As full of bacterial-mouth-spray as it is harsh-pragmatism, "Glagh" (sometimes pronounced in the prolonged, dramatic form "Glaaaaaaaagh!") is a throat-rending exclamation of all worldly frustration, a tongue-shaking vociferation of all cosmic calamity; when uttered in the quiet computer-room of my swank apartment, well, it drives my dogs nuts.
(Did you ever hear about the pirate with the steering-wheel sticking out from the crotch of his pants? When asked about it, the buccaneer expressed surprise and stated, in a raspy swashbuckler‘s voice, "I don’t know, but it drives me nuts".)
(You’re welcome.)
"Glagh" could very well turn out to be the greatest word creation since "antidisestablishmentarianism", but you wouldn’t know it by the baleful looks I receive from my cute, little puppies as I spew the word into their furry bellies; you would think that I was torturing them with heated-up chimney-pokers, but, of course, you’d be wrong.
For all of their obvious good traits, one of the faults my dogs share is an adverse reaction to progress, to the New; if they had their druthers, they would just sit back, eat, and get fat off the backs of others, swelling up on all the food earned from back-breaking labour and sacrifice.
I’m trying to change the world, one word at a time, and all they care about is if I’m going to share my pizza with them.
Bastards.
Glagh!
Friday, March 9, 2007
Wednesday, February 21, 2007
Being Excellent: Third in a Series
Sometimes you’re inclined to teach somebody something.
Is that last sentence too vague? Not if you’re Excellent it isn’t.
You see, much like having a pantload of money tends to push the too-rich towards the assuring, conscience-friendly realm of "charity", possessing an over-abundance of Excellence brings with it the need, no, thecompulsion to give back, in whatever form this desire takes - and, like plastic surgery in a dark garage, the results can sometimes be pretty atrocious. The problem lies, invariably, in your utter inability to teach something that you’re SO GOOD at, regardless of said thing’s general ease. Being Excellent, you’re probably very good at a lot of things, and you got very good at them because you were already good at them right off the bat; and what you, almost inconceivably, aren’t good at, well...chances are that you’re not doing that thing very much.
Teaching something that you’re naturally good at to someone who isn’t nearly as naturally gifted is, quite possibly, the most frustrating feeling in the entire world, or at least irritating...like hearing someone laugh before you get to the punch-line: they don’t know what funny is; they’re just trying to fit in. Therein lies the problem: does an unExcellent person REALLY want to know that thing that you’re twisting yourself into knots trying to explain?
If you’re a total ass like me, then probably not...though even if your relative assness isn’t as acute as my own, you’re still coming off looking like that golf-shirt-addled guy wearing sunglasses on an overcast day in a cherry-red convertible: maybe you’re doing what’s right for you, but you look like a total dickhead.
So, don’t teach. If you must, may I suggest this as an Excellence-barometer: charisma.
True Excellence can not, under any circumstances, be achieved without it...though, to be honest, the reverse isn’t true: I know many an unExcellent chap who have more charisma than a cloned-army of Paul Newmans but who also couldn’t snag themselves Excellence if it was in an empty room, at eye-level, bathed in bright, shiny, blinking lights, with an audio-soundtrack of "take me!" blaring from cranked-up loudspeakers in a honey-drenched voice...unfortunately, like the logic of this writing, this dichotomy of Excellence is a terrible characteristic to contend with.
Good luck.
Fourth in a Series
Is that last sentence too vague? Not if you’re Excellent it isn’t.
You see, much like having a pantload of money tends to push the too-rich towards the assuring, conscience-friendly realm of "charity", possessing an over-abundance of Excellence brings with it the need, no, thecompulsion to give back, in whatever form this desire takes - and, like plastic surgery in a dark garage, the results can sometimes be pretty atrocious. The problem lies, invariably, in your utter inability to teach something that you’re SO GOOD at, regardless of said thing’s general ease. Being Excellent, you’re probably very good at a lot of things, and you got very good at them because you were already good at them right off the bat; and what you, almost inconceivably, aren’t good at, well...chances are that you’re not doing that thing very much.
Teaching something that you’re naturally good at to someone who isn’t nearly as naturally gifted is, quite possibly, the most frustrating feeling in the entire world, or at least irritating...like hearing someone laugh before you get to the punch-line: they don’t know what funny is; they’re just trying to fit in. Therein lies the problem: does an unExcellent person REALLY want to know that thing that you’re twisting yourself into knots trying to explain?
If you’re a total ass like me, then probably not...though even if your relative assness isn’t as acute as my own, you’re still coming off looking like that golf-shirt-addled guy wearing sunglasses on an overcast day in a cherry-red convertible: maybe you’re doing what’s right for you, but you look like a total dickhead.
So, don’t teach. If you must, may I suggest this as an Excellence-barometer: charisma.
True Excellence can not, under any circumstances, be achieved without it...though, to be honest, the reverse isn’t true: I know many an unExcellent chap who have more charisma than a cloned-army of Paul Newmans but who also couldn’t snag themselves Excellence if it was in an empty room, at eye-level, bathed in bright, shiny, blinking lights, with an audio-soundtrack of "take me!" blaring from cranked-up loudspeakers in a honey-drenched voice...unfortunately, like the logic of this writing, this dichotomy of Excellence is a terrible characteristic to contend with.
Good luck.
Fourth in a Series
Friday, February 9, 2007
Being Excellent: Second in Series
All right. Now, as was asked of you last time, you’re good at something.
How does that make you feel?
I’ll tell you; you should feel like a million bucks...maybe two. You shouldn’t be sitting there, shrugging your shoulders and mumbling, "so what" to yourself in that tiny, mousy voice - the one you use to say "sorry" with when you’ve been flat-out busted for gawking at that hot chick in the mall, the one powerfully timbre-challenged, with all the resonance of a damp match being lit in a murky jungle.
I’ll have you know: this is powerful stuff right here.
Look, it’s not what you do, but the verve with which you do it. There are Scrabble tournaments, for chrissake; you can win $500 for spending a year of your life making a goddamned gingerbread house, another $1000 playing table-hockey, and then, like a syrupy cherry on the top of an ice-cream-cake in the image of Buckingham Palace, you can sit back and become famous for spasmodically slashing at your hair in some YouTube freakout.
Still, these aren’t examples of Excellence, are they? Rather, they are the manically self-indulgent obsessions of those who are lucky enough to have something "legitimate" enough for their parents to stop asking when they’re going to find the right girl/guy, and when, if ever, they’re planning to procreate. True Excellence, my friend, isn’t dollars and/or sense, but that strut you wear instead of those stone-washed-jeans, the swagger you show-off as you push through the throngs of the self-absorbed, the smirk you level at those nose-deep in their PowerBooks...and you’ll inevitably get the Double-Take.
Oh, yes. That beautiful, transcendent, quasi-orgasmic Double-Take.
The first look is of irritation, no doubt; to most, you’ll look like some half-mad ignoramus, waltzing down the street with hilarity in your eye and sarcasm on your lips...but that second look, the one where the squint is a little sharper, the attention paid a little deeper - that look is the one where they are asking themselves what you’re so fucking happy about. And it’s GOLD.
The Double-Take signifies the ruination of someone’s day; they have seen what they could be enjoying, on any old street, at any old time, and their ambition-related stress melts away, if only for a second, as they rue the fact that you’re enjoying yourself, for no other reason than because you’re Excellent. The anger will sit with them, confusing them on the way to their PowerPoint presentation, hopefully extending into the next week, where it lays in their subconscious, in wait, like a panther of doubt in the dense, humid brush of their mind, giving them terrible, uncomfortable-no-matter-what-your-PosturePedic-sleep-number-bed-is-set-at dreams of their own half-assed, failed attempts at glory...
Indeed, true Excellence sometimes borders on schadenfreude, but them’s the breaks.
Third in a Series
How does that make you feel?
I’ll tell you; you should feel like a million bucks...maybe two. You shouldn’t be sitting there, shrugging your shoulders and mumbling, "so what" to yourself in that tiny, mousy voice - the one you use to say "sorry" with when you’ve been flat-out busted for gawking at that hot chick in the mall, the one powerfully timbre-challenged, with all the resonance of a damp match being lit in a murky jungle.
I’ll have you know: this is powerful stuff right here.
Look, it’s not what you do, but the verve with which you do it. There are Scrabble tournaments, for chrissake; you can win $500 for spending a year of your life making a goddamned gingerbread house, another $1000 playing table-hockey, and then, like a syrupy cherry on the top of an ice-cream-cake in the image of Buckingham Palace, you can sit back and become famous for spasmodically slashing at your hair in some YouTube freakout.
Still, these aren’t examples of Excellence, are they? Rather, they are the manically self-indulgent obsessions of those who are lucky enough to have something "legitimate" enough for their parents to stop asking when they’re going to find the right girl/guy, and when, if ever, they’re planning to procreate. True Excellence, my friend, isn’t dollars and/or sense, but that strut you wear instead of those stone-washed-jeans, the swagger you show-off as you push through the throngs of the self-absorbed, the smirk you level at those nose-deep in their PowerBooks...and you’ll inevitably get the Double-Take.
Oh, yes. That beautiful, transcendent, quasi-orgasmic Double-Take.
The first look is of irritation, no doubt; to most, you’ll look like some half-mad ignoramus, waltzing down the street with hilarity in your eye and sarcasm on your lips...but that second look, the one where the squint is a little sharper, the attention paid a little deeper - that look is the one where they are asking themselves what you’re so fucking happy about. And it’s GOLD.
The Double-Take signifies the ruination of someone’s day; they have seen what they could be enjoying, on any old street, at any old time, and their ambition-related stress melts away, if only for a second, as they rue the fact that you’re enjoying yourself, for no other reason than because you’re Excellent. The anger will sit with them, confusing them on the way to their PowerPoint presentation, hopefully extending into the next week, where it lays in their subconscious, in wait, like a panther of doubt in the dense, humid brush of their mind, giving them terrible, uncomfortable-no-matter-what-your-PosturePedic-sleep-number-bed-is-set-at dreams of their own half-assed, failed attempts at glory...
Indeed, true Excellence sometimes borders on schadenfreude, but them’s the breaks.
Third in a Series
Tuesday, February 6, 2007
Being Excellent: First in a Series
I know, I know...you’re asking yourself, “Hey! How can I, myself, become Excellent?”
Well, in this particular case, that’s what I’m here for, and, in advance, you‘re welcome. But first, some bad news: there isn’t a pill, nor is there some arcane incantation or mystical spell known to mankind that provides the unExcellent with Excellence, no...Excellence is to be gleaned from the Excellent themselves, forged like steel over white-hot flames of overabundant self-esteem, cooled on a crystallized bed of indecision for the layman’s (or unExcellentman‘s) digestion, washed down with a jug of fortified solipsism, and then, EVEN THEN, there is no guarantee that you will, in fact, become Excellent.
You should know this, up front, before we get right down to the meat & potatoes of this thing.
You should also know, if everything goes according to plan, that there are, indeed, drawbacks.
Firstly, if you have an inborn need for gratitude, forget it. Nobody compliments the truly Excellent, even if the Excellence achieved is so tremendous that its beauty is beyond words; the unExcellent believe that you’ve already congratulated yourself seven-times-over, which you most certainly have, and their input feels superfluous. Secondly, if you aren’t good at anything, take a hike...and I don’t mean that literally, like stomping around in some forest will bestow upon you some gift of ability; I mean get lost...also not literally. Being good at something, anything, is a fantastic gateway to the inner Excellence in all of us, pounding at your sternum from the inside, pleading for escape from that self-conscious husk you call your body. It doesn’t have to be something sexy like playing sports, or playing guitar, or drinking your weight in bourbon, or successfully holding up a bank - crocheting? Yes. Comic-book collecting? Absolutely...if you’re good at it. I cannot stress that last bit enough.
So, go get good at something, and I’ll see you next time...with more smugness than you could shake four sticks at.
Second in a Series
Well, in this particular case, that’s what I’m here for, and, in advance, you‘re welcome. But first, some bad news: there isn’t a pill, nor is there some arcane incantation or mystical spell known to mankind that provides the unExcellent with Excellence, no...Excellence is to be gleaned from the Excellent themselves, forged like steel over white-hot flames of overabundant self-esteem, cooled on a crystallized bed of indecision for the layman’s (or unExcellentman‘s) digestion, washed down with a jug of fortified solipsism, and then, EVEN THEN, there is no guarantee that you will, in fact, become Excellent.
You should know this, up front, before we get right down to the meat & potatoes of this thing.
You should also know, if everything goes according to plan, that there are, indeed, drawbacks.
Firstly, if you have an inborn need for gratitude, forget it. Nobody compliments the truly Excellent, even if the Excellence achieved is so tremendous that its beauty is beyond words; the unExcellent believe that you’ve already congratulated yourself seven-times-over, which you most certainly have, and their input feels superfluous. Secondly, if you aren’t good at anything, take a hike...and I don’t mean that literally, like stomping around in some forest will bestow upon you some gift of ability; I mean get lost...also not literally. Being good at something, anything, is a fantastic gateway to the inner Excellence in all of us, pounding at your sternum from the inside, pleading for escape from that self-conscious husk you call your body. It doesn’t have to be something sexy like playing sports, or playing guitar, or drinking your weight in bourbon, or successfully holding up a bank - crocheting? Yes. Comic-book collecting? Absolutely...if you’re good at it. I cannot stress that last bit enough.
So, go get good at something, and I’ll see you next time...with more smugness than you could shake four sticks at.
Second in a Series
Thursday, January 25, 2007
Traffuck
Let me ask you a question.
If, while walking along sidewalk, possibly humming along with your IPod to Sloan’s Everything You’ve Done Wrong while dripping the last, little bits out of your double-double coffee into your gaping maw, and you saw a gigantic, 16-wheel flatbed truck trying to navigate a corner at the smallest of small-town intersections, would you:
A) Stop, for no other reason than because you have the last vestiges of coffee-swill drooling down your chin and, depending on the angle you held your coffee cup, sticky, mucous-like sugary-cream pooling in your eye-sockets, making depth of vision a little bit difficult to discern;
B) Stop, because the truck-driver is clearly in over his head at this intersection, trailing close to 15 tons of flattened metal & rubber around an intersection barely big enough to handle a crosswalk littered with school-kids, and the look on his face isn’t even a reasonable facsimile of the calm, cool detachment one would expect from the seasoned truck-driver who would laugh-off such a pickle in long, looping cackles in between drags off the cigarette he‘s holding in his sagging, illiterate mouth;
C) Look the truck-driver directly in his face, walk out in front of his straining, severely-rotating front-end with a blitheness bordering on obliviousness, and as the incredulous truck-driver comes to a screeching stop, thus halting all intersection traffic, you, with the most vulgar scowl you could muster, throw your empty coffee-cup on the back of his flatbed, continuing on your walk, diagonally across said intersection, while throwing a vile glare and a vague shoulder-shrug at the beyond-words-enraged truck-driver.
The answer, as I watched with my own two eyes this morning, is, astonishingly, C.
If, while walking along sidewalk, possibly humming along with your IPod to Sloan’s Everything You’ve Done Wrong while dripping the last, little bits out of your double-double coffee into your gaping maw, and you saw a gigantic, 16-wheel flatbed truck trying to navigate a corner at the smallest of small-town intersections, would you:
A) Stop, for no other reason than because you have the last vestiges of coffee-swill drooling down your chin and, depending on the angle you held your coffee cup, sticky, mucous-like sugary-cream pooling in your eye-sockets, making depth of vision a little bit difficult to discern;
B) Stop, because the truck-driver is clearly in over his head at this intersection, trailing close to 15 tons of flattened metal & rubber around an intersection barely big enough to handle a crosswalk littered with school-kids, and the look on his face isn’t even a reasonable facsimile of the calm, cool detachment one would expect from the seasoned truck-driver who would laugh-off such a pickle in long, looping cackles in between drags off the cigarette he‘s holding in his sagging, illiterate mouth;
C) Look the truck-driver directly in his face, walk out in front of his straining, severely-rotating front-end with a blitheness bordering on obliviousness, and as the incredulous truck-driver comes to a screeching stop, thus halting all intersection traffic, you, with the most vulgar scowl you could muster, throw your empty coffee-cup on the back of his flatbed, continuing on your walk, diagonally across said intersection, while throwing a vile glare and a vague shoulder-shrug at the beyond-words-enraged truck-driver.
The answer, as I watched with my own two eyes this morning, is, astonishingly, C.
Monday, January 15, 2007
For Fuck’s Sake
I really dislike being bored.
For me, boredom only comes from one place, and that place is the barren wasteland of boring conversation; if left to my own devices, I can keep myself entertained for hours, but if A&E happens to flicker on soundlessly while they’re doing an "expose" of the Ku Klux Klan’s "secret" history, well, fuck...
Try and stop a conversation about racial intolerance once it’s gotten started.
I dare you.
Now, I’m not, nor was I, trying to avoid the subject - I’ll yell about whatever and/or whomever at the drop of a hint - but seeing a bunch of dentally-handicapped, fat, sweaty, mullet-sporting, southern fucking retards gather together with their sunglasses and rat-tail-wearing children shouting "white power" while cloaked in hooded dresses...let’s just say that I don’t also need to see grainy, black-and-white footage of blacks being whipped to become angry.
I certainly don’t need to get into a conversation decrying racism; isn’t it obvious, at this point, that racism is, LITERALLY, the most horrifyingly repellant thing we could have done to ourselves as a species? Doesn’t that seem, among other things, ridiculously arbitrary?
“Look, we gotta come up with a way to keep this little club of ours to ourselves.”
[silence]
“C’mon! Think, dammit! We’re the edumacated types, right? What can we use as a basis for exclusion?”
[more silence]
“What about...I know! What about keeping people who have brown eyes out?”
[from the back of the room]
“But I have brown eyes.”
“Oh, yeah.”
[from the corner]
“So do I.”
[silence]
“Shit.”
[more silence]
“What about brown skin?”
[silence]
“Whaddya think?”
[from the doorway]
“But then we’d have kick Scully out.”
“Naw; Scully just got a little too much sun yesterday...”
Whatever; my point is that the conversation was fruitless, was going to be fruitless, and though that doesn’t mean that racism is something that should be forgotten about, EVER, it does mean that coming up with overly-simplistic, white-guy "solutions" for an age-old problem on a drink-fueled Saturday night isn’t exactly what I would call a good usage of time or energy.
Granted, the simplistic solutions were mine, but still...it was kind of like trying to shut the TV off in the middle of a Simpsons episode I’ve seen a thousand times; “what, you don’t like The Simpsons any more?”
What?
No, it’s just that I’ve just seen this...
Yes, I know it’s a classic episode...
Fuck.
more
For me, boredom only comes from one place, and that place is the barren wasteland of boring conversation; if left to my own devices, I can keep myself entertained for hours, but if A&E happens to flicker on soundlessly while they’re doing an "expose" of the Ku Klux Klan’s "secret" history, well, fuck...
Try and stop a conversation about racial intolerance once it’s gotten started.
I dare you.
Now, I’m not, nor was I, trying to avoid the subject - I’ll yell about whatever and/or whomever at the drop of a hint - but seeing a bunch of dentally-handicapped, fat, sweaty, mullet-sporting, southern fucking retards gather together with their sunglasses and rat-tail-wearing children shouting "white power" while cloaked in hooded dresses...let’s just say that I don’t also need to see grainy, black-and-white footage of blacks being whipped to become angry.
I certainly don’t need to get into a conversation decrying racism; isn’t it obvious, at this point, that racism is, LITERALLY, the most horrifyingly repellant thing we could have done to ourselves as a species? Doesn’t that seem, among other things, ridiculously arbitrary?
“Look, we gotta come up with a way to keep this little club of ours to ourselves.”
[silence]
“C’mon! Think, dammit! We’re the edumacated types, right? What can we use as a basis for exclusion?”
[more silence]
“What about...I know! What about keeping people who have brown eyes out?”
[from the back of the room]
“But I have brown eyes.”
“Oh, yeah.”
[from the corner]
“So do I.”
[silence]
“Shit.”
[more silence]
“What about brown skin?”
[silence]
“Whaddya think?”
[from the doorway]
“But then we’d have kick Scully out.”
“Naw; Scully just got a little too much sun yesterday...”
Whatever; my point is that the conversation was fruitless, was going to be fruitless, and though that doesn’t mean that racism is something that should be forgotten about, EVER, it does mean that coming up with overly-simplistic, white-guy "solutions" for an age-old problem on a drink-fueled Saturday night isn’t exactly what I would call a good usage of time or energy.
Granted, the simplistic solutions were mine, but still...it was kind of like trying to shut the TV off in the middle of a Simpsons episode I’ve seen a thousand times; “what, you don’t like The Simpsons any more?”
What?
No, it’s just that I’ve just seen this...
Yes, I know it’s a classic episode...
Fuck.
more
Thursday, January 11, 2007
Randumb
Numbers are only words that haven’t the vocal-chords nor the gumption to speak the language;
The delight of a small, whole-wheat Mr. Sub veggie-sandwich is equaled only by the physical and metaphorical dragging of a non-complicit onlooker into an otherwise self-indulgent story;
The slang-phrase, "B", as in, "yo, B, getchyo fizzace outta my bizzatch" was inadvertently created when Scottie Pippen apologized cross-court to BJ Armstrong after an air-mailed pass during the Chicago Bulls’ title run in 1993;
The word "sinkhole" spelled backwards is "elohknis", an old, Egyptian carafe made from the walked-on mud of political prisoners and the broken shards of even older Egyptian carafes;
If Ian McKellan had fallen in love with my grandmother, in an atavistic and misguided attempt at not being gay, he’d totally be my grandfather...if, indeed, he managed to spawn before he gave in to the overwhelming pull of his sexual birthright;
The colour purple has a smell, and it’s a cross between crushed wildberries and dingy tattoo-ink from a decrepit tattoo-parlour;
Short-term brain-malfunctions are just the result of one’s soul attempting escape through the imagination-gland;
Free-time is a luxury afforded only to those who work so hard all day that when said free-time emerges, there isn’t anything of any consequence to relate...just slapdashittery & purposelessocity.
Randumbening
The delight of a small, whole-wheat Mr. Sub veggie-sandwich is equaled only by the physical and metaphorical dragging of a non-complicit onlooker into an otherwise self-indulgent story;
The slang-phrase, "B", as in, "yo, B, getchyo fizzace outta my bizzatch" was inadvertently created when Scottie Pippen apologized cross-court to BJ Armstrong after an air-mailed pass during the Chicago Bulls’ title run in 1993;
The word "sinkhole" spelled backwards is "elohknis", an old, Egyptian carafe made from the walked-on mud of political prisoners and the broken shards of even older Egyptian carafes;
If Ian McKellan had fallen in love with my grandmother, in an atavistic and misguided attempt at not being gay, he’d totally be my grandfather...if, indeed, he managed to spawn before he gave in to the overwhelming pull of his sexual birthright;
The colour purple has a smell, and it’s a cross between crushed wildberries and dingy tattoo-ink from a decrepit tattoo-parlour;
Short-term brain-malfunctions are just the result of one’s soul attempting escape through the imagination-gland;
Free-time is a luxury afforded only to those who work so hard all day that when said free-time emerges, there isn’t anything of any consequence to relate...just slapdashittery & purposelessocity.
Randumbening
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