mothafuggah.

Ok, so I just wrote this big long thing and my ass of a computer just ate it, and so je suis le pissed, but here we go anyway.

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Well, the floodgates have been opened. Very few people know this about me, but I don't believe in 'liking' something, or even 'really grooving with' something. I get full-out lobster-bib obsessed. This takes a lot of energy, as you may image, so I have been known to purposefully avoid certain pop cultural "things" that I know that should I be exposed to them, rampant obession will follow. Take RENT, for example; I put off listening to that for years, and then one day. . . cut to a month later a month later and I'm weeping in the middle of the Centennial Concert Hall. It was very much a wet-nap and cuddle-time situation.

So when I took the vows of Chastity where Tori Amos was concerned years ago, I really, truly, meant them. I listened to one song and capital L -oved it, but convinced myself that this was only due to the emotional placement of Siren - said song - in Great Expectations. But then on Thursday, I'm trolling my way down Corydon when I come across Boys For Pele, her 1996 album, in Music Traders. '"It's just one album and besides, she's kinda weird so I probably won't even like her all that much."

...

I freakin' love her, God damnit!

So now it's all Moses crashing the sea onto the Egyptians, except they weren't newly infatuated with a woman who's produced eight other albums, when of course I simply must have, cause of my freakin' addictive personality, and let me tell you, those other ones are not gonna cost me $7.95 neither. No sir! And let's talk for a minute about time commitment; this is not a woman that puts out wimpy indie-rock 10-track albums, oh no. We're talking anywhere between 12 and 19 on one album. That's 150 songs! So goodbye social life and hello Ms. Amos and her motherfucking gorgeously ethereal sound!

Ok, so in other news, a friend and I were talking last night and we were having this rather philisophical conversation. I say 'rather' cause it wasn't Plato and Aristotle here, mostly due to the fact that our philsophical conversations mostly arise out of trying to out-trump one another with quirky weirdness. Anyway, so we're all discussing the concepts of truth and reality and existential crap like this when he drops religion on me. Ok, back the truck up, I say, Are you sure you want to open this door? I mean, we've opened it a crack before, but once we do this, it's, like, open, and stuff. Now let's just say that my friend and I have very different spiritual backgrounds. We are both well-educated, open-minded people, but when the observant and the agnostic get together it can get messy. Well, he responded, I'm up for it if you are, not unlike two fourteen year olds guys playing 'truth or dare' for the first time (Hey, I said we were both open minded). So we begin, and I think this is going to be one of those awful debates that will enevitably end in the statement, "Well, that's why it's called faith." However through a series of realizations, we come to the conclusion that while he adheres strongly to a religion and I don't really adhere other than culturally, that we can both agree on the fact that NO ONE KNOWS DICK! I mean, we believe, sure, but despite protests from both sides - ok, mostly one side - no one knows, and the fact that we were both so humble in our own humanity was just beeee-yutiful.

I think about religion a lot, hey?

A potentially offensive blog entry

Do you ever think, "Hey, um, am I big racist?"

I was at Zeller's this eve fetching wall tack to hang some of the fine prints I have amassed, and when I got to the line there was this black couple arguing with the check-out madame about the discount on conditioner or something. Now these were middle of the road, over-weight, not-overly educated people, these assumptions from sweeping generalization in regards to their verbal and physical communications, and well, my eyes. It wasn't like I thought any particularily racial thoughts, like, "Oh black people, just hurry up!" but I thought perhaps I was annoyed because subconsciously I resented them.

Then I began pondering my views on other aspects of the non-caucasian minorities...or rather majorities, cause if those kids ever got it in their heads to bring us down, we'd be dead. Anyway, so I thought about the stereotypical drunk native downtown, and the G'ed out ghetto superstars with their skull caps and their ebonics, and I was like, "Oh God! They all annoy me! I'm Hitler!" And that's a pretty big statement for a guy that come next Holocaust is donning a pink star.

But wait! Then I thought, "Ok, so I'm Satan, but what if it was white people acting like that?" And I thought about drunk white people down town, and white guys preaching mysogeny and bad fashion sense, and lastly I thought about white, chubby people arguing about Pears Conditioner and it hit me - I hate them too! Well, not hate, but they bug me. So I'm not a racist; I am pissed off by all dumbasses! Black, white, asian, native, straight, queer, stupid, or just plain moronic.

Pink star, here I come!

This has been something of a mad week. I played foreman while supervising the painting of my room by my brother and his friend. Yes, they got paid, and yes, I'm kinda lazy, but you know what? I have far more important things to do than stand around for three evenings doing something I hate, so I feel justified. In any case, the room is spectacular. THe walls are a lush crimson red, and the secondary accent colours are black and gold. And I say that with the most masculine voice I can muster. It's seriously hot shit.

I started work with the Fringe again, and it was so freakin' good, I can't even say. It's been an entire year since I've been in a job where I genuinely felt needed, cause the government is just one big chorus. One big tone - deaf chorus. By the way, I came across a file the other day for which was the name was Redneck Farms. It's right on the Alberta-Saskatchewan border. I love it.

I'm also having a very flash-back-to-high-school week. My best friend is in from Vancouver. (Whoever came up with the term 'best friend' really just hated humanity, because it's such a final term. It's not like she's my ONLY best friend. She's more the best friend in her category. We should really categorize our friends, hey?) Plus I spent Friday night in a small room with all of my former high school friends and it was spooky. Mostly cause there was about three of them that I actually feel anything more than ick for, and while it's like, a LOT more than ick, there was still a hella amount of ick in that room. And smoke. Cause apparently everyone smokes. Or at least enough people to make a small room seem hot boxed with carcinogens.

Lastly, I've discovered the defining difference between folk music and other genres of popular msic such as rock or rap. The latter two deal mostly with telling a story through instants - This happened, then that happened. They deal with emotions on a very superficial extreme level - I love you, I'm happy, I...hate...everything about you. Folk will tell stories by painting pictures with words of the settings, not of the events taking place. For example, a hip hop song will say, "An' den she wuz shot down in da ghetto" whereas a folk song will say, "the onlookers stared as the girl watched the ambulance pull away". Much more subtlety, poetry. And this is also how folk expresses emotions, not by outright saying, "I'm feeling..." but rather telling a narative to depict their feelings.

I saw a really powerful movie this weekend. Mr. and Mrs. Smith. No, kidding, although I did see that too, and it was pretty damn good. I would so do Angelina and that's not even queer boy talking all big. That's for real. No, I saw Bent, which was about these two concentration camp prisoners that become lovers without ever touching or really making eye contact. Their 'job' in the work camp is to move rocks from one pile to another about 10 metres away and every hour they get a three minute break. During one of these breaks, they make love purely by standing side by side, looking straight head, and essentially having aural sex. It's unreal.

And for those of you who are thinking, "How do they do that if they're side by side, and the guards are watching an man, and his spelling sure sucks," please stop reading this. Your kind is not welcome here.

An excerpt from a letter to a friend...

This has been an incredibly exhausting year for me, for all of us. Between the festivals, and competitions, and performances, and school, and work, and a mad cap social life (you know me ), I'm afraid it's coming back to me and just before the most stressful time, Fringe. I'm hoping the month-long normalacy of 9-5 during June will help prepare me. [Since this was written, I've been approached to start with the Fringe three weeks earlier so the month-long normalaxy is pretty much shot]

Other than physically, I'm no more emotionally exhausted than usual. However, when one is prone to tragic flights of idealism and romance, emotional exhaustion is normal, I suppose. I've been feeling a lot of changes since the New Year, almost like a mental and emotional puberty, trying to diversifymyself, the forms of which is (naturally) art and expression. I've taken to unwittingly directing music videos in my mind whenever I hear a song in a language I understand. Often they concern montages of our friends, many of the images hypothetical as the 'video' is a thesis on our four years together. Another popular one is that salon at my living wake [more on that next time], although I've sat with the idea long enough that it doesn't seem morbid to me anymore. I have my MRI in a month and a half and that's probably contributing to it as well.

I feel like I'm fighting a lot with my own creativity right now, often in very egoist terms, such as imaging detail for detail my own recital as I attend someone else's. Further, there is one matter that I don't quite have the courage to express, and that is a song cycle I've written over the past couple years. There are twelve in total, and the genre is extremely hard to define because I feel that it should extend beyond simply a boy and his piano. I've toyed around with percussion, thanks to B, but I hear the guitars and the bass and yet have no clue where to begin incorporating them. The order is troubling as well as it deals with a vast number of themes, not the least of which are failure, disillusionment, madness, and redemption. At it's peak, I see it presented dramatically with short monologues between the pieces, offered not as explanation, but rather narrative. I have written seven sonnets that I would like to incorporate, one of which was composed in the vein of Greco-Roman myth, the sun and moon acting as two halfs of the whole and so forth.

Essentially, I'm just overwhelmed. I'm happy to say that it is mostly from positive sources, though they can be a bit dampering.

So I'm going to Montreal in August. That is the plan. However there is one obstacle in my way and that is that I'm a cheap bastard. Still, I'm getting lots of help on that front. The transportation is being arranged by my parents as my birthday present, and it seems like my darling friend E may have found me some accommodations. Now all I have to worry about is food, perhaps some honourary compensation for my hostess, and spending money. However, an undetermined period is a lot of time by oneself in city that is schizophrenic with festivals and activities in July and than grinds to a halt come August. Clearly, I need companionship. Not of the salacious kind; God knows I'm not one of those people that needs to have a fling in every city I go to (Already done that Montreal). I'm looking more for sight-seeing, park-walking, wine-drinking companionship. So I've started the search with a couple of e-mails to funky looking guys in the Montreal area, and before anyone even judges for one second, hear me out.

I do not consider myself homocentric in the least. In fact, I often Tom Delay-esque levels of disdain with il mio communitio. Still, there are somethings that my breeder lifemates (And I love ya, yes I do), will just never get, because even though the Jews were slaughtered by the millions, and the Blacks were enslaved my the millions, and the Mennos persecuted because of their ardent love of schmofat, these prejudices/discriminations are no longer an acceptable part of this society. As much as I hate to admit it, as I hate being allied for something as base as biology, there are certain cultural and social bonds that one can share only with another person in the queer category (Let us not label. Labels are for Campbell's soup.) And as for the whole connecting via the internet. . .If you're the type who doesn't like to be downtown at night, hates any sort of performance situation, and considers Friends "edgy" than the world of cyber-communications is probably not for you. You need to read between each line that is presented towards you, and there are definite precautions you need to take, the biggest of which is trust your gut. But honestly, the biggest fault most people have through instant messaging and e-mails is that they are sinfully boring. Yes, you will encounter the odd vampire fetishist that wants to keep you in their apartment for two days without food, but hey, some people are into that. Wow, am I ever not, but you know, go with God and stuff.

So I've found a couple people worth taking to and I realized yesterday that I've just been sending them all my ramblings instead of blogging, so I'm going to pull a little cut and paste job, originally meant to save time, but now that I look at the preamble, it probably wasn't worth it, but whatever:

re: my saviour complex (developed from my first relationship in which we both needed saving. Him, from himself and his nutty fear/hate-instilling family; me, from the fiery pits of hell apparently):

The whole "saviour complex" was simply a fun fact about me; I have no aspirations to save anyone really. I just hate it when people overcomplicate their lives and refuse to make themselves happier due to fear or laziness. Maybe that's my ambition: in lieu of solving the AIDS crisis. I will instead teach the masses how to recognize what Ace of Base was trying to tell us all along: it IS a beautiful life. A major part of that is finding balance in social grace. I fully believe in manners and decorum but political correctness has become a joke; if you get your panties in a knot over being called a stewardess instead of a flight attendant, you have way too little to worry about. Go talk to a Swahili pygmy being chased by a lion. Now that's stress. And he doesn't care if you call him a pygmy, he's just happy if the lion goes hungry that day.

Essentially after nineteen years of angst and over-emotion, I learned last summer that not everything needs to be a big deal. Emotions should be savoured, not wasted.

I think we can all agree that people, as a race, are weird. Bus people, however, are the most bizarre of them all. It's as if when we step on to public transportation, we enter a completely different society with completely different social mannerisms. My friend J and I ride the bus frequently ensemble and we have spent countless hours analyzing the oddities that people come up with while on the bus. I'd love to give an entire thesis on my bus observations but sadly, I am lazy. Therefore, I will only entertain in this entry a single observation that I made today.

Sweeping generality. I'm just going to put it out there, and if it offends, so be it. The majority of people that ride the bus have less than the standard amount of social grace and tend to fall into the lower rungs of society's ladder. There are exceptions: students, environmentalists, 1 car household members, and a slew of other tiny differentiations. That said, a lot of adults that ride the bus have arrived there due to the vicious cycle of conduct. Conduct (manners, grace, etc.) is imperative for social advancement, along with education of course, but they tend to accompany one another. If one lacks proper conduct, education will be more difficult, decreasing the possibility of obtaining a high paying job and all the resulting amenities such as a nice home, disposable income, and a car. I think you can fill in the rest of the blanks.

And generally the lack of manners is on full display on the bus, from grafitti to body odour to public urination. But there is one custom on the bus in which we are downright Victorian: the choosing of our seat. People will do anything possible to move Heaven and Earth so that they - God forbid - do not have to sit next to another person. And if by chance there are no 'singles' left, the sigh omitted from your new bus buddy echoes across the plain in stupified frustration.

Now we arrive at today's observation. I was sitting in a very unique spot on the 18 Corydon-North Main this morning; in new-er-ish buses there are three seats that face the back door right before the steps onto the second level. The right-most seat is ideal as there is a divider between that seat and the first seat on the upper level, lending it to optimum slouching. In theory, these should be the easiest seats to negotiate, socially. One person on the right, one person on the left, and the middle seat is literally the last seat on the bus that would be utilized. So the bus is filling up rather nicely as we approach Confusion Corner and a young man enters, about 20-22, slightly robust, dress: toned down former sk8er. My left leg is aproximately three inches over my proper boundary onto the middle seat, which in bus speak means one of two things:

1. I will let you sit here if you truly insist, but be prepared to be coughed on.

or

2. I'm a man with a certain amount of 'baggage' if you will, and getting me to close my legs is about on par with a Kentucky whore with a yeast infection.

I assure you that my social graces will show that in my case, it was the latter. And this is just fine in a three-seat situation: we can BOTH overlap, praise the Good Lord! However, he, in his über-machismo, chose to stand, gripping the pole two feet from the seat in question. He clearly needed a sign. A sign that would say, "Dude, brother, ombre, you may share this assembly of seats with me, your strong, non-advancing breeder brother." All I had to do was shift my weight ever so slightly, retracting my leg a quarter of an inch perhaps, and we were gold. He sat. We said nothing, although glances were shot a couple times in mere observation of surrounding, and there was peace. And it was was good.

Sometimes it seems that even though I think I know people and consider them close companions, my existential mentality comes back to bite me on the ass. It isn't that I think that everyone considers me their best friend; just every second person. Naturally, I feel that if there is personal information that has become standard knowledge, I already know about it. It comes as a rude shock on the occasions where I hear brand new information and am met by "Really? You didn't know that?" (This is possibly the most moronic coupling of phrases in the English vernacular. Like, no, of course I did know that, you big dummy; I just wanted to make sure that the duck brain we had implanted in you was still functional")

Inevitably, this second-hand 'old news' offends the ego, who feels that he should be amongst the first to hear about anything that happens in the world...ever. The rational thing would be to assume that your ignorance was due to a lack of relivant topic or appropriate time, instead of say "All my friends are merely secretly tolerating me and are meeting to find ways to legally ship my 11th-wheel-ass to Abu Dahbi."

Man, you know you've had way too much Indian food when you're emotionally channelling Odie.*



*of Garfield**



**by Jim Davis