Immodest Proposal

It is a sad sight indeed to walk around any major city in our country and find the streets and side-streets and sidewalks littered with vagrants, seeking drink or fighting off sobriety, pleading and prodding for the change that jingles through our pockets. I think it is agreeable by all that this tremendous number of homeless is a grievance to our present deplorable democracy. We all struggle to make ends meet as we make less and less at work but pay more and more for the most basic of amenities, and not only are these vagabonds literally doing nothing to help us and the economy, they are actually a tax on it.

They ask and beg of us and they do indeed take from us, through our feudal payments to the federal government. These donations are ladled out to a long line of social handouts like addictions counseling, find work programs and affordable housing. It is truly disgraceful and discouraging to think of what our hard-earned pay is promoting.

As to my own part, having turned my thoughts for many years upon this subject, I have found the only possible recourse to eliminating this embarrassing homelessness problem: encouraging it. While this may seem preposterous on the surface, it is indeed true that not until we are all homeless, will we be rid of this type of despicable homelessness.

While I have illustrated that homelessness is a deadweight on us all, perhaps if we choose to view it from a different lens, we can see how homelessness can be used as a positive force. It appears we have spent ourselves into our present predicament, where individuals and cities and countries find themselves deeper and deeper in debt. We are over-consuming and perhaps we are doing this because we are trying to keep up with our overproduction, which our economy greedily and constantly demands. The homeless are not interested in this at all. If we all went homeless, would it not follow that we would consume far less and, as a result, become no longer enslaved to overproduction. Our systems would become more honest and sustainable.

With less production, people will start earning less money, so there will obviously be a decrease in tax dollars in the public purse, but that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. The greedy politicians charged with dispersing these funds would then be forced to spend our money wisely. Surprisingly, they would actually do a good job of this, while still thinking about their own interests. They’d have to keep spending money on infrastructure, lest their roads start falling into disrepair. Remember, these politicians will be the only people making any significant money and therefore the only ones able to afford to drive automobiles down our highways and byways. The politicians would have to dispense less to please lobbyists and would have to take fewer, and less elaborate, tours of foreign nations on business or else they would have to sacrifice the communications networks that would let them contact these lobbyist friends. They would be forced to forego the fee-hungry consultants and do their own work so they could pay the doctors that keep them in health, the teachers that taught the doctors and the tradespeople who built the schools, the hospitals and their very own homes.

By going homeless, we would force our government to pay only those professions that were absolutely necessary. It follows that there would be far fewer police and nearly no bankers to speak of.

We can actually thank the big banks for giving us a head start on this homelessness initiative. With the toxic mortgage crisis forcing millions to foreclose on their homes, the banks created a new, growing legion of homeless people.

As a by-product of our ‘going homeless’ we would have no trouble hitting our greenhouse gas emission targets. Let’s face it, homeless people can barely feed their dogs: they aren’t buying cars, taking extravagant vacations in jumbo jets or even heating a house. Who ever heard of a homeless person with a home? We would reduce our carbon footprint and be heralded by the international community.

Homeless does not mean hopeless, either. Once homeless, there are still many ways to succeed and survive. For instance, these days I must search in earnest to find a discarded pop can or beer bottle on the street when, in my youth, they adorned sidewalks and alleyways like dandelions. This is due to the recycling policies we have that pay people to pick up these items. By incentivizing the return and recovery of aluminum cans and glass bottles with nickels, dimes and quarters, we solved the environmental problems these objects once presented.

To think what we could do if we gave a monetary value to fast-food cups or cigarette butts. With job security where it is today, I would not hesitate to say that armies of casual, temporary and on-call workers – fed up with their meager pay and sporadic hours cooped up in front of a computer in a recycled-air office tower – would start roaming our cities with bags and tack-sticks to collect garbage so they could feed their families.

And the homeless actually wouldn’t be homeless after a short time. Homes boarded up and deserted after the mass exodus, would become reinhabited by responsible squatters. There are successful and well-documented instances of this in Buffalo and Detroit – cities particularly bitten by the recession. People can live safely and content in a home they don’t actually pay for. Every tenant learns a trade to fix up the dwelling and they earn their own way in the home. Just think of it: entire neighbourhoods would be revitalized and reinvigorated with energy and hard work. Subdivisions in suburbia would become self-sustaining communities, with a burgeoning new, hands-on labour class emerging where citizens have a renewed sense of purpose. Since so many over-priced stores would have gone out of business, resourceful residents would scavenge through the city and return with new pieces of furniture to add to their flourishing homes. And artists would be freed from their nine-to-five, or seven-to-seven, or on-call slavery to produce the works they’d always had locked up inside but never had the time to develop.

All we have to do to solve our problems and truly get ahead and succeed is to swiftly ditch everything we own and go live off nothing. That’s our only solution.

Unless, that is, you are prone to pessimism: because if some rich so-and-so has already figured a way to incentivize taking rusted, discarded cans off the ground and turning them into currency, then surely that person will surely figure a way to take homeless people from the streets and recycle them back through the machine to make them profitable once again.

nothing of importance, unless you are concerned for the health of dogs

The snow should be gone by now and other than a few depressing flurries the past few weeks, it is.

With it's annual absence, it has revealed something interesting, which before recently, I had not seen very often.

Now I don't know if they were covered in snow all winter and as the white stuff receded, they were uncovered and slowly thawed out, but the homeless are out in full force along St. Catherine, outside Berri-UQAM, in parks, bus stops, Metro entrances and on any street corner with any sort of foot traffic right now.

Coming from Yellowknife, seeing a disheveled-looking drunk guy yelling at someone on the street isn't something I would call abnormal. Actually, it's probably a bad sign if you don't see something depressing on a few downtown streets, because that means everyone has converged somewhere else and feces is likely to be hitting a fan.

But what I have noticed here is that most anyone who spends any time on the street does so with Man's best friend. (Apparently a dog will be your best friend even if you don't have a home.) Other than YK's Charlie -- who often had two dogs with him -- I hadn't really experienced this before.

And it's a little jarring. Here is some guy with his teeth falling out, walking with a limp, in tattered clothes and maybe nursing a black eye, leading a frisky dog that looks like it could do a backflip through a hoolahoop.

How can these dogs possibly be healthier than their masters?

Who's wearing the pants in this relationship?

At first, I thought it was just a cheap ploy the bums were using. Of course, they have these lean, gleaning dogs hanging around them to guilt us into coughing up money to satisfy their own coffee-drinking or jean jacket-collecting habits. (That's what homeless people spend their money on, right?) As a society, we like pretty things and they are using that against us.

But then I started to think that was a ridiculous thought and not at all reasonable.

For one, how did these dogs stay so fit? No matter how much money these shelter-challenged folks collected, they couldn't possibly feed themselves and the dogs well enough that the dogs looked like they did. I wondered whether these dogs were adopted from animal shelters or saved from puppy mills, used until they died from worms or the cold or from eating a bad turd and then the homeless person moved on and found a new dog to guilt us with.

But that couldn't be it, could it? No one at an animal shelter would hand a dog over to a homeless person, would they? And wouldn't a homeless person eat a dog from a puppy mill instead of feeding it?

Maybe that's what they did. The bum was harvesting the dog. They fattened it up and then, when the time was right, they whipped up some Chicken Poodle Soup. I mean, they eat dogs in Asia. Is that so far-fetched?

Again, though, I realized that could not be true. We were raised on Lassie and Old Yeller and Santa's Little Helper and there was no way any North American, no matter how down and out, could fathom putting a piece of a virtuous canines into their mouth.

Then it hit me. I had been totally wrong. It wasn't the dogs that were being used by the homeless people. It was the other way around.

How could I be so ignorant?

It didn't happen until I walked past a couple with a beautiful black lab today that it dawned on me.

These dogs weren't used as tools to drum up change by greedy, shameless homeless people. No, these compassionate people were just not able to cut the leash with their dogs and because of that, they found themselves without even a dog house to shelter them.

It was true. The couple today did not look at all like they did just a few years ago. They wore faded black hoodies. The woman's blond hair had splashes of blue, but overall, it was faded white by the elements and age and harrowing experience. The couple's faces were scarred with acne and burned by sun and their teeth were grey. They marinated in hopelessness, while their dog raced around, oblivious to them, like he was on speed.

And that was it. He probably was.

This downtrodden and forlorn couple probably once lived in a nice house in the suburbs with a white-picket fence. They were leasing-to-own a reasonable-sized SUV. They both had jobs in office towers. He was a junior broker. She was a human resources administrator. They hosted dinner parties a few times a year. They were planning on having a child, but not until they had a few more years of the mortgage paid off and they owned the vehicle. They were the picture of the successful, lower-middle-class 20-something couple.

Except, they had a demon. And it was a demon of their own making.

Once in college and before going to a party, the husband-to-be blew some weed smoke into the dog's face as a gag for his friends. The dog coughed. Everyone laughed. They joked the dog would get the munchies and laughed as it laid in front of the TV like they probably did. The husband-to-be and his friends went out and enjoyed the night without a care or a thought for the dog.

But something changed within the dog. He was feeling good. I mean, GOOD! This usually conscientious and order-taking dog was hungry, but there was no food in his dish. He raided the fridge and found a chicken breast and ripped the meat from the bone. He was thirsty now and he found a few beer cans, which he bit into and lapped up. Feeling even better, he then stumbled across a bottle of whiskey, which he smashed and then polished the floor with. Full of piss and vinegar, he fell out through the doggy door and into the night.

He woke up behind a McDonalds, not remembering a thing that he had done. He had an itch on his little red stick and some claw marks on his side.

But he did recall the way he felt. And he remembered he had liked it.

Over the next few months, the dog would leave for days at a time. The husband-to-be thought nothing of it. Maybe he'd made some friends. A few months later, every single dog in the neighbourhood was knocked up. A couple cats walked around with noticeable limps.

The husband-to-be didn't suspect a thing. He moved into a new house with his girlfriend and soon they got married.

Life was busy and the couple didn't pay much attention to the dog. And with more time, they saw less and less of the dog. They started to notice he was acting differently. He would leave for a week sometimes. He slept most of the time he was home. He wasn't as hungry any more. He was more agitated around guests. Lots of shady dogs started visiting the house and hanging out and digging holes on the front lawn. The dog looked at the couple wearily at times and he often did so with a suspicious eye. He didn't enjoy being pet much any more.

The couple never suspected the dog was up to anything serious. He was just a dog being a dog. But one day, they found a raven, a snake and the dog huddled underneath the porch shivering and making a lot of noise. The dog had a band wrapped around his paw and the raven held a syringe in its beak. The couple chased the bird and the snake away without a problem, but chasing away the dog's urges would not prove so easy.

The couple spent long nights with the dog, caressing him and bringing him water and doggy treats. But as soon as the couple went to sleep, assured the dog was on the right track, he would leave and wouldn't be home for days. When he returned, the couple took took him to expensive counseling sessions, but they didn't work. The couple returned the SUV to get the dog into a drug rehab program in California, run by new age dog handlers. But the dog would sneak out at night and often come back so high, his rehab workers couldn't even get him to sit, let alone lay down.

Finally, when all other options were exhausted, the couple caved and started buying the dog the heroine he so keenly lusted after, so he wouldn't have to prowl the neighbhourhood after sundown, doing whatever he did to score the substance. They did it out of love; to try to keep him out of trouble. They would even help him shoot up. And when the dog got his high, he would lay in the couple's arms and coo and the couple would stroke his coat and they would be comforted for that moment.

That was six years ago. That was one SUV, one house, two jobs, one kidney and two lives ago.

I walked past that couple on the street today. They spent everything they had to keep their dog alive. They loved him too much to let him go. They followed him through to the edge and back every day. They slept in dark alleys, got menaced by pushers and hustlers and had to constantly carouse with evil hell-raised pooches with rabies, scabies and fleas. The woman even sold herself to pay for the dog's habit.

So I felt bad today. Not for the dog, but for the people. There was no way I couldn't give them a buck or two.

I looked at them and nodded. There was a tear in the woman's eye. I looked at the dog and shook my head. The dog didn't pay me any mind. He pissed on an old man's foot and snickered. He was gritting his teeth. He was so healthy, despite his habits. I could tell he got the choice cuts of meat when the family sat down around the garbage can.

Feeling sympathy bulging in my pocket, I reached in to help these poor people out. Maybe they could get a clean slice of pizza on me, tonight.

But. I only had a $5 bill and I didn't want to give them that much. It was $5 fucking bucks, man. That's like a beer.

So I put the bill back in my pocket, shrugged my shoulders and bounced.

long time...

Hey folks. It's been a bit, eh? My have you changed. Is that a new haircut? It looks good. No, really.

I think this had been the longest absence I've had from the old blogski. No excuse really, other than being completely allergic to writing. Something happens when you spend your entire day maniacally writing down words. It's like, once you leave, you are completely brain dead. I told a friend who was badgering me last night about not blogging, that all I feel like doing after work is making fart sounds in my head and then laughing at them.

I've been busy too, I guess. Lots happening. Went to Ontario last weekend. Danced to Snow's "Informer" in a club in Toronto -- I don't know how much more authentic of a T.O. experience one can have. Saw my grandfolks and aunts and uncles and cousins and had Easter dinner with them and it was a grand old time. I'm definitely going to have to make another trip back there this summer. Maybe catch a Jays game and some Jazz Fest.

Like I said, work is a bit crazy right now. I'm realizing I'm a guy who is going to be stressed out at whatever he does. Until he croaks. I also realize the next place I want to visit is Cuba, but that might be some time, since I realized recently that I'm a guy who is going to be constantly paying off his VISA. Until he croaks. The next trip I will be making is to Tofino in May to see my boy Mindy take the plunge into holy matrimony. It's going to be a time.

Been to a couple of shows. Saw Black Rebel Motorcycle Club last Friday. They were the tits. They played for more than two hours. Two encores. And they hit all the classics. I don't know if there is a cooler bass player than Robert Levon Been. My buddy Skaped told me ages ago that they were a band that just made you feel cool listening to them. I totally agree. Extra points for ending off with 'Open Invitation' and the green lasers.

I'm starting to get itchy about summer. Really, we got teased last weekend with some +25 stuff. Girls everywhere. St. Catherines might as well have been a cat-walk. I felt like Summer Me was starting to break out of stodgy, winter guy, but now Summer Me has gone back into hermitude. He'll be back.

Also getting antsy about the start of the playoffs. Those Sedins are on some other level right now. It's almost spooky the kinds of plays they are making these days. I appreciate Ovechkin and his skill, but I'd rather have the Sedins any day. They play a team game and they're doing things that look impossible or choreographed.

We started a writers' group a couple months ago. We put a website up, but we haven't figured out how to allow people to post on there without going through the blog's administrator. Once we do, I'll provide a link and encourage any of you who have a fiction (or non-fiction) jones to submit some stuff. It's all about practice and getting comfortable with having people read your creepy, innermost neuroses.

So, since I have nothing more to share, here is a story about an idiot I know all too well. (Note: for some reason, my roommates stay away from me on Tuesday nights now. No idea why?)

The Idiot

This idiot friend of mine started a writers’ group or something and he suggested I join. For some misguided reason I obliged and I’ve been kicking myself about that decision ever since.

Anyways, we got together for the first time last night and I got to say my piece. The idiot had told us to concoct a work of autobiographical fiction, no longer than 600 words. He called it an assignment. Really, I started to wonder who this guy thought he was, giving grown adults assignments.

I told him so much, actually. Well not really, but in the way I fought with him about the “assignment” in the weeks before the get-together, I felt I was definitely challenging his self-important authority.

“A story? You want me to write a story about my life?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I hate to break it to you, but my life isn’t really that interesting. I go to work each day and then I come home. Somewhere in between, I eat and I shit and I might have a laugh or two. But that about does it.”

“Well this assignment is about fictionalizing your life. You can write a story about anything,” he said, with his typically patronizing tone. He didn’t even look at me during most of that sentence.

But this idiot made it sound easy enough. Just make something up. But when I sat down in front of my laptop, nothing came. Every single idea I had revolved around some clichéd search for romance or adventure or self. And since that’s what I’m really going after in life, there was no way the story would wind up as anything but non-fiction.

A week before we were to meet, I called that idiot up and asked him for some help. God, it pained me to call this idiot. He really got on my nerves.

“Every idea I have is so played out. I don’t think I can do this. I can’t think of anything to write. about”

“It’s called writer’s block. I never have it, but I hear it can be annoying.” He was trying to make a joke. I didn’t laugh.

He continued, albeit with a little less confidence. “If I were you, I’d just write about your days. Write about what you do every day. I’m sure there is something there. There is no way it will be uninteresting. Good luck.”

I hung up the phone and grabbed a beer from the fridge. I cracked it and took a deep sip and then threw on some beats. I didn’t think I could write anything interesting about myself, but the idiot seemed sure it was possible. And so I slumped down in front of my computer and shrugged and did what the idiot had told me:

Thursday. I got up really late for work and ran to catch the train. It was snowing but the snow melted when it hit the ground and there was slush everywhere. My shoes got all wet. I rolled up my pants when I got to work because my cuffs were soaked. I passed a cute girl in the hall and she laughed, on account of my pants. My boss shook his head and wrote something down into a binder. I ate three sandwiches at lunch, choking them down with a can of Pepsi. I went home sneezing and coughing. I thought I’d caught a cold.

Friday. I woke up, and went to work. I wasn’t sick. I ate two sandwiches at lunch. I met a friend at a bar after work and drank a lot. I don’t remember much of what happened on Friday.

Saturday. I woke up on the floor beside my bed at 2 p.m. with a really bad hangover. I didn’t leave the house. I spent the whole day trying to remember what had happened the night before. And trying not to vomit. I ordered a pizza and watched a movie.

Sunday. I felt a little better. I went for a walk. I passed an air-outtake vent outside a mall, where homeless guys usually sleep during the winter because the vent spews out hot air all the time. There was a huge pile of dog shit under one of the vents. I wondered if the mall owners purposely let a dog shit there to discourage the guys from sleeping outside their property. Then I started to wonder if that would backfire, since – despite the smell – the pile appeared cushony and warm. I went home and nuked the rest of Saturday night’s pizza, then went to sleep.

Monday. I got up for work. I didn’t sleep well the night before, so I needed to drink like three coffees to wake up. That was a bad idea though, because it ran right through my system and I spent a good part of that morning covering my nose on the can. The day flew by quickly. I ate two sandwiches for lunch. I took the train home. I made dinner and fell asleep.

Tuesday. I got up late for work and didn’t have time for a shower. I felt stinky all day. I sat next to the cute girl at lunch, but I was real self-conscious about my smell, so I didn’t say anything. I ate two sandwiches. I took my train home after work. I made dinner and ate in front of the television. I masturbated before falling asleep.

Wednesday. I woke up and had a shower. I smiled at that girl at work. She smiled back, but I didn’t get the chance to talk to her because we don’t have enough time to socialize with anyone at work. I ate two sandwiches at my desk because I didn’t take a lunch. I came home after work and watched television. I drank three beers and fell asleep on the couch.

There.

I got up from the computer and printed off my piece. I read it over while I pounded back my drink. I thought it was kind of funny and it was certainly my life. I kind of inserted some fiction into it too, like the part where the girl smiled back at me in the hallway. I closed the laptop and went to the kitchen to make a sandwich.

We met last night at the idiot’s place. He was playing the same music he plays every time I’m over at his apartment and he was grinning and showing off his story, which he thought was very clever. He reread it aloud a few times and each time he did it, he read slower and with more emphasis on certain words. His story was twice as long as his own imposed word-limit. (“I didn’t want to make the limit dauntingly high, because I didn’t want to discourage anyone from writing,” he reasoned. He was drinking.)

We went around the table reading our stories. We nodded and laughed and drank wine.

Finally, it was my turn and I read my piece.

When I was done, the idiot was shaking his head. His lips and front teeth were purple from the wine.

“I told you to write a story.”

“I did.”

“No you didn’t.”

“Yes, I did.”

He got up and grabbed my piece out of my hand and was silent for a minute or so.

“I’m sorry, but this doesn’t qualify,” he said when he’d finished re-reading it. He was obviously thinking himself some grand literary critic. By this time, he’d had about twice as many drinks as the rest of the group. It was too bad he didn’t impose limits on his alcohol consumption – although he’d probably break that limit too, come to think about it.

“I don’t get it. I did everything you told me to do.”

“I don’t think you did. This, my friend, is not a story. There isn’t much of anything here at all. Nothing is happening. There’s no plot and no climax and no conflict. And there certainly isn’t any character development. I mean, what reason have you given me to care about any of your characters?”

That’s all I needed. I think I was kind of waiting for someone to antagonize me like that, to tell you the truth.

I took a heroic swig of my wine, stood up, ripped my story from the idiot’s bony fingers and punched him in his big, fat, crooked nose. He doubled back in defeat.

I took two sandwiches from a plate on his kitchen table and then I bounced.

the basis of personality (part one)

From the twisted mind of yours truly, here is the first bit of a story I've been working on. (When I told my friend the idea for this story, his response was: "You need to get laid, man.")

The Basis of Personality

The man was feeling down. He wasn’t feeling himself. He wasn’t feeling anything.

He threw his used Kleenex in the waste paper bin, which was filled exclusively with waded, wasted wipes. He rolled out of bed and headed for the shower. He washed himself slowly and gathered his clothes and then slipped them on and went to work.

After a mundane workday, he met up with his friend the scientist at a pub down the street from where he worked. The scientist was always coming up with hypotheses, like a good scientist should. The scientist loved to look at problems and the man was always happy to sit and listen to the scientist speak at length about whatever he was tinkering with at that given time.

“I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” the man told the scientist, waiting for the waitress to bring them their second round of beers.

“What do you mean?” the scientist responded with a raised eyebrow.

“Well, I don’t really know. I just don’t feel like anything. Do you know what I mean?”

The scientist nodded the same way a shrink does when he’s listening to a patient. There was the show of concern on his face, like he was at the same time analyzing and sympathizing with the complainant. And of course, like any psychologist, he gave off the slight impression that inside maybe he was having a little laugh about the problems he was hearing. There was also a pint glass covering the bottom of his face, as he took a generous sip of the recently delivered beer.

“I just feel like a watered down version of myself,” the man said. “Like I’m not full of life. Or what’s the word,” he paused. “Vigor.”

“I see.”

“I’m just not making things happen. I’ve got no charisma. I’m boring to myself in conversation.”

The scientist put down his drink.

“I’ve noticed this, too” the scientist told the man.

“You have?”

“Yes, and it has gotten me to thinking.”

Somewhere inside the man, a flicker of excitement was lit. However, the man could not feel it, because he had been without feeling for some time.

“Is there something you can suggest? Is there something I can do? I really do hate feeling this way.”

“Well,” the scientist started, before again picking up his glass and stalling before taking a swig. He secretly enjoyed leaving people in anticipating.

“Well,” he started again, wiping some suds from his face. “Have you been masturbating a lot?”

“What?”

“I asked you if you have been masturbating a lot.”

“I’m sorry, but I don’t see the relevance of that question.”

“You asked me if I could suggest anything to you and there is a theory I’ve been working on for a while now. But I can’t help you if you don’t answer the question.”

The man took a long look at the scientist before taking an even longer sip of his beer, which he nearly finished in the motion.

He put his pint down and answered, in a voice that was much quieter than the one he had been using previously.

“I suppose that yes, I have been masturbating quite frequently of late.” He stopped. “I don’t know why I’m telling you this and still, I don’t know what this has to do with anything.”

The scientist smiled. “It all makes sense then.”

“What makes sense?”

“Your loss of feeling. Or vigor as you called it.”

The man sat quiet, allowing the scientist to continue.

“Look, it’s all very simple. Every time you masturbate, you are jettisoning a minute part of your personality. “

“Impossible.”

“Not at all.”

“It is. It’s completely unfounded.” The man laughed. “I do enjoy listening to your work, but I must say, this time you are completely out on a iceberg.”

The scientist continued undeterred. “Take a quick peak around this bar. Do you notice anything?”

The man glanced around the pub. He saw a doorman with an especially long and thoroughly groomed beard, sitting sullen at the door. The waitress and the barman were laughing about something at the bar. She was touching the barman’s arm. A married couple sat at a corner table. The husband fiddled with his beer coaster and then started picking at the label on his beer bottle, while his wife texted someone on her phone. A young couple picked away at some nachos, and traded whispers into each others’ ears, bringing smiles to their faces

“I don’t get it,” said the man.

“It’s really all perfectly clear if you take a detached and scientific look at it.”

The man rolled his eyes, but did as he was told and looked around the bar again. Then he shrugged.

The scientist picked up his drink and finished it.

“I bet you I can tell you who is having sex here and who is masturbating. With 100 percent accuracy, no less.”

“I’m all ears.”

The scientist pointed toward the doorman, who was now thoroughly checking the IDs of a group of girls who had just entered the bar.

“You see that gentleman with the beard there?”

“Yes.”

“He’s a masturbator.”

“How do you know?”

“Just watch the way he deals with those girls.”

The doorman took each piece of identification and combed over them far longer than it took to check a date of birth.

“He doesn’t know how to talk to those girls,” the scientist said. “He’s holding onto their IDs in the hopes that the girls will talk to him. He wants them to comment on his beard, which is quite the piece of work.”

The beard was impressive. The man had a goatee, but the beard portion extended from his face about a good six inches. For a man dressed in such shabby clothes, the beard was definitely the staple of his appearance.

The scientist continued. “What I would call that thing on his chin is a zero-personality beard. The man is not able to converse with people due to a severe deficiency in personality brought upon by his chronic masturbation and so, in order to gain attention, and a potential mate, he attempts to distract people from his shocking void of personality with his outstanding, meticulous and well-defined beard.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“Is it?”

“Yes, I think it is. A lot of people have crazy beards. None of those people are getting laid?”

“Think about it. Really think about it. Why would you need a crazy beard if you were having sex regularly? Wouldn’t it get in the way?”

The waitress came by and the two ordered another round. The man would hate to admit it, but the scientist had made a good point.

“I’ll get this one,” said the scientist.

(To be continued...)

don't poop where you eat...

I wrote this a long while ago and just discovered it again deep in the recesses of my trusty old Macbook...

Keep in mind, this was pounded out back when a certain English language war criminal was holding the highest office in the U.S.A. and before Stephen Haircut was our prime talking head.

I just thought I'd share it, since each day the memory of Canada being more progressive than our southern neighbours is fading...

Perhaps yours truly is just as guilty of having that poo-don't-stink mentality. Although, anyone who has spent any time around me -- literally -- will probably not be able to find this possible.

I digress...

Where there's a goose, there's a gander

by Herbiberous

As is usually the case with matters such as these, it all started innocently enough.

The geese gorged themselves in typical fashion. Gaggles of the majestic Canadian birds, whether grazing the banks of the Fraser River or munching the ancient Viking bunkers on the shores of Newfoundland, and all spots in between, gather upon the grasses , honking and hooting their good fortune, chasing around their young ones. And they feed and feed. And once they’ve had their fill, with a wave of their powerful wings, they magically take to the sky.

Now surely the geese are completely unaware of any of man's invisible, historically determined borders, and must be guided solely by instinct - that ingrained, conditioned behaviour honed over eons, perfected by survival. So they fly for some time, towards warmer pastures. That’s just natural. The long flights, however, do tend to wear them down, especially considering the massive amounts of vegetation they’ve consumed, and the large clumps of grass collected within them begins to feel lumpy as it gets pushed through the systems of these hard-working birds. And so understandably, when good and ready, they plop their former food out, and it bombs down near Bellingham, Washington or Detroit, the Motor City.

Relieved, they themselves glide down toward the Earth, empty and therefore hungry once again, and search for grass. But the grass is diesely and unkempt in Flint. And it is sparse in between warehouses and parking lots in Bellingham. And so where the grass appears greener, they fly. And it takes them back to Canada.

And so there they graze and after having reached capacity, they take off again to jettison their intestinal cargo, and unknowingly heave it upon hapless American soil. They circle back and this becomes the custom.

It had all gone unnoticed. And really, perhaps it should have stayed that way. But one morning, a tollbooth border guard at the Alberta/Montana line, briefly coaxed away from his box of powdered donuts by a beaver trying to cross into the states with some softwood lumber, by chance witnessed the strange flight patterns of the Canadian goose. He watched as a flock of the prodigious poopers picked up near the banks of a small foothills river and proceeded to cross the international – and in his mind, the figurative –line and dump goose doo doo down upon his native Montana soil.

The border guard immediately licked the dry white sugar from his stubby right forefinger to speed dial Homeland Security, which declared what is called a Code Red, which sent two black vans, teams of black suited men and a couple large choppers to protect their interests and monitor the situation. A team of tediously trained Navy Seals, descending from the helicopters, saw the geese violate America, confirming with their own eyes what the border guard had seen.

Think tanks were quickly filled. Armed patrolmen, camouflaged in greens, equipped with binoculars and infrared goggles, some dressed as bushes, were sent out to stalk any Canadian goose found within 50 miles of the United States. The celebrated Gulf War Hero General Fox declared in of his planned operation; “Where there is a goose, I want a gander.” Plans to erect a 900 foot high wall along the 49^th parallel were seriously discussed. 24/7 closed circuit cameras, surveillance systems detecting precise goose honking frequencies, went up and the newest and most elaborate radar was used to monitor all geese flight patterns.

To Homeland Security, protecting the American people from the potential dangers of fast falling objects from the sky was a concern, yet it was not considered to be the most important reason to pay so much attention to the geese. In the torrent of confidential memos streaming through Washington – some of which have recently been released – it is clear that this issue had a more profound and symbolic importance: they had to show the world that no one could get away with shitting on the United States.

Bills went through with wartime efficiency, getting bipartisan support, to allocate funds towards this worthy fight against the dirty flight.

When a goose in Quebec innocently waddled up to a bush clad patrolman and started to nibble the plastic garnish adorning him, the agent broke out his best goosetalk - which came from the most decorated and distinguished linguists of the land, who had been tasked with deciphering and devising, through their constant surveillance, a manner of speaking to geese - to flip the goose and get it to rat out its comrades. The attempt proved futile, as the goose could not hear the patrolman over the cloud of confused obscenities it honked out over the displeasing taste of the plastic bush.

Despite all the brazen geese pooping and blatant disregard of American sovereignty, the American government’s tries to stop the geese were fruitless. Politicians influenced the media to unleash a public smear campaign against the feathered defecators, but were unable to illicit within the general populace any of the warm feeling of rage they had in past endeavours. People could not be made afraid of the birds. And if the American people did not fear the geese, their government couldn’t declare war against them.

Polls in independent media outlets actually showed that Americans, in general, really did not care about the defacement. They joked about it. This only incensed those in charge.

In America, it was illegal to hunt these animals and no citizen would stand idly by if the government had tried to enact a law to make this possible. These animals, honking and crapping aside, are kind of pretty. And only a cold-blooded compassionless cruelheart could support it’s country murdering a pretty animal.

So it was with all think tanks ready to burst in frustration, that finally an idea was born so diabolical and meticulous that it could not fail and, even better, its undertaking would go unnoticed to all but the keenest observers.

The psychological battle was unleashed.

The operation was brought up only on a need to know basis. It was decided any goose caught crossing the border would be tagged with a miniature tracking device, drugged and brought to a secret detention centre to undergo an intensive, nerve-wracking, rewiring process deep within a military base, half a mile underground.

And so it was, as each Canadian goose crossed the 49th parallel, with their bellies full, they were hit with a dart and fell to the ground. Gaggles were gathered by loaders and shovelled into the backs of trucks.

However, this technique proved time consuming. As more was learned about the geese, new processes were implemented to improve efficiency: an ether-like spray, altered to smell like wet herbs to attract flocks, was found to be quite useful in slowing the birds down to where they would become drowsy, land and then fall asleep, and then become prone to capture. Hercules aircraft, adorned in goose feathers, engineered to emit a goose call, would sneak up on flocks of geese in the air, and when they crossed the border, the Herc would overtake them, gas them and suck them into its hold. On the ground, the Air Force men would walk into the base with limp, knocked out geese slung over their backs, carrying them by the necks, like grim clowns with bouquets of dead balloons.

Within 4 months, the Canadian geese had all undergone their annual migration out of chilly Canada for the winter months. Only a few people on the continent knew that the Canadian geese would never return.

These geese were not killed. They had not been destroyed, but instead altered. For several months the geese underwent an intense assimilation procedure where they were force fed propaganda in twangy accents. Their eyelids were taped open and the geese were shown hours of looped footage, Hollywood stars and striped flags flapping over majestic landscapes and massive industrial projects over reworked Earth and obese, pathos-sweaty desk pounding pundits punding persuasively on the evils of everywhere else and dollars falling from the sky. The geese were stuffed with commissary. Stuffed more than they would have allowed. They were prohibited from flying. They were separated, grouped together in competing factions where some were given too much to eat and other were given nothing.

Finally, when they were commissioned to leave the base, the geese were wholly different. The campaign had been a total success. The geese were larger. They were louder. They were more frightened.

And when they flew North, the Canadian people noticed a change in the geese. They saw that they pooped everywhere and anywhere they pleased. They fought like dogs. They started to eat their own poop, instead of treating it like it didn’t stink.

They weren’t Canadian geese anymore.

They were now American Geese.