immigrant song

Alright haven’t posted in awhile but, here. Life’s been windy – work sent me to Timmins and back, then Toronto and back. What does a small-town river rat do in downtown Toronto? Well, he still calls up his other small-town friends to come meet up from as far away as Guelph, and they still drink a 60 of rye in about four hours before they realize they’re too late for the bar. The difference is, then they eat shwarmas. They make the mistake of eating off a hangover at the Eaton Center, they realize it’s in fact a nightmare. He also eyes up the sports store across the street as he smokes on the balcony of the hotel and eventually it gets to him – growing up in a town where you saw a real live NHL sweater with the crest on it and everything just like the pros wear, you couldn’t buy them in a hundred kilometer radius, you’d get jealous as to the authenticity of even a hated Habs sweater. So he goes and buys two New Jersey sweaters, home and away. Finds a delicious hangover drink that you can’t find back home called pomegranate aloe, picks out Belmont cigarettes, also rare in his hometown. Finds out that Popeye’s Chicken is indeed, fuuckin’ aaawwesome.

The contrast in choice is what gets you, it’s what struck me as the significant detail. I’ve written and talked extensively about the gaps between North and South Ontario, gaps that’d be more adequately named the French and Mattawa Rivers: the thing is that there’s connections, too – bridges, powerlines. I’m not softening the tone – if Manitoba tanks and jets invade today, I for one welcome our new alien overlords. We’re more West than North, is what they don’t tend to realize. Westnorth Ontario should catch some attention, but hey it’s beside the point: they’re doing the same thing with their city that we’d be stuck doing with ours if we had that many people to deal with. We don’t go into our North either, to places like Moosonee, Moose Factory, Attawapiskat, Red Lake. People in Thunder Bay don’t leave Port Arthur or Fort William, sometimes they don’t even know where our town is.

I’m not going to lapse into any kind of Jeff Foxworthy kind of bullshit but to illustrate how rural we are: I’m riding this mountain bike at a good clip at night because I needed to go out for smokes – the quik-e-mart closes at 9 and who knows how late the Legion stays open until. I’m coming around this corner at a level of drunk that would get me mowed down in any city but the streets are empty because it’s like 11 or so. There’s a giant black fox sitting on the middle of the road – I thought it was a coyote at first, I’ve seen wolf and moose on this same paved street, one yard away from pure forest. So I start playin chicken with it, thinkin in my drunk mind, “allriggght how foxy can foxes even fuckin be”, pedalling faster straight towards it. Then I was like please move please move please move until it scurried outta the way at the last second and I was like, fuck yes. Played chicken with a fox and won. Nothing really does illustrate how rural we are: we have a library, we have high-speed internet. People grow up into vinyl or jazz, country or classic rock. People are in workboots or Italian leather. They park in their lawns or they manicure them.

“The curse of the small town” is a saying the locals throw around alot, usually to describe a generation (ours) that could have gone on to play NHL and Olympic hockey, but instead wound up drinking OV and smoking ice cream buckets full of hash oil. “The curse of the small town” is a defeatist and weak epithet. My theory’s that even the curses are blessings in (elaborate) disguise and the small town gives more than it gets. Another thing people like to lament is that it’s a good place to be from, but not a good place to be. It’s both, my hometown’s a blessing in the disguise of a former P.O.W. camp that housed Hitler’s best friend and pianist. “We make our own fun” is the other common excuse to round out the top three small town epithets. You make your own fun anywhere, just add shwarma.

So, there’s contrast to walk a kilometer that would typically only yield you a view of a couple hundred birches or poplars in various stages of growth or decay – you walk a kilometer in a downtown metropolis and you start to wonder if you’re visibly the most amazed person on the block, you feel like you’re right off the boat. A lot of people do feel like that there, but they seem to find it normal to pass by four bagel shops in one small area or to see store after store lined with pointless things that you didn’t even know were sold. I wouldn’t choose that choice but I can see how that level of choice in capitalism and consumerism is what drives it – a typical commute to work, like a casual stroll and they’re gonna bombard you with at least over 1000 brand names, things for you to want.

I really couldn’t understand how capitalism and consumerism could work until this year – I always found that the rate of pay of a decent job gets you way more than you could possibly ever want. In a city it seems inverted, it’s their job to make you want all that stuff and they’re doing so well at it, keeping the lil’ lemmings wantin’ more ever cute. See, growing up with 99% of consumer items being unavailable to me anyway, of course I’m a dyed-in-the-wool socialist, of course cities seem inane and vastly unnecessary, of course you don’t need that many goods and services concentrated in one area.

Of course me and Steph have it all figured out, I’ve been called on it: we’re just as snobby about being from the Northwest as they are about being from the GTA. They’re content being the Center of the Universe, we’re content being the Center of Canada. We love to laugh about how they couldn’t hack it where we come from: how they’d die of exposure with birch and matches in their frozen hands, how they’d maybe hug a bear, how they’d be offended by the implication that they had to do things like put wood in a woodstove to keep warm. The truth of it though is exactly what I got called on: most of us wouldn’t last down there, either. Homesickness and return rates are high: I’m too old to learn new tricks like how to use chopsticks or say thank you in Punjabi. I don’t know that I’m not supposed to pose for a picture if a gang member puts a cameraphone in my face, I wasn’t briefed that they then use that picture to kill you with. I wouldn’t know how to talk my way into a job with someone who only spoke PC. I’m not even sure how to walk that fast.

So I got home and I took her to the steak house and it’s a simple kind of life, it’s just basic and good and nice and sometimes kind of overwhelming because it’s more good than I’d even be able to wish for just myself, it’s kind of like all those years of people wishing you the best, it turns out people actually do that because I don’t know how else to explain it. Sure I guess I can take credit for living and being in a way that makes people want to wish you the best but still. All this is ridiculously lots and fun and I’d wish the same on like anyone.

I’m gonna go get a sub you can never make a bad choice at Mr Sub.

dear sasha grey

Now alright, some disclaimer. I may be a fan of Taylor Swift; might “just die” when I see her on SNL: I might in fact be actually, in a non-ironic sense, wanting to see the look on that stupid dumb cheerleader’s face when she realizes her boy belongs to Taylor. I might be joking. I do, however, have eclectic taste. The best of country turned pop is something, sure. The best of internet porn turned mainstream, however, is something else. Why. Why like how the Ukrainians say it – pointedly, wanting an answer.

Why does it require a disclaimer? Why’s it so dirty, a porn star doing 50 people is cleaner than a bar star doing 50 untested people. Studies show, the average keyboard is now dirtier than the average toilet seat. Other sources reveal that like 80% of people at hotel rooms order porno, so you look at ten or a hundred people and more than two or twenty of them look like you don’t want to think of them watching porn and I think that’s where it became somewhat of a faux pas topic: yes, masturbation happens, but the status quo doesn’t want to hear ten teenage boys raving about how awesome it is. Yes, vibrators are sold, but if you’re using them then it’s either shh you’re gross or shh you’re a tease.

Now I’m not even saying that if I’m watching a porno, then I grab it and shake a paw until something fun happens to my body. I realize that it’s regarded as foreplay, background noise, surrogate imagination, replacement sex life and inspiration but for the purposes of talking about it, I’m gonna go with the age-old caveman/anishinaabek thought, a thought that predates fire and drinking glasses, a thought that’s the predecessor of every invention in any landscape and room: in summary, “she’s pretty and I want to see (a) dick in her”.

I could go even deeper so to speak and say that I don’t like her because she’s especially beautiful, I like her because she’s made especially beautiful by the way she fucks. It’s a subtle difference but an important one: there are people who look more like horses than ugly and they look absolutely beautiful to each other in the throes of it and that to me is awesome. I know on the porno screen that she’s on birth control or that he has a condom on or that it’s in fact in her ass or that her clitoris is not, under further review, between her breasts but sex, because of all those pre-socialized caveman years and generational memory, is intrinsically and inherently linked with procreation, with life. It’s a creative force that makes a masterpiece of a painting seem secondary and resultant: hideous couples watching porno in a hotel room will produce beautiful babies, two negatives make a positive and all this is really amazing.

Ergo, it doesn’t need a disclaimer – if it isn’t socially acceptable, it should and will be. There is a lengthy list of things that are socially acceptable that are bullshit: provincial governments, taxpayer-funded sex change operations, induced starvation, class wars, capitalism, surplus value, American Idol, gang rape. It’s socially acceptable for a man on prime time television to stick his knife in a woman and make her feel murdered, but not to stick his dick in a woman and make her feel awesome. This is where Canada needs to side with its European heritage and leave the United States in its own puritan attempts at dystopia: here’s my thesis, I want to see this chick done properly on the CBC. You might not but whatever, I didn’t wanna watch Little Mosque on the Prairie, so I didn’t.

The porno argument is always to highlight the media obsession with violence – it borders on inundation for all you young troops out there. Then you can prove that even if it is bad, it isn’t as bad as the daily dose of war propaganda. What’s really got me writing is this anti-pornography youtube video – some people are really swimming against the current here, trying to prevent as many fish as they can from getting through. I think you can argue for the porno without mentioning violence at all – sure violence by definition is bad but I mean, legalize painkillers – they’re not heroin. Legalize theft under $5000, it’s better than theft over $5000. It’s only superficially a sound argument to say something’s alright because worse exists. If worse is prevalent, overcome it. The argument they should use is that the people have spoken in mass numbers on internet and with dollars that vote for an 8 billion dollar a year industry and that’s the name of our democratic free market game: if you can call like 200 million people wrong then why don’t you say something else crazy, such as only 100 million people voted for the (Prime Minister) so it’s invalid, let’s have a pointless revolution.

In conclusion it’s like Gandhi said – you have to become the change you want to see. It sounds minor and borderline petty of a detail but if you talk about your favourite porn like you talk about your favourite music and movies, if you recommend it like you recommend a news article and people start to see that hey, this is all open and cool, if your money’s flowing through it like it’s flowing through G.I. Joe’s ass then maybe one day in the not-too-distant future you’ll turn on your state-regulated television channel and see something more natural like, dare I say it – a cumshot to the chest, instead of a bullet. Or, dare I say it, omg what a revolutionary concept, a porn star in a “real movie”. That’s not dirty or perverted, it’s progressive and organic evolution.

know your audience

I remember a writer’s craft teacher goin’, write for your audience, know your audience, understand where their point of reference is. Which is like, kinda true – for example if you call me up from a telephone sweatshop and explain I could save 20$ a month in long distance savings then I’m gonna be like: go fuck your hat. Or if you sound cool then maybe I’ll start a conversation because we do all get paid by the hour here and workers of the world do at some point need to unite. Maybe I’ll say sorry I didn’t mean to tell you to go fuck your hat but the hat in this metaphor is obviously a symbol of the corporate logo you carry and wear, i.e. fuck whatever you’re working for. You could tell me that 20 x 12 = some kind of giant number that equals savings and fucked if I wouldn’t just gurgle, my mind already trailed off into the surreal muppet heaven of my dreams. If they would put it in terms I could want to understand though: like listen Rye, you go through 40 pucks a month. You just keep firin’ them over the glass and you never even bother to go get them, you figure someone else will find them and the game will at some point resume in myriad ways. So since you know you’re gonna go through 40 pucks a month you should just pay me a flat rate and it works out to be less per bucket of pucks and yknow what I’d say? I’d say buddy you got yourself a deal, hook me the puck up. Another thing this teacher told me is you’re pretty funny so go off on all the tangents you want. Tang, eh.

So I used to blog and variously sexy readers would get wise and/or puzzled, entertained and/or enraged, bored or floored. I’d have one of those statcounter things and I’d be amused by things people google like 3 foot green demon hallucination or beauty and the beast erotica or I guess some other funny things happened too. Anyway checking that thing became habitual alongside the old 4 or 5 routine tabs and it’s a fine line wherein the stalked becomes the stalker – I don’t need to know what size screen’s illuminating my opinions on bathymetry and/or beauty and the beast erotica, I don’t care about your IP address, I’d just use it to shut my blog down and change urls whenever too many hits came from my part of the world: a vast area about the size of France but very sparsely populated. About five times it was perfect, maps of hits from everywhere in the civilized Western world except for the Lake Superior area. I’m paranoid about that: people are gonna use it, if they think they’re reading your diary they’re gonna do it and it’s really minor detail and to be expected, I just don’t like hearing “oh so I read your blog” at a party and I’m really just sounding this off for myself right now but basically I know a fuck of a lot of people in this area, friends and family like my world’s all on this shoreline and basically I wouldn’t stand on anything and read spoken word or tell them all the same story in real life so why would I do it on the internet. So I don’t use a statcounter thing, I’m just gonna assume most or all of you came from Steph’s blog and so here’s where I introduce a new feature called Secrets About Steph. I live with her and do her plumbing and stuff, so I’d know, we eat the same food drink from the same bookshelf, make out constantly. I’ll assume for fun for now that I’m the Kevin Federline to her Britney Spears except that she’s way the fuck superior in every way than that and I’m way cooler than that – the white trash parallel is fair enough and I don’t know too much else about them except that you only know the one person because you know the one person, by that logic I’m also the alien Rhonda to her ALF or the Tom Arnold to her Roseanne hahah awesome. I’m blowing smoke up your ass here a bit eh. Anyway trust me aaalll this winds up having a point:

Secrets About Steph #1: She’s ADORABLE.

See.

let’s get two fighting fish

and gamble on what one will win, red or blue

i bet blue