SlapDashittery
Monday, June 22, 2009
After something like 300 hours of continual rain, the loud, blue-collar mood of the neighbourhood recoils like a scrotum in a cold lake, understanding its place in the galactic drama of existence as, at best, a tertiary concern. Brick and mortar goes soft under that type of duress, so inundated with water that houses up and down the street bob and bend in swollen protest, their aluminum-siding frowns a soggy testament to shoddy workmanship and this plague of environmentalism running rampant through the hearts and minds of even those thickheaded enough to fight it. We are the generation of sodden sacrifice, where moral superiority is painted forest green, and we’ll save the world ourselves; don’t worry your pretty little head about it, pops.
"I don’t understand."
"Don’t you care about the earth? You should buy these coffee-filters."
"Those are four times the price."
"Yes, but they’re made from recycled material."
"They go in the compost bin either way, don’t they?"
"You need to stop worrying about money and start worrying about the future; you have to be part of the solution."
"By quadrupling my grocery bill."
"Right."
Of course, but what good is any of that now? Logic and rationality have no place in a neighbourhood like this at this best of times, and certainly not after it’s been violated by rain – attacked, if you will, by the very forces we’re bicycling to protect.
OHIO (AP) – Senator Howitzer Jackapple, the humanitarian crusader for deer and buck rights best known for his successful "Hunt Not Lest Ye Be Hunted" campaign, was fatally shot by a deer this morning deep within what local residents refer to as "The Toledo Badlands".
"Why?" asked Senator Jackapple just minutes before being pronounced dead by on-site paramedics. Why indeed: among the many mysteries surrounding this bizarre ambush, such as determining where a deer learned how to operate a rifle and how it became so fully versed in irony, chief among them is why any deer would assassinate the man Time magazine called, "The Deer Jesus"; running a close second is the alarming question of whether or not the deer acted alone.
Unlike the vast underground network of highly-organized deer extremists, the forces of nature need make no such concession - there is no conspiracy of raindrops, just vengeance piddled out on a ghastly populace of reprobates and degenerates, the down and dirty revenge of Mother Earth designed specifically to trap her smug "saviors" indoors where she doesn’t have to listen to them congratulate themselves.
Alas, not all of life’s ills can so easily be explained away by a leaky sky; if only the teeming rain could account for that grizzled old hag with the mummified legs who invades the street in her minivan at odd hours shouting over the kind of redneck rock and/or roll that makes Lynard Skynard sound like a squad of eunuchs singing Amazing Grace. Perhaps it’s a large-scale brainstem-soaking that’s to blame for two cross-street rivals angrily Eskimo-kissing in regards to who heard what said about whom, grown men with the collective common-sense of a greasy sponge bickering like weasels trapped in a transparent elevator.
If it’s possible that waterheads are made and not born, there is no evidence of it on this dead-end street of teenaged temper-tantrums and one-legged vigilantes waiting behind the curtains for crime to appear in the narrow focus of their garage-mounted video-surveillance systems. No, it seems highly unlikely that the pervasive wet weather is responsible for this constant showcase of idiotic skullfuckery, and even less likely is the notion that dampness alone has been keeping this group of grisly werewolves from succumbing to evolution.
Ah, but now, as the clouds part, the sunshine can’t help but reveal two essential truths hiding within the slippery wreckage of city life: embedded gangfucks of sillywitted dipshits cling to this street like piss to the pantleg of a reverend on a rollercoaster, and no matter how violent the storm, the rain never seems to wash away all the grime.
"I don’t understand."
"Don’t you care about the earth? You should buy these coffee-filters."
"Those are four times the price."
"Yes, but they’re made from recycled material."
"They go in the compost bin either way, don’t they?"
"You need to stop worrying about money and start worrying about the future; you have to be part of the solution."
"By quadrupling my grocery bill."
"Right."
Of course, but what good is any of that now? Logic and rationality have no place in a neighbourhood like this at this best of times, and certainly not after it’s been violated by rain – attacked, if you will, by the very forces we’re bicycling to protect.
OHIO (AP) – Senator Howitzer Jackapple, the humanitarian crusader for deer and buck rights best known for his successful "Hunt Not Lest Ye Be Hunted" campaign, was fatally shot by a deer this morning deep within what local residents refer to as "The Toledo Badlands".
"Why?" asked Senator Jackapple just minutes before being pronounced dead by on-site paramedics. Why indeed: among the many mysteries surrounding this bizarre ambush, such as determining where a deer learned how to operate a rifle and how it became so fully versed in irony, chief among them is why any deer would assassinate the man Time magazine called, "The Deer Jesus"; running a close second is the alarming question of whether or not the deer acted alone.
Unlike the vast underground network of highly-organized deer extremists, the forces of nature need make no such concession - there is no conspiracy of raindrops, just vengeance piddled out on a ghastly populace of reprobates and degenerates, the down and dirty revenge of Mother Earth designed specifically to trap her smug "saviors" indoors where she doesn’t have to listen to them congratulate themselves.
Alas, not all of life’s ills can so easily be explained away by a leaky sky; if only the teeming rain could account for that grizzled old hag with the mummified legs who invades the street in her minivan at odd hours shouting over the kind of redneck rock and/or roll that makes Lynard Skynard sound like a squad of eunuchs singing Amazing Grace. Perhaps it’s a large-scale brainstem-soaking that’s to blame for two cross-street rivals angrily Eskimo-kissing in regards to who heard what said about whom, grown men with the collective common-sense of a greasy sponge bickering like weasels trapped in a transparent elevator.
If it’s possible that waterheads are made and not born, there is no evidence of it on this dead-end street of teenaged temper-tantrums and one-legged vigilantes waiting behind the curtains for crime to appear in the narrow focus of their garage-mounted video-surveillance systems. No, it seems highly unlikely that the pervasive wet weather is responsible for this constant showcase of idiotic skullfuckery, and even less likely is the notion that dampness alone has been keeping this group of grisly werewolves from succumbing to evolution.
Ah, but now, as the clouds part, the sunshine can’t help but reveal two essential truths hiding within the slippery wreckage of city life: embedded gangfucks of sillywitted dipshits cling to this street like piss to the pantleg of a reverend on a rollercoaster, and no matter how violent the storm, the rain never seems to wash away all the grime.
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Limping cocksure into a room of individually-stretched uteri is like being the snappiest-dressed guy at a lesbian dance-club, and in finding myself to have been parking the car while the girlfriend was summoned by the ultrasound tech, well, I also found that I was very suddenly at the complete mercy of a group of uncomfortable women none too eager to see me searching for seating amongst them. Comparatively, it’s quite similar to urinating in a men’s washroom: you try to avoid positioning yourself directly next to someone, but should that prove unrealistic, you must steel yourself against the inevitable waves of silent disdain.
Also, if Ms. Magazine beside me was any indication, pregnant woman need an extraordinary amount of elbow room; my arm looks like it was run over by a thresher, and the jostling almost certainly would have gone from bad to worse had the girlfriend not finally remembered that I was waiting to join her while treading water in a sea of estrogen, sending the aforementioned tech to get me just before a couple of the more obviously unstable women attacked me in a frenzy of cramped angst. After my escape, I was treated to a couple of translucent fetal backflips and what looked very much on the monitor like a foot being used as a telephone, which is entirely more jarring to see than it is to describe.
Back to the examination room we went, relishing the fact that our previous consultant, Dr. Whoreface, had taken the day off, presumably to pull the wings off of flies or trip children at the mall or whatever else mongrel thugs do when they’re not jabbing bystanders with a tree-branch and screeching about the end of the world. Instead, we were greeted by a woman wearing a warm smile who answered all of our questions by relating them to children she’d actually delivered, a genuine doctor who pleasantly explained what they were monitoring, how they did so, and what to look for on the graphs they would be charting bi-weekly so we could make determinations for ourselves without being influenced by any alarmist harpies seemingly content to point out only possible harbingers of catastrophe.
Of course, it helped that the girlfriend had managed to raise her famously low amniotic fluid to acceptable levels through sheer force of will alone, hilariously, which resulted in a surprising streak of normalcy that read like the first cut into the crust of a soft apple pie: dead centre, the exact middle, and, somehow, gooey. Also hilarious was this genteel doctor’s assertion that Dr. Bloodteeth would be gone after our next appointment, replaced by an incoming class of chief residents that she deemed "very, very good", a statement that hung in the air like a skywriter’s slowly evaporating trail and underlined by a knowing look that confirmed our suspicions that we weren’t, perhaps, the first to be unduly chastened by this emotionally-destitute, masochistic gremlin.
Either way, when Dr. Shitmouth returns for her extremely-limited engagement, we are now able to all but ignore her while concentrating solely on the hard data laid out in the graphs. However, should the conversation again turn needlessly morbid, I have the girlfriend’s permission to douse Herr Docktor with a bucket of sheep’s blood, staple her to the corkboard outside the main lecture hall, and pay a gaggle of indigent adolescents to throw rotting skunk carcasses at her until she pees her pants and says she’s sorry.
Of course, we differ on what exactly constitutes "needlessly morbid", the girlfriend and I do, but I continue to hoard dead skunks all the same...
Also, if Ms. Magazine beside me was any indication, pregnant woman need an extraordinary amount of elbow room; my arm looks like it was run over by a thresher, and the jostling almost certainly would have gone from bad to worse had the girlfriend not finally remembered that I was waiting to join her while treading water in a sea of estrogen, sending the aforementioned tech to get me just before a couple of the more obviously unstable women attacked me in a frenzy of cramped angst. After my escape, I was treated to a couple of translucent fetal backflips and what looked very much on the monitor like a foot being used as a telephone, which is entirely more jarring to see than it is to describe.
Back to the examination room we went, relishing the fact that our previous consultant, Dr. Whoreface, had taken the day off, presumably to pull the wings off of flies or trip children at the mall or whatever else mongrel thugs do when they’re not jabbing bystanders with a tree-branch and screeching about the end of the world. Instead, we were greeted by a woman wearing a warm smile who answered all of our questions by relating them to children she’d actually delivered, a genuine doctor who pleasantly explained what they were monitoring, how they did so, and what to look for on the graphs they would be charting bi-weekly so we could make determinations for ourselves without being influenced by any alarmist harpies seemingly content to point out only possible harbingers of catastrophe.
Of course, it helped that the girlfriend had managed to raise her famously low amniotic fluid to acceptable levels through sheer force of will alone, hilariously, which resulted in a surprising streak of normalcy that read like the first cut into the crust of a soft apple pie: dead centre, the exact middle, and, somehow, gooey. Also hilarious was this genteel doctor’s assertion that Dr. Bloodteeth would be gone after our next appointment, replaced by an incoming class of chief residents that she deemed "very, very good", a statement that hung in the air like a skywriter’s slowly evaporating trail and underlined by a knowing look that confirmed our suspicions that we weren’t, perhaps, the first to be unduly chastened by this emotionally-destitute, masochistic gremlin.
Either way, when Dr. Shitmouth returns for her extremely-limited engagement, we are now able to all but ignore her while concentrating solely on the hard data laid out in the graphs. However, should the conversation again turn needlessly morbid, I have the girlfriend’s permission to douse Herr Docktor with a bucket of sheep’s blood, staple her to the corkboard outside the main lecture hall, and pay a gaggle of indigent adolescents to throw rotting skunk carcasses at her until she pees her pants and says she’s sorry.
Of course, we differ on what exactly constitutes "needlessly morbid", the girlfriend and I do, but I continue to hoard dead skunks all the same...
Thursday, June 11, 2009
She speaks to us with all the compassion of a rat:
"Your amniotic fluid is low, which could mean that the extremities aren’t being allowed to fully extend and grow, or that the child will endure a lifetime of respiratory problems... or, it could mean nothing at all."
She watches the girlfriend burst into tears with something bordering on satisfaction, and I’m inclined to believe that the doctor had this whole thing scripted right down to the timed beats between the girlfriend’s heaving sobs.
"Instead of once a month," – sob – "we’re going to want to see you every other week," – sob – "but none of us will ever say that everything is going to be all right."
"Awesome," I deadpan, rubbing the girlfriend’s leg. "So, don’t count our chickens before they hatch."
The doctor stares at me while I try to discern why she seems to want us scared stupid. We’ve started the second-half of the pregnancy now at the university hospital, and after hearing A-OKs across the line, this little bit of theatre is specifically designed to frighten us, for some reason. I guess I shouldn’t have been shooting that heroin into my eyeball in the waiting room, or slurping my beer so noisily; maybe cooking up those truly epic batches of methamphetamine in the parking lot worried these healthcare practitioners into believing that we’re imbeciles not taking life quite as seriously as we should. Or, possibly, when a big-time university housing a nationally-renowned children’s hospital has snatched fetus duty from our kindly family doctor, warnings such as these are the equivalent to McDonald’s having to plaster "hot!" decals on their coffee cups: they’re just covering their ass, and we’re just the latest number in an unending line of digits.
The impish doctor consoles us with a song about this "hopefully being the worst conversation we have," but the lyrics ring false, and I wonder how many malformed babies a person needs to see before they’re able to rattle off these threats of doom as though reading off a grocery list. Resisting the urge to strangle her with her own stethoscope, I try to clarify her position that it’s possible that the child will be absolutely fine, and she agrees vaguely while avoiding my eyes, like a dinner-party guest complimenting the overcooked pasta. Rather, she finds something that resembles comfort in my devastated girlfriend’s face, all but lapping at the sweet sorrow running down her cheeks, and I have to grit my teeth and stare at the rotary-phone relic in her office to control myself.
We know, all right?
Yes, doctor, we are well aware of the inherent dangers involved in this whole attempted-childbirth-thing; we live with the risks and the fear and the hope every single fucking day. So, perhaps when meeting first-time would-be parents in the future, dust off that old "bedside manner" textbook and employ a tone less reminiscent of grave-digging morphine-addict giving directions to the morgue.
Of course, I’m just a cretin snorting coke off my girlfriend’s tits while twirling a baby-mallet on my cock – what do I know?
Wednesday, June 03, 2009
It was the bottom of the fifth inning last night when an elderly couple rolled onto our warning track atop a pair of stylish, pre-war bicycles. In the field at the time, my team collectively turned and watched incredulously as these geriatric interlopers continued their somnambulant pace, creeping along the outfield fence with a palpable, even violent lack of concern. This, along with the fleeting notion I had of following them home and shitting on their lawn, was the highlight of my night.
In retrospect, I didn’t have a fucking clue as to what I was doing with my book last year. I had some themes, some scenes, a general sense of story and character, but I was assembling it mathematically, jamming misaligned puzzle-pieces together and hammering them flat with my boot. If an idea arrived that connected one stray plot-element with another it was kicked into place, regardless of quality, and I spent a great deal of time wondering why the picture didn’t look anything like what was on the box. But at least I could hit.
A year ago, I walloped 34 singles, 14 doubles, 10 triples and 3 homeruns in 24 games and led the team in hitting; through seven games this year I’ve managed but 10 singles and presently sit second-to-last in batting average. My book, though, is surging along at such a pace that my much-lauded typing abilities aren’t doing it justice, scrambling to keep up with the rapid-fire rapture and fount of ideas so bountiful that it makes these delusions of grandeur feel like a craving for chocolate-covered coffee-beans. Of course, perspective is a slip of mercury and my relationship with common sense is not unlike that of a sex-addict hiding a pocket-dildo in polite company, so we’ll have to wait and see if this mouthful of hubris actually contains any teeth. Still, to this point the ride is a hugely enjoyable, if not occasionally tyrannical, expedition over the cracked and mangled terra of make-believe, clearly distinctive from my earlier exploits through – like insufferable born-again zealots, with their glued-on grins and unshakable smugness, I too am now following a less aggressive path.
Their ride, the old folks with the bikes, ended with the spontaneous eruption of applause from both teams as grandma and grandpa finally crossed into foul territory. The cheering was met with a severe up-and-under fist-pump, as close an approximation to flipping the bird as this gentleman’s generation can muster, and the gesture smacked of theatrics, of trying just a little too hard to convey his agitation. Judging by the angry finger-grip dimples I left in my bat-handle last night, and the gigantic pile of horseshit I wrote last year, there are life-lessons to be gleaned from these twin-dullards and their loitering two-wheelers: perhaps I can get through life without demolishing everything in my path, without trying quite so hard.
Perhaps I can relax.
In retrospect, I didn’t have a fucking clue as to what I was doing with my book last year. I had some themes, some scenes, a general sense of story and character, but I was assembling it mathematically, jamming misaligned puzzle-pieces together and hammering them flat with my boot. If an idea arrived that connected one stray plot-element with another it was kicked into place, regardless of quality, and I spent a great deal of time wondering why the picture didn’t look anything like what was on the box. But at least I could hit.
A year ago, I walloped 34 singles, 14 doubles, 10 triples and 3 homeruns in 24 games and led the team in hitting; through seven games this year I’ve managed but 10 singles and presently sit second-to-last in batting average. My book, though, is surging along at such a pace that my much-lauded typing abilities aren’t doing it justice, scrambling to keep up with the rapid-fire rapture and fount of ideas so bountiful that it makes these delusions of grandeur feel like a craving for chocolate-covered coffee-beans. Of course, perspective is a slip of mercury and my relationship with common sense is not unlike that of a sex-addict hiding a pocket-dildo in polite company, so we’ll have to wait and see if this mouthful of hubris actually contains any teeth. Still, to this point the ride is a hugely enjoyable, if not occasionally tyrannical, expedition over the cracked and mangled terra of make-believe, clearly distinctive from my earlier exploits through – like insufferable born-again zealots, with their glued-on grins and unshakable smugness, I too am now following a less aggressive path.
Their ride, the old folks with the bikes, ended with the spontaneous eruption of applause from both teams as grandma and grandpa finally crossed into foul territory. The cheering was met with a severe up-and-under fist-pump, as close an approximation to flipping the bird as this gentleman’s generation can muster, and the gesture smacked of theatrics, of trying just a little too hard to convey his agitation. Judging by the angry finger-grip dimples I left in my bat-handle last night, and the gigantic pile of horseshit I wrote last year, there are life-lessons to be gleaned from these twin-dullards and their loitering two-wheelers: perhaps I can get through life without demolishing everything in my path, without trying quite so hard.
Perhaps I can relax.
Tuesday, June 02, 2009
Pushing the needle of physical exertion repeatedly into the red zone is a summertime right of passage, happily, and the consequent overheating and temporary breakdown of the mechanics involved are not just to be expected but savored, like awaiting the sensation of jaw muscles recoiling from the temerity of a spicy enchilada. Triumphant trumpets bellow songs of victory after each completed task is rewarded with gallons of water, with sitting, with crisp breezes crossing against the sun to create a placid, wind-swept atmosphere that both relaxes the psyche and invigorates the hardening joints. With the system operating at near-peak efficiency, and certainly more correctly used than it had been in years, the only outside agent that could pose even a minute threat to ideal employment would be an airborne toxin, that undetectable poison that seems to gestate in the boiling cauldrons of hell itself, the father, sister, brother, motherfucking flu.
I’ve recently shredded my tricep, torso, shoulder and lower-back muscles improperly swinging a sledgehammer, cracked a toenail horizontally and friction-burned my elbow almost avoiding a takeout slide at third, took a one-hop bullet that danced around my glove off the inside of my thigh that left an orange-sized yellow-green welt as attractive as it was painful, but I obviously haven’t been touched by influenza in quite some time. No, the flu has always been more the slightly extra-ferocious older brother to the common cold in my mind than the shitstorm apocalypse that it turned into. I’ve since realized that viewing any flu in this manner is the equivalent to anticipating refreshment from a 50-foot tsunami.
A week ago Sunday, I developed a headache, for me about as rare an occurrence as watching a tolerant and compassionate discussion break out between a braless crack-whore and that guy in my neighbourhood who always seems to have burrs stuck in his hair. Astoundingly, I carried said headache into Wednesday before a brief respite allowed me to inventory my ailments, which I began alphabetically until the headache returned and proved that any complexities beyond that of standing to urinate were far, far more than my meager, diseased brain was capable of sorting through. My eye sockets began to pulse; a little tickle developed in my throat that produced spasmodic coughing, each hack a crumbling mountain of throbbing agony in my skull; my skin became sensitive as though my insides were held to my bones with nothing more than translucent paper hurriedly scotch-taped into panels of arguable tautness; my internal thermometer fluctuated like an hourglass in the hands of an undersexed baboon, and for every blissful fever there was an immediate reversion to chills so severe that thousands of thumbtacks found their way into my clammy back and ever-sweating scalp. Then, of course, came the mood swings.
Temperamental to begin with, I’ve made great strides this year in allowing inconsequential, insignificant bullshit to fall away from me like girls at a dance-club overwhelmed by repugnant aftershave, but these advancements have been harrowingly undermined by the galaxy of dynamite surreptitiously buried in my embattled cranium, little volatile globs of plastic-explosive with the fuses cut short and awaiting but the faintest of sparks. Unfortunately, hormonally-decadent pregnant women do not produce "faint" sparks, and the clash of the deliriously demented and the effusively emotional produced a cataclysm that was nothing short of extraordinary. I deviously managed to both hoist the white-flag of reconciliation and lob tear-gas at her in equal doses until I exhausted myself, leaving her to presumably stand above my prone, sleeping form imagining what, exactly, it might feel like to strangle the life out of me.
Suffice it to say, and despite the fact that there has been more Advil popped and apologies offered in the past week than in the totality of our previous seven years together, things are running smoothly. The girlfriend is glowing and giddy with child, and I am head down in my writing. Also, for the record, I am currently completely shitting the bed at softball.
Thanks for waiting.
Copyright © 2006-2009 I’ve recently shredded my tricep, torso, shoulder and lower-back muscles improperly swinging a sledgehammer, cracked a toenail horizontally and friction-burned my elbow almost avoiding a takeout slide at third, took a one-hop bullet that danced around my glove off the inside of my thigh that left an orange-sized yellow-green welt as attractive as it was painful, but I obviously haven’t been touched by influenza in quite some time. No, the flu has always been more the slightly extra-ferocious older brother to the common cold in my mind than the shitstorm apocalypse that it turned into. I’ve since realized that viewing any flu in this manner is the equivalent to anticipating refreshment from a 50-foot tsunami.
A week ago Sunday, I developed a headache, for me about as rare an occurrence as watching a tolerant and compassionate discussion break out between a braless crack-whore and that guy in my neighbourhood who always seems to have burrs stuck in his hair. Astoundingly, I carried said headache into Wednesday before a brief respite allowed me to inventory my ailments, which I began alphabetically until the headache returned and proved that any complexities beyond that of standing to urinate were far, far more than my meager, diseased brain was capable of sorting through. My eye sockets began to pulse; a little tickle developed in my throat that produced spasmodic coughing, each hack a crumbling mountain of throbbing agony in my skull; my skin became sensitive as though my insides were held to my bones with nothing more than translucent paper hurriedly scotch-taped into panels of arguable tautness; my internal thermometer fluctuated like an hourglass in the hands of an undersexed baboon, and for every blissful fever there was an immediate reversion to chills so severe that thousands of thumbtacks found their way into my clammy back and ever-sweating scalp. Then, of course, came the mood swings.
Temperamental to begin with, I’ve made great strides this year in allowing inconsequential, insignificant bullshit to fall away from me like girls at a dance-club overwhelmed by repugnant aftershave, but these advancements have been harrowingly undermined by the galaxy of dynamite surreptitiously buried in my embattled cranium, little volatile globs of plastic-explosive with the fuses cut short and awaiting but the faintest of sparks. Unfortunately, hormonally-decadent pregnant women do not produce "faint" sparks, and the clash of the deliriously demented and the effusively emotional produced a cataclysm that was nothing short of extraordinary. I deviously managed to both hoist the white-flag of reconciliation and lob tear-gas at her in equal doses until I exhausted myself, leaving her to presumably stand above my prone, sleeping form imagining what, exactly, it might feel like to strangle the life out of me.
Suffice it to say, and despite the fact that there has been more Advil popped and apologies offered in the past week than in the totality of our previous seven years together, things are running smoothly. The girlfriend is glowing and giddy with child, and I am head down in my writing. Also, for the record, I am currently completely shitting the bed at softball.
Thanks for waiting.
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