Throw Your Hands In The Air and Wave Them Like You Just Don’t Give A Shit

Depression: with one hand it giveth, with the other it taketh away. Wild mood swings have been a constant companion/foe of creative types for, uh, a long time. In fact, most of my literary heroes were manic depressives who battled with addiction and depression for most of their lives. I’m no different, although I highly doubt that I’m anyone’s hero since I haven’t published anything. In fact, I’ve never finished so much as a shitty short story, let alone a lame-ass novel. Half-assed, high school poetry? Yes, guilty as charged. It’s not that I’m devoid of creative verve, but every seemingly good idea I get is instantly dashed by my rigid doctrine of self censure. This urge to stifle my own output is often spurred by my chronic guilty conscience, which doesn’t make any sense from a stereotypical point of view since I come from almost wholly Irish protestant stock — mostly unpleasant sounding, Catholic-hating Presbyterians. So much for hereditary structuralism; my love is of Irish catholic descent.

But I rarely make sense anyways.

You see, most of the time, words flow most freely from my fingertips when I’m in a rotten mood (see my previous post for an example thereof — I don’t necessarily want to shoot anyone, but sometimes I like to put myself in the shoes of someone who would pull the trigger in a heartbeat. Is that so wrong?). Simply put, and to quote Eric Burdon, oh lord please don’t let me be misunderstood.

Fuck.

You know what I hate more than almost anything else? Pretentious, self-absorbed losers who do more living within the confines of their own skull than in the real world and consequently feel the need to act tortured in a public forum to draw attention to themselves, hoping to deflect criticism with the shield of artistic license housed in a useless degree or diploma.

So, I guess I must hate myself.

Not exactly breaking news, but why is this so? I’ve been like this for as long as I can remember. Was I savaged by critics in a previous life? Or was I merely a shiteating sellout?

Again, more hubris run amok. If previous lives are even a possibility I was probably a farmer or a basket weaver somewhere in the north of Ireland (and no, I’m not a Buddhist — such a peaceful, serene religion… right. Ask anyone who crossed the Japanese during the first half of this century what they think of Buddhist pacifism and you might be surprised to hear a different story than that put forth by the likes of Richard fucking Gere or The Beastie Boys — who in all honesty should hang up their Uptowns before they become an outright embarrassment to their craft. To The Five Burroughs? Holy shit, lads, talk about a disappointment of epic proportion. I mean, I’d seriously rather listen to Cut The Crap or that shitty Kiss disco album… and my hate for Kiss is on par with racism and parsnips).

But who cares? I have no answers. I don’t even have the right questions. So, I’m going to bed.

Night. Rather, day. But I can’t tell the difference anymore.

Italics Always Swing To The Right

Most people seem to draw inspiration from their surroundings, from the world, from their friends and acquaintances, but not I. I receive stimuli, but they hardly qualify as inspiration. In fact, going online and reading boneheaded drivel (which has become unavoidable these days on the so-called ‘net’) tends to put me in a bleak mood. Instantly. I try to avoid public forums, Youtube comments, and (most) blogs like the plague, but every once in a while I give in to my constant masochistic urges and, rather than self-flagellate with my homemade cat o’ nine, I browse away. These are the only times when I consider all-out nuclear holocaustic oblivion or indiscriminate genocide against the stupid as a potentially positive development for the human race. Reading the comments of the average ignorant, lazy, selfish, hateful piece of shit internet denizen makes me realize how meaningless opinions have become. As such, I can only conclude that everyone on this shit-hole planet is seventeen years-old. But god forbid if you deny someone their opinion. ‘It’s my OPINION, maaaan!’ Well big deal, asshole. Opinions are about as useful as the logic which informs their naissance (see, I’m like smart or something because I know more than one language and therefor my opinion, unlike yours, matters) and most peoples’ grasp of logic and the art of argument seems to extend no further than that of the average grade-school pupil. But perhaps I’m being too hard on the children. I have faith in the young. Well, I did before 75% of them became riddled with pharmaceuticals because their parents are too fucking lazy (or, in all fairness, overworked) to properly, uh, parent them. But Jesus Christ, let’s defend our wonderful culture until we’re blue in the face or low on ammunition — which ever happens first. I mean, who cares if we’re all hooked on legal drugs… look how cheap flat-screen TVs have become.

I’m successful. Don’t begrudge me my success. I love it. I have nice stuff in my nice house. I have a nice car. I have nice sex toys that I slick up with nice lubricant ordered online through successful businesses which assure me my anonymity, thus maintaining my facade of upstanding Conservative-party-contributing morality.

On my way across town, I cross paths with more than one acquaintance, but I have no time for these people anymore. I avert eye contact, I turn my back to them as I pass; dead to me, every last one of them. Who needs friends? The weak of mind and porous of body. And that’s not me. All I require is alcohol and professional sports — the true drugs of any right thinking conformist; like any good man of the age, I’m a shining example of humanity’s progress towards the evolutionary black hole of success.

I haven’t had a meaningful conversation with anyone other than myself since I was ten years old and I’ve never felt the pangs of love or the eventual heartbreak. I count myself lucky, but luck has nothing to do with it.

Sometimes, when I’m feeling saucy, I imagine my Lexus to be an Aston-Martin Virage. Oh, the fun I have. I sneer at pedestrians, flip them off, mouth ‘fuck you’ against the glass of my climate-controlled bubble and imagine what it would be like to shoot them all in the head with a gold-plated Desert Eagle and watch their brain matter atomize in a flume of glorious red and gray against a backdrop of golden morning sun. These are truly life’s little moments that we should all cherish.

What it comes down to is my simple hatred for mankind. Yet, I’m torn: the things I hate about humanity are the very same things that have allowed me to so easily and readily exploit my fellow bipeds. Sloth, stupidity, selfishness — and those are just the S’s. But I could go on all day about the worthlessness of the average human being and where’s the money in that? Nowhere to be found without an army of politico underlings to do my bidding and where’s the fun in that?

The trick is to accept this simple fact about the species (or, as I prefer, the speces – clever, no?) and move on, avoiding disease and filth as best one can. But learn what you can whilst among the rabble, among the poor. They’re so quaint, aren’t they? With their accents and their Wal-Mart footwear. Some of them weren’t even born here. Crazy world.

But it takes all kinds, and I take from all kinds.

Don’t begrudge me my success. That’d be mighty white of you… fuckface.

Another 365

The calendar is funny. Well, our calendar is funny, since I’m not overly familiar with other calendars, but they do exist and this simple fact speaks volumes on the arbitrary ways in which humans break time up into smaller pieces. Existence is a much easier concept to grasp when one can think of their life in terms of a constant multiplied by a variable and different people and different cultures use different constants to achieve this end. Years, months, days, minutes, seconds and so on, in an infinitely decreasing trend which can never theoretically reach zero. But these are all words that don’t really mean much of anything outside the confines of our own skulls.

Until you die, at which point these units mean even less. Of course, there’s an endless birthday party in the sky waiting for you if you’ve led the good life and bought enough shit to keep the economy jumping during your stay in the temporal realm. If not, look out. Fire and other vaguely menacing things await.

Time is everything, though, isn’t it? Well, it sure is versatile.

It flies, it stands still, it disappears. It serves regret, wistfulness and debt.

It serves competition and greed, but is also the handmaid of sloth.

Time is a limited resource, which explains why time is also money — but that’s another waxy ball of constructs for another time.

More than anything else, though, time hinges on perception. When you’re happy it seems as though there aren’t enough hours in the day, but when you’re in the depths of a depression, time is a bitch goddess with extensive cosmetic surgery and expensive clothing, dangling a clock in front of your nose with one hand while shoving you back down with the other.

“Come on” she says, “why don’t you do something with your life? Anything. I don’t care. Just get off your lazy arse and move around once in a while. Hey! What do you think you’re doing? Back down with you now. Can’t have you getting up, lazy arse.”

Time is oppression, but I guess it’s all we’ve got.

Well, time and the weather.

The Maritimes Were Better Off Before Confederation

Did anybody ever propose to unite Scotland with Poland or Hungary? Inland countries 800 miles off in the very heart of Europe.

- Joseph Howe

We hear it all the time: “Have noots!” they shout out the rolled-down windows of their shiny Ontario-plated SUVs and midsize luxury sedans. Then they have the nerve to make fun of our accents when they’re the ones who sound like a bunch of oot and abootin’ hosers, eh. (?)

Or maybe it’s just the chip on my shoulder talking, it loves to think in terms of us vs. them.

But it has been a fairly steady downhill slide for the Maritimes since Upper Canada drew us into its confederate fold.

The mid-nineteenth century, that was where it was at.

We made stuff. Lots of stuff. We had the largest steel factory in the country, a thriving shipbuilding industry and a bustling trade with New England and the West Indies. A jewel of the British Empire we were. Then along came Upper Canada, all smiley glad-hands drunk on opportunity.

Confederation put the run to all of it. There was resistance, but that was put to rest with some simple bribery. The federal government in Upper Canada then implemented tariff policies which forced us to alter existing trade routes along newly established confederate lines; Upper Canadian development was the goal, much to the detriment of the Maritimes’ economy and self-sufficiency. But it was their plan in the first place.

Upper Canadian industry promptly got fat off major government contracts and projects which were continually handed them while the industrial heartland of the Maritimes languished into rust-covered obsolescence. But never fear, our new Upper Canadian brethren were there for us, lying in wait to snatch up our factories and mills. And then what did they do? Well, they shut them down and made dependents out of us.

Perhaps they thought it was a transition we would have been genetically predisposed to dealing with, due to the Acadian and Irish bent of the population — potential migrant workers just chomping at the bit to be separated from the land and people they loved.

If I sound bitter, I suppose that’s because I am; not solely because of what happened — there is nothing anyone can do to change history — but because I was never taught any of this in school, despite Maritime Studies’ place in the curriculum. Why? I can only assume that such information would be counterproductive to molding obedient, flag-waving Canadians.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m as proud as anyone else to be Canadian. Even if we are also-rans, we are part of an internationally well-regarded country with a striking flag. Membership has its benefits. I can stick that flag on anything, wear it and people instantly assume me to be of no threat to their person.

I can also walk around without fear of stepping on a land mine or being cut down by paramilitaries due to my religious beliefs or colour of skin, but who’s to say it would have been otherwise had we resisted confederation?

Of course, our economy might have fallen flat on its own and we may have been turned into the 51st state, but I don’t know. Read up on it yourself.

The best part of being Canadian?

It lets us move, unhindered by pesky international borders, to Upper and Western Canada whereby one can reap a hefty pay cheque in exchange for long hours, closed Tim Horton’s and cramped living spaces.

Maritime Liberation Front NOW!

Nights

I’m a vampire, baby, suckin blood from the earth - Neil Young

I am a vampire — rather, a vampire in reverse. Instead of staying up all night and sucking blood out of my surroundings, I stay up all night as my surroundings get fat off my blood. I do it for the paycheque, see? Easy. I sit on my arse doing repetitive tasks for an above-average working-poor wage, like we all do sometimes. Right? I have responsibilities to keep me interested, but they’re always the same responsibilities, every single night. On cue, done mechanically. The clerical equivalent of being the foreman’s lackey on the factory floor.

Oh God. I’m turning thirty next week. For real.

People tell me “the thirties are great!” without really elaborating on the source of this greatness. I suppose it is the last pre-40’s decade of one’s life, that last vestige of youthfulness before the unavoidable reality of “this is who I am, regardless of who I thought I would be” sets in for good.

But maybe it’s all bullshit.

Maybe the old adage that age is nothing but a state of mind holds true. Even if the late-teen’s to mid-twenties are the sweet spot for personality molding, we still conceivably change as life goes on. Nonetheless, most of us experience all the usual groundbreaking firsts during this period: death, birth, devastating professional sports team playoff losses and sex (the less said about the lot of these the better).

After that it’s just more layers of bitterness, skin and wisdom (best case scenario). Hair and teeth as well, but they all fall off at some point; we cover them up with reasonable facsimiles, but it’s never the same as the original — doesn’t have that new-body scent we all covet. I don’t mean that in a perverted way. I’m pushing thirty, but not yet a dirty old man.

But I digress.

Turning thirty might not be so bad. I never became a troubled but gifted rock and roll musician so I had no worries of dying at 27. I’ve never had a dangerous job, with the exception of convenience store clerk, so occupational death has never been a big risk.

Heart disease? Maybe. Working nights, combined with laziness, can lead to less than heart-healthy eating choices. Gas station food is not part of the Canada Food Guide, but it keeps me fatted for my nocturnal surroundings. The sunrise is always at the back of my mind.

So bring it on, next decade. You’re not so tough!

(feel free to insert a dance number here, if that’s what you were expecting)

Maybe I’ll write a novel; maybe I’ll go to jail. Maybe I’ll get in a fight and not break my hand.

Maybe not, who knows?