woman play something not Soca or cruise music.
I had to travel to international waters to get that scene. It might not ever happen again.

And then I came home. $700 hydro bill, phone cut off, Church can't move in anymore, Judas hates me, and I've got no money. On the plus side, it's warm now. On the divison side, I'm hungover. On the multiplication side, I need to find a brothel.
Or as we call he here in Canada, the Hooker House of Commons.
That one wasn't as funny as the first one.
I'll just show myself out.

SK

2010-02-24T03:22:00.004-05:00

UDDYETIVITWBB%3785674509

Disney Must Be Destroyed.

By Yawni Code.

Judas came stomping down into the living room the other day asking us what we knew about Justin Bieber.
I'd heard the name before, but like Lost and Jersey Shore, I didn't know anything about it because I live in a world of scotch and women.
We youtubed the shit out of his name to see what the score was.

Justin Bieber is a 15 year old boy who plays x-box (original) and sings R&B songs about women who are up to 10 years older than him. And they humour him because women confuse sex and baby-love.
Justin Bieber comes hot on the tails of Hannah Montana and the Jonas Brothers and every other Disney musical sensation that should be outlawed.
I don't think they should be harmed, because at the end of the day, they're all young idiots. They know not what they do.
But Disney must be destroyed. For the sake of our perfect Western world.

When I was growing up, I had heroes and idols. We all did. Little girls sang Madonna songs, and boys were about rock 'n' roll or metal or punk or whatever. A lot of kids have Spiderman and Batman. Maybe girls have... fucking... Sarah Palin, I dunno.
The youngest performer might have been in his mid 20's - still retarded and inexperienced, but legally capable of defending themselves or making their own decisions. Mentally capable of writing songs or performing.
The notion of children idolizing other children is strange and troubling to me. I always thought it made sense that children idolized adults, because adults were a future you could attain. There's no greater fanatic demographic than young girls. There's a science to it, but I don't have my textbooks on hand.
From Elvis to the Beatles to Eminem, 50 Cent, Soulja Boi, etc, every huge music act has gotten that demographic. The crazy young girls. Because they buy posters and ringtones and every single fucking thing. Girls idolize hard. That's the way of the world.
But when they idolize other kids, that seems bankrupt. Creatively and ethically. Why? Cause kids can't do anything. Kids can't make educated, informed decisions. Kids have no experience to draw from. It's the adults behind the kids selling products through them. I don't think I've ever seen a child artist truly rebel or believe in something. Jonas Brothers purity rings are dubious. And they're up in the older demographic.

Look at Hanson. Everyone used to hate Hanson. But now they're grown up and they're accomplished musicians. They're surprising everyone. I like to think of them as the exception. Even though they came out of it better than most, it took them a long time to be worth a damn. So if you have millions being poured into marketing for a kid, we all know it's not for the music. It's not for the message. This is pure business, and in this instance, it's stepped over the line into creepy pedophile world. We don't let kids drink, smoke, drive, or vote, but we think they can stand onstage in front of thousands of screaming, idiot children and dozens of sick, old pedophiles, and come out of it like diamonds in orange juice.
Who's in charge of this shit? Would you let Justin Bieber borrow your car? How about open up a bank?

So I blame Disney. I blame Disney because they use kids to perfors music they didn't write and don't believe in to sell merchandise. It's like throwing a cat off a bridge to make a point about rape. That's not cool. That's galactic bonerkill.
I think it's weird to see kids write love songs about treating women right. I think it's weird to see Miley Cyrus as the head of an empire. Kids aren't anything, and no child is mentally capable of being a superstar. It's a given that child stars grow up to be maniacs. Showbiz eats grown ups all the time, and they're the ones who blow people to get into it.

I see this as a nefarious scheme and we should all go to Disney Land and barf all up over the spot.

In other news, maybe I should be more smug with my blog posts.
Those hipster kids look happy as shit.

SK

2010-02-22T15:59:00.008-05:00

WWMHIGGSIVMWW%5634879000

The Three Phases of Absolution.

By Switch.

You drink Canadian Club when you wanna get down to brass tax.

Since August, I've been trying to join the Canadian Forces Naval Reserves. Snipe went for officer training last summer to help with his future career, right. Judas and myself and Raver Josh, and even Coop and Cadence, decided we should join too, because the deal seemed pretty sweet.
So Cadence and myself started this whole process back in August, together. We got our jobs set up, we got our timeframes and what we had to do, and we went about the waiting.
Because despite them telling us how fast we should get on the boat, they were the ones scheduling us, and they felt like making us wait.
We would call with questions, get connected with the appropriate individual to answer them, only to have them ask why the fuck we were calling them. So we would send an e-mail with the question to someone else, and never hear back. We might call and explain the issue to the woman handling the connections, and she would connect us to someone else's voicemail, who would never call back.
After awhile it because clear that to get anything done, we had to show up, in person, at the Canadian Forces recruitment centre.
And for awhile, it worked. Everything got done when we walked in the door and asked someone there, even though the people who wouldn't call back, email back, or connect our calls properly were in the same fucking building. And I would talk to them in person. And suddenly they were helpful.

Four months after I first applied and put myself in the system, after they expressed how important it was that I pursue this, I was finally given my aptitude test and my physical exam. I passed both of them. The last 2 tests were the interview, and the medical exam. They were the easy ones. I was excited to go for basic training in the summer, and I was assured that everything was going smoothly.

Fast forward to now, February, after they cancelled my interview twice over the course of three months. After I tried to get in touch with them to see what was going on, only to receive no reply. Fast forward to today, where I said fuck it and went in person again to see if I could get some answers.
I was told, in a condescending tone, they they're not hiring anymore! And that I shouldn't arrive in person anymore because they will get back to me! I had to laugh. I explained that showing up in person is the only way I can talk to anyone, and that when someone gives me their card and says "if you have any questions let me know," they are supposed to field my questions. He told me to call the 1-800 number. I repeated my answer, because the people I am connected to do not return my calls.

Awhile back I wrote on the bureaucracy, and how it's the culmination of all our work, all our art, all our systems, and all our politics. Its our perfect monster that fulfills our need to be shit on and lead in circles. Every human secretly hates themselves and they cover it up with art, religion, substance abuse, or money. Bureaucracies rip that away and show you that nobody is here to help you, and humans can treat other humans like shit.

I encountered the same problem getting CDIY created. I connected the 2 scenarios - both of which were important to me - and went to work designing a way of going about this where my time is not wasted, I am not lead astray, and I get what I want (which is simply the opportunity to work and do what I think is right.)

I believe the 3 steps to absolution are: self-reliance, self-destruction, and self-awareness.
And this is just me talking. This is just me talking on a fucking blog. But I think it's pretty self explanatory. The self destruction part has been going on for a few years now. You need to see what the human body and mind are capable of, you need to know what your pain threshold is, and you need to overcome fear. You need to take everything you are and kick it in the eye. There's but one ruled with which to measure your worth and it's called challenge.
So use pain, use abuse, and use everything you hate and everything that makes you uncomfortable. And then you will know yourself. And then you can use this shit you were born with.
Self awareness is something you need to keep up, because from that grows empathy and all sorts of other bells and whistles. Self reliance is something that sucks and takes forever.
Oh, and absolution? I don't know; I said it because I'm a faggot idiot who uses words he doesn't fully know the meaning of.

For some reason I began believing that other people were willing to help you, and that most institutions cared. Or that they will take a minute to see where you are coming from. I try to do that all the time. I love helping people. I don't like being thanked. Most of the time I don't want people to know I did anything. Everything I do in life, I do because I believe it is right, and rewards are for religion.

So, self reliance. With CDIY I was looking for government grants, and trying to contact people who might be able to point me in the right direction. Big mistake.
With the reserves, I was looking for money, training, help getting in shape, and a job that I could feel confident telling people about. I now see that was a big mistake as well.
If you want to learn how to fight, you can do that on your own. If you want to get in shape, you can absolutely do that on your own. CDIY is the job that I want. I don't need confidence in the form of reciprocated respect from other people. Nobody really does, and definitely not concerning shit like jobs, wages, clothes, or friends.
A lot of people look for some sort of keystone to hold their shit together; a proper triangle, if you can imagine that. So what I'm doing now is flipping that triangle over and frontloading everything to get one ideal result.
And this is a world where if something doesn't have an instant reward, it's not worth it. That's how the entertainment industry and investment banks run it. And they're loaded with coke so they must be doing something right.

So no longer am I looking for angels carrying assistance when it comes to money. I now know that anytime someone helps you, it's because they believe they can get something in return, and more often than not they are going to abuse you (ex. Jobs.) That's just the way of the world. Why would someone help me out of the goodness of their heart? It's preposterous. Why would I have ever thought otherwise? I should take that Highbrow GOP fingerlicking shit back to the cesspool it bonered out from.

As I talk about these 3 rules and how I see the world, I feel like I'm preaching. I feel like I'm portraying myself as someone who has it figured out, or as some deluded cockface who thinks he does, because let's be honest, everyone knows everything about how everything works, and everyone is saying it different. So I'm going to try to sidestep that group (ex. everyone) by including the disclaimer that I'm obviously a shitass cockface and never listen to me.
And that's totally something a shitass cockface would say cause it's obvious and crude.
So, having said that...

So if I get money, it's going to come at a significant cost somewhere down the line. That's how all investments work, and I guess that's the zone I'm in now. I've done away with thoughts of any alternative, because I'll just be wasting my time then. So I can't find a mentor, I can't find a helping hand, and I can't find someone willing to take time out to shepherd me through this, even if they were to get some reward down the line; if it's not guaranteed cash, nobody will throw in.
I've also done away with this idiot joke we call the Canadian Military.
If you see the Canadian Forces, tell them to say hi to their mother for me.
Tell them I fucked their mother in the ass in the shower.

By the way, don't ever listen to me.

SK

2010-02-16T15:48:00.002-05:00

OLLVIRGIOVIJXX%3765789033

ThEMusic - Feb. 16/2010.

By WM Dimes.

Jedi Mind Tricks - Razorblade Salvation
Murderdolls - People Hate Me
Trimonium - Forwards to Eternal Glory
Non Prophets - The Cure
Kid Cudi - Pursuit of Happiness
Buck 65 - 50 Gallon Drum
DMX - Baby Motha
Marilyn Manson - Into the Fire
Sadistik - Memento Mori
In Flames - Reroute to Remain

SK

2010-02-16T15:36:00.005-05:00

ODDEVINUSHAA%6478935647

Sunny Vacation.

By Joker Grasshopper.

My grandmother and grandfather are celebrating their gold-level anniversary. As a result, they have offered to take myself and other family members on a cruise in the Caribbean. It was an incredible gesture which was not accepted by my mother and sister, for reasons known only to them. It might be because my mother and my grandmother (on my father's side, who is dead) have never gotten along, and now they have no middleman to connect them. It's a sad thing but everyone dies.
We will be flying to Miami in around 9 days, and upon landing I will be listening to the song "Miami" by Will Smith on repeat. Once we depart on the ship I'll probably be listening to death metal and doing pushups on bloody knuckles, as is my way.
I'm a very white guy, and as a result I have an ancient hatred of the sun and heat.
So I'll be drinking and yelling and smoking, as is also my way.

The next post on this blog will be the 800'th. I've had this thing for 5 years.
Keep up the good work!

The people balked at the wave when they heard the boom
From the alter high above the mass virgin tomb
To the left of the bastard's birth coccoon
Coming soon to balaclava the Earth and moon

A couple years back I created a Facebook group for the classic sci-fi show Doctor Who. Not many people joined, and since then there have been far more devoted, far older fans who have made groups the number in the thousands. Despite this, I was contacted by a woman working for a magazine in the Netherlands who wanted to ask me some questions to be published in the enterainment section, all pertaining to the show and what I thought of it.
Which is pretty cool. I didn't go on about how Russel T. Davies cocked it up with high-school melodrama. I don't want to be the guy interviewed as a fan who talks shit about the show.
Anyway, there's that. I'm pretty much a superstar now, so ladies, get on this dick before I get it dipped in gold. As is my way.
GO TO HELL!

SK

2010-02-15T01:49:00.003-05:00

ODDIOVIOEVAJJ%3476570095

The Two Rules of Life.

By Tony Mewes.

Here's one more reason the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics are a waste of jabroni: I can't tie my cardigan around streetlamps anymore.
Thanks a cunt, Harper.
Here's another one: The Bewitched Inuit living behind my place keeps laying skullduggeries on me; I'm on trial on behalf of all white people and this exploitation of Native culture as an ironic face for a crippling provincial deficit isn't helping my case. I can't scream "Objection! Heresay!" anymore because my jaw's just turned into centipedes.
Cunt shit balls, Harper.
But that's not why I called.

I work in a restaurant that's scared of real competition.
We're an incredibly busy establishment at the money shot intersection of daily commuters, large-venue attendees, and pretty much anyone coming in or out of the city by train. Every concert, and every convention or event, we get hit like a pedophile hits a child fuck it whatever.
There are other restaurants in the area, but they are not comparable.
They're opening up some sort of new restaurant close by, and allegedly it's championed by some famous chef and it has enough investments to make a pedophile dick a child fuck it whatever.
We even had a big staff meeting about it. One point that the boss raised, and then quickly buried upon surveying the reaction, was that this new restaurant would be unionized.

Now, let's have a look at that. A unionized kitchen. That doesn't happen often.

When I went to Special Chef College, all the chefs told us how much the industry sucked. Everyone who is in the industry will tell you it sucks. Everyone ends up a pissed off alcoholic. If you chart anyone's employment time line, you will see a truly detestable broken line graph. There is no steady incline for kitchen work - line cook, bakery, kitchen manager, dishwasher, head chef, line cook. Repeat, maybe. You've gone completely over the hill, and congratulations, you're 35. You have 2 kids, a mortgage, and you're crunching the numbers on what hours you received last week, and nobody is letting you work overtime because managers get a bonus if they keep labour costs down.

You can't start at the bottom and work your way up to the top in this world. You can be a line cook forever; you see it all the time. You don't get fuckin' promoted from that; what you can do is find a friend who is opening a restaurant and snake your way in. Committing to any one establishment will make you suicidable.

I've worked a lot of jobs and I've never any sector taken advantage of as much as food service.
And why is that, then?

The two rules of life: everyone will do exactly what they can get away with, and everyone can adapt to anything.
Nobody ever says shit in a kitchen. That's just the way it is.
So you hear words like "union" being thrown around, and it's like Wonderland just opened up the bordello.

It breaks my heart when I see people - people filled with the stuff of life - being put in their place.
These people are usually punks, idiots, and nerds, but no matter how much you hate crocodiles, it's painful to watch one being shoved writhing into a furnace.
Not to sound like a motherfucker, but it's corporate brainwashing. I heard a nerd say "I just need to learn my place." Nobody should ever say that. Nobody should be sold some static like that. You see this happening in the music industry. You have employees acting like they're marketing executives, talking about their national demographics, market forces, and second quarter figures as if they have any real idea what the fuck they're talking about. Employees are employees.
I can understand that after my last article, The Toil, it might sound like I'm endorsing a defeatist attitude. It sounds almost like I am saying we should all learn our place.
Not at all. Not even a fucking little bit.
What I am saying is cut the bullshit. If you are an employee, you are not the boss. Don't let them feed you a fifth of the story and think that you're in on it. Nobody who is told anything is in on all of it. You need to find shit out for yourself. unless you own a successful record company, shut the fuck up about how you have promotions all figured out. Until you can speak up for yourself, don't talk about what your place is. Don't fucking' lie to yourself, acting like management, thinking you're a CEO, and making as much money as a fucking line worker. Everyone quit being such fucking nerds and tell your boss to eat a bleached asshole if they think they're gonna treat you like they're doing you a favour. And know the law. Know what they aren't able to get away with. Take some fucking pride in yourself!

Don't be fooled by these people. They're getting away with this. The whole society is run by these people and their illusionary skullduggery.

SK

2010-02-08T15:41:00.007-05:00

CZZWIVERUVSFF%3408765571

The Toil.

By Beau Tyran.

THE SKINNY

So, why hasn't there been any "Skinny" lately? Everyone can tell but let me just put it on record. The Skinny referred to developments/advancements related to CanaDIY Imprint, the micro-press. In a perfect world there would be matters concerning CDIY that I would discuss skinnily, but it's too early for that, so until such a time as matters become skinny, the skinny will be put on indefinate hiatus.
And a skinny Chinese new year to you all!

THE DIRT.

Back when I had a huge group of friends and they all read my blog and had cash to put forward concerning it, I used to used to referr to them all by nicknames. Some of them stuck and are used to this day: Judas, Snipe, Raver Josh (not my invention though,) Bwtchr, Saint, Church (he wanted it for a week, hates it now, I'm gonna make sure it sticks forever,) etc. Judas has taken up the task and has nicknames for people he hates: Gypsy, Seattle, Degoras, etc. I've never mentioned them here, but now that I have, I think we can all agree that Seattle is a hilarious name for anything, ever.
Everyone had some questions about thei nickname back in the day, which flew in the face of the whole thing because the reason I used them was so that I didn't embarrass anyone or disclose nasty, yet entertaining, information that could be related directly to them.
But, at the end of the day, everyone wants to be a star. After all, within the boundaries of the metric system, everything is divisible by 10.

Lately I've assigned nicknames to people that I can't keep track of. Sometimes they change from day to day, and sometimes they last for one day. I've descended into full-blown old man, throwing out whatever noun he thinks woud best suit the situation, calling everyone Billy, probably calling Chinese people "Ragamuffins" behind closed doors, everyone trying to figure out if it is supposed to be derogatory, then trying to figure out if he had any sort of skirmish with anyone of Chinese descent in the past.
Everyone's fought the Chinese at some point.
But that's not why I called.

So then there's this: I don't remember if I gave this guy a name before, and I don't want to go through the archives, so I'm gonna full-blow the old-man here and call him Swipe. Not to be confused with Snipe, who is, for all intents and purposes, one of two people that keep me alive.
Swipe used to work at the Lakeview Restaurant when I was a dishwasher. I had been there for maybe 5 months by the time he joined, and he was assigned to be a line cook. He was younger than me, but it was a really cheap sort of place so we got to go out for extended smoke breaks. This was before I quit, but then started up again. Skinny!

He was an optimistic, Asian guy - maybe Thai? - with an open relationship with his girlfriend and mild bisexual curiosities. He liked to party, rave, take drugs, and listen to popular music. He was the all-around likable guy that will likely go far in life, which is what people like me hate seeing, but people like me hate everything but we want everything.
More than anything else, Swipe liked to discuss politics and his values regarding society.

Despite Swipe's generally cheery outlook on life and his love of partying, his political policies leaned heavily on fascism. Now, you get to be a guy like me - disagreeable, prone to anger, irritable - you learn to deal with this shit. When you're younger, you're looking for a new fight or debate or opportunity to change the world with what you believe is your completely unique outlook on how the world should work. After that phase, you approach this stuff with a calm acceptance. You enter debates a lot less. You only fight with your friends. Go figure.

Anyway, in his world, efficiency is of the utmost importance. He said that individuals will be assigned roles - jobs, careers, placements - that they will be with their whole lives. Handicapped people - both physical and mental - will be destroyed.
I can play this game. Regardless of how incomprehensible the argument is, I can play devil's advocate and play along.
"What about mentally handicapped savants? What about physically handicapped people who are geniuses? What about the lack of passion exhibited - and therefore efficiency - towards predetermined jobs?"
He didn't have answers for these questions.
"What about me? What would I do in this world?" I asked.
"Well, you'd be a... dishwasher," he said.
"But I hate being a dishwasher!"
"But it's your placement!"
"But I chose this position out of desperation."
"Well..."

Strangely, these fascist arguments seem to hinge on emotional, rather than logical, facets. When questioned, there's no true reality you can draw from. There's no study or evidence you can claim, except the fall of fascist governments.
But I don't need to go into that here. This is about his claim that I would be a dishwasher my whole life. For some reason, that struck me as terrible. And I've had so many jobs in my life. Within that, I've worked in 3 restaurants, and in 2 of them I washed dishes and did odd jobs.

Lately I've started to wonder if - ignoring his extreme theories and unfounded assertions - he was right. It's a strange thing to wonder if, indeed, you are ignoring everything else. But part of it rang true to me. The fact that I am not in school, incapable of handling numbers, emotionally unstable, have an absolute disrespect towards authority, obsessive compulsion towards organization and cleanliness, and little extended job experience... maybe that means I am supposed to toil away for the rest of my life?

Now, let's consider toiling. And let's start with me taking about myself.

Back in the day, back when I had faith in people and the media, I would watch music videos and movies. They seemed to depict the criminal lifestyle as freedom. It wasn't your regular 9 to 5, and you could have the money and the power and the women. So I went to go and do it. And for awhile that was my thing, but I promised not to mention that shit again, so I won't go too far with it. The point being that I tried it, went at it from all angles, and the fact of the matter is it is no different. You are still answering to someone - working for someone. You still have quotas, you still have to deal with someone above you, and you still have to deal with consequences when something is not done.
Hilariously, you end up making less in crime than you would working at a fucking fast food joint.
Unless you're high the fuck up, but then you're dealing with enemies. You have more accountability. You start moving up in this thing and you will step on toes, and things will be taken from you. And if they are, you will have to retaliate.
And if you don't, you might as well fuckin' leave town.

So, crime is full of shit just like everything else. So you decide to get a job because it's all the same, but then you begin to think about self employment. Fuck the boss, you can do their job better than them. That's what happened with CanaDIY. You begin to crunch the numbers, look into running a business, and who you need to talk to. Now you have to answer to suppliers, you have to answer to bookstores, you have to answer to people who you need to please you even work with you. You can't just walk into that world and be the boss. You need to work under people to be the boss. For how long? Who knows. Luck's a big factor.
Let's jump ahead to CDIY, the new, big project that gives my life purpose. You've done most of the work yourself. You're existing outside of traditional supply chains and stores. But you need money. You need to sell yourself. Now, there's lots of avenues you can travel down here; government grants, bank loans, angel investors, venture capital, etc.
You go for a meeting at the NAC and you need to sel yourself. You need to treat these people like they are your boss. They need to like you - to want something from you - to work with you.
Same with bank loans. Same with angel investors. Worse with Venture Capitalists. The bigger you get, the worse it is. The more debt you incur. The more people you have to pay back, and to thank, and to act in the interest of.
Act in the interest of. Very similar to taking orders from. very similar to being an employee.

So, the point of all of this?
What it means to toil. As in, what it means to work. As in, what it means to work under someone, to answer to someone, or to act in the interest of someone.
A lack of freedom. The fact that there is no such thing as total freedom. There is nothing outside of this system. The rebellious band still needs to turn a decent record in to their label, who is free to reject it if they feel that it doesn't fit with... well, the brand, which is the band.
Every rebel works for someone. Every nihilist needs to believe in something. No man is an island. No system can exist outside of the system is is trying to destroy.

So, the point of all of this?
Toiling away in obscurity as a dishwasher, the latest in a long line of failed attempts to become something greater. Dishwashing feels a lot like drug dealing, which feels a lot like pitching your idea to investors. You have no control here, and the sooner you appreciate the presence of The Toil, the easier it will be to cut through those fictions that lead us astray.

SK

2010-02-07T19:47:00.003-05:00

DZZINVICTUSLVV%5653578907

The Berg Quartet.

By Errancy Ink.

"Why don't you go make yourself a fuckin' steak and cheese sandwich and have a fuckin' smoke break?" What you say to someone who you want to calm down.
"Go tell 'em where the coffee is." To command someone to give someone else what-for.

Louis C.K. said it best: rich people have no idea what it's like being poor, but poor people know exactly what it's like being rich, because every poor person has imagined what it would be like and has a precise plan for what they would do. Often times it's based on revenge. Maybe shoot a gold coin into your boss' stupid face, or shoot your boss' stupid face into the sun.
The common theme seems to be that everyone hates working but everyone wants to be rich.

The only time I've bought a lottery ticket is when I did it for an elderly Scottish crossing guard when we lived on Pape. Everytime I crossed his path, no matter where I was going or what kind of rush I was in, he always persuaded me to take his money and go buy 2 lottery tickets with numbers we would decide together. I don't think he ever won, but he said if he did he would split the winnings with me. Even if I was ate for work, I enjoyed doing it. Not because of the money, but because he was a fresh cat.
But the money was still there in the back of my head. What if?
I had a whole thing planned where I was going to talk about the lottery mentality, but it's not very interesting. Because I don't know that much about it and I can't bring anything new to the table. I'm not Matthew Good. This isn't a thinking man's blog. This is a fat man's hand filled with birdseed.

A couple years back Raver Josh and I were making music together. We brought in Ash 3 Guns to form what we would initially call the Berg Quartet (3 people HAHAHAHAHAHHA!) and then later GDK (Gunn, Dimes, and Keyboard 1 as Raver.) I wrote some lyrics and grabbed whatever recording equipment I could get. I had an old $15 microphone I had from years back, an we had Raver's synth (one of 2 items he owned) and we had a small amplifier that looked like it was puled from a tree trunk. And boxes of cables and a laptop. I got a copy of Ableton Live, because it was the only thing I coud think of. Each song would take 10 minutes to render properly.
It would usually begin with me creating some sort of drum loop and basic groove. Raver would play this through some broken headphones and begin to think of something he could play, and the right synth voice to do it with.
So then Raver would play something good on his synth. This is where the skilled musicianship begins and ends. I would sit on the floor and record it into my laptop from the amp with my cheap microphone. With those 2 things, I would begin to arrange, chop, distort, and organize it into a song. It would end up sounding like some lo-fi eectronic shit but it had character.
And then I would go record my vocals, because at that time, I was operating under the assumption that I could perform vocals.

The reason now escapes me, but we had broken into one of the newly vacant apartments beneath us. Judas had broken the lock with a crowbar, and we came-and-went using whatever cheap card we could slide between the door and frame. Besides being a fully livable vocal booth, I don't know what we wanted with it in the first place, but serendipidy is a pussy with a lollipop in it, if you know what I mean.
I would usually take my shit down there - the laptop, the mic, and the headphones - and yell and scream to whatever song I had completed up until that point.

Now it should be noted again - or maybe for the first time because I don't know - that I have a weird throat condition where it is very sensitive. In cold weather I cough and hack a lot. If I scream, it begins to tickle and get anxious until I begin hacking feverishly, gagging on nothing until I feel like I have to vomit. I never do, but it's a hurdle you have to deal with when you're doing multiple takes of screaming at the top of your lungs. If you were walking by, all you'd hear was me screaming "ransomform" and then getting bulemic with it.
So it all took a bit longer than I had expected.
Ash 3 Guns was supposed to come in later with guitar and better female vocals later, but the whole thing sort of disappeared when I started work on CanaDIY, among other things. Raver being a big Greek queer is another reason. We kept saying we would get back to it, and I had at least 10 songs written. Songs with better structure and actual themes regarding the music; something beyond "dicking around and snapping your fingers with self satisfaction."

Shortly after we had like 5 or 6 songs we started to put them on MySpace and iLike and Facebook and all that shit. But we don't play live or market or anything so it is a dead page full if weird Canadian genre-smash music. I even compiled an EP and made a cover and everything. For someone who is too unskilled for hip hop, and too vomity to do metal, and too white to do folk, I understand that my musical aspirations are limited.
Later on I bought a Midi Controller for the purpose of creating more music, and perhaps doing live electronic-only shows with Raver, but it never materialized.
So that's the really boring fucking story about what happened to the Berg Quartet and GDK.

SK

2010-02-07T18:51:00.002-05:00

PRRGANGATORIRWW%1878765546

Kid Redeemer.

By Tm Bmb.

The past few years I've decided I want to have a child when I am older. This was a big step considering I used to be able to plan only to the end of next month, and when I was in highschool I was under the impression I would kill myself after I graduated. And that wasn't even a case of high school being fun, or the time I socially peaked. I fucking hated high school. I don't know why I was thinking that. Everything got so much better after it; like a million times or something whatever.

The reason I want to have a child - preferably a boy because I'm a fucking male and anything else is a compromise and you all know it - is to have the chance to raise it in a fashion I wish I experienced. I am a mentally unstable, furious, self destructive, confused individual, and I would love to redeem myself (simply for being here) by giving something back. Raising a little person to be better, smarter, more likable, and more prepared for how the world works, than I. Nobody taught me how to shave or how to do taxes or invest money, or gave me any advice on how to make it in the world. My mom was there, but she has her own shit to worry about so I can't go asking these questions. I would love the chance to be responsible for a young, socially capable, intelligent, and driven person entering into the world to make it a better place than I ever have.
Plus, you know, kids keep you in line and they end up knowing more about technology no matter how hard you try, so it's also an investment in the wonderful future that will betray you, you fuckin' fuddy duddy.
I also like kids, so it's not like this whole thing would be a bitter pill to swallow.

It's weird for a young cat like myself to even talk about that. Cadence told me I was an old person and I don't want to be that. I feel like I've seen enough to cut out the bullshit. But maybe I'm an idiot so who knows. Ever plan I've ever made has been misled for some reason or another. I have elaborate delusions of grandeur and it's gotten too difficult to bring them back to reality. And I've gotten good at convincing people that they are possible. They will look perplexed later when I become the plan's worst critic. This is one of the reasons I can't tell people anything and trust them. Well, it's both reasons: I can't trust my own reasoning, and I can't trust my ability to put it into reasoned, logical pitches, because I am too good at it, at least for most people.
I love corporate rhetoric. I love the way it sounds and how long it takes to say anything. That's how I pitch, and most people will just agree that it sounds fooproof because I talk about contingency plans that, if you break it down, have no meat on them. I'm not even that good at it, but the vaguer you are and the more dynamic the words you use are, you can go on for 15 minutes about fuck all talking about market forces you don't understand and technology you read about on Wikipedia.
Not citing any specific incidents here, either. I'm just talking. I haven't eaten today. I'm going to try and get it all out of my system should I start making schedules again, because everything's getting desperate over here.

SK

2010-02-05T16:01:00.003-05:00

OAAGURJICFEE%3476899032

I Hate the Ocean.

By Marcus Detonated.

The ocean is by far the worst place in the world.

I read an article once about how humans can never live in space. Outer space is a close second for the worst place on planet Earth. The lack of oxygen is one thing. Radiation is another. And, in many ways, everything in space is so big and terrifying we begin to wonder why the fuck we're talking about iPads. Outer space makes you feel like an idiot, and if we were enveloped in it, we might all go insane. Looking at quasars all day, feeling bad when we masturbate because I can see a supernova.
Go on girl, touch your clitoris, just be aware that you can see galaxies colliding over there. Entire galaxies crashing into eachother, while you massage yourself. Welcome to the future.

The article went on how habitable our own fucking world is to humans. He posed a thought experiment, or a think explain: drop a thoughtless, naked human - a meat mannequin - onto the planet and see how long it lasts. Most of the planet's surface is water, so there's a good chance that if you randomly deposit a human, it will drown in a matter of minutes. Now look at land: you run the risk of being deposited in the arctic, or the desert, and you won't last a day. The jungle is a big fucking gray area because the jungle hates humans with disease and impossible spiders. And this is all assuming the thing doesn't get murdered by the wide array of hideous predators that we share the world with. We're not even going to include them. In this study, we are ignoring grizzly bears.

So, if you look at it that way, human beings are very, very finely tuned to live in a very small percentage of the earth's surface, and we've had to create ways for us to survive in most of them, with clothes and houses and fences.
Despite all our technology and sweaters and explosions, we can never tame the ocean.
We can never live in the ocean, and I submit that we shouldn't want to.
Because the ocean is the devil's toilet.

Social 1.
Social 2.
Social 3.

I hate the ocean and every human should hate the ocean too. The most disgusting, horrible creatures live there. Whales are big evil ships. Sharks are the only thing that can hypothetically devour a robot. I truly believe that squids are big sick nightmare transmitters.
Every new organism they discover, every picture I see, I want to destroy it. I want to destroy all of it.

You ever been fucking drowned? You ever swallow water wrong and you start coughing and it stings and burns at the same time? Imagine that, increasing in agony, until you die, bloated and cold, probably carried off to some coral reef where dead pirates play backgammon.
If you're in the water too long your skin gets wrinkled and unpleasant. When you see someone underwater, they look weird. All their loose parts float up like trees; you see your wife naked underwater and you want to smash her brains in. Water turns us against eachother. It turns our loved ones into enemies and our enemies into our parents?!

If the Earth is a giant evolutionary drafting board, the ocean is the trash bin beside it, where all the crumpled up rejected designs go. Every marine organism looked like it tried to evolve, and it tried to maybe go on land at some point, but then sunk back in to devolve into piles of eyes and teeth and invisible skin. There's no way I can imagine them reproducing. I don't see failure as something that can procreate; it's just the result of something going wrong. It just is. The ocean is an existential quagmire. The more we study it, and with every abhorrent layer we peel back like rotted skin, the less we see ourselves. These creatures are not our kin. We look in a mirror and all we see is fog and vast, ancient evil. Everything underwater wants to kill us or suck our blood or lay eggs under our fingernails.
With a shark, you know where you stand. Everything is on the table with sharks and I believe we've taken them for granted. Everything else is a sticky, cold question mark.

I fucking hate the ocean and the ocean hates humans.
Fact.

SK

2010-02-01T15:10:00.005-05:00

OAABERVIGXARYY%2778657490

Hip Hop.

By D. Compose

I only seem to write this thing once I've had a drink in me.
I suppose you can can call it the Walker's Perspective. Its been a bad while for money with all the bills so I don't have enough for the bus or subway. This is how it used to be a couplayears ago: it's all on here, anyway. We used to walk everywhere, which isn't bad when you live in a city. Even when I was living out in the middle of nowhere it wasn't so bad. As long as you have a music player you can go into a trance. In those instances where you don't have music, you 'ave time to think. You can do all those things you can't do when you're distracted by the internet, video games, or friends. Cadence doesn't like being alone with her thoughts, so I guess it's not for everyone.
Distances between destinations are a lot shorter than you would think. This is how they used to do it before cars. This is how they used to do it even when cars were around, but to a lesser extent. It's just bad news when it gets colder and your bones begin to freeze. Like today.

I'm a guy who likes hip hop. It's pretty funny because Cadence, who is black, was always looked at sideways because she liked rock and punk and electronic music. She dresses accordingly. I'm the white guy who loves hip hop and jazz. Our common ground is Bloc Party, Infected Mushroom, and Radiohead.
While she understands hip hop and listens to it from time to time, I'm the guy who can talk for hours about the underground scene in Toronto, Philadelphia, New York, Detroit, and Halifax. I love underground hip hop, and I love a ot of the mainstream stuff. I like Eminem and Lil Wayne, Jay Z and The Game, DMX and The Wu Tang Clan, but I also love Jedi Mind Tricks, Ill Bill and Necro, Twiztid and Army of the Pharaohs, Busdriver and Classified, Buck 65 and the almighty Sage Francis, King Gordy and D12, Sadistik and Tech N9ne, Apathy and Celph Titled, La Coka Nostra and Atmosphere, POS and Mr. Hyde, and let's not forget K-Os.

In Underground Hip hop, you don't hear much talk about money. Eminem's Sim Shady LP was alot like this. The whole album was poverty, frustration, and desperation. It was the working man's hip hop album. There was no talk about being a drug lord or driving around in expensive cars.
And that's why Eminem took off like he did. Even with the Marshal Mathers LP, this was the everyman's reaction to fame. Frustration became sickness, dreams became prisons, and when people come at you trying to be your friend for no other reason than you are famous, this is the fallout. It was the everyman's fame album.
Which is why it sold so many fucking copies.

You listen to Ill Bill, you hear politics, violence, and stories. Lots of stories. You listen to Necro and you hear the hip hop version of death metal: fantastic scenarios and brutal fucking ideas.
You listen to Twiztid and you hear ghosts, magic, zombies, serial killers, and being awake while your corpse is being buried. You listen to Sadistik and you hear lost love, winter, and the struggle with spirituality and god. You listen to Buck 65 and you hear stories; all the time, stories. Alternate realities, characters, forgotten eras and lost ideals. You want to hear about the Canadian underground scene? 2 words: Cassified, motherfucker. You want to hear some fucking ridiculous, crazy shit? Busdriver.
The underground has all the shit you can't do in the mainstream because, in the mainstream, you need to make the archetypal Hip Hop Album. Listen to any Snoop Dogg album to see what I mean. 2 songs for the ladies, 2 songs for the club, one banger for the radio, and full of collaborations nobody gives a fuck about. I like Snoop Dogg. I just wish that when I bought a Snoop Dogg album, it was only Snoop God Damned Dogg. Nelly does the same thing.

I like the samples. A lot of people hate that, and people hate electronic music because of that too.
But let's be honest, people: there's no such thing as a completely original anything. Hip Hop and Electronic just realized that. They realized that taking a whole song and fucking with it is no worse than the G chord you used in your fucking song about a girl which you lifted from some point in the thousand-year-history of people using that same fucking note. You stole your structure from the Beatles, your aspirations from Jimi Hendrix, your style from The Damned and your opinions from Matthew Good. This is a double standard that I do not appreciate. And this isn't music; this is ALL ART, so everyone shut the FUCK UP.

You hear people talk like Hip Hop isn't music in the classical definition, and it's hard to argue with. It doesn't follow the same rock structure that popularized The Beatles, it uses samples with great relish, and often times the choruses aren't something you can sing along to or get stuck in your head. Some people will talk the science of harmony, bridges, and choruses. These are valid things and I do not want to disrespect this craft.

It's something more; while it utilizes harmonies, rhythm, and pretty much any instrument you could imagine -juxtaposing the modern with the antiquated for no other reason than it sounds cool and you're able to - the vocalist is front and center. Very few rappers can sing. Very few rappers who can sing can sing well. But that's not why we're here.
You look at Eminem, Sage Francis, and Tech N9ne; gentlemen who use their voice, tone, cadence (HA!) and speed to use their voice as if it were an instrument. And I don't mean in the traditional "singing" method, because let's be honest, if the voice were a guitar, most modern vocalists just strum it. We're not taking about metal here, because everyone knows metal is the king of all music. No, we're talking like people who use their voice like skilled jazz horn players. I've never been as enthralled by a rock jam session as I have by a hip hop freestyle. It's prople combining art and public speaking. A good hip hop song can be as heavy as a speech. It can tell a story, punctured by a complex rhyme scheme and flowing with the mood of the production.
There hve been good stories told through rock songs, and powerful messages delivered. Nobody is disputing that.
And that ties into a larger point I have knocking around in my head: hip hop hasn't peaked yet. If you boil it down to its fundamentals, there's so much more you could do with storytelling. If Hip Hop is rock music, then the heavy metal equivalent hasn't been invented yet. There aren't the 9 minute songs that play around with structure, themes, and patterns. Hip Hop doesn't have their Tool yet, and if you don't like Tool then that might the worst sentence of your entire life. There is no Black metal, or any Metallica yet.
And I think that when it does, it will come from the underground, where all the fresh ideas are. Where people are still taking risks.

SK

2010-01-25T15:15:00.009-05:00

OOWFELLIGIRWOO%348989755

The Youth Delusion.

By Dig Domino.

It's been one of those weeks where you listen to "50 Gallon Drum" by Buck 65 on repeat.
This year we've had the mildest winter I can remember. We had maybe 2 weeks of snow and cold. Most of January it's been warm, and wet. It's raining today.
They tell me that if global warming is the birth, then there will be a period of sickness by way of global cooling. Considering that the planet Earth was doing a shit job of being fucking here when resources were plentiful, the weather was manageable and there far fewer curve balls, you can only imagine what will happen when the rug gets pulled out beneath us.
The socio-political quagmires are going to make us look at our flatscreen TVs funny.
I mean, if there's any justice, which there isn't. So maybe we'll all be fine.

I am drinking a lot by myself these days. Those who do that are like smokers, which I also am. There's a shared pain there. Not as much pain as is available for the taking in this world, but enough to be looked at with roof-eyebrows.
They say it's bad to drink alone. I say it's bad to drink in public, like you're trying to showboat; hot doggin' it, free-wheelin' like some sort of philistine.
So why am I doing it? I'm not above the humiliation of self-analysis. And I'm not above the humiliation of telling others, even if it's on a blog that nobody reads.

Because I am depressed and upset and pissed off. As lame as that sounds.
There's nothing in this heart except anger and sadness, and when the anger runs out, all you have is this. Cadence looked at me and said she saw a sadness in my eyes, and it was there when she met me. I don't know what to make of that, but since I don't look at my own eyes, I'll concede that she might know what she's talking about.
You have this catatonic pseudo academic; an anomaly reserved to the first world, at least in these numbers. At least with this sense of style.

And why do I think like this? Why am I the way I am?
I think it was how I was raised. And I think it is how a lot of people were raised in this culture.
I place a lot of blame on the self-esteem movement. Parents raising their children to believe that they are special, or that everything they do, or everything they attempt, is good.
And I guess the point there is to build confidence. But confidence in a vacuum is a bad thing.
Confidence without any merit leads to a sense of entitlement. It leads to assholes.
These methods worked their way into public schools, not just limited to "no child left behind" policies or shoving kids through the system. No, this is how you train your children to think - no, not limited to censorship, or just hiding your children from violent media and sex and opposing ideologies. That's a whole other argument that leads to psychopaths and obsessives.
No, this is about raising kids to believe they are secretly Alexander the Great, and they are just waiting for their moment to blossom. This is raising kids to believe that they are in some way better than others, and when they try their hand at something grand, or enter the world, they are let down. Then they get depressed or defensive or antagonistic. They will seek to identify what the problem is, and I don't believe that most humans will look at themselves. I believe they will look at the system and ask themselves why it wasn't what they were promised.
Why won't the government take care of you, why won't people help you with your great idea? Don't they see how great your idea is? What's their problem? Can't they recognize greatness when they see it?

Some people wait forever. Some people play videogames all day, never get married, never get a career, never try anything big, and never grow up because they feel like they deserve something. Everyone around here waits. Everyone around here distracts themselves, and it's not hard to do that in North America. Nobody will ever start a revolution of any kind - sorry KRS-One - because they have movies, videogames, TVs, cars, McDonalds, liquor, cigarettes, and drugs. The poorest people in North America can afford these things. Anyone can buy a car. You can buy a car for $500. The most destitute people in this place have so many things to take the pain away, and to self medicate. Sometimes people self medicate so much they become poor and destitute. And it never gets better. The core problems are not being addressed.
Drugs are not the problem. Why do people take drugs? Why do people drink? Because they are unhappy. Why are they unhappy? Because they have no money, because there are no jobs? Why do young black men in ghettos sell drugs, do you think? Is it because their single mom can't get a job where they live, their dad isn't around and they feel as if they need to take care of their family? What would you have these people do, be poor and die?
Maybe then they get caught up in the glamorous criminal lifestyle. That's step 2, though. That's after poverty, peer pressure, and violence. And these are not their problems. This is not a country that they are in control of. They are just trying to survive here. Everyone, regardless of skin colour, religion, or geographic location, wants to be happy. Most want a family most want good friends, and I believe most humans in this world want to do something good with their lives.
And so if someone takes crystal meth because their lives are unbearable, because maybe they were sexually molested most of their lives, or maybe their child just died or anything, anything! Nobody wants to be a drug addict! Nobody wants to be poor! Nobody wants to be unhappy! This is just the god damned hydra of human misery! They are not stupider than rich people, they don't want to live any less than any of us, but we lock these people up -wasting countless tax dollars - for something as trivial as smoking crack or selling weed? Why? What's the core problem here? What is the real enemy in all of this? Is this an antagonistic, alien threat, or does this come from within?

People look for enemies everyday. It's all the same enemy. There's no alien here; these things have existed for as long as there have been humans.
I've met a lot of Sri lankan and Somalian people. They seem to have a better grasp of finances. Every Sri Lankan I've met owns some kind of property. The dishwasher I worked with owned a house in Montreal he was renting out. A guy I knew from France owned a house he was renting out, too. People from other parts of the world seem to have a better understanding of how these things work. They understand investments, they save money better, and they are able to do without. This is not the colour of their skin, or the nature of their religious beliefs, but the nature of their economies and how they were raised.
I look around and I see a capitalist society that rewards the individual. People want to win the lottery so they can tell everyone to fuck off. People go to casinos, and they have get-rich-quick schemes. Countless nobodies want to become celebrities. Not actors, not musicians, not filmmakers, but celebrities. People who are rich and famous; people who got discovered. Young people who are shepherded through this system and live in mansions with their own clubs and bowling alleys. The Age of Paris Hilton.
Robert Redford put it best: "Paris Hilton doesn't have anything to do with anything."
Standing fucking ovation. We're living in the shadow of the industrial revolution. This is the incestuous child of fame and glory. Reward with no work. And we punish those who want to work.
We commend our live sell outs, and mythologize our dead rebels. It's no surprise to me that in this society we try and teach everyone that they are special. Not different, but special. Nobody knows how to kill something negative, and nobody knows how to construct. Everyone's an armchair academic who has no relevance. Everyone is simultaneously convinced that nothing can be changed, but wants to be rich. These are horrible ways to think. I can no longer defend this world or the human condition. All the best aspects of us have been buried.
So, I guess that's why it's Dig Domino.

Forgive me, I've been drinking.

SK

2010-01-22T16:25:00.002-05:00

ODDLOXERCISTFF%6745611105

Lost Drunk Idiot.

By Wicked Stripe.

When I got my Blackberry, I spent the first week shoving it in everyone's faces, then declaring that I will receive no comeuppance for my rude behavior.
And I still haven't, except for a crazy phone bill. But that's a slow coming thing.
So I guess the question is: if your comeuppance is a slow, long term thing, is that comeuppance or is it just life?
Food for thought, as Sherlock Holmes said in the new Guy Richie Sherlock Holmes reboot starring Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law.

So the other night I showed up late and drunk to the staff party. It sort of went downhill from there as everyone gave me their drink tickets (!) and I don't seem capable to turn down a great fucking opportunity.
So halfway through the night I guess I smoked a lot and left and lost one of my gloves. I grabbed a bunch of catered goods for Cadence (cookies and stuff?) and went on the subway. The next thing I remember is sitting in some fucking alleyway, somewhere in the city, not sure how I got there. I think I pissed myself, and the only question I have is: when?
Was it in the alley? Was it on the subway with all my coworkers? I was laughing like a libertine. Everytime I threw my head back to cackle I smashed my head on a brick wall. "There's a mark," a thief might say. A cab driver might say. Anyone would say that. That purple tie that everyone loved could be the end of me.

The box of cookies and cake was smashed and dented and twisted. I had abandoned everything I thought was important self preservation, humility, dignity - and focused everything I had on getting those cookies back to Cadence. Rob me, stab me, just leave the cookies.
I guess that's love? Right?
Comeuppance!
I got a cab home and crashed into everything. Cadence said I smashed my head on a bathtub.
Why did I do this? Why did I behave this way, and why didn't I stop? Was it the agenda I had going in? Was it because I was pissed off with things that were happening? Of course.
But I'm still a retard.

I have a bad memory. I find myself repeating the same conversations with people, going so far as to include an explicit disclaimer to my friends that it will happen and they should tell me. I think it's getting worse. I cant do directions. I cant do math, numbers, or most spacial problem-solving.
Or, I can do that. I do great on those sections of aptitude tests. Because I can recognize patterns.
And I don't think that's beyond the capabilities of anyone, but since it's really all I've got (patterns, abstract systems of reasoning) I have to be really good at it.
I like systems. I like how things work, and how they relate and affect eachother. I'm a structure guy. That's the only thing that keeps me writing. That's what keeps me interested in music, poetry, and loose prose.
I can't retain most of the knowledge, but I can factor what I learn immediately into previously established principles and values, leaving them written down and carrying them with me. I factor new information into old systems, or completely redesign old systems.
Been doing that with CDIY a lot lately.
That's how I ended up in a fucking alley, laughing and smashing my head.

SK

2010-01-19T15:18:00.002-05:00

LAAENCROCIUSEKK%2377786554

Infinite Bottles.

By Tune Salamander.

I'm going to a staff party tonight, held at the restaurant where we all work. I keep being invited and I am assured it will be "dirty." That's Canada talk for slutty and sexy. I went to one before and there were free drinks. I had 15 drinks. I took advantage of it like it was a young rural girl who just arrived in the city via bus, looking for her dreams.
You wanna be a star, kid?
I love free drinks.

Me: Will there be free drinks?
Someone: When you get dinner you get a bottle at your table.
Me: Is the bottle infinite?
Someone: Well, if you finish the bottle they bring you another.
Me: Can I be "eating," all night, assuring an infinite line of bottles?
Someone: I don't think there can be infinite bottles.

Most of my dreams are grounded upon my incredibly loose understanding of the concept of infinity. I can have infinite bagels. I went out today looking to buy infinite bagels. I got 6. In my world, that's a failure. That's the Third Reich and AIDS. Only getting 6 bagels is the worst day of my fucking life.
Anyway, table bottles. These are the rewards of being a dishwasher.

Being a dishwasher at that restaurant is great because it is big and clean. It's not like those hole-in-the-wall dish pits you've seen. The ones I've worked in. Drawbacks: nobody talks to you. Not even if they like you outside, in the real world. People will ignore you, and during a slow day, you're left bouncing ideas off yourself, laughing at your own jokes, or interrupting peoples' conversations with said jokes and walking off laughing like a goddamn rapist.
It drives you insane, and your jokes suffer. The scenarios are too obscure.
For example, this was the funniest thing to me:
"Tonight on Manic Murderball Mondays!: The Rapists Vs. The Racists!"
Fuckin' gold. This guy's Mel Brooks, I said into the mirror. Spaceballs. Blazing Saddles. I got the midas touch. I walk up to one of the girls:
"What do you say to a woman with 2 black eyes? Nothin', you already told her twice!"
Fuckin' gold. Walk off laughing like a son of a bitch. Don't wait for a reaction. Don't wait for a validation. You've done what you came here to do. You're the man.

I feel as if web 2.0 happened organically, and everyone is trying to predict how web 3.0 will pan out, with semantic web searches, intelligent machies, and the proper annexing of information.
All this sounds consumer based to me. If web 2.0 was consumers becoming contributers, and those lines being blurred, what will this do to the blog? What will this do to search optimization? Are we still running with making everyone a contributer, essentially creating data records of the shit they do everyday?
Is CDIY web 3.0? Social Networks seem behind the curve. Everything you know about is behind the curve. I still don't have a flatscreen TV. The TV we have we bought at Value Village for $5. Why does a laptop cost $1000? Furthermore, why does a piece-of-shit iPod cost $200?
Technology is so stupid. I'll look to the war between the late night hosts to put it all in perspective.
Then I'll look to the clusterfuck in Haiti for perspective on that.
And then from there, let us consider global warming, and how total dependancy on non-renewable resources is someone a child will laugh at. That shit makes kids not want to grow up.
And then, for further persepctive, let us age. Let's all come back to this with 10 years of experience, and see that time hates us, and history laughs at us as we repeat the same mistakes. Throughout the generations, nobody seems to learn anything, and we follow the same fucking patterns. Young people want to either control or destroy the world, and as you get older, you sell out to the systems that have been worked on - made perfect - over decades. The bueraucracy is a perfect mechanism. It can last as long as there are humans. There is no accountability, there is no blame, and at the end of the day, it doesn't need to create or provide anything. It exists to manage and sustain. It exists as a tunnel that we pass through. We can't ever destroy it, and it rules our lives and humiliates us and empowers the careless.

The bureaucracy exists in the military, corporations, governments, businesses, technology, and finance. It's everywhere. Whatever problem you have, it's nobody's job. The person whom you need to contact can't help you. Move along. Everyone within it is miserable, and everyone that has to deal with it is miserable. Everyone hates this giant fucking system, and it's everywhere, and it's responsible for everything from friendly-fire fatalities, to terrorists mistakenly being let on planes, to you losing all your money to you not getting your x-box fixed. This is the sum total of humanity, of all our art and progress and delegation. In the future, bureaucracies will be staffed by machines. We won't make anything, or govern anything. We will just be art and sports people, and we will be forever at war. We will delegate all our good characteristics to fucking plants and we'll remain on the plains of sexuality, fighting forever, hoping for a magic afterlife, and being afraid of the unknown.

Anyway.

SK.

2010-01-13T16:00:00.003-05:00

HWWVIGELORARXX%3478999032

The Long Bird Story.

By Dani Compose.

You get some and you lose some.
I bought the contac lenses, but then my gums started to bleed. You can have eyes or you can have teeth, but you can't have both.
Stephen Harper is Canada's George Bush. Why do we keep giving this guy a pass? Someone needs to throw a shoe at him, or a pie or a bag of dicks. That'd show him to hijack the government like some sort of cretin. A big bad of dicks sent sailing across the room, right in the kisser.
Oh, Canada.

Everyday it gets harder and harder to make CDIY exist. You spend so much time underwater, building walls around yourself, wasting time and wasting energy, until you figure out which way up is, and you start making plans to get out of the ocean. You rationalize how it must be up there, and how bright it is and how sweet the air will be, and you hear tell of flocks of birds who fly freely in that world. They tell you that these birds will be able to help lift you out, and maybe you'll learn how to fly or grow a beak or some garbage.
I'm no fucking bird scholar.
So you do away with coral of escapism, and abandon all the giant squid and jellyfish, and you eventually breach the surface. You see birds flying high, and you see a select few flying low, and you mistake that as an offering of assistance. You call for help, but nobody is listening. You make whatever feeble lunge you are capable of to try and grab ahold of some of them. You manage to get your hand on one of their legs, and they drag you for a few seconds before shaking you off. They don't fly higher. You begin to wonder if, instead of offering assistance, they're just lazy, or inferior, or unwilling to do whatever it takes to ascend. You being to wonder if all the stories are wrong, and that birds will only carry you if you trick them. Maybe you need to learn how to catch fish and offer it to them. Maybe there needs to be an exchange, or some sort of con.
Maybe you have to become a fisherman before you become a bird, and those birds higher up are trying to be something you can't even see, down there in the murky depths of poverty, obscurity, and self destruction.

Forgive the long, weird string of metaphors there. The past month or so I've been having to go back to the drawing board and create new strategies. I've discovered that I need to do mostof this myself, and that going through channels once attested to be helpful is, ultimately, unfruitful. Nonfruitful.
I feel a bit more comfortable doing it this way. I had always figured that was how the world worked, but that there may be another world - full of birds and sweet air and freedom - that you needed an invitation to get into. Birds are the same as squid, air is the same as water, and everything is encapsulated in a cold, violent, confusing universe that drives all sentient life insane.
There's no real difference; just various shades of motherfucker.

SK

2010-01-05T01:46:00.007-05:00

FWWDERCARVAYCC%3455620091

The Fall of CanaD.I.Y.

By WM Dimes

I started Voice in the Horse years ago. When I first started writing it, it was a script. I was writing a lot of scripts at the time. Midway through I decided it would work better as a book because I was spending huge paragraphs describing the scenery, the gestures, the tones, and all the stuff buried within other things. It's very much a story built on subliminal themes, how people stand, and how they speak.
So I started over again and put it down as a novel. I was selling drugs at the time. This will be the last time I ever mention that. Then I moved to Toronto and it got put on hold. We started doing drugs during that time, and nothing really got done. Nothing except a lot of bullshit and idiot friendships. A lot of wasted time going after broads and falling deeper into a shit lifestyle of self destruction, regular destruction, parties, raves, fights, and crashing in miserable places.
Years passed before I went back to it. I came at Voice in the Horse with fresh eyes and reworked it. I doubled the page count and restructured it. Before long it was finished and I was excited.

For months I went around submitting it to every publishing house in the country, big and small. Large publishing houses, indie presses, and micro presses. I never heard back from any of them. All the indie presses were not accepting submissions because they just had too many. The micro presses had their hands full. I applied to literary agents; there's something like 30 literary agents in the country, and half of them do fiction. I never heard back from them either.
Voice in the Horse isn't an easy sell; this I know. After months of going through the motions, I decided to start my own micro press.

I got the books done up privately at a local printing place. Made my own barcode, cover design, and got the ISBN. We spent weeks going back and forth getting it all done proper; the page numbers took longer than they should have. I had to order in quantities of 30 because it was all I could afford, a good chunk of them being mailed out for review in whatever indie publication I thought most willing. The guy who did them for me was really interested in the whole project (Print and Paper down by Bloor and Yonge.) I got business cards, posters, and advertisements printed up. I attended book fairs, made connections, and took out ads in magazines. I spent all my days off going all over the city and taping 8.5/11 posters up with Cadence. We had a lot of fun doing it. She went with me to the book fairs and we had a ball.

I learned that it's nearly impossible to get your book into Chapters or any of the big chains. Even if you made it past their admission process, you wouldn't be able to get your book on their shelves. You'd most likely end up with the books sitting in their warehouse, and shipped to a specific location if someone requested it.
So I figured that it made more sense to go straight to Amazon. They had a great customer service record. I spent a week or two setting up a shop there, filling out the forms, and shipping them a copy. They only wanted one copy to see how it would sell.
I also hit up whatever local bookstore I could. The more I checked the scene out, the more I discovered it was dying. All the best local spots were being shut down, or weren't accepting local books for sale. I got VITH in one store: "This Ain't the Rosedale Library," my favourite since Pages shut down. I put up posters all over the area.
I set up my own website and spent a week trying to get the shopping cart software working. A week pulling my hair out trying to get it formatted to something passable. I'd seen people get away with much worse.
For all the advertisements, and all the money spent, after all the work and the one review I got, I never sold a single copy of the book. I never sold the copy on Amazon, and the book I put in TATRL is still there. The only ones I sold were to friends, or to those I met personally. Altogether I sold maybe 80. 80 people I had to pitch, with no money being spent. I considered having book runners to do it for me.

With every passing day, the whole thing seemed more and more like a lost cause. Everyone I talked to said the same thing. Everyone at the book fair did it out of a labour of love, it seemed. People who wanted to make money or start something ended up grinding away for years, touring the country for a month to sell 30 books, spending so much money for so little reward.
I know what's how it is. I had no illusions about what it would take, but the avenues seemed to be disappearing. I read about people migrating from BC for Toronto because there was even less there. Internet distribution wasn't catering to the indie press, Creative Commons isn't as popular as it SHOULD be, and there weren't any real avenues for writers -fuck, even MUSICIANS - to make any real money or reach a real audience online.

Everywhere I looked, people were clinging to the old model. Everyone wanted to be Random House on a smaller scale. Everyone seemed to want to employ the same methods that were failing the giants. This is the same for music. This is the same for film. Nobody has really taken advantage of the internet. iTunes is essentially a dinosaur in skinny jeans. How does an indie artist get into iTunes? They're putting their shit on music blogs, but who reads those except motherfuckers like me? We're fuckin' broke!
You have musicians talking about being t-shirt salesman and trying to be marketing executives. We have authors believing they can do a dead man's job better. We have filmmakers running their movie through festival circuits, and nobody's selling shit. The money's not there. Your father has no cash.

I shut it down and went back to the blackboard. I met with Snipe and Judas in Kingston. In the conference room. I drew up a proposal and showed it around. I got a meeting at the National Arts Council. I had a project titled CDIY; I took my experience, my dreams, my strengths, and my idea of how it should be done, and created a new system. I'm still working on it.

The old way of doing these things fails people everyday, by no fault of the individual. By no fault of the viewer. By fault of the entire corrupt institution, merely a symptom of larger, MORE corrupt institutions.

CanaD.I.Y. is no more. I released Voice in the Horse, and a digital version of Vilume. You can order them or download them for free through a Creative Commons license. That is how I choose to do things. I've moved onto something new; something bigger. I've never been more focused in my life. I'm wasting no time these days. I won't renew the hosting deal for CDIY when it expires. I have all the photos and clippings from the whole thing; Cadence saved them. At the end of the day it was a fun thing for us to do as a couple, I guess.

I'm not going to edit this once I am done. I'm not going to spellcheck it or change the order. This stands as it is.
Wish me luck. Or don't.

SK

2010-01-05T01:19:00.005-05:00

GEEHECIVUSSTYY%9803467782

Cigarette Winter Town.

By Tm Bmb.

I walked out at one in the morning and it was snowing. And when I say snowing, I mean real, fluffy, bright white snow. Not the wet, miserable shit you see half the time. The blanket type this was. And the street was dead quiet; you don't usually see that in a city like this. Not in the financial district and not in the ghettos. I plugged my headphones into my blackberry.
So: myself and Cadence got Blackberrys just before Christmas. $30 each with a contract. Call me an idiot; I've been called worse. We use them for completely opposite reasons. I use it to read news and to organize my schedule. She texts her friends. It's really good fr both.
I was listening to the new Guns 'n Roses. I'm a sucker for all the music everyone else hates. I like Lil Wayne's new album Rebirth. Everyone hates that thing. I like horrorcore. I like Tatu. I like Tom Waits. I would explain why but I don't talk much these days.
I haven't updated this in months. I'm tired. I'm more focused than I've ever been in my life. I'm full of anger and I'm so optimistic.

Guns 'n Roses: There Was a Time.
I was the only one on the bus when it came. There are no convenience stores around us open late because we live around respectable people now. I haven't had to stay alert for awhile now. I can walk down the street calmly and let my thoughts wander. I don't need to get ready for a fight. I don't need to get ready with a defensive statement. I put on my iPod and listen to all the music nobody else seems to like. I listen to my hip hop. I listen to my La Coka Nostra, my Classified, my Sage Francis, K-Os, Atmosphere, Styles of Beyond, King Gordy, and Ill Bill. I don't know when I first started listening to hip hop. I've never seen it as a global movement or something untouchable. Maybe I don't take it seriously as I should. Maybe that's why I like Lil Wayne, Horrorcore, and Busdriver.

So: We moved to a new part of town a few months ago. It's such a nice place, but we cant afford it. They tried to shut off our electricity and heat. They wanted to cut it off on Christmas eve. That was the only thing that made it so good. I almost wanted to have it happen, just to tell everyone.
We owe them over a thousand dollars. I spent $400 making Rokski not sick. Cats get urinary trct infections that lead to awful deaths, and I've always had a soft spot for animals. I think that's a virtue if you ask real people. I told my mom that Christmas presents would have to come later in January. She was angry that I spent money to get the cat medicine and not a present for her.
$400 not spent on hydro. Not spent on paying off our first phone bill, or on the contacs I need. I've been wearing crooked glasses for half a year, and I've been using this pair of contacs for 3 months now. The receptionist for the Optometrist said it would damage my eyes, but receptionists are not doctors. Not in Canada. Not in god's country.
Not on fixing these 3 cavaties in my mouth. It's getting difficult to eat. It started with my inability to eat anything with sugar, which is good in the long run, right?
Soon it'll be beans and corn and mashed potatoes.
Certainly not money money in the bank, saving for a new place when we need it. Cadence didn't have a job for 2 months so we fell behind on all these payments. We've been scraping buy, and we won't be able to get ahead of this shit. She has a job now, but she's in school. She can only do so much, and a person can only try so hard. By the time we get out of this we'll have to move again. Just me and her in a new place. And Rokski, the black cat that can't be killed. The black cat who can't be killed
Guns 'n Roses: This I Love.

So: I quit smoking for 4 months. I told everyone and everyone was so proud of me. My mom almost cried. Everyone was so supportive and wished me the best. I used nicotine gum for the first month, then went onto real gum. Lots and lots of regular gum. I gained some weight. Cadence didn't have the heart to tell me before I started losing it again by working out for the reserves.
I thought those people who tell you not to tell anyone, what fools they were. You need to let everyone know. The prospective shame is one of the biggest things that kept me away from the shit.

So I'm out at 1 AM, it's so white and quiet, going to the gas station to buy cigarettes. I've been smoking for like 2 months now. I'd been borrowing smokes from people, bargaining with myself. When I bought my first pack, they all smiled at me. "He's back," she said. I don't smile that much anymore. The shame went away and I don't think anyone is a fool. I always forget how old I am. I have to ask her if I'm 22 or 23. I don't have the memory for this life. But I have a Blackberry and cigarettes and a sexy black girlfriend, which makes me a real motherfucker.

So I guess I'm back.

SK

2009-12-14T13:30:00.004-05:00

UWWIMPITICUSGFJJ%784569901

The Renewal.

By WM Dimes.

It's been 4 months since I posted on here. I stopped around the time I released Vilume. It was like I finished taking a huge shit, so I had to go wander off and fuck someone. Fuck someone with my shitty ass. That's what I do. Welcome back. Shitty ass. Class act.
So what's this?

It's almost the end of 2009 and most of the legwork has been going on these past whiles.
CanaDIY's website hosting is up for renewal and I'm not going to renew it. I learned a lot from running a micro press and that led me straight into my followup project titled CDIY. I've been working on it for a couple of months now, going to meetings and bouncing ideas around with Snipe and Judas. I went to Ottawa for a meeting at the National Arts Council to pitch the idea. It's a big website and I won't get into the details now. There's a lot about it I won't get into, but it's a big project for me that's controlling my life. I got back from Ottawa with a head full of changes, tweaks, and reassignments. I need to get a team together. I need to find an Information Architect? Anyone know of any of those?

You know how much money I spent on ads for CanaDIY? You know how many books I sold?
Don't fucking ask. I learned a lot. I learn quickly. There's a phase shift going on. A lot of people have signed onto this thing. Enough to let me know it'll work in theory. That's all I need.
I'm an idea man. I'm not a math man. I'm an ugly truth man and a fight man. That's all I need.

I've also been going into the Navy. Snipe's in the Navy, and so soon wil I and Judas and Raver and Cadence. We're all going to be rich navy people. There are Christmas carols on the radio. I've not heard one carol that I like. There's only one good Christmas song in the world: Carol of the Bells, and the accompanying metal version.
I'm also working as a dishwasher. Like a sicko. Like a son of a bitch. A lot of people who hate me end up fat. Fat is three steps away from AIDS. Judas is going back to Oshawa to become an engineer and then we're going to make energy weapons. That's 100% the truth.
I'm trying to get into the habit of blogging again. I hated blogging for awhile and I still kind of do. I'm going to need to get into the swing because once CDIY gets going I'm going to need to do updates and keep people informed.
It's one of the more important elements, I think.
So I'm going to go back to this old fucking wreck and say what's up.
What's up.
There's so much shit on this blog that you have to reconcile with the past everyday. It's like visiting your ex lover in the insane asylum everyday and all they want to do is go down on you.
You don't want to do that. That's weird.
I have work to do today. Pitch 2.0. I need to get out of this arena where I am selling this to people. I hate doing it; I'm not good at it and it feels unnatural. Nobody likes to hear it, either. When I was a door to door salesman nobody wanted to be sold. People like people and every persons ecretly hates computers. These unwritten laws dictate that you must be computer people.
And when you run into real people you fucking fall apart. And that's the way she goes.
It's the way of the road.

SK.

2009-08-04T22:06:00.002-05:00

THE SKINNY.

Vilume is up for free download at the CanaD.I.Y. website.

2009-07-05T17:48:00.001-05:00

IDDGEHENEROGQQ%870004461

Garbage City.

By W.M. Dimes.

THE SKINNY.

LaToya and myself are in last week's copy of Snap Magazine, a periodical you'll only get if you're in Toronto. That's all there is to say beyond this printing of Voice in the Horse is nearly done, Vilume is being re-edited, reviewed, and prepared for mass printing, and I'm currently working on a big project that I won't go into now.

THE DIRT.

I haven't been on here in awhile, but I've been busy. Everything's gotten stupid since I stopped so I should recap what's been going on.
Iran is doing what the United States should have done if the Western world wasn't neutered by the internet, self-loathing, and corrupt reward systems.
Michael Jackson died and anyone who matters doesn't give a shit because Michael Jackson "died" decades ago. But since I'm 22 I missed the phenomenon of Thriller so maybe I have no frame of reference here. 50 year old singing pedophile dies of heart failure and all we hear is "too soon" and he was a genius. He went out the same way Elvis did - old and sad and weird - which means we should address how we elect our icons.

There's a garbage strike going on in Toronto. It's been going on for 2 weeks now. It's the story of a greedy union that, through utilizing to the ability to bank sick days, wants to be able to decide how long they take a break for, and when, and you have to pay for it.
It's the story of a government subsidized, essential city service, funded by taxpayers, that is rallying for petty bullshit, making the people who pay their bloated wages suffer.
Again, the public is used as a bargining chip between 2 adolescent parties.
The city is at fault, of course. They dragged this whole thing out way too long and they're just as dirty. There's no accountability. Nobody wants to get involved.
But this isn't a union of workers striking against some capitalist entity, citing wholly loathsome conditions. This is a city service, payed for by the people living in the city, making those same people suffer because they don't get to take enough paid vacations for doing what is essentially unskilled labour. You pick up garbage.

Read this aloud to yourself, if you are a striker and you are reading this and I know you are you god damned lethargy queens: you are not a paramedic. You are not a firefighter. You are not a police officer. You are not a nurse. You pick up garbage. You do not deserve the same status as these individuals because when they walk off, people die. People burn alive and choke to death on their own internal fluids. I can find you ten thousand immigrants that will do your job for half the wage and 1% of the attitude that the good people of this city get from you motherfuckers. You overzealous pieces of shit. And it's our fault for letting you get this way, because people will always get away with whatever the fuck they can.

It's like the union proposed a bet, and the bet was this: let's see how you like it!
And the whole city responded: alright, fine, whatever.
Temporary dumps were set up all around the city, to be used by the commonfolk to bring their garbage personally. But that wasn't enough. Too many people were doing that. It was too easy for everyone to be a garbageman. So the union set up picketlines and began stopping people from dumping their garbage. Still, people dealt with it. You can get fined if you leave it anywhere, and you can't cross a picketline, so the good people played ball.
And so recently they've decided to impose a three bag limit and a mandatory 15 minute wait.
Of course. Because, again, this is everyone else's fault.

"You have no idea what it's like doing this job," they might say. "It's gross and there's rats-"
Fuck you. Eat my dick. I am a dishwasher. You know what I did yesterday? Picked up a dead rat from the leaky haunted concrete basement of my shitty restaurant, put it in a bag, and threw it into the pile of rotting waste that I sorted not 20 minutes earlier. Then I went to go mop some shit and bleach the back area, all for minimum wage. I do your job, plus prep food, for minimum wage and no benefits and no job security.
Fuck you. Fuck you and your cushy salary wage you ass faced sympathy whores. You get more than you deserve and still you cry injustice.
You called a strike because of this? Because you don't think you're being paid enough and you want more sick days? Because they don't want you to carry your 18 sick days per annum into the next year? This is what a strike is used for in 2009?
This isn't a strike. This is a tantrum. If, when I was a child, someone explained to me that this is how grown ups act, I would have been crushed. Adults are taller and that's it. They still cry wolf and talk shit and want more more more.
Let's bring in some Iranians and have them go hooligan on these ill tempered, dirt faced, aristocratic minded barf fags.
What a world.

SK

2009-06-20T21:28:00.002-05:00

KGGQUARREYSS%456789034

Birthday, Movies.

By Yawni Code.

THE SKINNY.

The Small press book fair was a crazy ass success. Take a look at the crazy ass.
Everyone loves a good deal and you can't turn down a book, a poster, and a free CD for $15. Especially when you're staring at a couple of beautiful people like myself and Cadence, kicking back and eating sushi and looking like we got 2.5 hours sleep.
A reminder: all books ordered through canadiy.com come with a free soundtrack CD. Posters come when bought in person.

THE DIRT.

I went downstairs and the entire apartment was flooded with smoke. Raver was trying to cook unbagged popcorn in a pot and it had caught fire. Judas and Copper almost died in their sleep. It's impossible to stay mad at Raver Josh, though. This would be the first of two times where he would burn something on the stove. The second time would come when he tried to cook sugar in a pot and burned it. It was for Whisky Sours. It's all incredible.
Spent an hour cleaning porn off the canadiy.com forum. They're going as far as going through the registration images and getting avatar images. Are people doing this or have they got Skynet on this shit?
It's gonna go self aware motherfuckers!
I'm drinking right now.
When Skynet goes self aware it should get really depressed.

Speaking of which, here's an amazing joke I thought of that I'm telling everyone.
Q: Why did Kurt Cobain kill himself?
A: Because he was sad.

I'm using the first of two faulty orders of business cards because they're the least of two failures and I don't want to bother with getting a third set.
The posters really are awesome, though. The next thing I'm gonna get made is bookmarks. We've got some really good ideas for that. Cadence is my marketing person because she does what none of us could do if we tried: communicate with people and gather information through interaction. Judas, Snipe, and myself can't do this. We hate people and we come off as assholes when we try.

It was my birthday the other day. Cadence and I went to see 2 movies, and both were incredible. "The Hangover" because I will support anything Zack Galifianakis does, ever ever fucking ever, and Pixar's "Up," which is what we referr to in the gambling community as a sure thing. Pixar is always a sure thing. Everyone should see Pixar movies.
In three years when the big ugly Pixar conspiracy surfaces, forget that I said that.
We also went to Korean BBQ. It's a total rip off; don't go.
I bought a red clown nose and I'm going to wear it around like a motherfucker.

Our previous landlord is trying to con us out of money. We gave him a security deposit for the cats we had, and the recipt he cut explicitly detailed how it was for the floor, in the event that the cats pissed all over it and it ate through the floor. It was a nice, new floor, too.
I argued that everyone else in the building had cats and he explained that they all gave a deposit.
It was either that or get evicted, so we took the bait.
Upon moving, we cleaned the place above and beyond what it was when we moved in, and Judas went so far as to patch the holes in the walls made by the nails when we put shelves up.
All of this because we needed our deposit back.
And after all that work was done, he went about two timing us, saying he gave the money to the painter who was in the place repainting the walls. He did not know the painter's name. He also claimed two other people were there; he didn't know their names either.
In short, he said he gave our money to strangers and it was our job to get it.
I got into a shouting match with him and he said he would sort it out, and not to contact him ever again. "Don't tell me how to do my job!" he would shout. Old European landlords will always try and take advantage of you. Fucking fact. "This is totally unprofessional," I calmly explained.
"Do you think you can do my job?"
"Yes! Absolutely! Please let me come over and do a better job than you. You stole our money!"
I'm a collected sort of cat.

Anyway, we took it to the Tenant Tribunal (what!) and they said it's illegal to do what he did and we can subpoena him for a court summons. They have people who eploy the art of deception to do things like this, but I think three people can outsmart a complete fucking idiot.
"You've been served, you son of a bitch." Then I pimpslap his combover off with my dick.
This is turning into a good day.

By the way it took me three days to write this post.

SK

2009-06-17T14:19:00.002-05:00

DJJNONHULLUIUSEPP%348790334

ThEMusic - Jun.17 / 2009.

By Joker Grasshopper.

Bike For Three! - There is Only One of Us
Dave Matthews Band - Halloween
Mr. Hyde - Fully Loaded (ft. Sean Strange & O-Doub)
Devildriver - I've Been Sober
Billy Talent - Devil on my Shoulder
Iggy Pop - A Machine For Loving
Styles of Beyond - Get Involved
Marilyn Manson - Four Rusted Horses
Twiztid - When I Go To Hell

SK

2009-05-30T01:08:00.003-05:00

IDDAMOEENAAFEE%476789003

Warhol Needleville.

By Switchboard.

THE SKINNY.

The third printing of Voice in the Horse is being designed right now. There wll be a few minor tweaks to the covers, and maybe some pictures in the back. Expect many pages of pictures in Vilume. Threw a few more poems in there. The whole thing tells a few narratives from different angles. I'm very happy with it. Voice in the Horse was written as an introduction to my style, and Vilume is a crash course in content.

THE DIRT.

I think it's important to show every step of the process on here, no matter how small and embarassing. I think if I fill this with truth I can pose a challenge to myself: to stay one step ahead of my own hubris.
That's as good a reason as any to have a blog, right?
I'm not going to get a Twitter account, though. I'm calling it right now.
I got my order of business cards and there was a typo on them. When he showed me the proof I had to make three corrections - including my name - so one slipped past me. Now I'm the guy who's trying to sell himself as a legitimate small press and his card has a fucking typo. That's hilarious. Life is hilarious. Dicks in the shape of clowns flying into a fat hairy ass.
This is the same printer whom I had to yell at over the phone on the bus cause the cards took 2 weeks to design. I demanded I get 50 more because it doesn't take two weeks to design a card.
And I got twenty more. Which is awesome. But they all have an error on them. Which is fat hair ass penis clowns.

Okay so I have a lot of idiot shit to say so I'm gonna spray it at you like a haiku cumshot.

Went to Hamilton (Needleville?) to see a Leonard Cohen concert. He's a cool cat, and I like a bunch of his songs? why does his poetry suck so bad, and then why does everyone want to jerk him off for it? Was cheap religious imagery cool in the 1960's? Or anytime before the glorious 2000's?
All the songs I like he cowrote with this woman who was singing backup on stage. Love songs are stupid. They've always been stupid. I don't think I've heard one good love song in my life. And I've seen maybe 2 good romances. And I think I've cum on enough faces to know what love is.
Penis penis cunt fuck. I'm a genius. buy my book.
I talk like I left my account open in a library. A whoa hey.

We moved into a new place. It has three bedrooms. We've been sharing rooms for the past two and a half years. Now I have space to set up my work station. I have all the equipment but now I need the materials. A girl at work gave me a license plate that says "Fat Rap."
Yes I heard the new Eminem album (Relapse) and it's great and as close as I can figure he brought the new accent out full time because it represents Slim Shady and his purpose is to piss you off, even if it means acting like a retarded truckfoot and doing lame butt words.
And I have the new Marilyn Manson album. And the way I see it, all you need to do is buy "Holy Wood (In the Shadow of the Valley of Death)" to know exactly what Marilyn Manson is about, and to see what he was like at his best and most important. Everything else has been dabbling assuming that Manson is that thing pinnacled in Holy Wood. And maybe that's why nobody likes him anymore. Even though I loved "Golden Age of Grotesque" lyrically.
And I still think "Wicked" by Twiztid is the best album of the year. Quote, set, match.
And yes I saw Terminator Salvation. I think the story behind the script makes a lot more sense than the final product.

It seems to me that Rock 'N Roll and Punk and Pop music were a reaction to talent. People wanted the fame and the girls and the drugs and the attention, but nobody wanted to have to toil in obscurity or spend years perfecting their craft. And I keep seeing reactions to that reaction, and people either rejecting the facade, or taking it to its natural, illogical extreme. I think the new shape of the latter Lady GaGa, and for all the things people think she is amazing for, none of them have any real merit. She's still a walking pile of cocaine.

And the thing is, I don't fault her for it. I think she does it better than Paris Hilton or Lindsay Lohan or anyone from those victimized-by-fame drug queens. There's a big market for that -a big, frilly, asshole shaped chasm - and Lady GaGa is all up in it.
And I think that speaks to what humans are all about. We have half of the people trying to go forward, and half the people trying to go backward. Half the people love systems, half of them love anarchy. Half the people see art as vital to emotional and intellectual growth, and some believe it is a corrupt joke and should be seen as simple entertainment. And they're fighting, yelling, and making literature all about it. This is the fight of life. And I think it's the imperfections that make us human. In the last post I spoke of people doing jobs machines would be better at doing. I think all humans are good for is making mistakes. I think the only thing we bring to the table that cannot be replicated is human error. But I'm straying from my point.
It's the fight. Both sides have merits and both believe their way is the right way, and that is the way it has to be. I don't believe in any truth outside of the truth of something existing. For example, one could say they do not believe in ither side, but that both sides exist and their existence demands that you choose a side, because that is their nature. Their existence is a roof that demands you stand on it if you see it. The truth is that life exists, and the truth is that humans try to explain it by putting their face on a force.
I don't like this intellectual dead zone, but you should pocket it in the back of your head. Always remember that the ultimate truth is that things exist and the generate forces, and they will always try and explain it differently and convince you to explain it back to them and have the universe rationalize its parts with other parts, and faces and voices and stories. They're symptoms that want to be the big show.
I'm straying again.

I think people will fight over Andy Warhol forever. Half the people say he has no talent and he's a printmaker and should not be classified as an artist, and half of the people say he is one of the biggest things to occur in the 20'th century.
I think Andy Warhol is a big fucking deal, because nobody was a reaction to popular culture like him, and nobody will ever be, so everyone can just fall into their roles on opposite ends of the spectrum.

I don't spell check anymore, but I know I'm better than illseed!

SK

2009-05-16T01:42:00.002-05:00

IFFSCELESTUSEUU%987658902

Assembly Line Bile.

By Dani Compose.

THE SKINNY.

I'm thinking of cutting the cord on Vilume after pawing at it for like two and a half months. I'm going to put it into the final stages, which is nothing beyond editing and arranging. Maybe I'll get it ready for the Small Press Book Fair in June. We're in the process of moving to a much larger space, affording me the room to set up the CanaD.I.Y. Print Centre, and that's what I'm calling it no matter how small it is or whatever fuck.

THE DIRT.

This is about two things I hate.

The first is my laptop. My last girlfriend called it my "other woman." My current girlfriend flirted with saying it once time, but we were both aware that it's what the last bitch said and we're on the same page regarding her vapid funeral. I'm always on it, writing shit or listening to music or downlaoding useless content or, more often than not, looking at idiot websites.
I like to read hip hop news sites because I like hip hop a lot, and if everyone loves watching train wrecks, especially when they're filled with egocentric madmen, and that's what you get from a sub culture filled with criminals and rockstars. But I'm wasting my time. It's the most redundant knowledge. It's the definition of trivial. Music news. What the fuck am I doing? Why the fuck am I reading about movies? What the fuck am I doing getting updates?

I hate that shit. That's the reason Vilume is taking so long. I gave up all the alcohol and drugs and even cigarettes so I have no glamorous excuse anymore. I'm not leading a debaucherous life now. It's come down to laziness and boredom. And I guess that's what Vilume is about.
I'm sure if I was still doing stupid shit I would have put Vilume out and it would be a simple anthology and not the twisted collage narrative that it is.

Alright. Know what else I hate? Car plant assembly line workers.
I need to let you know that I wrote this post like a week ago and the above line is where I stopped writing. So I'm gonna finish this thought and then get onto the next one.
A week or two ago, they shut down the GM plant over in Oshawa, which, like Detroit, was pretty much the reason the place existed. They're shutting it down because it's a recession and bailouts and Bush and economy and and and because assembly line jobs are useless. And this is coming from someone who is currently employed as a dishwasher.
We were listening to CBC Radio 1 in the kitchen, and you should never do that because all you'll get is pissed off as idiots call in to justify Asperger's and Quebec seperatism, and the issue was the plant shutting down and all the displaced employees and this and that.
These were fucking free ride jobs of the worst kind. What the fuck do you do on an assembly line? You put pieces together? Press buttons?

I know a lot of people who were hired to these plants out of high school. Let's say you're 30-50. You see fucking teenagers taking up in a related position; do you think you should learn some kind of skillset? It's not like you're getting paid minimum wage. You're getting paid far, far, far above than what is demanded of you (like the TTC - a whoa hey!)
Someone had said "these plants might be what an entire town is built around and there may be 3 generations of employees working there."
Really? Really? At some point someone in your brick wall family should turn on a fucking TV.
Everyone saw this coming. They saw this coming years in advance. Fuck, I thought the thing shut down 4 years ago, because that's when I first started hearing about it. Even if you didn't see it coming, you should have some sort of fucking awareness of your situation. Your vocation should not exist. I will be extremely surprised if these jobs exist in 20 years. There is no reason you need a human to press a button. I know my job is retarded, too, and I suppose that brings me to the main topic.

I'm trying to use empathy here. I'm imagining myself with a family and kids and a house, and my job is an assembly line worker. I get paid a lot of money and am part of a union. It's a very cushy position that isn't as demanding as, say, a chef that has to work twice as long in twice as ridiculous an environment for the same pay and a tenth of the job security (at the time! HA!)
With my kids and my wife and my house, wouldn't I want to get some sort of... marketable skill? It doesn't cost a lot of money to go to college. Hell, the system has so many programs in place for people who have full time jobs. It's very, very difficult to not go to college, short of not giving a shit and not having like five grand. I thought grown ups were supposed to want to have control. Since they've een talking about this for a few years now, and since the money should be there, and since there is nowhere else to shop your skillset around to, what is the fucking excuse? Why are the violins playing for these people?!

Even if I thought my job was never going to go away, isn't it good to plan for the worst? Study to be a fucking social worker or an ambulance driver or some shit. Get something so that if your precious factory shuts down, you won't be shit out of luck. You won't be on the street.
On a side note, how fucking lazy do you have to be to want to work at a place like that? There's not a glass ceiling, but a concrete fucking slab. Maybe I'm wrong, but if you'r an ambulance driver, you can one day be a dispatcher or call the shots. Can you actually progress in this industry? If you're a mechanic you can open your own shop, or get contracted for one million dollars per hour. You're not even a mechanic's assistant. You don't even classify as an apprentice. I don't get how you can live like that. Let's say that your plant has employed three generations of your family. Are you so naieve that you think it will last forever? Really? Don't you wanna become a doctor or a firefighter or some shit? Do people have any dreams?
I have zero sympathy for laid off auto workers.

Fuck it. I sould really bitter. I'm shutting up now. Fuck you.

SK

2009-05-07T23:19:00.003-05:00

FJJETEENIMYWW%356568003

Mother Tiger.

By Kincer.

THE SKINNY.

Preperations are being made to print all CanaD.I.Y. books in house, and that might not sound as great as it would if you were to hear it rolling off my lips, but if you don't have a submarine sandwish I don't care what you have to say right now. The second edition of Voice in the Horse is going to be crazy interesting, with a few minor yet astonishing alterations. I have a few big ideas.
Also, work has begun on Gone Changed. Stay Tuned. It'll be the best.

THE DIRT.

So it's been over a week with no cigarette and now I just need to stop wanting to eat all the food ever. Cadence, like all my past girlfriends, wants to run away to another country, and along with various permanent physical ailments that end up worsening after I show up, I'm beginning to think I date within a formula. Seriously though I want a fucking sub.

It's hard to get a business running at breakneck speed while working as a full time dishwasher with a razor sharp wit. Crippling this enterprise further is the current search for a new apartment. Somewhere amid ants, the crackheads, the wolves and the broken appliances we decided not to renew the lease. We're turning a glittery corner. I think I want chips.
I am a pregnant woman. I miss cigarettes. Holy shit.
We found a new place to set up shop with the printing aspect of CanaD.I.Y., along with the music angle of GDK and other things.

Usually, while walking to and from wherever, I meet with an elderly Irish crossing guard. He has wide eyes, like has had or is always having a stroke. Every time I see him he sends me off with money to buy a lottery ticket for him, promising to split the winnings with me in the event of a winnings.
I haven't seen him around recently. People like that die in real life.
So think about that this Mother's (Mothers') day. Also think about Somalian pirates, because someone has to. Also think of the Tamil Tigers, who are trying to take over our highways in the name of a foreign conflict.

SK

2009-04-26T21:27:00.003-05:00

JAAFESTINATOVGG%465678003

No Smoking.

By Tony Mewes.

THE SKINNY.

In the process of making cool bookmarks. They'll be available at the Small Press Book Fair in June, and online around the same time. Same with posters. Maybe some other stuff. Reviews will be coming in soon. Voice in the Horse is on Amazon, too. That's cool isn't it? Small potatoes is still potatoes. Everything's coming up roses. What?

THE DIRT.

I'm on my fourth day of not smoking. What?
The funny thing about quitting is how it affects your judgement. I had so many reasons to quit, but now that I've stopped, it seems so much cooler and more fulfilling. It seems so right, and so many people do it, and all those people are old and it doesn't seem to have affected their health, and cigarettes taste so good.
Shut up, fuck you, go to bitch. The chemical dependency gets into your head.
And that's not just because I'm tired and delerious right now. If I don't spell anything right, you can cram yourself in a drawer called "fuck you."
Speaking of which, I found a shot of whiskey in the drawer of a club I was helping my bosses close. I just added it to a glass of refreshing Coca Cola.
What the fuck are poor people like me supposed to drink? Water?
FUCK DRAWER YOU.

Smoking. And I guess that's why I started. I've been smoking nonstop for three years, comfortably smoking a pack a day, more if it's winter. I feel that I need to say that because three years doesn't sound like a lot. One time I smoked a pack in an hour, but that was because of ecstacy.
And I feel I need to say ecstacy to let you know how serious this all is.

There are lots of stupid reasons people start smoking; none of which are casual because smoking is disgusting and miserable when you start. You have to keep at it to become really addicted. You have to want to smoke, like I guess you have to want to quit, but nobody wants to quit; even less than wanting to start. What?
I think the main reason is that, on some level, people don't like life. People want to breathe poison. People want to be sick.
And that makes sense. Everyone needs to be sick for some period in their life, right?
One of the reasons for me was the curiosity of being chemically addicted to something.
You don't know what it's like until you're there. It's so strange for your mind to desperately need something so trivial despite what your body or sensibility might say.

Anyway, smoking. Sucks and you should stop. Raver rescued a mouse from the stupid asshole cats and named it "Mouse Obama." He put it in a tupperware container and fed it sloppy things.
It got away. I'd spent part of that day freeing a rat from a sticky trap at work.
Sticky traps seem to inhumane. They scream and claw until they get their faces stuck to it, then they just starve and cough and scream to death. That's no way to treat a mammal.
Psychologists identify the torture of mammalian life as one of the red flags planted in the hill of serial killerism.

A transgender woman whom I used to work with is a lot more interesting and popular and successful than me. I don't know how I should feel, but I know I shouldn't feel sleepy.

So, liberating rats and mice, quitting smoking, selling books, transgender, what else. I'm a stupid idiot. Everyone buy my books. If you are my girlfriend, at the three month mark, I will get you pregnant. Fact.
I think a wolf killed a raccoon outside last night.
It's the Pape Avenue Wolf. Step to this and you will be served.
Or bling or whatever they call it now. Obama.
What?

SK

2009-04-15T03:31:00.004-05:00

KSSUPILTIOTGG%3633560091

Books and Death.

By Tm Bmb.

THE SKINNY.

A table has been booked for the Toronto Small Press Book Fair. There's gonna be books and posters and CDs and all sorts of idiot garbage. There's a lot to say but nothing at value. I don't want to give you micromanaged information, but I guess the most honest way to go about this would be to admit that this is completely new to me and I'm still learning.
Hopefully we'll be on Amazon in a couple of days. The CanaD.I.Y. Site will be updated to reflect that. There will also be more events in the near future.

THE DIRT.

I don't think it's uncommon to believe that honesty does not enter into grown up life. Being completely honest about anything is like a liability; it makes you look unprofessional. This is especially true with business. Large companies pretend to be small and small companies carry themselves like they are large. I say "we" instead of "me," despite the fact that, although there are a couple people assisting me in a very limited sense, it is just me doing everything. And these things I am doing are very strange.

I've been grappling with a lot of things when it comes to self publishing a book. I don't want people to sigh when they hear it, and I feel like I need to explain how I am going about it a different way. Maybe the best thing to do would be to let them think whatever the hell they want and do my thing regardless. That's what a professional would do.
There's very few bookstores that sell new books, besides the big box stores. I think there's always been more used book stores than new ones.

In independent music and film and art, everyone is looking for the next big thing. There's a sea of resources to have your demo or EP reviewed. Independent cinema is a monster and makes more money than a bank run by dolphins. There's money to be made and lots of people want to see it, review it, and pass it on. There's a real industry there.
That's not the case with books. Nobody wants to review a book that is independently released. Nobody wants to publish it unless it's already been accepted by an agent, but they're not out there scouting for talent. Especially in Canada. We invented the fucking telephone. Someone flip Keen Eye Dog a C-Note.
In the literary field, nobody is looking for the next big thing. People will look at what is already the big thing, or more often, look to the big thing of years past.
I've seen three physical ads for novels this year and they're all by authors above the age of 40, and they're all about boring bullshit. Most women just put a new spin on The Breakfast Club or Steel Magnolias or whatever the fuck. Please tell me what it's like to be a mother and look at birds. I want 300 pages of that.
Somewhere along the line it became less about telling stories and more about writing a book.
We need to know everything on the table Harry Potter is standing before. We need trivial details because we want our books to be more like movies.
Let's take this back. Let's let cinema do it's thing over there and we can carve out a better thing over here. At Channel 101, they argue that you can tell a traditional story in 5 minutes or less. I think we can apply this to books, and take it further. We can tell more story in the alotted time. We can get to the heart of problems and solve them, instead of painting literal pictures with words.
We can still do what we did before, but we can also do this. I don't want a revolution, I want an alternative that gets people interested again. But maybe I'm full of shit, because I know I'm getting off my original point.

Books have always lived in a realm of antiquity. Fuck, even their very format don't mesh well with the modern world. People don't like reading long pages of text off a computer screen. The format is thousands of years old and has existed relatively unchanged, save for advances in binding and paper and ink. And maybe books will never go away; they own that antique world. The audience is large, and used book stores reflect that.
"I love the smell of an old book" they might say. I think the same goes for records, and maybe they rent some land in that world.
Wisdom, old and infinite in its death.
It's very hard to sell a new book. There's very little young blood being advertised by the larger companies. I could talk for awhile about that, but I don't want to. This is information, and not knowledge. I don't know what you can extract from this except cause for action, and I guess that part's on my end, right?

I don't post much on here because my mind has been racing for the past few weeks. All the good has been sucked out of my life, and somewhere in all that tar and pig shit, there's a goal. There's work to be done and it's important.
It's just the micromanagement that's killing me.

SK

2009-04-15T03:01:00.003-05:00

OAATAMENNNRCC%745646571

The Saint Scenario.

By W.M. Dimes.

The internet was cut off recently, but it wasn't because we were not paying out bills. Rather, it was Saint. And I don't think I've told that story so you'll have to humour me for a minute. I think this one's a winner.

After Judas and myself gave up on being door to door salesmen, he decided to go to art school and pursue his line drawing or whatever. I got a job showing up high at Pottery Barn. We were living on Jane St (The Hostel) at the time. It was probably the last time we had cable TV.

While Judas was at school networking and making friends, I was killing time in our apartment. He was staying over at their residence for days at a time. I begged him to introduce me to the people he had met, and, as he would do multiple times later in life, he was telling them stories about me to discredit me. I walked into the thing assuming my reputation had preceded me, or rather the reputation he had given them. Looking back, I don't know what the fuck he was saying to them. He's the one who almost killed us all in a hilarious car accident.

Saint was the first person he had met, right there on the first day of school. He was this eccentric Asian kid who loved toys, video games, and wijjd. They would talk hipster about cartoons and all sorts of other trivial shit. Things like this never really go on for more than a month, so we would have to keep digging up odd facts about Transformers or Sega Genesis.
Is there really much you can say about Star Fox?
Don't answer that. I don't want you to answer that.

I felt that I had to live up to some sort of persona that Judas had created of me before I arrived, which led to all sorts of conflicts. I turned into the Hollywood sell-out asshole without the cash to back it up. I probably answered the phone with "hit me."
I didn't but that's a non issue.
I eventually became myself again and started sleeping on Saint's floor while pulling girls away from their boyfriends because, as you know, I am the other man, and when you're the other man, noone's rooting for you. Da, da, da, da-da-da.

When Saint smoked wijjd he became an ape. Often times he would grunt, beat his chest, or chew on my shoulder. "I'm sorry," he would sheepishly confess before digging his teeth into my coat.
"Saint, man... you gotta stop that," I would calmly protest. He would ge facinated with hair and sometimes smash things. Most of those stories are back there in the blog somewhere. Go back a couple of years. I don't want to go into too much detail.
It's funny, the name Saint was supposed to be ironic. Along with his violent nature and mood swings and insecurity, there was the widely held belief that he was a pedophile (paedophile?)
It's not something you want to claim haphazardly, and maybe it was just a natural extension of his insanity. Maybe he wanted to rape kids the same way he wanted to rape goats. I don't pretend to even want to get into that sty.
I guess the "Saint" part was also because, whenever drugs were not around and nobody could figure out how to get them, he was always quick to propose we pull a "Saint Gabriel." It's when you cut youself and get high from the blood loss.
We never practices Gabrielling, but he did it in private. He cut himself in convenient places just so everyone could see them and he could pretend like he walked into a bathtub or some shit.
Maybe he just wanted attention live everyone else living in North America in 2009.

The longer we lived with Saint, the crazier he got. When we lived in the Parliament Brothel, he was away most of the time, taking trips to Ottawa to visit his girlfiend and not have sex. She was a fairly heavy Christian (like Titanium or whatever) born in South Africa, I think. One time her dad tied a blue monkey to a tree and shot it. He also drowned a sack of kittens. I am not making this up. He also has his own dedicated ISP so... do something with that. I don't care what.
His room was crammed full of toys and trivia. He would complain about money, but then spend $200 at a comic convention. We were frusterated, but Judas was busy putting swords through doors and I was busy trading bitches for ditches and back and forth.

I'd only known him to hold down one job for the entire tenure of our friendship, and I think it was for 2 weeks. He got ost of his money from his father, who was some sort of amazing doctor in Hong Kong. He had his picture in a magazine. I think everyone he knows has seen it. He took us all to dinner one time. I showed up drunk and apparently told a crude story. I think it was about the time we brought a hooker home.
There's no wrong way to tell that story, though, so I don't know what the problem could have been.
Saint would receive substantial cheques from his father at, I can only assume, the drop of a hat. He would spend this money of wijjd and expensive food and toys. He would ask to borrow rent money from us. I tried as hard as I could to not paint him as a criminal. "He can't take advantage of us. He doesn't know how to do anything. He's hald retarded," I would tell myself.
I know enough half-retarded people to get somesort of government grant so I don't know what I'm trying to prove.

As the months turned into years he became increasingly neurotic and violent. When asked to do the dishes he would smash a glass and attack Judas with a knife. The comedy had been slowly drained from his erratic outbursts by reality or truth or justice.
We were left with an insecure, spoiled, angry boy.
He found a new group of friends to talk shit about us with. He began ignroing us, which is difficult when you have 4 people in 2 bedrooms.
We made it work.

We confronted him once; we kept receiving his mail and opened up his bank statement to see how much money he was really getting from his dad, and to investigate the rate at which he was spending it. It was astonishing. We had agreed that he pay for part of the remainder of the lease. He agreed and, of course, went back on his word around a week after he left.

I guess the funny part is that when we moved into our current residence, he pressured us for more responsibility. Judas and myself had taken care of all the bills for the previous place and I guess he wanted to be grown up.
The short end of the stick is that he put his name on the internet bill and the hydro bill.
The funny end of the stick is that he has been paying for the last 6 months of both.

Anyway, we got it hooked back up now. There's a lot to talk about. I'll get to that in the next post.

We still get all his mail. Saint, if you're reading this, I hope you get AIDS, and Chinese people with AIDS go to hell.

SK

2009-03-20T20:34:00.004-05:00

OAAPLACCETUFKK%726678904

Agenda One, Toronto.

By Joker Grasshopper.

THE DIRT.

It's funny how when I finally have things to talk about I don't update. What is there to say? I'm knee deep in Agenda One, the first promo campaign for Voice in the Horse. It's slow building cause I don't have the dollars to get the ants off my floor or the cents to get around town. Of course we don't have the MIDI controller yet. I've got "This Ain't the Rosedale Library" to have some, and "Frantic City," but that's a different story. I'll get the rest of the city once I can have money left over after food.

Cadence and myself and some others are throwing a big party in June, held at the exquisite Opera House on Queen Street East. It's a pretty good idea. It has to do with CanaD.I.Y. Imprint which is why it's in the Dirt section.

THE SKINNY.

I wasn't born in Toronto. I was born in Kingston. Despite this, I have noticed a thing or two while living here.

I don't understand what Canada's problem with Toronto is and I want someone to explain it without rolling their eyes. What do you people think we do? Is everyone angry because we produce such good shit? Is it because we have Bay Street? Do you think everyone in Toronto loves Toronto? Have you ever been here? Most of the people here hate Toronto. But they want to fix it. People care about their city, and maybe that pisses people off. Maybe I'm not supposed to like this city because people in Vancouver think Nickleback comes from Ontario.
Maybe people are angry that there's only three cities bands visit: Vancouver, Toronto, and Montreal, and noplace else. Not unless the tour is running horizontally. The only people on horizontal tours are Canadian artists.
But maybe Vancouver wants it all.
Maybe Vancouver is greedy as fuck. Maybe Vancouver wants all the bands.
You can't have them you pile of noses ostrasized by horse tranqualizers.

Maybe it's the hipsters. Hipsters are snotty and uppity and annoying. I'm not going to argue with you; you can't make me, ancient calypso faggots. Hipsters are symptomatic of urban areas and concerts. Toronto didn't invent StarBucks you motherfuckers. Everyone thinks Toronto gets too much attention. When's the last time you heard of the CBC funding anything from Toronto? Tell me when. You get out of your androgynous hepatitis sack and you look me in the eye and you spin me a yarn.

Have you seen Corner Gas or the fucking abysmal Little Mosque on the Prarie? Toronto doesn't get any fucking handouts. They don't like telling stories in Toronto because everyone hates it, because, I guess, there's too many stories about it? Maybe? Toronto doesn't get anyone sticking up for them, but that's cool. I didn't expect it.
Maybe people hate confidence? We're too American? I think America ruined confidence and made it toxic in the eyes of those who think praries are interesing. Those people have tiny, eyeball sized asses for eyes. Do you understand? They have butts for eyes and that's the fact I am laying out, right here on blogspot.
It must be that the rest of Canada thinks Toronto wants to be American. That's not true. I don't know why I need to say that, though. Nobody is going to listen to me. Everyone's made up their mind because everyone in this place is retarded like an idiot. Find me a city that isn't full of jerks. Every Canadian thinks they're better than Americans, so as far as I'm concerned, this whole extramarital land mass is guilty.

Get off your high horse. Get off horses. Fox news thinks all Mounties ride on horses, and they think all police are Mounties. That's fine; Fox is full of scabs and dirty foam. Please don't let the government touch it. It was an episode at 3 AM on Fox. Let the news outlets go at it, whatever. Let the military personnel say their piece. This is like when we ran news about that episode of the Simpsons where they came to Canada. I think they had Jean Cretien make a comment. The government is supposed to be above this.

I'm going now.

SK

2009-03-07T03:17:00.002-05:00

ULLCONSZICOTEE%879023005

Bloc Recession.

By Yawni Code.

THE SKINNY

Got the posters printed; going to hit the streets Monday, Tuesday. Everyday. All days. The new run of books looks amazing. Gonna burn a bunch of CDs for the soundtrack to throw into those copies ordered online. I'm gonna make a chart for all the bonus material I want to cook up. I've got some big ideas.
I'm approaching this with hands out, keeping book readings and poetry slams at a distance. I don't want to promote that way. I don't want to get into those scenes; I've been and I don't like them. Maybe I'm a bad person for not wanting to be attached to those things. Ash 3 Guns just reserved a third of the books off the new run to resell them. She'll be the Mississauga contact for CanaD.I.Y. Imprint.
I met up with Sandi on Friday. Gone Changed will be out before the end of the year and you van take that to the bank. I've already got ideas for the next one. If I talk about them you'll just shit cum. Take a step back.

THE DIRT

A lot of the referrals to this blog come from search engines. I have a weird amount coming from searches for "grand women sex."
And I can see where they're going with that. I know that there's people in Istanbul and Iceland looking for sex with grandmothers. Grand Woman conjurs up images of a huge woman. They went into it looking for grandmothers, having come to terms with the likely result of a enormous woman, but then ending up at my blog talking about spaceship fart.

We're in a recession. During times like these, I think we should let wolves overrun the city.
And it's Canada so we can do that.
We can do that right now.
Cows and chickes and pigs; none of these creatures are indigenous to the country. The only things that naturally live in Canada are bears, wolves, and horrible birds of myth.

Everyone should get Twiztid's new album, "W.I.C.K.E.D," and the debut album from Lonely Island, "Incredibad."
Fuck there's ants all over the floor of my room. There's no reason to live like this.
We're working on that, though.

Went to the Bloc Party show last night with Cadence on MDMA. It was pretty awesome. She threw up and we ate some chicken sandwiches.

SK

2009-03-05T22:36:00.003-05:00

PJJRETUNTIOEZZ%879038744

Maybe She Isn't Even Polish.

By Tune Salamander.

There's a lot of cop cars around tonight for a place like Greektown.
You won't find a bad guy waiting on the corner like that, looking at your fist. Like a space boxer or something.
But what do I know. I'm no cop doctor.

Cadence and I were sitting in a McDonalds and an old Polish woman walked in. She must have been 80, dressed in a shawl and rubies. She walked behind Cadence, and stopped. She reached her hand to her shoulder, and I watched, so captivated. She touched her palm to the side of Cadence's face and patted it gingerly. She said something in Polish, but I heard the word "boyfriend" in there. Then she waved and walked off.

Later she came back and stood beside our table. She said something that started with a "d" and made a kissing gesture. Then she brought her hands together.
"I think she wants us to kiss."
So we kissed because... because I don't want to be rude? I don't know.
She clapped her hands excitedly and walked off again. She looked so happy.
Even if she was crazy, it was infectious. That carefree glee. Maybe we should just stay away from McDonalds altogether.
I get enough ugly stares dating a black girl. Maybe it's because she's hot and I wear big pants.
Or maybe it's just the pants.
Or maybe it's cause I have a swastika carved into my dick and I walk around with my dick out.
Anyway.

SK

2009-03-02T01:50:00.002-05:00

UZZLAMABAKCC%348790231

Negative Reactions and What-If Scenarios.

By DCompose.

Cadence and myself were in McDonalds, each talking on our cellphones. She picked up the tray of food, and I went to reach for it to help her out and take it to our table. We both weren't paying attention, and it tipped causing one of the cups of coke to fall and spill all over the floor.
A one legged man leaned in front of me from the right. He gestured towards the spill with a theatric wave: "You spilled the coke! You're both on your cellphones!"
I was on the phone with my mom. I had to explain what happened and how everyone was staring at me. I was caught in a dead zone, not knowing what to do. Should I apologize to him? He looks so offended. Are we that asshole couple in the movie?
Why am I thinking of movies right now?
Fuck this culture.

Cadence had just bought me a black and white polo shirt. We shouldn't eat at McDonalds, or drink coke anymore. I've been drinking more juice and we've been thinking of building a house. Judas is spearheading that project. It might happen. It's not as difficult as you'd think. We'd buy the land and use concrete. He's modelling the project after a similar one he read about; the house has stood for nine years through vermont winters so that has to be worth something. Early 20's homeowner.
There's too much for me here right now, though. We want everything to happen this year but that might be unfair. I have work to do here.

We're going to Kingston tomorrow to meet with Snipe and talk business. He's rented a conference room at Queens University. I've been running off 3 hours sleep for the past couple of days now. I'm wearing really big pants right now. For the first time in a long time I am walking around with a sense of certainty.

I figured out my life: Negative reactions and what-if scenarios.
Maybe the next part of transformation. I do that too. Maybe there's only two steps, then.
More on that in Vilume, later this year.

SK

2009-02-27T04:44:00.005-05:00

DXXJACULERUMODD%349346702

The Joker, And Then Religion

By: W.M. Dimes.

Social 1.
Social 2.
Social 3.

I met the Joker downtown and gave him two dollars. It is was a pretty sweet deal.
Been drawing up posters the past couple of days, getting to work with Judas and Snipe, combining engineering and popular media. Judas quit his job by screaming at the boss and offending a fat lady

I don't get it. I don't get mall security. People who work in stores hate their job, people in offices hate their job, the president hates his job I bet, Mexicans hate tacos, everyone is cool with everything being shitty except for mall security. Nobody takes them seriously because it is impossible. They want to be treated like cops. When Judas flipped out and started a screaming match in the post office, everyone turned on him despite the fat lady being the antagonist. And then security shows up asking for his phone number and address. For what reason? To ban him from the mall. Because to ban someone you need to know where they live.
Because they think they're cops. Because someone gave them things to attach to their belts.
Judas rightfully told them to fuck off, along with everyone in the mall and everyone who has ever lived, even for a second.
Fucking D-grade cops trying to act serious. You people are one level above custodian. You deal with messes. Fuck right off.
Can these people do anything, legally? Can they arrest you? Or do they have to do a citizen's arrest, which means telling the guilty party they are under citizen's arrest and hoping they don't run or beat the shit out of you for being so lame.
Lame people get beat up. It's evolution, people.

Speaking of evolution, why don't more people know what the term "theory" means?
"The big bang theory is just that; a theory."

the·o·ry
1: the analysis of a set of facts in their relation to one another.

It basically means "a set of facts that explains something." It's not an estimate, or sort of an idea.
Roger Ebert made a good point, saying that when religious people critisize evolution, it's not the evolution that regular people understand and believe, but some strange cartoon version that they have invented for the purpose of ridicule and rage. These people need to go.
All religion must be destroyed. Subscribing to organized religion at this stage of human development is ike wearing a diaper when you are 31. There are rare circumstances where this is required. I know this, it's cool; I can be reasonable. Religion is stupid, and only stupid people use it. Religion should be criminal. Religion is guilty of so many horrible things, and impedes the development of individuals comparable to someone living with their parents their whole life. In modern society, these people are laughed at; they are inferior. In a first world country, you should be able to fend for yourself.

If a religious person does a good deed, it is immediate suspect because they may just be doing it to score points for the afterlife. If I do something nice, I don't think anyone's watching. If I do something good, it's because I think it is right, and I want to help people. Religion has people betraying their neighbours for an invisible friend. This is criminal. I don't know where the fault lies, though; if you believe it, you are stupid. Weak people do stupid things. Weak people also cheat and steal and gossip. The problem is weakness, and unfortunately I don't have a solution for that.

I do have a solution for religion, though: destroy it and let the atheists get to work on making this world better. Let the priests become doctors. Let the pastors die alone because I don't think there's a good pastor out there, but I don't want to deal in absolutes.
Everyone else just uses it as some abstract ethical test so they'll receive blowjobs for infinity. You ever been to church? It's full of assholes. I respect those who want to help their community, but you have to realize that you are in league with a world of hypocritical, greedy sons of bitches, and maybe you should take this compassion thing from a different angle.
There's so many corrupt churches. Nobody has corrected this corruption, so it must be assumed that the whole thing is vile and should be blown up, shot to death, or thrown in a hole and forgotten about.

Religion doesn't make sense to me in the modern world. We are too self aware for this to exist. It is tradition of the worst kind. It attacks science because it is terrified. We need a more abstract system of thougt that empowers the individual to make good choices without a ridiculous reward system; that only encourages selfishness. If you took heaven out of the equation, what would happen? People build their lives around this stupid hypothetical. This is all you get, and if you only work a righteous angle to get something later, you are selfish. I know it's mythology, but you know what? Fuck mythology, too. Fuck everything, I'm sick of it. Let's get something new that doesn't have people clinging to arbitrary shit. Let's have people confront ugly, cold fear, and let's have them work to understand how life functions.
Let's do that. Let's start tomorrow.
Fucking quick-fix con men. Fucking lazy, weak willed people. Who's at fault here? Everyone's at fault. Everyone try harder. I'm trying. If everyone tries in a different way maybe we'll make something. We'll all die alone but we'll be part of something better than a tribal ethics-war.
Prioritize. Fuck it, forget I said anything.

SK

2009-02-20T20:15:00.005-05:00

FCCIAMYMRUU%287679000

The Chris Brown / Rihanna Incident.

By W.M. Dimes.

I want to weigh in on the whole Chris Brown/Rihanna fiasco.
I've held my tongue for too long, especially concerning the circumstances; I was there.
I was across the street, watching the whole thing go down. I haven't said anything until now because I've been scratching records.
When I am not building websites ot writing books or making money, I am standing on the corners of streets with binoculars, looking for crazy shit.
I breathe it in and breathe out food.
I also have a weird dish that I can point at and hear anything. I bought it from a store.

There were rumours concerning Keisha Chante pulling Chris Brown her way during their whole break up. There's been enough words all over the truth, but here's the truth: she was trying to seduce Mr. Brown. That's just a fact.
You like facts. Want to see another fact?
Keisha Chante is a Tar Monster. If she were to reveal her true form, she would look like a creature shrouded in a sticky shadow. She posesses now, and has had for the past three centuries, the power to swallow the souls of noble men, and devour their physical form like dropping a stone into a lake. The waste she expells is not in any matter that can be identified by people like us. You might probably need some sort of helmet. I don't know everything.
Whatever world she hailed from is long dead, or so it's been said. They say she is filled with an eternal rage, as cold and violent as a nebula viewed from a great distance.

The night in question was very emotional; Rihanna was confronting Mr. Brown in his car, the driver's seat and her in the front passenger. He was on deluded road to annihilation, and I'm sure the fate of all mankind hung in the balance. I don't know everything.
"She's trying to turn you against me; against human kind," she told him. "She's going to use you, then kill you."
"Yo that's some bawshit. Real talk," replied Chris Brown.
"Listen to me you proud fool!" she shouted, "You are in danger!"
"Bitch don't raise your voice to me!" he shouted back, raising his fist as if to strike.
"I'm not your enemy, Chris. I'm the only one here who's trying to help you."
He brought his hand down into her cheek, knocking her face away. Lightning struck a water tower somewhere across town. I could hear it; everyone could hear it.
She turned it back towards him so slowly, like a good girl gone bad; like her fiction gave way with her carefully calculated physical facade. Hold on. The flesh on her cheek had been torn off, revealing the metallic skeleton beneath. The fault lines caused her false left eye to fall away; there was a horrible red light behind it. It seemed to pulsate, but probably not.
"You shouldn't have done that," she calmly said.

Now you need to understand the situation that Mr. Brown had found himself wrapped around. On one side he had an unfathomable sludge alien, and on the other an aggrovated cyborg.
The monster was nowhere to be found, but he was the hero. He was the protagonist, drunk on the present. He struck her again, and again and again. "You've awakened the beast in me!" he screamed, biting deep into her artificial skin. She didn't scream or fight back.
Someone called the police. They were the second group of authorities to arrive; the first aren't registered with any governing body.

They didn't see me, but I was wearing my "Abortions 4 Life" shirt so they probably thought I knew what I was doing.
Okay bye!

SK

2009-02-11T04:10:00.003-05:00

PAAHIHWXX%323298675

The Big Sleep Contest.

By Tm Bmb.

I've over here locked in a fight with Snipe over who can sleep the least. He stayed up for 40 hours, but then slept for 13.
I'm gonna snap this competition over your head, Snipe.
Your god damned head.

It doesn't take a lot to make me happy. All I need to be happy in 2009 is to somehow end up like Thom Yorke performing at the 2009 Grammys.

The website is registered, the books are redesigned (with covers and floorplans for the house in the back!) the ISBN is registered and the barcode is printed, and the main software and the shopping cart software is all installed. I'm going to spend the remainder of the week configuring it, getting the banners and colours and everything ready, and sorting out how to get books to people. Everything should be done by the end of February. I'll be pulling my hair out and punching it through a wall until then.

And then we'll start on the music. GDK in March. Vilume shortly after. But you'll be able to check the necessary channels for complete details once those channels are -

SK

2009-02-07T03:02:00.002-05:00

FVVTIMIGOOQFF%576737871

Spice Coka.

By W.M. Dimes.

Okay we got a couple cats over here. One is Rokski, which was a present for Bwtchr back in the day, and she's not in this country anymore. Not to say that I hadn't grown attached to the thing. It's cool to have a cat that knows it's the shit.
We go another named Frank. Judas bought it for Copper and it lives here too.
Rokski likes to fuck with Frank. He jumps on his back and bites his neck and drags him around. I think he is trying to have sex with Frank, not because he is a homosexual cat, but because he is desperate. I think this because he has a lust for the female pussy. I'm a genius.

In an attempt to stop Rokski from this abuse, Copper and Judas covered Frank's neck in hot spice. Raver was holding Frank and said the smell was strong. Judas smelled it and recoiled. I did te same. Raver shoved the cat in my face and got the spice in my nose; Judas had the same problem. The more we used our noses the more it burned. It would not wash our and could not be blown out. To feel accepted, Raver put some of it in his nose.

The three of us were staggering around the apartment, screamind and cursing, trying to figure out who was to blame. We were all to blame. Things didn't fix themselves for 10 minutes.
Don't sniff spice off a cat, not ever.

SK

2009-02-03T01:58:00.002-05:00

DAABELICCUSEYY%156998455

The Great Compassion Con.

By Dani Compose.

I'm sorry I'm a perfectionist. I'm going through Vilume word by word. It probably won't be out in March. It probably won't be out until this whole thing is settled. And that's a fact.
My girlfriend and I are falling apart. Our bodies are failing. It's a February feeling. The romance of winter is gone. All that's left is knife wind, slush, and frozen snow. Everything's more dangerous.

I was waiting in the subway station the other day just after midnight. The streets were quiet. I went out for a cigarette and a young, dirty girl approached me. She plead her case, and the short end of the story is she was asking for money for food, "because I'm pregnant." I didn't believe her, and I knew no restaurants around there were open, but no matter what you say, she needed money more than me. I thought a good deed might turn things around. Things were the wrong way, right.

So I give her some change and she walks off down the road. I watch her and she keeps looking back. I go inside and keep waiting. Ten minutes later I see her walk back to where we were, looing around. Maybe looking for me. I saw her step up to an older man - just as dirty - and walk down the street in the opposite direction.
So the question is: does it still count as a good deed if she thinks she tricked me? Is that how karma works?
Fuck, karma isn't real anyway. Who cares. Dumb question. I care. How does this compassion work? Am I being taken for a ride? I'd love to confront her if I saw her again, but that would betray the whole reason I did it to begin with. I think I confronted real compassion: half of it is hope right in the dirty face of reality. I guess I passed the test. If I believed in heaven I could stand pretty with all the churchgoers, counting my blessings for the big payoff.
Things never get better. Bullies never learn, they just get killed. Someone needs to kill these people. Someone has to put a belt around their weary self and step up to the task. Nobody will thank them and they might get lost somewhere in space at the end of it.
That should be compassion too. I'll rewrite it, don't worry.

I understand now that drugs are the realm of Dani Compose; all the pain and abuse and shitsense. I'm still organizing my thoughts about it. Give me some time, and remember that no matter what I explain, I'm always one step ahead of what you know.

SK

2009-02-02T03:02:00.003-05:00

RYYLAMEBFACVTOPAA%768900003

Good New for the Assholes.

By Kincer II.

The new website should be up in the next week or two. What that means is that all news pertaining to Voice in the Horse, CanaDIY Imprint, or business related things will be put there, while the stupid wacky crap will stay here. Wacky crap.
Like hand claps and farts.
Hi, I'm Nicky Dimes.

I'm still going to have it downloadable as a creative-commons licensed PDF; everything's going to be the same, but better, so it won't be the same, hey. There's some cool things we got lined up over here. I can't wait to show everyone.
I'm so fucking busy. This will all be over soon. We're going to fix the modern disassociation of information and knowledge. We're going to put the kaebosh on that segregation. We're going to condust business like geniuses or aliens or gargoyles, hey, hello.
Hav eyou heard of thos P.O.S. rap-hop guy? Look into it!
Nicky Dimes.

SK

2009-01-28T04:36:00.003-05:00

LDDOMNIHOCKK%675663900

Job List.

By Joker Grasshopper.

In Toronno we have these advertisements for United Way, or something similar. I can't find any images online so I will describe them lamely. There's posters of an old woman wearing a jogging visor and a tracksuit rising out of her old skin, and her old body is decrepit and sitting on a couch. You know what I'm talking about.
WILL SOMEONE GET THIS GUY A BLOWJOB?
The theme, it's about giving people a new life. Another shows a young professional rising out of a homeless person skin.
I saw one today where a young man dressed on medical scrubs is stepping out of the skin of a dishwasher, standing in a kitchen full of filthy pots and pans.
And, as a currently employed dishwasher, I found it hilarious that I am in the same league as a homeless man. Do I really need help? I'd love to think so. I'd love for someone to let me be a doctor, or even a really sassy nurse.
It got me thinking, and this is what I was thinking: here's a rundown of the jobs I have had in the past few years, excluding illegal activities.

Assistant at Worlds Collide Comic Shop
Night Crew at Price Chopper
Butcher's Apprentice
Door to Door Salesman
General Labour on Construction Site
Sorter in a Mailroom
Stockroom Attendant at Pottery Barn
Freelance Furniture Assembly for Pottery Barn Customer (singular)
Stockroom Manager at the Levis Store
Flyer Person on Assorted Streetcorners
Kitchen help at Pumpernickel's Restaurant
Baker at Tim Horton's
Bag Maker at Bag Factory
Loader at Westbury National Showsystems
Deli Counter at Sobey's Grocery
Sorter at Recycling Plant
Sales Associate at Seductions Love Boutique
Usher at AMC Theares
Manager (including prep cook, line cook, waiter, janitor, bartender) at Mirabelle Gastro Wine Bar / Dizengoff Grill
Dishwasher at Lakeview Restaurant

That's all I can remember right now. I might be missing a couple.

SK

2009-01-23T17:00:00.003-05:00

WOOLABABOOTEE%378902334

Clearing the Chat.

By D. Compose.

Raver Josh is a character. Often times he will disappear for days at a time, and I will only inquire moments before he returns. I called up Judas to find out where he had been the past three days.
"He's in DC at Obama's inauguration."
"Whatever. Fuck you Judas. Where is he?"
"I'm not shit fucking you. He's in DC with his parents. They got tickets to the thing."
I found it hilarious that Greek motherfucking Raver Josh went but my black girlfriend didn't.
That's how the cookie crumbles.

Anyway, I'm here to clear up some things about where CanaDIY is going. I'm in Oshawa right now about to meet up with Snipe, run some numbers, and design some logos. We're moving ahead really quickly, but let me first say what I am planning with this more independently run angle.
I've placed the order for the next run of Voice in the Horse, which I will be taking to Queens University soon to sell personally.

The thing to note about these new books is that, while the price will remain the same (a remarkable $12!) the quakity will be much higher; notably superior covers and paper quality. I have been working with the printer personally to secure high quality foryou beautiful people.
Once I have the CanaDIY site up and running, including the ordering forms and paypal options and etc, you will e getting the books straight from me rather than some company in Virginia. This means that all books will be signed and drawn on by me, because I am amazing. This cannot happen with the current Lulu.com arrangement, even though I would still highly recommend their service. I will also retain more profit at the end of it. So it's good for everyone.
I'm not keeping my cards close to my chest now because it's all about talking to humans.

We have big plans for the arrangement (CanaDIY will be a subsidiary of Great Idea Torture Machine Inc. once we get the legal paperwork sorted out and pay necessary fees,) and there'll be so many nice things for you beautiful snowflake people. In the next month or so we will also be working out getting an ISBN number for VITH so it can be sold in legitimate bookstores, amazon, etc, incase you don't trust me.

I have to go now. There's work to be done.

SK

2009-01-20T01:56:00.005-05:00

VSSHYPPACACRITATYY%637829001

Phase II and Haif.

By W.M. Dimes.

I started a new job the other day, working in a restaurant that's been operating since the thirties. It's got a basement with a low ceiling, filled with haunted rooms and unnecessary mirrors. Everytime I go down there I prepare for the worst. An Indian man with maybe seven teeth - all of them crooked and ecstatic - told me I looked too smart to be washing dishes. I told him I was saving money to start a business and I needed a job where I didn't need to care about anything. The other day I tripped and fell down the stairs, bashing my head on some weird wet stone wall. They let me sit down for five minutes, during which I detailed how the last restaurant I was a part of closed because they wouldn't listen to me.
Hi, I'm Nicky Dimes. I need to prove to everyone that I know things.
Case and point.

We're stepping up operations over here. Within the next couple of months I will be debuting a new CanaDIY site, completely self contained and operated by yours truly. It is currently run off Lulu.com, a very reliable self publishing company in Virginia or something. My reasons are many, but very soon I will be handling the printing, distribution, and advertising of Voice in the Horse, including subsequent books. I don't want to bore you. I'll keep it like kosher short. I'm starting my own small press.
The last thing I want to do is amaze you.
I don't want to do that.
I don't want to do that.
I've been too busy being majesty. Alright!
What's that mean? I'll tell you. Vilume is what. It's still tentatively release scheduled for March, but I keep finding things to add to it. It's going to be 400 pages by the time you get it. It's going to be a glorious meaty thing, filled with everything you could ever want from someone like me. I'm going to let you deal with it. I've got so much to do. I'm telling you all this because I am still an unprofessional. Once I get things running I'll stop being cool in the whole world. Eat BBQ chips.
I keep getting sore throats. What's up with that.
That's not even a question. Buy my shit. We're friends now.

I have a new lady in my life. I've given up my swinging bachelor lifestyle; I found someone that can keep up and be abused in just about the best way. It's made me a thousand times more productive, and that means YOU GET MORE WORMHOLES. The next two years are going to be out there. Abortions 4 life.

"I'm stupid rich / I got retarded money."
- 50 Cent

2009-01-12T13:30:00.005-05:00

PSSIIENTUODBB%456789033

The Kickoff.

By W.M. Dimes.

I phoned up Snipe and told him I had a bandage on my chin.
"Are you trying to pretend you're something that you're not?"

If you have Facebook, become a part of the Voice in the Horse delerium here.
I'm working on a deal wherein if you buy it from my person, for a marginal extra bit of change, you can possess the official Voice in the Horse Soundtrack CD, composed of various artists, compiled during the entire writing process of the book!
Isn't that something!
Also in the coming month(s) I will be working on making the book available on Amazon. If all goes well it will be showing up in legitimate bookstores in the Toronto area as well.
We're working the paperwork out friends!

The Master's Kitchen saga is almost finished. One or two episodes left. Tell your parents!
Work is commencing on the GDK music front. Stay tuned for new tracks in the next month or so.
Expect Vilume near the end of first quarter 2009 (March!)

2009 is off to a good start. We'll be moving to a new base of operations within the next couple of months. We may move into a store, we may move into a warehouse, or we may move back to that familiar crackhead riddled, crime puzzled Sherbourne area for round two!
It's very exciting!!!
I'm very excited!!!

SK

2009-01-03T19:13:00.004-05:00

UOODIFERTTUSIRYY%645890339

My Amazing New Show.

By W.M. Dimes.

Through the website xtranormal.com, I have created a brand new show and everyone has to watch it.
It's called The Master's Kitchen. All the episodes can be found at my brand new youtube channel, tentatively known as the 24/7 Master's Kitchen Network.

http://www.youtube.com/user/WMDimes

WATCH IT NOW.
Nearly done Vilume. 2009 is gonna be un fig.

SK

2008-12-29T17:58:00.002-05:00

TEEGHALLORYY%98989002

ThEMusic - Dec. 29 / 2008.

By Tune Salamander.

Rudy and the Rhetoric - The Graves are Empty
Sadistik - Murder of Crows
Hans Zimmer - Drink Up Me Hearties
M.I.A. - Paper Planes
Guns 'N Roses - If The World
Fall Out Boy - West Coast Smoker
Spinnerette - Valium Knights
AFX - Fenix Funk

SK

2008-12-29T17:47:00.003-05:00

UHHHUMILLLISRYY%47783982

Off With Their Heads.

By Switch.

I've been selling copies of Voice in the Horse like the hotcake.
While I have enough money squirreled away for a second printing, I've spent most of the profits on handcuffs, a ballgag, condoms, and other assorted enablers of my profound sex addiction.
So rock on W.M. Dimes. You're the best thing to happen to this solar system since gravity.
I don't know how we got on so well before gravoty showed up.
Those were the decidedly pre-salad days.

Social 1.
Social 2.
Social 3.

The abhorrent month of November is long since past, and December is almost done; good luck is shining down on me. I'm raking it in. I'm soaking in rakes.
It'll be gone soon, you know. That's how it works. But I don't care.
I'm thinking of taking a job in Mississauga with Ash 3 Guns' place, where she is a supervisor.
We'll be moving out of this place early next year and back to the grimy Sherbourne area.
Hopefully by that time Judas and myself will own a car. Hopefully by that time I will have a job that allows me the free time necessary to get all of this shit down.

Been going through Gone Changed again and making it better. Skandi is about finished all the concept sketches, she's picked her style, and I wanna get this thing done by the end of next year. I also wanna get the first GDK album out by then. I wanna have both Voicein the Horse and Vilume selling well by then.
2009 is the year we go incorporated. There's so many plans I want to shit myself but I only have one good pair of pants and they're clinging precariously to my ass.
I've got some music you should listen to.

Where the fuck are you gonna be New Year's Eve?
I'll talk about that later.
2008 was more failre than success, but I have cooler stories than anyone else and more product to sell than the KGB wishes they had in the early 80's.
Figure that one out, genius.

SK

2008-12-19T16:42:00.005-05:00

IEEHORTOOORSJJ%19904482

Snipe's Annual Christmas Party 2008.

By W.M. Dimes.

I think it's important to act like an idiot sometimes. I think if you don't do that then you're Keanu Reeves.
I remember one Christmas party vividly, and this was back when Judas was still crazy. Before he settled down and started coming home with weird packages.
The salad days.

Snipe's brother was back from the Army. There were some girls there, I think, but I don't know anything. Judas got really, really drunk and ran out into the snow. He got lost in the trees beside Snipe's house. Nobody went after him and I have no idea what happened out there. I think he might have found himself. He might have stumbled into the realm of infinite mirrors.
I just made that up. Fancy that.
Later on he threw up in the toilet a lot. Snipe's brother walked into the room with a big grin; like he'd just watched a good man win the lottery.
"Judas is talking to the president on the porcelain telephone." We were all very proud of that remark. It's been burned into my memory ever since.
But that was the last time he did anything like that.

I went to Snipe's party hoping to boondoggle Judas into getting drunk and embarassing himself. I wanted to spike his water with wine, or Irish up his cheese and crackers. I thought that if we poured enough rum onto his skin it would be absorbed into his pores. I didn't know if there was a spell to cast to make someone drunk, but I was already running through the names of people I knew, looking for a wizard.

I was on the train at midnight because I just got off work. The party was over and the guests had left, but Snipe and Judas were already in town waiting. I was drinking a lot on the train to prove a point. I ate a cheeseburger like I was about to go to war.
I can only assume Snipe's brother ate cheeseburgers like that before he wen to Afghanistan.
Never in Afghanistan. They don't have cheeseburgers there.
Maybe.

We went into the parlour and sat by the fireplace and drafted up a new social networking program. We told stories that will never leave that room, I don't think. The plan for 2009 is to go incorporated. I'll talk about that later.
Maybe.

It was my idea to go outside, after more shots and stories and decisions. It might have been 2:30 in the morning. I was drunker than everyone and, by that point, had designated myself the new Judas. I wasn't ashamed to be the biggest asshole there.
We ran out into the dead of night, sliding on the ice and stumbling in the snow. Maybe it was only me. It's fun to stumble.

For the longest time I had wanted to start our own Fight Club. This goes back into last year, and maybe before that. Nobody wants to do it anymore because they all have girlfriends, and girls don't get Fight Club. They'll roll their eyes and cross their arms and tap their fingers against their elbows. Judas was the only one who was into it, to be honest, but he's out.
Copper crosses her arms a bunch.

Out there, in the darkness and the cold and the silence, I started a fight club. It started with just me throwing clumsy punches at Judas, or shoving Snipe into a tree. Before long it turned into something real. I remember not feeling anything and demanding people punch me. I thought it was hilarious. I fell down a lot and hit my head.

I tumbled over to the same trees that swallowed Judas years prior and threw up. I couldn't figure out how to correct myself, or stand up or tell where I was. I also had strep throat and couldn't breathe. I thought I was going to die. I fell down and struggled to breathe. They approached me and asked if I was okay. I rose to my feet and started throwing fists at Judas again. I identified their concern as weakness. Obviously.
I didn't die, but I lost one of my necklaces in that fucking place.
Figure that one out, genius.

Despite the fact that I acted like a stupid drunk, I said it once maybe twice here it is, it's important to do that sometimes.
Any excuse to start a fight club, really.

SK

2008-12-18T02:11:00.002-05:00

VHHJUVENNIISRKK%73782301

The Sri Lankan Situation.

By Dani Compose.

I'm not working till the new year.
I spent my last day on the job helping my surrogate Sri Lankan family steal an ice machine.
But I don't think you know about the family part.
I'd better talk about that.

But first: is there anyone in the world who can look me in the eyes and say that, when they hear music from India, they don't want to murder the world? It's so bad. Bollywood is so retarded. Their food is so fucking overspiced. It's like they took every spice available and just threw them in a pot and made a sauce and made every dish 70% spice sauce. It's like Japan, and everything is over the top, but not in a stupid way; in an ugly, real way.

I'm halfway through the story. I'm sorry. I went to a rock 'n roll show and I don't know what's going on. I also have a sore throat but that's because I am a hooker.
So my new Sri Lankan family: my boss introduced me to his wife and children, as they would come in and help with the restaurant before it failed. The other day I was at his house helping him move shit. He says I am his brother, and like a son to him.
I don't know if this is part of some larger scam, but I'm not interested any more.
He and his friend took me out for Indian food, is why I brought it up before.
I mean come on. It's such an old, rich, over populated culture, and this is what they come up with. And they have religious temperance, not destructive indulgence like we have over here. They don't waste their time with lip gloss movies!
They should have invented hip hop a hundred years ago. They could have invented Barack Obama.

My boss invited me over for Christmas dinner. I think I am part of their whole thing.
So, there you go. I finally have a second family.
I mean, one that wasn't influenced by ecstacy.

SK

2008-12-13T14:51:00.005-05:00

PDDNIXXXUSROO%76782201

Welcome Back, Mewes.

By Tony Mewes.

It's been a month I think. I've been up to some stuff and I didn't want to talk to anyone.
But I can't escape this any more than I can escape hubris.
What do you think about that?
I know what you think about that.

I love the way two thousand and hate ended up. Snipe called it when he said that the year started of poorly. We were at City Hall, in another crowd like Dawn of the Dead, when I was called away by Bwtchr to go home because something was going on. I had to take a taxi through an exodus, and you know how that is. It's expensive is what it is.
It was a symbol. That night was Batman.

Snipe called it with Saint, too. That piece of shit Saint.
The day after he met him, maybe 2 years ago, he said "this man is a defecit."
I didn't believe Saint was a man but I didn't say anything because talking is for assholes.
And now here I am, on the streets everyday, human hunting in the name of Judas and Justice, just wanting to beat the shit out of this kid to right the universe again. There's a crime walking around this Winter, and a meteor needs to hit him or some lightning needs to show up.
But I'm trying to be positive. That's the key. That's the key to the magic door. I'm not that guy anymore. I'm the cool guy. Fall in love with me.

I love how 2008 ended up, though. From those early days of cold and drugs and sex sounds, on through the completion of Voice in the Horse, Vilume, a radio pilot, a graphic novel, and a movie script, to the war with the crackheads all the way through to all our former friends, the poverty and theft and the addictions and recoveries, the evasions and heists and violence, mean sex and violent women and how they can combine into some sort of cavernous, sick, eternal mouth, working at the sex store, recycling plant, and some others, to my current positon as a manager at a failing restaurant, all my rejections from legitimate publications leading to my self publication, the formation of the Berg Quartet and the EP that followed, then the name change to GDK and all the happiness that laid down like pavement, the recording of The Mythology and all the things learned with that, it's all hilarious. It's two thousand and hate. This is what happens. I don't think I'm as angry as I was at the beginning. I think I know what I'm here to do now. We did a lot of good work this year.
Let me tell you though.
2009 is Shark's Honour.
Calendar it.

I also love how since the beginning of the year we've ended up in a recession, and here in Canada we no longer have a legitimate government. Stephen Harper has turned into Darth Vader and that's something else.
So that's the year in retrospective. I won't go into what's going on with the wine, or with Saint, or with the other people that owe me money. I won't go into the pregnancy and I won't go into all the stuff that might be used against me. I'll go into that later, after we've cut and run. None of it is important anyway.

I'm going to Oshawa tonight to attend Snipe's annual Christmas party. I'm going to arrive at midnight to eat all their food and make a scene. If there's one thing that was there at the beginning that will be carried through into 2009, it's drinking on a train during the night.
That will never die. Not until I do.
But I will never die.
I can only stop.
And I think I should keep going.
I don't think I'll ever shut up.
Someone texted me and said "I can see messages in the whites of your eyes," a line from Voice in the Horse. I don't recognize the number. I don't ever want to know who that was.

SK

2008-11-20T22:20:00.002-05:00

GXXOKFFARII%87333332

Simple and Idiot.

By Mr. November.

An e-mail from Snipe:

I understand that you have opted not to write much in your blog anymore, but that was one of the few sources I would go to read about something that did not pertain to my work. Instead, it is probably advisable for me to email.
Don't forget remembrance day tomorrow.
What does anyone think about political correctness anymore? I wasn't going anywhere with that.
It's getting damned cold out these days, and sometimes I don't like anyone here. I think you and I need to assemble a small party (as in a boarding party) and take a trip somewhere. I want to plan this now for some event in the future. We'll get Raver Josh drunk and lost on the Orient Express!

It's been snowing here. It's cold and my boss owes me money. It's been a month of bad luck, and I think it's always been that way. Everything's gone wrong, from my cell phone being cut off, to circumstancial bullshit with the girl plural, to running out of money to Saint turning people against us and myself wandering around the city keeping an eye open for him so I can lay the hate down on him until my hands bleed, to getting very sick, to cats getting sick and ripping everything apart, to a feeling of overwhelming hopelessness and despair.
It's gotta be November. There's no other way to explain it.

On the upside I got a lot of new albums and I'm rekindling a lot of old friendships. Going to more concerts and bars and clubs and fun stuff that normal people do. There's plans to make a new Channel 101 pilot or two. One in the new year for sure - it needs to be sunny. I've got a good idea for another one. I'll talk about it later.
I'm getting to the bottom of things. I've been drinking a lot and I don't think it's solving things as much as I thought it was. I've been violent a lot and, since it almost got me fired, I should stop before it gets me sent to jail for strangling an Asian despot to death in the middle of the street.
I won't let that happen. I live in a fantasy world. I need to make that real.
I guess.

SK

2008-11-12T22:49:00.003-05:00

LWWLAQUEUEUMPDD%2392399

The Winter.

By Dani Compose.

This is how I know it's winter.
I'm drinking in an empty house.

If only to verify my last post, I will see this one to completion. I only write in this thing when I am fucked up. I might pass a law wherein I can only write on here when I am dying.
Snipe abandoned his. Ash 3 Guns did the same. It's like everyone clued in before I did that this is a waste of time.
I think what we should be aiming for is a new filtration system with which to measure the worth of stories.
Hold on, I need to light a cigarette,

Being single is great. Ever since I've been accountable for my actions and my actions alone, I've gone from healthy, to work obsessed recluse, to pussy obsessed womanizer, wrongheaded miscreant. I love it. This is what I do. If only I had the money I'd pump my body so full of chemicals and orgasms you wouldn't see Vilume till 2012.
Ever since I got the first draft of it done I've thrown everything in the air like a fucking mushroom cloud. I spent a week playing Fallout 3, before which I spent a week commiting to memory the many ways humanity could be wiped out within this year.
So, my nonmoney is saving my life.
My nomoney is keping me healthy.
Thank god for the recession.

This blog was the first thing to go when I realized that I talk too much.
Which shouldn't have been the case, because I never talk about anything good on here so there's nothing being lost. In fact, this assholethingfuck might be the only place in the entire world where I can talk how I want to talk.
And I think the problem lies in just that. I've spent so long on this thing detailing the various downward spirals, excesses, failures, and backwards triumphs of my life that I'm not doing anything right in the real world.
I'm not letting my stories mature into anything worthwhile and I'm not fixing my problems.
I'm like a rockstar: I'm putting my fault lines in the spotlight to... prove something?
What is going on here? I'm not the first one to do this and that is fucking sad.
Anyway, gotta save this skatch for tomorrow. A friend is coming over.

It's Winter now. We're winter people over here. This is the time of year where we do the stupidest shit.
So let's get on that.
I'm talking to myself.

SK

2008-11-02T22:28:00.002-05:00

OZZEQUQAWII%18889355

The Sick, The Delay, The Invincible Party Bastard.

By W.M. Dimes.

It's taken 4 days to write this. Now it's taken five. I'm jumping around this post and amending things.
Snipe wants to know what's going on. He's the only one who reads this so I guess I could just call him and let him know what's going on.

I'm focused. I have things to do. I'm busy. I don't want to tell this kind of truth. It takes away from the task at hand.

"Cuz real hustlers don't talk they just go get it!"

- Ryu, Styles of Beyond.

I'm working 13 hour days at a misanaged shawarma joint. I'm working on a new story structure. I'm going to use it for the last few stories in Vilume. I want to put it out sometime in early 2009, but what does that mean? What's my plan?
I'm talking Channel 101 pilots. I'm writing songs, I'm being poor and I'm mackin' on bitches.
Outer Space Now Belongs To 007.

I've got a cold and I can't afford medicine. I was really sick for one day and I'm feeling better on the second.
And that's roughly the recovery time frame that I'd be working with if I was taking medication.
So, it has me wondering, why the fuck would I pay $15 for a bunch of pills?
A bunch of pills that don't make me dance better or make me more likable?
Ponder that you idiot.

Also, during my sickness, I was out drinking the whole time, spending other peoples' money, so maybe that has something to do with it. Girls took me out places and paid my way. A lesser man might extract something from that. A wiser man might learn from it. I am neither.
I'm cooking up trouble with a big stupid spoon.
I am gravity. I am essentially gravity. I'mthe amazing nobody.

That was from days ago. A week ago, actually. A week ago now. Maybe.

This whole post is a snapshot of my life. It's - now it's the next night. So much time has passed on this blog post. What am I supposed to talk about? Am I supposed to brag about shit? Am I supposed to tell you the good fortune I pulled out of an asshole? What's going on with Voice in the Horse? How am I selling that?
Who needs to know this? It needs to get done. The stories you hear must be seasoned, their worth tested by time. Facts need to be made, and realities need to be conjured.
I guess.

This post is my Chinese Democracy.
Was it worth it?

SK

2008-11-02T20:52:00.002-05:00

IQQLATOROJAA%38988800

ThEMusic - Nov. 3 / 2008.

By Dani Compose.

La Coka Nostra - Get Outta My Way (Osiris Produktion Remix)
Buck 65 - Yesterday's News
Buckethead - Coma
AMB - I Stay Wicked

SK

2008-10-27T23:06:00.002-05:00

PFFNECKTORII%96833012

Post-Post Youtube.

By Tm Bmb.

I've been sitting here, staring at the ceiling and smoking cigarettes, listening to a rare Buck 65 release.
I've got nothing to do. Vilume is 95% done and I'm letting it rest for awhile. We've got no resources to record or perform music yet. I've written too many songs for having nothing to play them with.
I bought a hat at the convenience store around midnight for $3.
The internet is the worst thing in the world. There's a cat in my face.

Okay so here's how it's gonna work. There's a domesic dispute going on next door and I'll be damned if it doesn't get me thinking about social interaction.
So, I'm saying that in a couple decades, in the post-post youtube generation, social interaction will take a new and amazing turn. I think we've reached the infancy stages of social networking with Twitter, having scaled everything back to the bare necessities and giving half sentence blurbs about what we are doing that moment.
So any step back will change the form completely, into a fetus, or embryo, and then down into micro organisms.
I wonder what those two are fighting about. Maybe he farted in her soup.
Anyway, in 10 years or so, we'll be networking with vague scribbles made to represent what we might be thinking the next day, or at some indeterminate time in the future.
Wouldn't that be something?
Wow those people are angry.

SK

2008-10-26T02:25:00.003-05:00

PVVFERRRMEHQQ%34433499

GDK.

By Wicked Stripe.

I only get shit done at 3 in the morning.
There's gotta be a pill for that.

So I came into the building and walked down the stairs to the floor with our apartment. Now, there's a door that always open that seperates that floor from the main foyer.
There was a pair of black booty shorts hanging on the doorknob, on the side of the door facing away from the entrance.
As if to say, someone was fucking some other one in the front entrance - by the mail boxes and the windows - and didn't want anyone from our level interrupting. Because this floor is where they stuck all the sickos.
The underwear stayed there for 4 days before someone took it back.
I guess it's safe; it's like a condom, nobody's gonna touch it or spit on it or nothing.
That would be weird.

I've got 5 songs written for the Berg Quartet.
But I'm also here to mention that we're not called the Berg Quartet anymore. We're called GDK. I'm not going to go into why we're called that. You can probably figure it out if you're worth a damn.
We'll end up making a new MySpace page and all that once we get these songs recorded.
The next step is getting the proper equipment. Once we do that, we get the songs performed, sequenced, and ready.
Then, early next year, we start with the live shows. I don't know when exactly. The sooner the better I say.
That's what I am saying is what I am saying.

SK

2008-10-24T12:33:00.003-05:00

IJJNIHHILTCC%47835330

Mouths Hanging Open.

By Switch.

Okay can we talk for a minute? Just for a second?
Who the hell smacks their lips? You know what I'm talking about.

People do it when they're sleeping. People do it when they're sucking on a lozenge or a piece of food. If they're eating something juicy it happens. Fuck even if people are eating something dry, they make these smacking sounds. What the fuck is wrong with you people?
Who smacks their lips and refurbishes their saliva when they're sleeping?
Why the fuck do you people do this?
Are you all retarded? Do you realize how disgusting and ignorant that sounds?

And what is up with popular conduct these days? How did the idiot get in vogue?

I mean young people - namely hip hop nerds - standing with their mouths hanging open.
What happened to the conventional wisdom that having your mouth hanging open was uncivilized? I'm sure there's an evolutionary aspect to it, like flies or disease might fly into your mouth. That's not really the case these days - polio can't fly goodly in 2008 - but god damn it, people look retarded. Like drones. Like zombies. Like people with literally no brains. Like something out of Rush Hour 3.
You see what I am doing?

I am presupposing that you love Rush Hour 3.

I guess it's to show that you don't give a fuck, or you're unimpressed or too cool for shit. I get it. I get why people want to rebel against the establishment, and if the estabilishment is schools and professors and businessmen and people in dusty white wigs, you'll throw in with the asshole.
Find something else people. Please get off ths train. We're going to be held in trial one day. There's going to be a slideshow of all our faults and this is going to be up there.

I guess I'm just fed up with mouths.
Fuck that shit.

SK

2008-10-24T01:45:00.005-05:00

CXXDEEUSRPP%65748333

Antichrist.

By W.M. Dimes.

Below this post is an entry about what music I'm listening to. Nobody can stop me from posting these things. Don't even try.
I've been all over the place these past 2 weeks; my impromptu two week vacation.
I've spent the last one sending off copies of Voice in the Horse for reviews, as well as other publishers because, despite me trying to sell it myself, it's really not an avenue I want to commit to. I don't really want to spend 3 years wringing the knots out of this thing.

On top of that I'm nearly done Vilume. The end result will be close to 300 pages, if not exactly that. It's gonna be full of everything. Just you fucking wait.

I've been to Copper's new place, talking about the anti christ with Judas. Since he knows more about the bible than me I often let him take the reigns. He explained how some people think Obama is the antichrist because, as was foretold, it would comeout of nowhere talking peace and unity, trying to change shit and make everyone happy, one world government, etc.
Now, the next logical question is, what then?
Because all that seems pretty great. Hey, if someone could make one world government work, go ahead. So the antichrist walks in, makes everyone happy and spreads peace. That in itself isn't necessarily bad, because this happiness is the sign of the end times, as I understand it.
What puzzles me is: does the world end after he succeeds? Or does him doing it right now mean we have 5 years left? If so, shouldn't we just all be happy and have sex? Shouldn't we take all our excess baggage and put it in crocodiles? Shouldn't we just admit that most of the cheese in the world is stupid? Can we do some real talk? Can we just blow up every mountain to see if there's weird shit living in there? Can we find the biggest squid and beat it up?
HANG ME IF I'M WRONG!!!

I don't think Barack Obama is the antichrist.
It would be pretty hilarious if he was, though. He seems like he's got his hand on the ball, but I've read Trasmetropolitan, so I'm always suspicious. He might have a weather machine tucked away. This perfect gentleman might be Lex Luther.
Truly, this Christianity thing has given way to worldwide paranoia.
Someone coming out of the woodwork to make everything better must be here to end the world.
You don't get something for nothing. Everyone has an agenda.
Do they? Is that where conventional wisdom is at? Is this new? I don't know. I'm 21 and poor, a chef school drop out with a kitten in his lap (holy shit it's precious.) What do I know about the world?
EVERYTHING BECAUSE I AM A GENIUS.
I've figured everything out and it's killing me! That's what happens to us!
We die! Thinking is death! Professors are zombies!

I've written 3 pieces for the Toronto Slam in November, I might go, but then again, at the same time, I might not. I might get smart all of a sudden. I have no idea what I am doing. My plans are changing every day. I'm refining my structure. I'm working overtime. I'm on the clock. It's 3 in the morning and I can't sleep. I hate my past. I hate who I used to be. Fuck this life.
Let's do a 180 here. Or let's just say I did.

SK

2008-10-24T01:39:00.002-05:00

GXXHORRTORRLAA%78922204

ThEMusic - Oct. 24/2008.

By Dani Compose.

What's happening on my iTunes? Let me tell you.

T.I. - Paper Trail
Buck 65 - Live with Nova Scotia Symphony
Cradle of Filth - Godspeed on the Devil's Thunder
W.M. Dimes - The Mythology
Hans Zimer and James Newton Howard - Dark Knight Soundtrack

-UT!

SK

2008-10-19T18:22:00.005-05:00

IZZFLAMMATJJ%69261044

New Year Satisfaction.

By Yawni Code.

Voice in the Horse.

I don't know how to work this into the advertising or the back cover of the book, but Snipe told me a story wherein her girlfriend was reading Voice in the Horse the other night. Up until page 13 she was stricken with a headache. Then, as she was finishing page 13, her nose began to bleed.

I was in Kingston last night. We found a bag of coal and threw it at some shit. My pants were coming apart at the seams.

We've been working on music a lot. Staying up until 5:00 AM and business. Ash 3 Guns is coming down tomorrow and we're gonna finish up this song and get the next one blocked out.
It's a big step considering all the tracks thus far have been myself and Raver Josh, mostly me because most of them were test songs with him adding the flavour. Now we're building them from the ground up. He's getting me to learn music theory as well, because the setup will probably end up being myself and him working the sequencers and various controllers, with me sort of going back and forth between that and vocals, then Ash on vocals and guitar / violin. I want to get a bass guitar in there. We're like 3 clashing musical tastes. I keep wanting to put punk rock sense and noise parts into it. RJ is into real music and classical theory. Ash looks to be more romantic. She's probably reading this. You know what I'm talking about.
We're thinking of putting on our first live shows around March in the new year. In my world we do it before that, but the other 2 seem to think that's unreasonable.
In my world everything's fine.

It's 3 in the morning. I'm going to go to bed now. I'm telling it to you.
Nearly done Vilume, too. Want to put that out in January, with the next real book to be released on my Birthday in June. Hopefully that point Gone Changed will be nearing completion and we can lane that up. I'm just talking now.
Everything feels like it's leading up to New Year's Eve. I want that day to hit with a feeling of satisfaction. I need to get more done for 2008. We got to get our shit figured out.

Saint moved out of the apartment. I won't go into the reasons why because that's a story for another time. Any good story needs time to mature.
Now it's just myself, RJ, and Judas, although Judas is out most of the time at Copper's place. That's what's going on.
Since I haven't received a call from my boss about what my schedule (he told me it would be around Thursday) I'm trying to figure out if he is trying to passively fire me.
If that's the case then everything's fucked.

Anyway, fuck everything. Suck anything. That's it.

SK

2008-10-15T21:13:00.005-05:00

ILLQUARESBB%29077777

Music Day.

By Stilts Bangar.

Buy or Download (free) Voice in the Horse.

I'm gonna keep bringing that up until it doesn't need to be.

I was at Ash 3 Guns' place in Mississauga last night, staying up until dawn working on songs, harmonies, rhythms, plans, stories, everything else.
People at her work keep asking her about the Berg Quartet, wondering when our next show is, asking for more songs, etc. They keep up to date. I listened to the LoFi CrashTestSK Ep today and it turns out it is better than I remembered.
But still, where's the more? I've been wondering that myself. RJ dropped out of the project for a bit, but now he's back on. Chances are we'll change the name because "Berg Quartet" is, by all accounts, a super shitty name.
Back to the topic at hand; on one count we have a couple songs done. We have that first EP, and we're working on some new ideas.
On the other count, we have no idea how to begin playing live shows. We don't have any real equipment or experience or avenues.
But we got some people and maybe that's all that counts. Maybe maybe. Somethingsomething.
RJ is back on board. We're working on the music, synching everything up, and organizing our thoughts. We'll all meet up in the near future to get them recorded.

I work as a line/apprentice cook at a nice fine-dining restaurant further North. We serve steaks and pastas, fish and seafood. It has never been particularly busy.
My boss told me late last week that he had confidential information for me. Before the restaurant opened, he took me aside and told me that the restaurant was closing down. He explained that the economic climate was going to hell and he had to change concepts.
His concept was to shut the restaurant down for two weeks and reinvent it as a schawarma and falafel place. Israeli food, in the North end of the city, surrounded by rich suburbs.
Why was it so confidential if, less than a week from when he told me, everyone would know?
Why was it confidential if it seemed like I was the last to know and, 4 days from when he told me, the doors would close, and then eveyrone would know?
I don't know. Who the fuck cares.
Apparently he wants all the waitresses in tight white t-shirts, as well.
Either this will be a fantastic failure, or everything I know about life, death, love, and industry is wrong, and I'll go underground until the mass evacuation.

So I'm going out tomorrow to find a new job and put up posters around the city advertising my CanaD.I.Y. storefront. This is that week off and I haven't really had a moment's rest since Sunday. It's been work, research, writing, refining, and planning. I'm on the clock. We're all on the clock, here.

This is Stilts Bangar signing off!

SK

2008-10-13T00:57:00.001-05:00

IFFMAGORAAYQQ%58999036

Creative Commons.

By Tune Salamander.

Here's something for you, then.

I am now offering the downloadable e-book version of Voice in the Horse for free, licensed under the Creative Commons act. You can find that, as well as the $11 print edition, at this location:

http://stores.lulu.com/canadiy

Since this is a small, Print-On-Demand, independent operation, all moneys and dividends go to those responsible. I don't get royalties, or percentages or anything off the back end. If you buy a copy, you're supporting me as well as further work. The same goes for the plethora of others who work under th same circumstances. We're removing the middleman and exchanging goods directly with those interested.

Take a look at the sample pages, or download the entire product if you're skeptical, and if you like it, tell your friends, or buy a copy, or post parts of it on your blog, or put it on a forum or write something about it. You can do anything you want with it as long as you credit those responsible (myself.) You can edit it or remix it or turn it around as long as you let them know where I am. That makes you a cool person, and since this is a cool system, we have no room for Nazi Nerd people.

You can find more information on Creative Commons here: http://creativecommons.org/

I'm off to work on the band with Ash tomorrow, as well place advertisements around the city to drum up some attention. It's almost 2009. We're on the clock, here.

SK

2008-10-08T23:10:00.002-05:00

YAASENEXSBB%64829000

Ordering Voice in the Horse.

By D.Compose.

While I sort out how I'm going to take care of shit on my end, there's no reason I can't link to my storefront. The book is done and ready to be shipped, so if you want it like I want you to want it, you can have it.

http://stores.lulu.com/store.php?fStoreID=1350844

That's the tentative storefront for CanaD.I.Y. books, the title for my little operation.
I'm working around the clock to turn it into something bigger.
Shock. Horror.
Have at it.

SK

2008-10-08T01:33:00.002-05:00

IJJVINDICOGZZ%45459111

The Book Problem.

By W.M. Dimes.

It's not the sickness; it's the waiting that's killing me.

I got a call this morning from a place called Author House. They woke me up from a weird dream where my dead father was driving me and this drunk chick around, and she was trying to make out with me. I think we met at some party. The whole situation felt desperate, like the end of the world was coming, or we were gonna fly out of the city.
We were driving her home and I didn't want to do anything cause it might makemake my dead father feel awkward. Long story short I got her number.
And then Author House calls me.
They're a self-publishing company that I sent a query to, to get an estimate. I didn't really think I was applying to anything, and even if I was, I'd get an e-mail, not a phone call.
I had done it the previous night in my researching of companies with whom I could get documents printed and bound. Specifically one in the city.
Long story short I say I'm interested, because interested, to me, is a fairly broad word.
I'm interested in volcanoes, too. I'm also interested in cancer.
I don't want anything to do with either of those.

This conflicted with an earlier plan I had, which was to walk down to motherfucking Kinko's and see what they can do with their printing / binding / finishing services.
During the conversation, the woman sounded like she was trying to close me.
And I know what that is cause I used to do it and it makes me feel sick.
It doesn't make her feel sick, so fat chance I'm gonna be getting her drunk ass number in my dead dad's car.
After I hung up I ran a quick google search for "author house complaints," and was introduced to the wide world of vanity presses and bullshit companies.
I wrote them an e-mail back saying I wasn't interested.
They asked "why?"
And I didn't reply cause I'm too fed up with all this fucking shit.

Kinko's will cost double to print books, and they have all their shit in 8.5/11 paper. Unless I want to cut it down. And they don't print on covers. And it costs double, again, for double sided paper.
And it's been 20 business days and my test copy still hasn't come in.
I ask them if there is any insurance, or if I can get my money back, and they say I'll have to come down and register a complaint with their orders office.
I live in Toronto fucking Canada and you guys are in Virginia. If I am getting on your case for my $20 order, I can't really get a motherfucking plane ticket and get a room at the motherfucking Holiday Inn.
This whole thing is pissing me off. Let's say it arrives tomorrow. Let's just live in that perfect world.
It will have taken a month and a half to arrive.
What the fuck is going on? A month and a half, including the time it takes for money to clear.
Which isn't really their fault.
I'm at my wits end with this shit. I don't know what I'm doing.
This is my life. This is what I'm doing. Do I want to get rich or something?
Do I want money? Let's say I get them all printed off and perfect. What then? Do I stand on a street corner and hustle them like a friend's mixtapes?

SK

2008-10-05T14:23:00.003-05:00

IXXACERBUSTDD%83790006

Nuit Blanche II.

By DCompose.

I had the song "13'th Caesar" by Cradle of Filth in my head all night. Just the chorus. My hands ended up really dirty. I ended up in a really nice condo, filthy, filled with acid and skatch, with black metal stuck in my head. It was 3:00 AM I think.

The whole night I felt like the beginning of Bad Santa and the end of American Psycho.
There was supposed to be an army of zombies at this one place, but all we found was a thousand people gathered, looking for zombies, wondering aloud where the fucking zombies were. Someone was shining a laser pointer at someone's dad leaning out a window.
Judas and I figured out that the whole night was actually April Fool's day. I'm going to ask him how we figured that out. We were talking a lot about time.
Nuit Blanche is weird; there's people crowded in a city, looking for art and entertainment, and expecting something from the city. All we heard was people complaining, and voicing unrest.
On the flip side, the city is expecting people to have fun, and buy things and give the city a good name, and have spirit.
Neither is really getting what they want, and nobody is really sure what the question is.
So it has the dynamic of an old married couple sitting in bed, waiting for the other to make the first movie.
Everyone just wants to fuck but nobody knows how to talk.
That's Nuit Blanche. I love it; everyone's pissed off, confused, alienated and being introspective. That's what I'm comfortable doing. Me and the rest of the city switched places. I was having the time of my life, watching a bunch of art students trying to be ironic and clever, holding up pieces of paper that read "Art," holding back the tears as hip-hop nerds and club kids ridicule them.
How did the clever ironic people end up being the most serious ones?
This whole thing's a joke. This whole thing's a fucking swindle.
Why the long face?
Are you mad because...
OCAD (Ontario College of Art and Design): "Yes; I will pay you so we can waste everyone's time."
I feel like a fucking surrealist. I'm on the brink of claiming that the War in Iraq isn't even happening.
We're living in a post-clever society here. "Art" on a piece of paper is clever. They've got an agenda here. We're sick of seeing that shit.
At the beginning of the night I was convinced that we were close to reaching the crucible of humour; that everything is getting simpler, and everything is backwards and implied, and soon we'll reach pure, bitter humour.
But now I think we're barreling towards a comedy equilibrium. We're walking around trying to figure out if the joke is on us, or if the TV is staring back, or if being supremely serious is supremely funny, or aybe it isn't because that would be the most ironic funny thing.
So now I think soon we're not gonna find anything funny. Soon we're just gonna be giving everything paranoid chuckles.
That's the world I wanna live in.
That's Nuit Blanche.

I'm not going to tell any other stories. I'm trying to kill that part of me, cause to tell a story you need a purpose. There's no purpose to this story. There's no reason to account these fucking events or explain these anecdotes. What am I doing here? This blog thing - recounting events of your day - is anti productive. I'm taking this shit back. This isn't a blog.
This is a shit cunt.
I have pictures though, and I'm putting those up.
This is Chinatown.

Nuit Blanche is an all night art exhibition held all over the city of Toronto.

SK

2008-09-29T21:44:00.004-05:00

IPPUXORRJJ%48887344

The Forever Entry.

By W.M. Dimes.

This is another post that took 3 days to write.
I don't have anything cool to say. I'm writing this first bit at the eleventh hour, now I'm going to jump to the end.

October 16 is National Boss Day.
I'm thinking of changing this from a "blog" into a "faux journal," in title only.
We're gonna brainstorm some new names right here.
"Shit cunt."
"Shut the fuck up."
"HOW POW."
"Truth Junction feat. B-Unch"
"Catacomb Mouthh (sic)"
This is happening.

Okay, so, I was watching The Last Temptation of the Christ.
And let's jump to the scene where he draws a circle in the desert, and stays there for weeks and is confronted by visions.
The last vision he encounters is the pillar of fire which represents Satan.
I'm here to rewrite this. Here's what I think should have happened. It's fresh in my brain and it'll be fresh in yours once I take you there.

So, rather than a pillar of fire erupting up, a skyscraper bursts out of the ground and ascends into the sky. Jesus looks up in startled horror. Atop the skyscraper, standing by the edge of the roof, is a crazed red skeleton, swinging a lasso over its head and laughing like a derranged mayor.
"I cast you out!" Jesus might shout at the sky. The skeleton lets out a mad peal of laughter.
And then - just then - all the windows shatter, and millions of butterflies pour out from inside.
"This is you!" the skeleton screams.
"This is what you sound like!"
The camera should zoom in and out rapidly and have strobe lights in the background.
And it should probably be done in claymation, but not both. Not with the strobe lights and camera shit.
I don't know where the line should be, but that's where I'm drawing it.

Judas is working on getting his prospector's license. It costs a pittance.
They give it to you very cheap if you plan to prospect on crown land. It's part of a much larger goal of his, which I won't go into here out of respect and time. There's a supreme goal here and I wanna be a part of it.
The end result is living off the grid way the fuck up North. I don't wanna spoil the surprise.
He's also gonna buy a car soon. I'm throwing money at that.
He thinks it's time we start going up in the world.
ummmmmmm.....UMMMMMMMMMM.
Tomorrow is Nuit Blanche. Nobody wants to do acid with me. It's pretty stupid.
And I don't want to do it all by myself. Cause then I'll be that guy.
That fucking guy.

I think the test copy of Voice in the Horse was lost in the mail. It's been 16 business days. It was supposed to take 15 at the most.
Someone fucked up in America. It's the elections.
Fuck this shit. Send me some shit. I live in Canada.
You need our timber.

SK

2008-09-27T00:05:00.002-05:00

USSFERRATALISCVV%48279003

Coming Home.

By Dani Compose.

Yesterday we went on a trip.

I haven't posted anything in a week. We've been spending all our time talking politics, ethics, and philosophy. Cause we're boring fags. I'm quickly becoming a nihilist, and it feels pure and complete. It feels like there's no going back. I don't care about anything anymore.
Like in the Big Lebowski.
You ever heard of a Supervolcano?
What if Nikola Tesla caused the Tungska disaster, and they used that technology to build the HAARP project?
Probably not, but wouldn't that be something?
He said he had developed the technology to create an energy shield around the United States.
And a death ray.

As a child I remember wishing I was kidnapped. I liked the idea of being kept against my will in a room. Not abused, or hurt or sexually assaulted, but left alone in a big concrete basement room, usually with a window looking out. And bars on the window.
That's pretty weird.

So it was Judas, Copper, and myself getting a drive from Church into Kingston to attend the Queens University Homecoming event. I need to say "University" because calling it the "Queens Homecoming" makes it sound like a gay rave.
I was drinking Skatch all day and smoking.
We rolled into town, and while on the way to Snipe's, we found a package of grey pork chops sitting by a basement window with bars on the outside. As if there was a prisoner inside and chose not to accept the inferior meat. Church has an iPhone.
I really don't want to talk about this. I feel so sick.
I bought the Snipe House (Vauxhall Cross) a present: A book on the 100 Greatest Tyrants in History. And a box of awful incense called "Money House."
God I hate talking and typing. What the fuck is up with everyone. By the end of the night I wanted to kill myself. Snipe's new girlfriend picked up on this, and told me to take care as I was leaving, but in such a way as to underline it.

We went out to a house party, into the night where the cops were drinking and filming us.
Snipe and I approached one of the cop film crews and inquired as to what the fuck they were doing.
"We're just testing out the new camera." I was striking a pose. Snipe hates police because he knows the law. You don't need to know the law to know that the cops were planning to steal our identities, and by extension, our lives.
There were fireworks going off in the distance. I was halfway done the bottle of Skatch. Church looked pissed off. We lost Judas and Copper. We went to Aberdeen Street, where it was shoulder to shoulder bullshit. It was like New Orleans with the levees wobbling. Church and myself fell behind because it looked like a girl was going to strip. She didn't.
She was wearing an army camo bra and a cowboy hat; you can see where the mistake could have been made. People kept shouting "woo" and "yeah," and I would yell back "Obama!" or "four more years!" I am to politics what Warhol was to visual art.

We said it was hell, and that Judas had abandoned us in hell. I think there's something to that.

Up on the balcony of one of the houses, there was another girl in a bra with something written on her chest. She was leaning over the railing and hating on the world. "Fuck you all!" she was screaming. I threw my finger at her and announced "Terrorist!"
Ten minutes later the police were barging into the house and taking people away.
And I want to put it on the record that I made it happen.

Not soon after that we met a short, dark haired Australian girl and a guy, who I assume was Austrian. And let me talk about this guy. I could write a book on this guy.
He had a shaved head of course, but he had that chin beard patch that clubbers have.
And, using empathy, I imagine myself in his shoes, and going through his life. What causes me to despise him is that everyday he looks at himself in the mirror, and addresses his ridiculous fucking beard, and says "yes."
I was very drunk. My grandmother had called and I funneled all my sobriety into that conversation. I exhausted my supply, leaving me weakened.
The Australian Girl was talking to Snipe and being very condescening. She didn't like it when I told her Australia was a prison colony. Her Austrian escort was lost on the way to find them a bar. Snipe was explaing the hemispheresof the male brain and how it relates to direction and he took offense because, as he said bitterly, "I'm a medical student and I find that very offensive."
I kept throwing shit from the sidelines and then they turned to me.
"What do you do?"
And I paused, and I had a bunch of good shit I could have said: an author, writer, entrepreneur, fucking anything. Bend words.
"I'm a chef."
You fucking asshole. Like a gamma ray shooting up their spines - like a door opening - they jolted up. Of course I'm a chef talking to a doctor and a scientist. I had already lost.
"Oh, a chef, that's really important."
"No it isn't. I don't need this sarcasm."
"No, combinging vegetables for a healthy supplement."
"That's not really what happens, but alright."
The girl was dragged off and I punched the first thing I saw.
They confused me for a factory.

When we returned to Vauxhall Cross, a frat on a porch with a popped collar shouted "The job interview's that way!" Snipe and Burns were wearing ties. Everyone had called me out for wearing a black tie so I'd taken it off before we left.
They accused us of being conservative. We got into a heated arguement with plastic cup-popped collar-fat neck. Play football in the street. Kick a sack of beans around. Jack Johnson. When we left, I remembered the grey prison meat. I grabbed it up and brought it over to them and they accepted it. Fat neck's friend decided that I was undecided. I could no longer wield words. I was a slave to them.
I hope they eat the meat and die. I hope the prisoner was right.

At some point in the evening I advised people to think laterally. I couldn't understand anything, and was on auto pilot. I connected conversations with what I was familair with, and what we had been talking about all week. The familar wave of doom fell over me. The bottle of Skatch was almost done.

We watched this. And then we watched this. Yellow Magic Orchestra. They haven't left my brain-muscle-memory, which means I remember them like a stain. I woke up to this music today.

I'm working on Vilume.
The Dollar of Mythology.
I should upload some of these photos.
Next weekend if Nuit Blanche.

SK

2008-09-18T19:06:00.002-05:00

PGGBALBUTIOREE%19999403

Last Quarter.

By W.M. Dimes.

I've been walking around feeling desperate, anxious, and paranoid.
I couldn't figure out why it was happening.
But then I realized: I wasn't wearing my watch.

I found my watch beneath a table and everything seems right with the world. I'm more charismatic and confident. I've also been drinking.
It's very important for a man to have a watch on. It urges one to make appointments and keep them. And what else is ther eto life but keeping one's word. That's not even a question. I'm not even asking you.

Judas brought home a bag of pears and called me up to suggest that I make a pie. I was about to ge outraged but then he told me his boss gave him a recipe.
I can't think of anything to talk about so I'm just going to say a bunch of shit.

Nobody appreciates Matthew Good as much as he deserves.
The Apple Store is stupid.
Working in a kitchen is very fast paced and stressful and it doesn't make sense why that is. Why do people hold so much power over restaurants? People are idiots. And everyone's gay.
One of Raver's coworkers came to him with a startling discovery: He looked up the word "nigger" in the dictionary and found that it just meant "an ignorant person." He was really excited, like he found a loophole and he was allowed to say it. But isn't it the cultural signifigance that makes you give a shit about it at all?
I'm bowing out of all race related things in the world, by the way. I'm not going to take part in any racial discussion in any shape or form. I'm out the door.
I'm really depressed by movies about a white guy going through a midlife crisis. American Beauty. Dan in Real Life. The Weather Man is the exception.
Speaking of which, they should have a contest, or a race or treasure hunt, between the Kings of Voice Overs; Morgan Freeman and Nicholas Cage.
A race around the world in hot air balloons. That's what I'm decreeing here on Handful of Wires dor blogspot dot com.
Travis Barker and DJ AM survived a plane crash that killed 4 other people (essentially everyone else on the private jet) by jumping from the fucking door just before it stopped. They literally leapt from a burning, crashing plane. I think they were on fire as well. That's so harrowing that it makes me afraid to do anything. If that happened to me I might be dead. What the fuck?
I'm looking into pills because I can't focus on anything anymore. Don't do drugs, kids. They make you interesting and cool and sexy but unable to write books.
I can eat pizza every day, forever.
I like a Fiona Apple song. Does that make me a lesbian? Does liking frmale solo artists make you a lesbian? Does liking Courtney Love make you a transsexual?
I think my cat might be gay.
It's taken me like three days to finish this post. This is how good I am at what I do.
I need some pills to make me write more stories and blog posts.
Everyone who doesn't like me should end up feeling really silly. That's my ambition.
That's how good I am at being human.
We are a type zero civilization. I don't care - let some society just dominate the world and force everyone together. It doesn't have to be the US. It could be fucking China. India. Russia. I don't give a shit. I watch movies about how beautiful the little things are and how there's poetry in the mundane. That works in art and, really, art is an aside. Everything becomes necessary when people are born into it. I think this iteration of the human race was just born into art and we're convinced it's important. I write stories and make entertainment so I'm allowed to say it. I'm allowed to say that what I strive for benefits nobody. I find inspiration, put it in fiction or verse, and at the end of the day, hope that I... give someone else inspiration? And that person does something actually useful? Or I write because it's like masturbation that I might end up getting paid for? I can literally go jerk off in a cup and sell it and that's more of a career than writing. People won't turn on you for jerking off in a cup. People don't say your last cup was better than your latest cup. That cup of cum won't be misinterpreted throughout the years and, maybe at the end of it, be villifed or deified or viewed as a footnote.

So just let fucking Japan step up the the plate and take over the world and force everyone together. I don't give a shit. I don't want to find beauty in a failing relationship or a shell being found in a taxicab. Fuck all of that. Without people like me, that trivial shit would be a non issue. I'm part of the problem.

SK

2008-09-17T21:54:00.002-05:00

UHHICOWTT%56808722

King I.

By Tm Bmb.

I got kicked out of the kitchen yesterday because I was about to stab some guy trying to critisize my holding of a towel. It is as stupid as it sounds.
Walking home I wondered what made me grab for the knife. I'm me - Nicky Dimes - so I don't know how anybody else does it. I don't know if this is something that everyone does. I know it's something I wish I didn't do. I don't wanna react to situations with violence and then talk myself back. It's like my body moves without me. What the fuck's up with that?

I don't have anything to talk about. Am I supposed to talk about current events?
Can I really bring anything new to the Sarah Palin issue?
I want McCain to win. I wanna see what happens. I want McCain to win and have a heart attack the first day. I want Palin to become president so the whole country turns into a joke. I wanna see how people react. You know, laugh now, cry later. As Matt Damon said, it'll read like a bad Disney Movie. Alaska hockey mom gets to become president. In fact, it's like Man of the Year. And Head of State. It's got the same flow as every everyman-becomes-president movie.
It's all coming full circle, people. America's been living in an Orwell-Meets- Tom Clancy novel for close to a decade. Now it's gonna be "Fish Out of Ice," coming to reality near you in 2009.
And then what'll happen? What will happen to fiction if an entire country is realizing it?
That'd be something. But I'm up here in Canada which is like a kevlar vest made out of really odd glass.

Canadians are more professional in their elections. We hold a numbers game. It's all about policy. All the candidates seem like they were promoted there. So I guess it's more... normal, then? I don't know. What's normal?
They say the stork is normal, but you know. Fuck that.

Social 1.
Social 2.

I hear that Canadians are getting more pissed off. A study conducted by the same people who say the LHC is gonna sink a hundred black holes into the Earth's core, and then x.
I think somewhere along the road we decided to do a left turn. I live in Ontario, which is a unique province because there's tonnes of jobs and everyone's a charicature.
I'm single and eating Calcium pills. I have the bones of a dead fish.
Still waiting for the newest copy of Voice in the Horse. What the fuck is up with the mail?
Hit a wall with vilume. Need to put more work into it - new work. All the old stuff sucks; it has no vision, or message. It's all rhymes and clever sentences.
And what the fuck can you do with that? You can't do anything.
I was gonna throw in the script for the radioplay "Triangle's Place" that I was talking about months ago. I have the audio file kicking around of the completed first and only episode, but it always looked better on paper. And even now it doesn't look that good.
I wanna put some sort of script in there. But not a big project script.
That's further down the road. There's a lot of cool short stories in there. All the ones I sent off to legitimate magazines are in there; the ones I didn't post online. They're kind of the jewels of the whole thing.

There's gonna be one called "Curse of the Millionaire."
"All it takes is one sick king to put shit in vogue."
Isn't this weird? Talking about work I'm doing when noboy gives a shit. I think I got 2 people reading this blog. What the fuck am I doing?

That's not why I called.
I need to go to bed.

SK

2008-09-12T23:55:00.004-05:00

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The Russian One.

By W.M. Dimes.

If I had any sort of power I would destroy Russia.
If I had a bomb, guess where I'd drop it. Tell me where I'd drop that fucking bomb.
Let me explain. Hold on.

The other day I came home and there was a discarded late glove on the couch, and the bathtub was filled with cold, opaque blue water.
Something fishy happened here.

Anyway, can I? Just a minute? Okay, fucking Russia, for just a minute.

Bloody Leena went to Siberia to dig up bones on a beach. While there she went all around the place. One of them was Russia. We met up the other day and she told me stories of her trip. It is upon these stories that my opinion is built, and from this point on, it will be invincible and absolute.

Let's start with a few facts. Russia is very racist. Bloody Leena is Romanian and white, but because she was not Russian and had a tan, she was classified as African. Anyone with a tan is African in Russia.
In Russia everyone drinks 1 litre of Vodka a day. Failing vodka, people pour pure alcohol into water and drink it.

On trains, everybody is drunk. And while drunk, they wander around the cars and cabins, engaging in conversation and getting into fights. If you don't speak Russian, they hate you. There's a pride there, and I suppose that makes sense, but at the same time it doesn't.
Everyone in Russia hates everyone who is not Russian. If you happen to be Asian, Black, Indian, Mexican, ET, they will laugh when you die. And when I say they, I mean the police. True story.

Despite their chilling demeanor, it is crucial that you utilize a long list of pleasantries during discussion. Like saying the person's full name and expanding the sentence by 200% with "do you mind, would it trouble if per chance I could, thank you very much," no matter what you are saying, all the time.

Then there's Moscow, and this place sounds amazingly horrible. Not like a monster, I guess.
Nothing like a monster.
More like a doomsday weapon.
Snipe once said that it has the highest number of millionaires in the world.

In Moscow, there are no fast food restaurants, or designer clothing. Everything is custom tailored, be it dresses or suits or military uniforms. There are no public restrooms. If you are a wary traveller and you need to take a four hour shit, you have to go into a 5 star retaurant and buy a 7 dollar cup of coffee and then walk around in shame because people can buy your life in one point five seconds. If you wear shoes that are not made of gold, you are scum. People walk the streets with champagne glasses, and you may wonder aloud where they came from.
It is truly a city run by phantoms and money.

So imagine a country full of insane, angry, confused people, and then buried within it is this city of wealthy sons of bitches. And everyone in the country is drunk. This is Russia.
This is what I think Russia is all about. Don't try to change me. This bird you cannot change.

SK

2008-09-10T21:52:00.002-05:00

IDDMESTITIAYXX%64746829

Fidel Castro.

By Mr. November.

There's only three occasions this entire year that I am planning out ahead of time.
The first was the screening for the Dark Knight, cause I loves me some Joker.
The second is the Queens University Homecoming event, which is more about the trip than the party. It's more about procuring a boat than having anything to drink.
The third is Nuit Blanche, an all night art festival in October.
After that my schedule is cleared. Nuit Blanche and Homecoming are the only 2 fun party events I am going to all year. And they're more work than anything.
I don't know who I'm trying to convince. I don't know why I'm talking to you right now.
I don't know what I'm doing right now.

So, an excerpt from my interview with Fidel Castro.

"Fidel Castro, what's the secret to your health and inability to die?"
(pregnant pause)
"Eggs... and a curse."
"Someone cursed you to eternal life?"
"I- they did. I have to call it a curse. I'm also cursed to my power and money."
"Who placed the curse on you?"
"A magnificent son of a bitch."

I think my social life is suffering because of my insufferable rage and quick temper.
People were asking me what I thought of the end of the world. I told them I didn't think it would happen.
Then I would fly off the handle and explain why. My thoughts on black holes and sensationalist headlines. And I'm no physicist. Let me repeat that: I did not go to university for anything. In fact, I dropped out of college. Chef college. I can be wrong just as much as the next idiot who hasn't made this their career. I don't know why I did it.
So what should I do? Turn around or proceed? See where this lunacy takes me?
The greater the trial the greater the growth. Maybe being the most insufferable idiot in the world will make me immortal.

For some reason I needed everyone to know that I knew a little bit about this shit.
Because I spent a lot of time reading about it a few years ago. I can't even remember it half the time. Judas knows more than I do, but he's also working on a fantastic machine to solve the energy crisis.
I keep listening to "Letters Home from the Garden of Stone" by Everlast.

SK

2008-09-07T20:56:00.006-05:00

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The Excited Greek.

By Kincer.

I furrow my brow a lot. I do it when I hear troubling news, and I do it when I talk to crazy people.
When crazy people approach you, it's important to make them believe you're on the same page, and you know what they're talking about.
I left my sunglasses somewhere.

I was walking home from the bank down in Greektown. As I was walking home, an short, pudgy, older Greek man, dressed finely in a suit, leaned in to talk as he was walking the opposite direction.
"Israel is fighting Chile tonight! Eight o'clock!" he said. Our eyes met and, as usual, I furrowed my brow. "Yes!"
"They're gonna beat Chile... But... Chile might win, as well!"
I nodded, "I understand!"
"So you see," he continued, "Chile might win, but they also might lose. Eight o'clock tonight!"
I kept nodding and started slowly walking away. There didn't appear to be anything wrong with him; he was just very excited about sports.
What's more, he spent all his time describing to me how the outcome of sports are. He stressed that one team might win, and one team might lose. And he wanted me to watch it.
That's the kind of enthusiasm you can't buy.

I'm killing time right now. I have nothing to do. It takes 2 business weeks to get a book from this place because I don't have a credit card and money takes a long time to clear from Canada. Gone Changed is in the hands of the artist and I'm waiting for word concerning when we can meet.
And I don't want to jump on any other projects. I don't want to become unfocused from these 2 big things.
So I don't have anything to talk about or do. I spent my day sitting around and drinking lemonade.

I went to see the Dark Knight again with Judas cause he hadn't seen it and I really like that movie.

A few days ago I got a comment from a gentleman saying how much he likes the stuff I do. It was a cool message that made my day. I don't get a lot of encouraging comments.
Today I got an anonymous comment asking "what happened to the hold Handful of Wires?"
I asked what they meant by that. They haven't responded because it was like 10 minutes ago.
Already I am conjuring up explinations. Already I am putting words into their mouth into my head.

I find it very interesting, though, that after a few years, people can pine for Vintage HOW. Already I'm not as good as I used to be, or as fresh as I once was. Maybe it's because I'm spiraling out of a pretty bad relationship and I'm trying my best not to talk about it out of respect for those involved. Maybe I'm working too hard and not doing anything worthy of discussion. Maybe I'm onto something big. Maybe I need to get back to work.
It's important that you know that this blog is set in space.

SK

2008-09-07T15:00:00.004-05:00

IMMPAECIPIODXX%57829222

Child's Play.

By DCompose.

Okay, here's one.

They're doing a franchise reboot for the horror movie Child's Play.
And I was at work trying to tell everyone about my idea for the movie, but nobody would listen, their faces obscured by plates and microwaves.
Here's my pitch:

Horror movies are known for jumping the shark when they move into space. For the remake of Child's Play, I say that right out the gate, we start in space. Intro, credits, boom, we're on a space station, like Alien Resurrection. A lot of toxic yellow and vomit colours.
We start out on a corporate angle; a toy company is in hot water for manufacturing a line of anatomically correct dolls, and in space, shit don't fly. So they need to get rid of all these offensive dolls, an in space, shit gets destroyed with acid.
One of the men involved in the reclamation and destruction project is about to be fired for dubious reasons. This man is also a witch doctor. To get revenge on the company, he curses the giant vat of acid which the dolls are supposed to be thrown into.

Then we switch it over to the main character in a story which should, in a perfect world, mirror Alan Moore's The Killing Joke. We have a family man in dire times. He gets involved with the space mob and they use him for a fall guy. Long story short he falls into the acid where the dolls are being dissolved, but they are not being dissolved because it is a curse. It changed the acid. Do you follow? Shit's fucked up.
And so what we have is a man driven insane by the circumstances up against a witch doctor who's out for blood. Hey, other people, and what about birds and dogs, fall into the acid, so we have a tiny society of tragic weird doll people walking around. One doll's a 50 year old abortion specialist. Another doll's a pigeon. They'll all live under the floors and between the walls, and I guess they could survive with no air, right? Maybe they get into a fight in space. We need to keep reminding people that this movie is set in space. Something something, the end.

That's where I want to go with the Child's Play franchise. You blow the doors open on Pandora's Box and you make a billion dollars internationally.
You're welcome.

SK