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[May. 17th, 2009|07:51 pm] |
i don't use this much anymore.
been doing some writing. nearly done in paris. back to toronto on june fifteenth.
catch my writing as it comes for free here. ipod touch and iphone friendly. oh technology.
http://fictionbyjfb.blogspot.com
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| so ive been a real writer recently |
[Apr. 28th, 2009|10:38 pm] |
no edits, straight up, free for consumption, distribution, etc viewer discretion, apocalypse horror, bad writing
Old Story Which I didn't post
another piece of apocalypse fiction called survivors envy the dead i'm trying to hit this genre as hard as possible before the rest of the hoi polloi catches on. even with all the bad horrible writing and whatnot
Flash Short A Suicide Note from David AttenboroughFinally a brief piece of flash fiction written from the point of view of David Attenborough, narrator of Planet Earth
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| (no subject) |
[Apr. 28th, 2009|08:18 pm] |
still alive, listening to opera, writing,
editing myself because nobody works for free
creating recipes, drinking coffee, smoking less
reading more, see w. somerset maugham and cookbooks
have not one penny to my name, illegally riding the metro to get to school
barely escaping metro inspectors
wearing ripped jeans, socks, stained clothes
obtaining the nickname dirty at school
not getting swine flu yet
devouring pop culture
missing home, friends, family, working
posting stories with links sometime soon |
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| 9 stories |
[Feb. 18th, 2009|01:12 pm] |
1. cigarette addiction in a time of nuclear war
2. the history of parasitic cordyceps
3. little geniuses devouring their teacher
4. a neighborhood murdered by vigilante animals
5. a family just outside the fallout zone of a nuke
6. gay horror
7. biography of a world changing classical composer
8. two best friends and death
9. vagrant hobo art critics in postapocalyptica
happy happy thoughts. mostly finished. some requiring scalpel work.
just talked to a dude from dead fucks art collective in toronto and i might have me an artist or two.
july. but the ones i finish, i´ll be releasing quietly in other venues. but july is the month im thinking.
also, looks like i´m back to toronto in july, not for any huge stretch of time, but for a few months anyhow. |
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| dumb motherfucking dot com |
[Feb. 16th, 2009|11:03 am] |
so its been a while.
a year has passed since i applied to school in paris and a lot has happened since then. in that time:
ive been single for the longest stretch of time since i was sixteen. i grew a beard. i´ve become obsessive with music and food. i have frequent panic attacks and bouts of crippling depression. i detest people a lot more. i have lost my faith in the human race. i sometimes wear clothes that are not black. i kept a job for longer than six months. i still wear a baseball cap and use a backpack like a security blanket. i´ve been reading a lot more. i´ve been writing a lot more. i spent a paragraph of 2009 in the depths of narcissism. i befriended americans. i left my home continent. i went to two more countries than i´d ever been before. i climbed a mountain. i took a thousand pictures. i ate some weird fucking shit. i made hollandaise from scratch. i became eurotrash. i switched cigarette brands.
i´m probably going to be a little late for school. so i can´t write much more. i´m simultaneously writing and rewriting five short stories. my mind is tripping up. its kind of fun. and i wish i could just take twelve hours from a day and lock myself in a room with coffee and cigarettes and write until i couldn´t write no more, but there aint the time.
im also thinking of leading a revolt at school. they´ve gone soft on us. its a pity.
to school, to school. maybe ill update some more later. but there´s not much to report. |
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| the brave little smoke detector and other stories |
[Jan. 16th, 2009|01:45 pm] |
i went to a doctor yesterday who x-rayed my chest and tested my blood pressure. i'm average weight for my height, my blood pressure is normal, my heart rate as well and after x-raying my chest: how much do you smoke? so i tell her five to ten a day and she responds that i'm the healthiest smoker she's ever seen. apparently i have super clean lungs and the rest of me is a-ok. there's a muscle contraction in my back but that's nothing a little heat therapy can't cure. that or...lasers. anyone with lasers that keep it real on the regular please mail me immediately. for those inquiring about the process of keeping it real regularly, chuck d will be holding a seminar down the hall for the rest of time.
so let me get this straight: six years of treating myself like garbage, eating french cuisine for the past year and smoking like an idiot lands me in perfect health at the age of twenty two, nearing twenty three. something is rotten in the state of denmark. i'm lining myself up for a surprise death in the near future. the epitaph on my headstone should read: I TOLD YOU SO. and if i die of something smoking related: YOU TOLD ME SO. bury me in pere lachaise. that place is wonderful.
quote of the week:
phil: "i wish you weren't so pessimistic all the time. it's such a downer."
me: *laughs maniacally*
my computer is still dead but ive been deprived from the internet and focusing on school like a horse focuses on an anterior ligament when performing reconstructive surgery. im kind of killing it in the living department right now. i just landed a job as a personal chef for a family of four. i have to create menus for them and eventually ill be putting together a cook book for them. that is if i pass the trial week. itll help me hone my knife skills and basically keep me cooking all the time until i'm a robot.
ive started looking ahead. instead of moving back to toronto for an extended period of time, i've been looking at the possibility of doing a stage here in paris, commis work in england and/or, i'm looking at dubai very seriously. the buzz in the culinary world is very strong and i think itd be in my best interest to jump on it soon. don't get me wrong, i'm probably one of the most homesick people on the planet, but this little birdy has got to fly like a motherfucker. i don't know where in the hell i got all this ambition from, but its there and i kind of need it at this age, so im not complaining. i will be back in canada for sure at some point this summer. for how long, i have no idea.
ive been so busy that i just haven't had time to write. my new place is incredible, don't get me wrong. fantastic roommates and a lot of fun. but its rare i get a time like i have now to sit down and put something together. the novel is on a bit of a hold, but the head is still bubbling with ideas. ive got a slew of short stories begging to be written. just begging. ill have weekends off for this new job so i might find a shack to borrow from a friend and lock myself in it once i get my laptop fixed. i got a food blog that is also begging to be returned to. believe me, ive been cooking like crazy and taking a ton of pictures. and on the note of timing and not having enough of it, i've got a class to go to.
yesterday, musee d'orsay.
tonight, the louvre.
my life: hilarious. |
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| barcelona |
[Dec. 16th, 2008|11:01 am] |
last night i saw a band from toronto in paris. made me a little less homesick and realize how much i miss punk shows.
it was fucked up at le mecanique ondulaire. ben was sweetheart and got me on the guest list. it was a fucking sweet show. french people love them. they even knew their earlier tracks like generation, police and circle and the drain. the fact that they played all that shit was awesome. and they covered nervous breakdown by black flag, which was righteous. i've been writing an essay about their work and shows i've seen, so i'll post that one of these days. FUCKED UP is the name of the band and if you haven't heard of them, do yourself a favour and grip their discography.
in a couple of hours, i am getting on budget plane i only slightly trust to fly me into tiger country. i call any new place i'm heading into tiger country. hell, i called quebec tigery country for years. i do not speak the language and my body is sore and my feet are blistered from days trying to get to know the city i live in. i'm going into a land where it is not advisable to drink the water from a tap. this might prove testy for your humble narrator as he loves water from the tap. i only half know how im travelling from 100km outside of barcelona to the city center at eight in the evening. i have a sleeping bag so if worst comes to worst, i've got the knowledge that i've camped in more uncomfortable places (ie the woods in a shitty lean to in minus 30 weather).
i know very little about this place other than it has a beach, people like cerveza and the women are good looking. i can't spend any money and i'll just be doing what i've been doing here. walking around, taking dumb photos and writing captions that make me laugh underneath them. i'll also be working away at the writing. somehow at the beginning of the month, i had one project on the go. now i'm simultaneously working on four or so.
the painful awareness that the lady above me practices opera has seeped in. i hate this woman. her warm ups are consistent, on time and irritating. it's godawful. i'm moving out of here when i get back from espagnol. can't wait. she just hit a falsetto note. i just felt my the nerve endings that make me smile fall apart. perma frown.
i hate planes. mine takes off in a couple of hours. paris to beauvais to reus to barcelona. hollaback y'all. |
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| d'oh canada (an idiot's view on the broalition and harper's blunder) |
[Dec. 7th, 2008|11:16 am] |
this is a big one. which no one will probably read. i've always been a firm believer that the political theatre of my country was a joke. i've never really taken it seriously because nothing that groundbreaking or exciting ever happens. and i've never considered that to be a bad thing. we have a pretty rad government and on the whole, a pretty rad country. people complain a lot but take it into perspective, we've never had a bush, a mugabe or a hitler. also take into account that our "right wing" party, the tories, is a lot like the USA's democrats. all in all, we've got it pretty damn good. had i been born in the era of trudeau, i might have taken a little more interest. hell, i spent the last year or so rooting for another country's president elect. that all changed when we made front page news across the globe with a catfight for parliement hill. so sue me, i'm an ignoramus that loves his drama. if you know me, i'm kind of a leftist apocalypse soon kind of guy so excuse the extreme bias that follows. i've been reading the news and i've been following the little situation a-brewin' back in the homeland. as an outside observer not entrenched in the bias of the canadian media or national conversation at the moment, i'm still not too sure what to make of it. so i really looked into it and i've been doing a lot of reading. here are two things i think but are not necessarily true: 1. stephen harper is a braw boasting pussy who screwed up and couldn't face the music on december 9th. whining to the gov. gen. was a bitch move. for shame, stevie. in his spare time, stephen is a fun loving guy likes long walks on the beach, throwing darts at a full size poster of darwin and drinking the blood of the innocent. 2. the coalition government is probably the last thing the country needs, especially with our options. i sensed something unpunk about this coalition the minute it came about because...everybody thought it was cool. the anti-establishment leather wearing nihilist in me smelled a rat. my question to the people supporting this broalition of the willing: you were really supporting a war on parliamentary error with dion as your general?
 this teddy bear? really?
i know it would only be until may, but
we're at a global juncture in time where every single minute counts harmless. freedom fighters and warring nations would look at us and think: JACKPOT! THIS MOTHA FUCKA'S GETTING STRAIGHT UP JACKED! i'll give harper this, he's got a dead man's stare. here are the facts (in my perverse and twisted way of delivering them): harper didn't win a majority (thank your commie stars), but, parliament once again becomes his castle. dion then said, you know what, my campaign sucked, i'm peacing out in may. jack layton polished his head with turtle wax and gilles duceppe wasn't there because he's allergic to daylight and was fast asleep hanging from the rafters of his attic. the economic crisis begins to spin out of control and business the world over begins to shatter into pieces. the rest of the world is coming up with new economic plans and ways to stimulate an economy which has already been in a recession for nearly a year. harper springs to action (several months too late) and announces a grand plan: what's up, here's my boy j-rock flaherty to announce my plan to save the economy. cue def leppard's pour some sugar on me. guess what guys? our banks kick ass. represent. while everybody else got shanked by rampant consumerism and bad credit, we pretty much came out alright. on top of that, because my last economic plan was pretty rad and everyone got a tax cut, let the good times roll. by the way, my dearest civil servants, remember that raise i was talking about? yeah well you can kiss that goodbye and if you don't like it, you better start looking for a new job. as of now, there's no way in hell im going to let you go on strike. you're mine to 2011. oh and dear economy, the subject of this wonderful set of ideals: NO STIMULUS PACKAGES FOR YOU! but just to make it look like i'm not a complete secret hitler, dear fellow broliticians, i'll take away the buck 95 you get every time your political party gets a vote(because it doesn't matter to me anyhow because the votes are in, i'm the motherfucking prime minister and i won that bitch fair and square. king kong ain't got shit on me). sixty one percent of canadians, hollaback, i got you. you guys pay your bills, politicians should too. ladies, just in case you think i forgot about you, in case there's some pay equity issues at your work, remember that time you could go to the courts to sort that out the ol' democratic and perfectly legal way? THINK AGAIN, YOU JUST LOST THAT RIGHT! oh yeah, artists in one of the most creative countries in the world right now? get fucked. i think we've all had a little too much culture. to raise some money, i'm going to sell of some things such as schools, libraries, museums and art galleries. -mr harper? yes, ronnie james dion, what can i do you for? -uh...what's that poking out from underneath the rug? nothing... -uh...you know what? it kinda looks like the deficit to me. STFU DION! IT'S ON! <B>THE FOLLOWING ACTUALLY HAPPENED IN CANADIAN POLITICS</B> dion declares: yo, fuck this noise. even though months ago, i, stephan dion and jackie boy here that we'd never team up, guess what? this winter, for the first time ever on the CBC powerpoint presentation of parliament (in canada, we don't have C-SPAN and there are meetings in a big ol where cameras are not allowed to go), DION, LAYTON, DUCEPPE! BROALITION 2K8! now why oh why would they go ahead and do this? i think a blatantly obvious reason lies in one of the mandates of the economic bill proposed by harper. money. the one where the buck 95 from every vote goes on to fund the party. about sixty percent of the NDPs and Liberals government funding comes from that pool. and the bloc (who i'm going to joke about often in this rant) get nearly 90 percent of their pursey from it! the funny thing is, the conservatives stand to lose the most: 10 mill. the only downside is, little parties like the rhinos and commies lose everything...but...really? c'mon. BUT aside from the greed inherent in politics, they want harper out. more people voted against the liberals, against the NDP and against the bloc (and all those other little guys), than voted against the conservative party. BUT, if you think about it, together, (bloc, ndp, lib), more people voted against the conservative party. HENCE THE BROALITION. i think they feel that they got a raw fuckin' deal and they want a takeover and they're going about it boyz in the hood style. i think they honestly believed that they could work together to represent a broad spectrum of canadians while hammering out a better economic policy. but let's be serious. for the record, let it be noted that dion DID go ahead and say: listen harper dude, you've got some options! bring us a new deal and we can talk. harper, instead of what he should have done, (which would have been to say: YO STRAIGHT UP! MY BAD! give me a chance to rework this deal) calls it a coup d'etat (which it isn't because in the constitution, there's nothing that states the lefties are in the wrong) and THEN copped out of a non-confidence vote, cancelled parliament and went and hid under his desk with a cellphone on constant speed dial to the governor general. like it or not, he fucked up and painted himself into a corner. he calls her up and gives her three options: 1. DISSOLVE PARLIAMENT AND CALL FOR NEW ELECTIONS SIX WEEKS AFTER THE LAST ONES. FAIL! HAHAHAHA 2. RESIGN! FAIL! HAHAHA 3. the ultimate pussy move: "prorogue" parliament. you know what guys? we're gonna go on vacay till the new year. yeah...in the middle of an economic crisis, let's fuck with our democracy and make it so that i'm untouchable. that's how bad i wanna light advent candles at 24 sussex drive. LISTEN GUYS, I REALLY DON'T WANNA SEEM LIKE A BENIGN DICTATOR HELL BENT ON POWER, BUT, I'M JUST GONNA HOLD OFF ON THE WHOLE VOTING THING. dude, if the kids at richview collegiate beat your nerd ass up, tell it to your psychiatrist. my dad went to richview and you don't see him proroguing parliament. kris bassi would take it like a man! maybe he wouldn't...i'll assume he would though. in any case, my dad can still beat up your dad. (dad if you read this, that little thing was put there for the comedy's sake...your son is trying to be funny) so what happens? gov gen jean prorogues. you know why? its constitutionally sound of her to do. i'll tell you why. if you think that stephen harper is a born again hitler, there are a bunch of people out there who don't and you've got to respect that. just because it ain't your point of view, doesn't mean you need to get all militant about it. or else, you're just as bad as them...those weiners. this is fundamentally why i think she went with this option. the conservatives, who were voted fair and square into parliament, would be replaced by a brand new party (who would hold a majority of the vote) with a guy who's splitting in a few months. does that sound secure to you? where's the democratic process there? this decision rested in her hands and i think she made the right one. and this proroguement (if that's a word) is only lasting until after the holiday break. the other option would have had harper resign, but that wasn't ever really an option now was it, mein fuhrer? now for the juicy business: the broalition. me? i call for a brohibition. fuck em. if these dudes come back in a uniform black after this little waiting period, we could be in trouble. i do not feel right about them one bit. do not be conned. it's a hack's opportunistic government slapped together to pounce on a moment of conservative weakness. sure, that's politics, but is that how WE do, my fellow canadians? a lot of people are buying into it and that kind of scares me. how much time have they had to think about this? not a whole lot! on top of that, a majority of the people in favor the coalition and wanting it in are just anti tory. it would be a major blunder. stephane dion, is probably, the most unpopular dude ever to run for the liberal office. he's the reason the conservatives got in again in the first place. with layton and duceppe in there you've got one hell of a snafu. that's like letting three virgin geeks (drunk on peach schnapps) share the prom queen after graduation: it's going to get messy and fast. if this broalition goes forth, the tension and rancour in parliament will be so poisonous it could be bottled up and used as a biological weapon. infighting leads to unstable government and unstable government leads to the four horsemen of the apocalypse. there will be a war between egotistical politicians during the most pivotal time of human history: the present. then there's the issue of the bloc. over the recent years, they've toned down their hardline stance about separation. they're gunning more for a quebecois nation within the nation of canada kinda thing right now. still, it is their overarching goal to become sovereign. you think they're just going to assimilate into this without a fight? have you ever met a BQ supporter from quebec? they would not be down with that shit AT ALL. i'm both a citizen of quebec and ontario. the biggest issue for me: the emergence of a two party system in canada. where's the fun in that? one party would be the conservatives and the other the coaltion. the conservatives are a tight knit group of jesus loving nazis whereas the coalition is a melting pot of hippie liberal and left thinking inherent with the possiblity of fracture and disagreement. sure it's nice to have debate within a party, but not when it comes to terms of party solidarity. the beauty of our system is that there is tons of room for debate. it's not black and white. isn't that one of the many things that makes canada great? the only good i see from this whole debacle is the fact that canadian politics are taking a cue from the states and: it's getting a little more interesting. anybody hear the recordings of dion and harper having a catfight in the house of parliament? priceless. while we lack great orators in the political arena (on a superficially aural level, every canadian politician when either recorded or speaking sounds like they're about to cry or about to die), they're starting to show some cojones. what we need though, is a barack obama. jack layton looks like a duck, gilles duceppe could star in a bram stoker flick and dion? awww i just wanna pinch his widdle cheeks, the big softie. the person next in line for the liberal party, and essentially the coalition, is michael ignatieff. in my opinion, he's not a terrible choice but not a perfect one. while i love the other possibility in gerard kennedy, i just don't think he's got the experience (daily bread food bank, mp, education) nor education to tackle the job ahead. i think he should definitely be an integral part of the administration, but definitely not prime minister material yet. maybe in like ten years or so...throw him the minister of defence job and see if he bucks up or fucks up. ignatieff would be great to have in office for the upcoming foreign policy issues that lie ahead and perhaps could emerge as a goodwill ambassador PM in certain heated situations (russia, middle east, asia). he's incredibly knowledgeable, well written (it'd be sweet to have a patron of the written word in office) and bilingual. he's also "not much of a church guy" which is pretty great because we don't want another dude in office who thinks the world is 6000 years old, hates abortion and thinks that the queer crowd are a bunch of sinners. did i mention he's got 9 honorary doctorates? he'd probably be the smartest guy ever to take office. the downside is he is a bit of a war junkie. he wants to extend the mission in afghanistan. he was also a huge supporter of the iraq war, until like everyone else, realized what a fuck up it was. he also is for what he calls lesser evils to combat the anti-infidels. lesser evils include, drum roll please, indefinite detention of suspects, coercive interrogations, targeted assassinations, and pre-emptive wars in order to combat the greater evil of terrorism. how that buzz word is still hummin like a fridge is beyond me. while the political thriller and intrigue man in me is so down for this type of yahoo going rambo on the freedom fighters, methinks it is not canadian. we love hockey and peacekeeping, eh? the other two guys in the broalition to deal with jack layton and gilles duceppe. i do not trust jack layton. there is something almost snaky about him in the same way that bill clinton is kind of snaky. i used to like the guy but he's got a legacy of just calling out the other parties. he is the john mccain of negative campaigning in canada. he'd much rather talk about what everyone else has done wrong than what he could do right. he spent the last campaign tearing into the liberals, trying to steal their votes and now he wants to jump into bed with them? saving face much? while he has some great policies concerning social issues in canada (ie homelessness, environment and health care), BUT he wants to raise taxes by a lot to get them. i'm not naive, i get it. we gotta feed the cow if we want it to give milk. but right now, in terms of the economy, we need a centrist more than a socialist. the ruthlessness penny pinching debonair of the conservatives with a less of a fascism for toddlers spin. a lot of people see this guy as canada's barack obama. they think jack layton is great, grand and wonderful. he even went as far as alluding that he was kind of like barack in his 2008 campaign speech which...dude...you are not brobama. brobama does not sling mud at opponents. i don't think he has the experience, economic savvy or the political maturity to deal with the problems we have now and will have over the next few years. that said, one of the things i do groove (you bet i just said that) with him on is a rehaul of the canadian voting system. word up. the first past the post system we have has led us to the current situation where we might end up with a two party system (zee coalition vs zee tories). votes get wasted (so that whole my vote REALLY COUNTS! sentiment doesn't play in...sometimes your vote counts and sometimes it doesn't) because once a winning or losing party reaches a certain number of votes, anything after that is considered a wasted vote. a whole wackload of votes for your fave party won't mean shit in determining the final outcome. and then when you've got all those little parties like the green, the rhinos and the marxist leninists in the mix: well that's yet another wrench in the gears of our current voting system. viva la proportional representation! and on another note of why he isn't a complete dolt, this maverick loves him some torrents and file sharing. respeck! gilles duceppe...i'm just going to leave it at that. dude looks like a vampire. in conclusion, in a time where the world has never been more fractured and there's an economic clusterfuck, we need someone who's balanced in ALL areas. someone with kennedy's looks, most of ignatieff's foreign policy/intelligence/leadership qualities, certain aspects of harper's economic policy (which in reality up until his new deal, did do us a good fucking turn with the recent times. our banks be bangin' our taxes get lower), jack layton's social/environmental cunning and gilles duceppe's power of invincibility. we also need a restructuring of our voting system and solid discourse in parliament. this hissy fit that just occurred? c'mon...we've got serious hell ahead of us and this is no time to quibble. the government needs to hug it out, sit down with each other and work it out diplomatically rather than getting dramatic. this is not the time for an election, a two party system, backdoor negotiations (haha backdoor) or anything of that nature. it's time for voters to realize what makes our country so great, not to take it for granted and not jump on flashy and illfated bandwagons without doing a little research. and to our dearest politicians: debate, roll the twelve sided die or go to the sauna. do whatever it is you've done to keep our nation politiely democratic as it has been in the past (minus the other times a non confidence vote when into effect). don't push this to a vote just yet. ride 2009 out amenably, lightly spar with each other and try to work together. work together for the greater good: utilitarianism, my brothers. you know what bickering with my younger brother got me when i was little? time out. do you guys really want a time out...FROM GOD? but seriously, in times like these, you need to reach out across the aisles and work together to hit the ground running. trust. i'm only going to tell you once because i am never entering your filthy little scat game of politics. if it comes down to voting either/or, hell, i'll give al gore my citizenship so you guys can vote for him. think about that north american powerhouse: THIS SUMMER, FROM THE PRODUCERS OF RUSH HOUR TWO AND BLADE RUNNER, COMES A TOUCHING STORY ABOUT TWO UNLIKELY POLITICIANS ENDING UP IN TWO VERY UNLIKELY OFFICES. KABLAMO! WITH SAMUEL L JACKSON AS BARACK OBAMA AND VIN DIESEL AS AL GORE AND CHEECH MARIN AS FELIPE CALDERON! FROM DIRECTOR MICHAEL BAY COMES THE SEASON'S GREATEST BLOCKBUSTER ABOUT FRIENDSHIP, DIPLOMACY AND GET READY FOR EBONY AND IVORY, KICKING ASS IN HARMONY! QUENTIN TARANTINO PRESENTS PRESENTS: THE UNITED PESOS OF MANADA! i leave you with that. if you made it this far thanks for reading. all this said, i'd love to hear any other points of view, left, right, whatever. disagreements and conflicting viewpoints are encouraged. i'm an idiot who loves to lose arguments.
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| pros and contras |
[Dec. 6th, 2008|09:27 am] |
24 hours in the life of a fool with a dirty mouth:
+ just scored a possible job opportunity as a personal chef for a french-american family. they like the cut of my jib and we're only waiting on my school hours to come in.
+ short story getting published by a toronto based arts/skateboarding website (will post link)
+ i'm officialy moving in with one of my best friends to an island in the middle of the seine on boxing day
+ 33,000 words and the toughest part: the ending is written, now i just have abuse the hell out of my character for the next fifteen thousand words or so
+ reading statistics and self teaching political science and economics
+ plane, hostel and square footage of a beach booked for barcelona in ten days
+ watching my friends come into their own from across an ocean
+ i sleep all day and write all night: total expenditures over two weeks: 20 euro
+ haven't shaved in fifteen days, ain't shaving till the last edit of the book is complete. result? epic beard.
+ being insanely canadian. i've developed more of a novelty accent here than i ever had back home
+ beethoven, crass and tragedy
+ HONOR! yaaaaay
+ wearing a leafs jersey in paris france and telling anyone who asks about canada "everywhere in canada is great except for ottawa. ottawa sucks"
mixed bag: celibacy and becoming a total recluse, drinking coffee again
- having very little to complain about in my personal life
- the rapid shift of world power from west to east (belee me, happening right as your'e reading this)
- india and pakistan, worse than ever
- iran: two months away from nuclear reactor
- old white people making movies about being young white people (nostalgia)
- the clusterfuck also known as the canadian government...phil underwood for PM laurence bw too...but less the cheech, my son.
- reading the economist
- smoking (and on top of that, not being able to do it inside)
- FAMINE! boooooo
- watching my friends come into their own from across an ocean (not being able to congratulate them with huge bear hugs and high fives)
- the leafs playoffs chances (this one never gets old)
- reading the news |
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| (no subject) |
[Dec. 2nd, 2008|09:52 pm] |
after muchos deliberation, the baguette wielding defeatist toads decided to give me my visa.
thanks sarko. that was real sporting of you.
i'm growing a thick and wild beard and flying into barcelona on the sixteenth of december.
i will stay there for five days and drink cheap beer and write stories on the beach.
this will be my first vacation to a place that does not have snow and maple trees.
i don't speak any spanish so this should be interesting.
donde esta una cerveza and una mamacita i think will suffice. i actually have no idea what that means.
i should probably stick with sign language.
my plane ticket was absolute peanuts. flying around europe is cheap as me after a few drinks.
both the airports, beauvais and reus, are in the middle of fucking nowhere outside of the city centers.
once i land in reus, i've got exactly one hour (that is if my plane isn't late) to grab a taxi to the reus train station and catch the last train to barcelona.
believe, paris is still fantastic, i am just in need of some culture shock.
the writing is becoming mildly trying but i think the trip will sort me out. |
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| dan rather |
[Nov. 17th, 2008|01:06 pm] |
17,000 words and counting...
i've hit the novella benchmark. its beginning to write itself.
once im done that i might write a short story about how all my editors are dead.
current obsessions:
orwell, dan rather, Air (the band), ghostface, post-hardcore (clouds, red sparowes), the new metal bands coming out, economics, t. corraghessan boyle
look it all up, it's great. i promise.
dan rather especially. the way he's currently invested a lot of his own money to take on CBS to investigate political influence in the media is fantastic. hes in the news, read him and weep. he's a huge basis for the character i'm writing about:
(from WICKEDpedia)
Since retiring, he has spoken out strongly about what he perceives as a lack of courage by American journalists. On January 24, 2006, Rather spoke to a Seattle audience. Before the speaking engagement, he told a newspaper reporter, "In many ways on many days, [reporters] have sort of adopted the attitude of 'go along, get along.'" "What many of us need is a spine transplant", Rather added. "Whether it's City Hall, the State House, or the White House, part of our job is to speak truth to power."
and
In a July 1980 interview with Ladies' Home Journal, Rather said that "in 1955 or '56, I had someone at the Houston police station shoot me withheroin so I could do a story about it. The experience was a special kind of hell. I came out understanding full well how one could be addicted to 'smack,' and quickly." According to journalist Cliff Jahr, Rather said, "As a reporter - and I don't want to say that that's the only context - I've tried everything. I can say to you with confidence, I know a fair amount about LSD. I've never been a social user of any of these things, but my curiosity has carried me into a lot of interesting areas."
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| (no subject) |
[Nov. 15th, 2008|12:35 pm] |
i am now a cordon bleu basic cuisine graduate.
i wore a suit and nice shoes and i didn't wear a baseball cap for the first time all week.
don't worry mom, i'm ordering you some 8x10's.
i'm nearly finished my first novella. maybe another month or so.
i'm planning to release it for free, as a gift to people, online for small donations.
before i do this, i might need a couple of editors.
there's a chance i might be in canada in december after all. but, best case scenario, i don't have to. way too expensive.
my chances of completing the visa process hit more red tape by the day.
in other news, OKAY, OKAY
I'VE HAD MY ISSUES WITH THE HUMAN RACE BEFORE, BUT THIS IS JUST STAGGERING. A PIECE OF NEWS LIKE THIS REALLY VINDICATES ALL OF MY BELIEFS. THERE IS SOMETHING ABSOLUTELY WRONG WITH US. OUR SOCIETY, WHICH SOME PEOPLE TAKE AS IS, IS JUST PLAIN MESSED UP. WHAT IN THE BLUE FUCK IS THE MATTER WITH US? HOW DO WE LET SOMETHING LIKE THIS HAPPEN? LAURENCE, I DEMAND ANSWERS.
http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/europe/11/14/second.life.divorce/index.html
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| (no subject) |
[Nov. 8th, 2008|10:10 pm] |
dear writer's block,
its been fun hanging out for the past two years. i'll see you again some other time.
your pal,
joel
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| (no subject) |
[Nov. 6th, 2008|06:33 pm] |
thank you america for not fucking up. jesus. it was close too.
school. it's been nuts. anyhow, today was nice. bought some baguettes, created a different user for myself on the computer and wrote. i finished a short story for a montreal zine called bitchstick. my friend jamie asked me to write one up for him. it's probably in need of an edit or two but its the first one i've completed in two years. like most of my short stories, it's slapstick and in this case it's incredibly gruesome and macabre slapstick. it's not for the weak of stomach. i'd actually go out of my way to tell people not to read this one. the theme of the zine is gay horror, so i had to do something along those lines. i kinda felt physically ill writing the last parts of it so, really, i know this is like one of those DO NOT PRESS THE BUTTON and you go ahead and press it kind of scenarios, but don't say i didn't warn you. think the movie Junior (hence the title), make danny devito and schwarzy gay lovers and then throw in buckets of blood and viscera. its disturbing okay?
in other news, i am going to be sequestering myself in my apartment for the next two months working on a book. won't give any details away as of yet, but i'm going to self publish it. because i'm punk. most of my friends will have split come december, but i'm going to stay here and just write straight through the winter. that's the goal anyhow. nothing really much has been going on with me other than school. trying to nail down living locations with good ol KayMay for january but that's about it. i'm stoked for that wonderful day.
keep on rockin in the newly free world, friends. (fuck neil young)
your pal,
joel
( junior...a short story explicit/offensive warning label thing )</div>
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| one time |
[Oct. 20th, 2008|03:37 am] |
well, just in case you had any doubts about my fleeting sanity: i'm going to run the paris marathon in april. i quit smoking today and i start training tomorrow. not setting any records here, i just want to finish a marathon once in my life. perhaps i'll see god or something.
i've been feeling like crap these days and i know its the smokes. plus, i'd just feel like an idiot if i died of lung cancer. just a bloody fool.
so here goes the next attempt.
i've never worked out a day in my life. not once. i was on a football team once and i did some cross country in grade school, but i've never worked out or even thought about it. so hear goes something. that's just not who i am. i'm a lazy bastard. i think some direction would help me in other arenas of being a person maybe. would it really though? this is me not believing in my own bullshit, just in case anyone was about to call me on it.
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| black october 2: another chapter on the coming doomsday |
[Oct. 13th, 2008|01:47 am] |
or in long form: another chapter in dismal and depressing lunatic raving from your pal joel or another conversation i'd probably be having with luke and finally, further realization that i might be working a shtick
for sheer bragging rights and morbid vindication, i'm calling it today. it's nosedive day. end of the business week sell everything day. this is it. mark this day in your calendar and mark this month in your life. we are entering some dark days. as the hours pass by, the jovial outlook of optimists is being quashed by some stark truths. the global market is fishtailing and no matter how much money is pumped into our beloved financial sectors (privatized and otherwize). no matter how many tidal waves of benjamins or robert bordens we inject into the skinny arms of the banks, i don't think its going to work.
now, of course, i could be very wrong. i'm no business student and i'm basically just your newspaper scouring pad. my paws are covered in ink and im perpetually scowling. or frowning. even when in the middle of a rare and fleeting sexual act. now in reality, today will probably end up okay with markets taking a small percentage drop, but in the long run, i think people will witness the volatility of the market and get a little bit scared. it's big time gambling. take losing your house at vegas and compare it to losing humanity at the global craps table.
i'm six hours ahead of the markets back home, but just a word of warning, if you're playing the stock market, get the hell out now. and i know that your banks are telling you to do the opposite, but it isn't patriotic to fuck yourself in the ass. another thing to bear in mind, is watch your back. every recession is associated with a huge rise in crime. go figure, right? the natives are restless AND broke so they're robbing each other. there has never been a more lucrative time to be a member of organized crime. if i ever open a restaurant, you'll find me somewhere south of the black market. so not only will it cost you a small fortune for a lapdance down the street, but you could get robbed on your way there.
the price of oil is dropping which could disrupt some major players in the world market. so now you can drive to wichita, but world trade is slipping up on its heel. there's some good news. as a result of this mess, a new president might help his nation ride it out. as much as i would revel in spanking it to the dying throes american civilization, as a citizen of the world, i kind of rely on the states to be reasonably okay. if the states don't ride this one out and just start drowning, well kids, you know who's going to step up to the plate with a huge bat ready to knock some dingers out of the park? not vladimir guererro, but mr vladimir putin. he's a scary fucking guy. now some people think that obama is a little bit of a communist and that the world needs a mccain to sort things out. mind you, our dear boy mccain is not the most fiscally sound person: look up The Keating Five. but in the grand scheme of what im talking about here, this is merely a droplet on my windshield.
and we're not that far off from the next world war. remember the last GREAT depression? the only thing that flipped economies back on its stomach was a world war. and i don't think people are going to start a war because of the economy, but because tensions are already so tight and continually rising. you know this dead horse i keep flogging? the one with apocalypse branded on its ass? this is it!
apparently the mayans or some people called 2012 is the year everyones keeping an eye on. the mayans predicte that it we will either be elevated as a race and a people or alternatively, it will be the end of it all. apparently there will also be a geometric reversal of the poles. there's the chance that will wipe everyone out because as the earth acts a giant gyroscope it would need a lot of energy to work. it'd probably kill us. there's also rumor of a unification of human consciousness. but this is all hearsay. anyhow, if this whole living business plays out to a symphony of tragedy, you know, dramatic and such as life can very well be, i think we're at the precipice of it. it would make sense, no? the first movement would be a cultural and artistic stalemate (see the past five years). then probably along the same lines as beethoven's fifth, the economy will come crashing down. there will be a crescendo of rising food prices, the energy crisis will reach new heights and dunn dunna duuun duunnn mother nature will begin her vomiting and pussing and oozing and lord will it get messy. then with the bombastic maelstrom of the third, they'll be assembling the coffins and polishing the weaponry and right before the infantry can rush out onto fields from here to timbucktoo, the bombs will drop to ring in the fifth. and then there will be blackness, echoes of screams, weeks will follow as the ash coats the naked eye and it will all be done. heck yes, i could definitely see us getting around to this kind of malarkey by 2012 but don't quote me on that one.don't quote me period. in my line of thinking, most of my opinions are pretty baseless and in the end are meaningless. they often get me into trouble anyway. DUNNNNAAAA DUNNNAAAAA DUNNNNNN, DUN DUN!
oh look, kids! its madonna and her ray of light:
this may be a good time to do all those things you want to do in your life. there may not be money or time in the future. try to accomplish as much as possible in the coming days and months. that girl you never talk to but always faun over? go introduce yourself: say hi i'm young and this might be as good as it gets for either of us. i think if and when this kind of thinking (the longevity of our planet, the short term actuarial tables for our race) becomes global, we could see a genuine shift for the better. on a very small and minute level, i have the tiniest bit of appreciation for rapture fanatics minus the whole foregone conclusion business. just because in some deluded fashion they almost get it. they just think they're going to be "saved". poor bastards. purgatory is an awful lonely place. or so i've heard anyhow. who knows? me and my merry band of atheists might be pleasantly surprised by santa clause and a forever happy fun time deluxe land built with marshmallows and fuelled by gumdrops. the message is, for the love of the thick and thin of it, please waste your time wisely.
i'm getting tired again and i have class at eight thirty so i should probably call it a night. again, like most of my rambling diatribes, i leave this one unedited so if i contradict myself or something, write a letter to your local fucked if i know.
oh yeah
happy thanksgiving |
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| the sartre junkie saga continues... |
[Oct. 7th, 2008|07:39 pm] |
we're all going to die. do you ever think about that? does that ever cross that exponentially aging mind of yours?
while you're living your life and suddenly you see this really happy family trundling along, laughing gaily and you're standing across the street, do you ever stop and think this is all going to end? for an egg (example given, guvna), perhaps when you're flying 30,000 feet above nowhere and you have that thought that the old lady sitting beside you might lean over and quietly whisper in your ear: "we are all going to die." and then the good lord cues the tell tale whistle of a nose dive, that loud alert beeping bleeds through the loudspeaker when the captain assures you that everything is kosher but rumor has it that they're going to have to do an emergency landing over water. they also mention how it would be absolutely radical if you assumed the position listed in the leaflet behind the seat in front of you. you know, the position that'll send your lunch tray through your trachea. that one. the old lady is actually smiling. the old bitch has the nerve to smile BECAUSE SHE doesn't really care. she's done her time. she won the spelling bee in grade nine at hutchinson middle school (it was capybara, an oversized south american rodent), got her degree at a mediocre school in english lit, married rich and she walked away with a huge settlement and her last love was a pool boy. don't even get me started on the ridiculous concept of old rich men hiring nubile cabana boys to tend to their pool while they're away on business. but she's happy. she's done hundreds of unique things that no one else has done in the exact same way and she made her peace before she walked out across the tarmac. ah old people, you lucky bastards.
the plane levels out and lands and you realize that you were seconds away from being emulsified with the fat lady's make up and the fat lady herself. but as the vicodin continues she does not wake to sing. and you land in la guardia or lester b. or charles du gaulle or beijing international and somewhere within the closest hundred miles, somebody else dies. perhaps a aneurysm or maybe a patch of black ice. and there's a brazen warlord who blows himself crossing the wrong red wires, a crosswalk nazi with a turned back and the coma that goes sour.
i think about it more and more with each passing day. you know every time i wake up i think about it. you know that. you can be assured of that. the sky is blue, the grass is green and when joel brown wakes up in the morning he thinks: we're all going to die. everyone of us. even you, cindy loo hoo. you little seussical tart. despite the fact you may live forever in the annals of literature, i'm sorry to say, but your books will be gone the way of the dodo sooner than you know.
the human race is killing itself. a little slit on the wrist here, some playful dabbling in aspirin and liquor and now, the noose slips below the chin. we're stranded on this island and we've set up dynamite everywhere and we're blowing the shit out of ourselves, body parts flying into the brine, cannibals picking at femurs, dead babies, we're all going to die. every passing day reveals the new last page in the book. cancer rates may skyrocket when we find out what cell phones are really doing to us. the chicken is not good and there's a new epidemic. and somewhere some god whispers in someone's ear that "yes, i wasn't joking the first time, i really have chosen you to be the reckoner of the apocalypse! isn't that bubble gum, sweetheart?"
the reason i'm picking at this particular scab is that i read about that hadron converter that they built and there's an infinitessimal chance that it could create a black hole and suck us all in. they said you're more likely to get struck by lightning. why would you give that statistic? did you know that so far this year 24 people have been killed and 390 have been injured...after getting struck by lightning? so it is less than a one percent chance, but WHY on earth would you say that? i can see it now, when the cameras roll: oh hell no! there's no chance...*cough* at least not much of one. so on top of all the nukes, the economic collapse and the destroying of the internet, we're going to toy with a gigantic machine that COULD DESTROY US ALL AT THE PRESS OF A BUTTON.
i've moved on from the death of culture to the death of the life that sustains it. we're all this homogenous blob that these little passing fancy parasites feed off of, growing and growing, until the abdomen strains and breaks, leaving a bloody stain.
the world has never been in a sorrier state. never. right now, we make world war 2, the dark ages and the dirty thirties look like a jaunt in the grove. it's not like we rebounded and reached new plateaus after oh i don't know massacring native americans, the holocaust, stalin's graves, the khmer rouge, the middle east or anything like that...the yoke of suffering just shifted weight on atlas' shoulders. there has never been a time of hope or prosperity on an international scale. nay, if you weight it out and roll it like dough, on average the forecast calls for stark, bleak and depressing circumstances. and just like i hate lover's quarrels and pedophiles, i extend that blackness as i've come to know it to the great decline. i'm not too sure what our highest point was. maybe when we took our first breath. when the first caveman went WHOOSH! that was something else. it's just been a steady drop in the ratings. we're the everybody loves raymond in the universal television network. and cts still plays reruns of that damn show...god...i know i'm not alone, but i hate raymond. and if there's any extraterrestrial life out there, i bet they hate us. i can hear them talking about it over the nebula cooler: the earth channel sucks and thank god the ghostwriter killed himself before the first episode. and for the same reason i haven't walked onto the set of that damned raymond show with an uzi and a pocketfull of wrigley's winterfresh is the same reason they haven't vaporized us with star dust. though i hope they do, and tease us a bit first just to show us who's really boss...on second thought, maybe not. i'd rather die at the hands of rapists than let tom cruise be vindicated.
we won't outlive the century. i repeat: we will not outlive the century. and for argument's sake, let's just say we do. you think we'll outlive the one after that and after that and so on and henceforth? hell no. the long drawn out moral of the story is that eventually we're going to get eaten by the sun and everything we've made, created, the stories we've told will be razed, burned up, gone. there won't be anything left and there won't be any witnesses, no source of documentation. it's quicksand. this life is quicksand. and when the last hand is poking out, twitching the last pinky, finally succumbing to the pull, there will just be a desert. no buzzards or palm trees or camel's skulls, they'll all be gone too. just unbearable heat and no one to talk about it. these are just fundamental truths. of the first people to walk the earth, there is not one still among us and of the people alive today, there won't be many left at the turn of the next century. sure our life expectancy is rising, but who really wants to be that old anyhow?
say we find a planet and load up a bunch of scientists and pretty people to go inhabit it. what then? well there's a huge chance that the spaceship will fuck up and we won't ever hear about it because they'll be so damn far away. and again, no witnesses. and that's what makes it worth it right? it all leads to the obvious, magical and heartwarming question of the lifetime: what's the point, right? it's almost better than daddy, where do babies come from? storks. where do storks come from, daddddy? god. oh daddy? yes son? where does god come from? NO MORE CHEERIOS! NO MORE CHEERIOS, HELEN FOR THE LAST FUCKING TIME!
what izzzzz the point? as a staunch atheist there ain't one for yours truly. if you happen to be one of those lucky people that picked the right light above, then all the power to you. its like the golden ticket in the candy bar...except with the smug satisfaction of being the rightest! if there is a hades i'm there chained up in one of the many broiler rooms getting my skin picked off by...i don't know, lawyers. or bears made of lava. or cysts with personality. you call it.
but wait, in all this disparaging and drop your jaw darkness i foresee for us, i've come to the decision to make my own point. and that's kind of what i feel like you have to do. if you spend your whole time fretting about the end of it all, you'll miss out on oh i don't know, probably everything. and even if everything amounts to nothing in the end of it, well everything can include rock music, vanilla ice cream and premature ejaculation. so as i get closer to that obscure and random happenstance where i end up kicking the bucket, i'm trying to find things to make it worth it for me. is your embittered misanthrope getting any less angry? no no, i'm just taking my anger into perspective, for a little walk down the introspection laneway. that's what this whole journal has basically become. i think what might irk me is the fact that nobody thinks about this whole dying principle. the whole part where we like...you know...really fucking die. no joke, etc. perpetual darkness. everyone's having a good time and listen, don't let me harangue you on having a good time. i also, believe it or not, love municipal waste's album the art of partying. but there's no more dialogue about it, just the odd joke: hey, we're all going to die! every last one of us! pass the coke, arturo! (can we all agree that arturo is a failed attempt of a name? and also note, that it's probably some kid named arthur trying to be...l'exotique?)
it would be godawful to be the last one on the street with your dog, while everyone's fled for the northwest territories, but you know your wife leaves you and there's no kids, because you planned for this and everyone left you and the sirens start stuttering and nothing ever comes, but it will. the architecture will concede, the people will sway and vanish and you'll be right. right there with your dog and your broken foot and the murders of passion. there's kids buried in the backyards of many, a forced rapture of sorts. your neighbours didn't want the children to witness it. the sirens will bleed on, god is nigh. and you're supine on your front lawn, as not to leave a shadow, just staring at the cloudless sky, waiting. and you'll be thinking, its nice to be alive in a place like this, so peaceful, no mobs stampeding across the border, killing thousands. no riots, the fragility of the race broken. and in the downtime of doing nothing, you go play fetch or you raid the pantries at the goldblums.
the day eventually passes into the next and then one day you're not there. neither is your dog. or the children buried in the neighbour's back yard. or the trash can. or the rose garden. or the oxygen. or anything really. and there isn't anything to prove that either way.
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joelbrown's journal