Fuck you, ABBA.

Today's Google header is retarded.


Okay, so I have nothing to say at all but I'm getting all paranoid about my low output recently. Low out put = me not putting out = blogging prude. It's like THE RULES made a Blogger! Edition.

What? Even I barely get my 90's pop culture references any more.

So I have nothing to say, as previously...said... so I'm just gonna tell ADORABLE childhood anecdotes and pray that no one notices how shitty this blog has become since I started my monstrous ABBA/MS Paint undertaking.

I am 6 years old, playing in the backyard with my next door neighbour, Nathan. Nathan is going into grade 2 and infinitely cooler than I for it. It is the summer time and as always The Red River Exhibition, a three-week long carnival with lots of rides and deep-fried shit, has pulled into town. It is a modern Neverland and so, like all things related to childhood, such as Full House, Lucky Charms and the notion that "my no spot is just for me," my parents have denied me knowledge of its existence.

Nathan, in his super suave 7 year old voice, asks, "Hey David, are you going to the Ex this year?"

Oh god, he is so cool. I don't even know what the fuck he is talking about.

"Good question, Nathan," I respond, "Let me just go an check with the bitch in the kitchen my mom."

Mother informs me that, no, small child, you shan't be venturing forth to have this "fun" you've heard about in rumours and the liberal media.

Distraught not at the idea of missing out but rather having to tell Nathan that I am not in his Universe of Candy Appled Awesome, I head back outside to face the music. This being 1990, likely Minni Vanilli.

"Well?" he asks.

"No," I reply, "I am not going to the Ex...

...but sometimes I go to the Y."


GOODNIGHT, CHICAGO!

A new bodily goo for me to swallow

Have you ever felt some tickling the inside of your nostril, presumably a booger in some form or another (fossilized, goo, etc.) and so you sniff really super hard but then that little flap separating your nasal passage from your throat doesn't have time to close so the booger passes through it and suddenly you're wondering what morsel of food just dislodged from your back molar and is drain-circling your throat when you realize that - omagad - it's the booger and so you hork it up really loudly and you taste it and then for a moment it reminds you of eating boogers as a kid and how much fun it was so you try to eat it but then you're all "Um, I'm eating a booger right now," but you can't really stop booger-eating so you just kind of swallow it?

*sigh*

Wow.


My promised ABBA-ductee reinterpretation is still being created. So far I've done 10 MS Paint drawings. I'm quickly coming to hate this project. But I will percevere for you people. Goes I'm a giver. Just not the Lois Lowry kind.

My self-esteem needs a shower

Once upon a time, the pictures that I uploaded linked themselves so that you could see the larger format, but now the blogging gods have deemed me unworthy of such privelege and thus have relegated my lowly readership to squinting just so they can marvel at the amazing detail I pour into every piece I create.

As such, I have made a top 10 list of my favourite words on my blog Wordle, the idea of which was coopted from Nigel at corndogpenis.blogspot.com:

10. Um - Way to start off with a bang, Wordle. But yeah, I use 'um' way too much.

9. Dildo - No witty comment. I just like that it was included.

8. Bechamel - See, you think I'm classy, but no.

7. Pizzas - Plural.

6. Members - Not as in joint associates of a common club or organization, but rather, penii.

5. Back Pocket - Okay, I realize it's two words, but 'pocket' is inside of the B of 'back' and I thought that was kinda cool in a very Alanis Morissette circa 1996 kinda way. Fine, admittedly not my best blog post ever.

4. Awkward - Just like #5.

3. Magic - as in, comma Black.

2. High - Which clearly I was when I thought this would be a fun post.

1. Failed Many - One on top of each other in my Word and far too telling in my life.


NEXT TIME: I reimagine ABBA lyrics from the perspective of an abductee.



UPDATE: For some reason, this one picture, the one on which I based my whole "Blogger is a whore that hates me and my small penis photos," decided to link all big-like. Even my attempts at failure fail. I am so Garfield on a Monday right now.

Wherein I devote 17 straight (ha) hours to the community that ignores me

This past weekend, I volunteered 20 hours to Toronto Pride as a result of 3/4 of a bottle of wine. As with my NXNE volunteering, it was a complete shit show and a total waste of time. The following is an overly-detailed account of how my Saturday went:

5:15 - Wake up at housesitting house. Punch their cat in his cat junk for whining at me while I make his breakfast of chicken livers and gravy. Half of the third world doesn't eat as well as this asshole.

6:30 - Arrive at volunteer check-in. Lament pink shirt I'm forced to wear and the fact that the picture for my volunteer badge is the best photo I've taken since 2003. Contemplate scanning it for new Facebook profile pic. Sit around for 45 minutes waiting to be told that my team and I can leave.

7:20 - Walk with group to Vendor Registration tent 10 minutes away. I am the team captain and am completely drunk with power as a result of carrying the walkie-talkie.

8:00 - Darren, a 38 year old volunteer who I inadvertently alienate by guessing he's 40 when asked, goes to get coffee for everyone and a breakfast sandwich for me, a tragic sign of carb-loading to come.

8:45 - We actually do shit for 25 minutes, signing food vendors in and giving them their permits.

9:30 - Chatty-Cathy Darren asks us all what we do and when he learns that I'm new to the city, tells me that he's been here for 7 years and that it "doesn't get easier." I want to punch Darren in the pancreas.

10:15 - A 50 year old white woman in causasian dreads and a tye-dyed muumuu sets up a bunch of hippie-shit necklaces on a nearby picnic table, in clear defiance of those vendors who actually purchased permits. One of my fellow volunteers, a kicky 19 year old aspiring lawyer, asks me if she can be the one to go get all up in Moonchild Rainbowbeaver's grill and, naturally, I say yes. I support her youthful exuberance, but mostly I just don't want to get off my duff.

10:50 - Cindi Lauper begins her soundcheck and I decide to catch a glimpse, handing the walkie over to Darren as secret punishment for getting my breakfast sandwich on a biscuit and NOT THE CHEESE BAGEL I HAD REQUESTED. Turd. In any case, the 19 year old wannabe litigator and I stroll backstage with are super-authoritative volunteer badges and she gets all sassy with the security guard trying to shove us away as I totally gay out when C.Laup passes by within 8 feet of me.

12:00 - A skinny woman volunteer with weird thinning but curly hair arrives, saying that she is a 'runner', meaning someone that can do random errands, but as there is nothing to do, she sits down and joins our crew.

12:05 - I realize this is a man. Stephen quickly becomes a den mother to us all, randomly telling us stories of adventures with lesbians, brown acid in the 70's and jokes with Darren about the joys of leather sex. I want to joke with Stephen about the joys of leather sex. I want to punch Darren in the eyeball.

12:45 - Stephen takes order for coffee and then announces that it'll likely take him a couple hours cause he has to drop off some children. Or Pride buttons. I wasn't really listening.

1:00 - Changing of the guard. Darren et al are replaced by two teenage girls, a quiet Asian who I immediately want to befriend and a curly-haired hippo who reminds me of my retarded cousin.

2:15 - Stephen returns and as Darren is gone I drink both of our coffees, totalling 4 shots of espresso. Lacking is my foam and honey, which Stephen forgot but makes it seem like he didn't hear in the first place. Bloom is sure off the rose with this one.

3:30 - I ask girls what their favourite colour is.

3:45 - Repeated calls are made over the walkie for David. I answer them. No one answers me back. This becomes a running joke that everyone at Pride hates me. This is kinda funny. Not really, but kinda.

4:55 - All that coffee comes back to haunt me and I am escorted to the washroom by Barbara, the little Chinese girl. She goes to the University of Toronto, close to where our tent is and sneaks me into the library bathroom. She's pretty much Michelle Yeoh in Tomorrow Never Dies.

5:05 - I fully Jackson Pollock the toilet bowl.

5:45 - A new volunteer arrives. He is little and foreign and kind of cute. I mentally name him My Little Albanian. He also bears a striking resemblance to this guy who's been messaging me on Manhunt, who incidentally had just had a birthday. I decide to see if they're one and the same, building on my amazingly successful "What's your favourite colour question?" question from 3:30, and ask everyone when their birthday is. MLA's is in August. Myth = busted. But still... I'm fucking crafty.

6:15 - Stephen adds me on Facebook via his blackberry and then leaves.

6:45 - I go for another stroll and some young, kinda cute, kinda stupid guy starts talking me up. I think I've made a new friend but then I realize that he's just drunk and I remember that I don't have friends. Crafty lone wolf am I.

7:00 - Barbara and Tons-of-Fun leave.

7:01 - Twinky boy shows up in a volunteer shirt cinched at the navel and his green-and-white striped underoos more than visibly showing, saying that he's another runner. I tell him that there's nothing to do so to feel free to go run. He smiles huge, yells, "Okay!" and fucking takes off in a flailing jog. I hate him more than Darren.

7:02 - I'm bored. I regret telling Fairy Fox to go away.

7:30 - I try making small talk with MLA and it comes out that he's a huge Mozart fan. We listen to arias on my iPod. Things are looking up.

8:00 - I teach him how to play 'Hot or Not' with a Fab magazine featuring a cover model that looks like Nate from Six Feet Under but totally naked and a guitar covering his junk. MLA says he likes tanned muscle guys with hair only on their heads. I'm fucked.

8:45 - Bag checks at the gate have resulted in a line about a quarter mile long to get in to see Cindi Lauper. A lady asks MLA and I for directions to the beer tent before informing us that she really wanted to bring her kids but that it "wasn't her weekend." Evidently, alcoholism and oversharing does not lead to primary custody. Who knew?

9:15 - MLA and I are tasked with putting up Jones Soda signs all across the top of our tent. I hold the signs while he tapes. We bond.

9:21 - I poke MLA in the stomach. I'm so playful.

9:30 - Things get heavy. MLA tells me all about how introverted he was back in Europe because of his sexuality and how his father doesn't know even now and how he works at McDonald's while going to school for a bachelor of science in biology. I want to hug him.

9:45 - Fresh from the washroom, MLA breathless informs me that that we may get a whole pizza to ourselves if none of the other volunteers claim it. I still want to hug him. Maybe more.

9:50 - Another drunk guy comes up to me and says how much he appreciates the volunteering I'm doing. He then wishes me a Happy Pride and informs me that he's sucking as many cocks as he can in celebration and encourages me to do the same.

10:15 - By the grace of God, we get shut down early. Passive aggressive comments are made at the supervisors about how maybe 17 hour shifts of wasting people's time are a bit excessive.

10:20 - MLA and I listen to Cindi while leaning against a tree. This is his first Pride and had to lie to his father about working all day. He is clearly in awe of the massive amounts of people and music and lights, like a 14 year old dropping E at his first rave. Except instead of E, he's dropping - wait for it - his guard. Deep.

11:00 - We walk back to volunteer headquarters to drop off the walkie-talkie. MLA carries my bag. He's about 5'5" so this is both endearing and sort of funny, too.

11:20 - We walk to the subway, throw out our shirts out - him so his father won't find it, me because I'm an autumn - and exchange numbers, hugs.

12:00 - I get home and talk to Future Roommate incoherently. I tell her that I have a headache which I fear may be do to alcohol withdrawal. I later realize that it's more likely because I've been up for nearly twenty hours and all I've put in my body is coffee and shitty pizza.

12:35 - Receive text from MLA thanking me for a pleasurable evening and that he's never felt so open with someone in his whole life.

Okay, maybe not a total waste of time.

Remembering nothing from my Robaxacetted week except job-related loathing

I have just arrived at work and am being flanked on three sides by coworkers having personal conversations ranging from barely audible hush to full Springer melt down.

The latter is an otherwise genteel South Asian lady who I affectionately call Indonesian Dr. Philla. The 'a' is cause she's a chick. The extra 'l' is there cause I'm AMAZINGLY KNOWLEDGEABLE ABOUT LATIN LANGUAGE STRUCTURES. Currently, I'm being unintentionally entrusted with the knowledge that her cousin is back with this cad Antwan, who is evidently "just not a cool guy, you know?" and that he better watch "hisself" cause he played this same game with her friend Monique. It's like I'm working in the projects.

Across from her, another stand up employee is privying me to the knowledge that she's having some credit card debt issues and that the lovely Visa rep just "doesn't understand" that she and her husband are struggling to make ends meet, what with only making $45,000 each annually and that she was under the impression that their 50-inch plasma TV would be a tax write-off as he's an evening manager at Block Buster.

Finally, on the other side, is Black Magic, who is talking about me and the cold shoulder I'm giving her cause she's effectively passed half of her work load onto me. One of the lesser examples but consequently all the more infuriating is that rather than place a letter in the mail room on her way home, effectively requiring to take an additional 15 seconds in her laborious trek, she instead took the time to write a post-it note asking me to do it. Biznatch, how lazy can you get? Well, ladies and gentleman, the answer to that question lies in the size of her ass. I'm pretty sure it's the size of Gary Coleman's casket. One could incubate a baby moose back to health between those cheeks. Our boss seems to be okay with this situation as she knows BM (ahahaha...BM...) is lazy as fuck - trust me, fuck is lazy - and needs the work to get done so she tasks it to the one person currently not on the phone with creditors, recently paroled family members or BFFs named Shanice.

Finally, let it be known that the first two characters were both a ruse and that they're all Black Magic.

Fuck, I hate her so much.

I'm a lumbarjack and I don't care

Saturday morning, I woke up with the sun, tossed my adorably emaciated legs over the side of the bed, stood up to greet the dawn and threw my back out.

Clearly I'm 52 years old.

As such, I have been on my back on the floor for the better part of the last four days in a hazy stupor resulting from a heady cocktail of Robaxicet, Aleve, wine and Mary J. Hwuana. The latter, it should be noted, was my father's suggestion and required me to locate the dime bag my uncle had shoved in my pocket in lieu of a Hanukkah present last December and that had been living in the back of my desk drawer ever since then. So to my therapist, who may be wondering about my habit of using alcohol and narcotics as a form of escapism, there's another piece of the puzzle for ya.

Some things I have accomplished during my sojourn on the floor:

- Upon discovering tv "on demand", watched an entire season each of The Hills, The City and The Real World: Brooklyn. Bathed twice after finishing each. Douched once.

- Discovered that The Cleveland Show can actually be funny but only when high on the gange.

- Talked to many of my friends and family members only to have zero recollection of these conversations the next day.

- Was visited by a current e-mail buddy who sorta made me wish I was on my back for completely different reasons.

- Created an original dish, a baked layered casserole consisting of (bottom to top): canned salmon, fresh spinach, grilled eggplant, roasted potatoes. bechamel sauce, sliced tomatoes, marble cheese. Tragically, I wasn't even stoned when making this, just really low on groceries.

- Ordered two XL gourmet pizzas from down the street, totalling roughly $60.

- Ordered groceries online. Yeah. It's possible. It was pretty pricey, costing about as much as a Sobey's/Publix but the delivery charge was only $10 and they dropped it off in front of my fridge, mufukas. IN FRONT OF MY FRIDGE. You can't buy that kind of service. Oh wait, you can and it costs $10.

Ok, I'm still a bit high.


Finally, to all the ladies on the subway carrying designer purses and JANSPORT backpacks, a quick lesson:

+

=

Ich bin nicht cool

Well, it's 10:12am and I've been at work for an hour and accomplished nothing. I feel this trend will likely continue until at least 4:59pm when I may muster the day's effort in clicking "Shut Down" on my Start menu. You're really only supposed to log off but I like to shut 'er down on the Friday because I somehow thinks this counteracts the 23 story building leaving all its lights on for the duration of the weekend.

Magic Powers: Now the only way left to save the Earth

Whoa. That got political. Anyway, let's move on to the real topic. I know you're thinking that someone who spends most of his employed hours modifying Google-searched images in MS Paint is extremely cool. I am here to disprove this myth.

I AM NOT COOL.

I'm not going to chock this one up to failure. That would imply that I am failing at being myself, which would be ridiculous. I kick demon ass at being myself. That self, however, is not cool.

As previously stated, I've been volunteering for the NXNE music festival and am reminded daily of how not cool I am. First of all, I've been driving a 12-seater van to transport bands to and from the airport/gigs. No one cool has ever driven a 12-seater van. The bands thus far have taken two approaches to being driven by me. The first involves all of them sitting in the back and not talking to me, as though I am their paid chauffeur rather than a volunteer who just finished MS Paint-ing working for 8 hours at their real job. On one such trip, a single person out of the seven I was driving wearily stretched out his hand as way of introduction. I in turn flailed about and eye-hand-coordination failed. I think maybe two of our fingers interlocked. I am not cool.

I felt cool for about a moment when I got to go up to back stage security and say, "Yo, I'm here for the band," and he nodded me through, but then the manager says, "You're here for the band? Awesome. They're just gonna finish up and then do an encore. Do you want to wait back here?"

Oh god, I am so cool.

"No, I mean behind the backstage area in that stairwell. Great, thanks."

Aaaaaaaaan we're back.

Another super twatty American manager, when I dropped her off, even omitted an "Uch, could you at least open the door?!"

Bitch, it's a 1983 Ford E350 and you're not Miss Daisy. Back. The. Fuck. Down.

The second approach to the Warning:-Not-Cool pheromones I must omit is that the band will just be a bunch of jackasses. In this case, one of them will at least ride up front with me but will ask inspired questions like, "Dude...dude...how much would you charge to drive us to Dildo Bay?"

"Um, where's that? I just moved here not too long a-"

"Dude, Dildo Bay, Newfoundland. How about Intercourse, Pennsylvania?"

"Uh, I dunno. I'm just a volunteer and I have to work in the morning."

God, lamest response ever. What is wrong with me? I'm not cool, that's what. Then they'll pretend to accidentally blow each other (it's this new thing among comics where they pretend to start coughing and this merges into them pretending to be choking on one of their friends' dicks. It's totally straight. And funny.*), telling mock-racist-but-kinda-just-racist jokes and talking about how amazing their set was.

Um, you're in a Queens of the Stone Age side project - things aren't going all that great for you. Art rock, this ain't.

I am not cool but at least I'm not a delusional asswipe either.

Douchey Bassist: Hey, so, what's the hardest to guys have ever sucked each other off while you were driving them?

Illustrious D: ...

DB: I bet they were from AFI. That guy's hit on me so many times, fuck. So is that gay if I let him?

ID: (trying to be cool) Depends on how much you enjoyed it.

Drummer Who May Be Getting Head From A Groupie: Nah, man, it's only gay if you kiss afterwards.

*It's only one of these things.

P.S. - I left my very first comment on a blog that I love, but failed to omit a key word so it just read, "Clearly, really does hate fags." The writer commented back, "Um, was the word God supposed to be in there somewhere?" and then my internet soul curled up into a ball and died.