Dope City Free Press

La Ceiba Nightmare

2012-02-18T23:33:00.000-03:00

I am not happy. I am pissed off, fucking pissed off, about the recent burning prison deaths in La Ceiba, Honduras. Pissed off enough to be having trouble finding the words to express what I feel about governments rounding up suspected and convicted criminals and barbequeing the motherfuckers. Is the Honduran government, the government of a state that has pretty much failed because of our subhuman war on drugs, responsible for the deaths? When you take away someone's liberty you take responsibility for them. It does not matter if you are a government or a kidnapper, should you care to make the distinction.

In case you have not read a quotation from a prisoner who survived the fire here is one sentence from Jose Enrique Guevara. "I was in bed when they shouted fire, then I heard screaming and smelled burning flesh."

Sounds like something a survivor of Horoshima or Nagasaki might have said.

Some fucking war the war on drugs is. I can smell the burning flesh from here.

I Woke Up Feeling Like the Killer

2012-02-18T14:10:00.000-03:00

I drank just enough last night.

Enough to put me to me
To bed at a decent hour.

Enough for me to be
Barely able to mutter the word, "Fuck,"
When the Hammer woke me to go outside.

Enough to fall back to sleep
Seconds after pulling
The blankets under my chin
Once again.

Enough to sleep in.

Enough to wake up feeling
Like Jerry Lee Lewis
Walking around my house
In my robe wondering if
I should shoot something today.

Born In Dope City

2012-02-18T01:45:00.000-03:00

Dope City born I am.

That is why all
You motherfuckers
Who came from some
Other place
To live here pisses me off
So much I guess.

Dope City is my fucking town.

Why don't you all
Fuck off and
Go back to
Saskatchewan
Where you belong?

Defibrillators Save Lives

2012-02-16T00:32:00.006-03:00

Got to talking with someone I had seen around the gym for years but never talked to before. He and I are two of the freaks who work out without digital music blasting our fucking brains out. He had heard about one of our gym's defibrillators saving somebody's ass. We agreed the defibrillators were amazing fucking machines. They are now affordable enough that no work place should be without one. One of the greatest inventions of our time.

The fucking government, defining glacial slowness as usual, have yet to make defibrillators mandatory in all workplaces. CPR is good for motherfuck all.

Businesses, defining not giving shit, are not lining up to provide defibrillators to their first aid help.

This lack of leadership from both government and business pretty much sums up why I am an Anarchist. I am no fan of inaction or not giving a shit.

Hearing about over 300 prisoners dying in a prison fire in Honduras does not exactly squeeze a bellows on the smokeless fire that represents my feelings towards the Stanley Park petting zoo goat fuck of government and business either.

Buddy Guy Valentine's

2012-02-14T22:10:00.001-03:00

Made up Sonja something she really likes last night and put it in the fridge. Put it in the oven right now. That will give her time to get a little wined up before she eats.

Stopped at London Drugs on the way home. Were more cards left to pick over than usual, late afternoon Valentine's Day. Found one especially fitting to the occasion and our deep blue sea of motherfucking love. Sparkly!

Card in hand I made my way to the chocolate section where I found some good organic vegan chocolate. I really ought to try my hand at chocolate making. That is one thing I never tried making from scratch.

Two down one to go. I walked over to to what remains of the London Drugs music department. It is small but they still carry some good titles. Bought her Buddy Guy's new record.

That is about as invested as I can get into a Hallmark holiday.

Came home and walked the dog in the brilliant sunshine. Opened myself up a tall can of Strongbow once I was back home again. Not as good as draught cider but not bad. For some reason it reminded me that roller derby is right around the corner.

Do You See What I See?

2012-02-14T00:58:00.001-03:00

After
I
Wake
Up

And
I
Look
Into

The
Mirror

I
See
Whitney Vicious

Another Tasteless Waste of Your Time

2012-02-13T00:47:00.000-03:00

I had just begun the poem I wrote yesterday when Sonja told me Whitney Houston had died. Sonja had heard about Whitney dying on the radio on her way home from the liquor store. We turned on our television, poured ourself a few drinks and watched CNN for 75 minutes until we were bored fucking near to death ourselves.

"We out-lived another one," I said to Sonja after we had switched to the news.

"Another what?" Sonja asked.

"Another disco cunt," I clarified myself.

"That's not very nice," Sonja concluded.

Once the news was over the big telethon got going. There was a man with no arms asking us to donate money to fucking sick kids.

"How does that motherfucker wipe his ass?" I asked Sonja. Not that I figured she knew.

"Probably someone else has to do it."

"Not these days. He probably has a robot wipe his ass for him."

"Whitney could have bought herself a robot to wipe her ass for her."

"You would think a scientist would attach bionic arms to that guy so he could wipe his shit."

Then the first of many pre-taped performances came on to entertain us into giving the sick kids some of our money. Michael Buble. I have a lot of time for Buble. He is so much like the way we Dope City people like to see ourselves. Profane, hockey loving, funny and talented. Was not long before we were bored of him too. Who the fuck listens to that grandpa shit?

We switched to the Canucks game. The Flames beat them up pretty good.

We had a few more and then we went to bed.

I outlived another disco cunt.

Alright.

Mountain

2012-02-11T23:11:00.001-03:00

I try and keep the Hammer
In shape during the cold and dark
As a pint of basement stored Guinness draught
Dope City winter but it is not easy.

Sometimes
She does not get breezed
The way a big dog needs
Breezing.

Today
I tried to
Make it up
To her.

We took advantage of the dry and
Somewhat warm conditions.
Got into the mountains by
Some ponds we are fond of.

No one
Was up
There
Besides us.

I like that.
A man and his dog
Need their own mountain
To hunt on.

Berlin Sawmill

2012-02-10T23:19:00.004-03:00

Listened to Lou Reed's St. Ann's Warehouse performance of "Berlin" on the way to work today once it sounded like I had no multiple fatality car crashes to avoid on the way into the fucking mill. "Berlin" has been with me since I was 14 or some fucking thing. That is a long, long time and you know what? It is a long, long way back to Germany, motherfuckers.

Caroline, the character who kills herself with speed and shit on the record, and I have a deathwish in common. Figured I was here for a good time, not a long time, back when all the rockstars started dropping like sick fucking flies when I was still in elementary school being taught elementary school bullshit. I figured wrong. When you choose to kill yourself with sawmills and alcohol it can take for-fucking-ever.

Foreman came by like he does every day. It would not be so bad if he was not a fucking German. Told him that once. He did not like it. Fucking Germans have no sense of humour at all since we took all their gas chamber jokes away from them.

"How's everything going Beer?" he asked me like he could give two motherfucks about anything but the off reservation blowjob he has lined up on his way home.

"Better than World War II went for you motherfucker," I told him for the 10,000th time.

"Fuck you too asshole," he replied. Jesus fuck. The cunt was having a conversation with me. He must have been into his own flask this morning. Schnapps I guessed.

"Want to go for a beer this afternoon?" I asked, friendly like.

"Fridays are bad for me. I have to pick up the fucking kids. How about Monday?"

"If you're buying. You know I'm broke as a Liberal promise on Mondays."

"You're on. Be good for you to get to know some Germans better. I'm not that big of an asshole once I pull out of this shit pit mill's fucking parking lot."

"My grandpa said all the Germans he met in World War II were nice too. Nice and dead."

The rest of the world can forgive the fucking Germans all they want. Me and England know fucking better. The fuckers ever invent something more lethal than the atom bomb it is curtains for everybody except for them and maybe the Norwegians.

Fuck the foreman. It was Friday and a splendid Friday it was. In spite of ourselves the working class made the sawmill some money today. Not that the cheap fucks will ever admit that to anyone who might ever want to ask them for a pay rise in the future.

On the way home, through surprisingly light traffic, I listened to the last song on Reed's cd over and over again. The only song not from "Berlin." A little number called "Sweet Jane."

It is the weekend and just like the German scientists secretly developing that big motherfucking bomb I am enjoying the beginning of my weekend with a big glass of beer. Got supper cooking and five cds shuffled in the stereo. "Lulu," "Pale Green Girl," "We Sold Our Soul For Rock 'n' Roll" and "Cop Killer."

Disco sucks.

It's great to be alive.

Time Enough

2012-02-09T23:10:00.000-03:00

Got my chicken in the oven.
Going to eat it
With garlic bread and
Green beans.

Takes time
To cook a chicken.
Time enough
To have a couple.

At the back of my whisky bar
I found a half full
Bottle of Arran's
Tokaji Aszu Wine Cask.

Guess it did not
Do the trick
For me when
I first got into it.

Hard to say why -
Shit is 55%.
Must have been back when
I was heavy into the absinthe.

Poured myself a glass.
Watered it down some.
Cask strength whisky will
Fucking kill you if you do not.

It is doing
The trick
For me
Tonight.

Free Bag From the Grocery Store

2012-02-09T00:47:00.000-03:00

Went to the grocery store after work today. Sonja and I needed some food. Onions, spuds, eggs, sour cream, parsley, bread and a dead chicken. Sonja wishes I would not come home with dead chickens. They have a mom.

I looked at the people in the store as I made my way around. Did not recognize anybody. That is what happens when you move from one big town to another.

There are always lots of old people in the store. Old people who would rather be spending their money on booze and prescriptions like me but if you do not eat you do not shit and if you do not shit you die. Just like the rest of the old people I had my plastic basket. Fuck the buggy.

At the till the checkout girl asked me, "You want any bags?" I get asked if I want bags everywhere I fucking go now. Like I am supposed to walk around with bags every fucking place. I looked at the checkout girl like I was thinking real hard but having a hard time figuring out how many bags I would need. Finally I told her "Give me two." She bagged my shit into three bags. I got a free one. Jimmy Motherfucking Pattison and Glen Motherfucking Clark are going to be pissed if they hear about that. Assholes. Bags used to free.

Later Sonja asked me, "Why is there a fucking corpse in the bottom of the fridge?" as my headless frozen chicken lay there thawing. I see some stores will sell you your dead chicken with the head still attached. Sonja is not going to like that one bit staring at her from the bottom of the fridge like it is just taking a nap.

"You know I love me some corpse on Thursdays, baby," I answered her. "It is not like I eat corpse every night like we both did in the old days before the motherfucking hippies altered your diet with their anti-corpse propaganda."

"Why don't you keep your corpse in your fucking beer fridge?"

"Because it is a beer fridge, not a corpse fridge. I don't think you would like me keeping my beer in a corpse fridge."

Good thing I cooked up veggie pasta and garlic bread for dinner. Wine too. Sonja has forgot all about poor little bottom of the fridge dead chicken now.

Shady Pines Campground

2012-02-07T23:23:00.001-03:00

Buying old records, or a cd in this case, is like turning over rocks looking for cool bugs and shit when you were little. Other day I found a musician I newly admire on whose cd I have found a song which fulfilled my boyhood need to discover freaky bugs - a new favourite song. The artist is Amy Honey. The song, which I think she wrote, the cd liner notes are far from complete, is called "Shady Pines Campground."

Oh how I love
This time of day
When the sun goes down
And everything is gold

Oh how I love
Sitting in this chair
Got myself a drink
See myself there

Shady Pines Campground
How I wish I could be
Sitting 'neath the shady pines
Living carefree

Oh how I love
To pack up the van
Throw in the kids
And a couple of dogs

Drive out to the Shady Pines
Sit in my chair
Look up at the stars
I love being there

Shady Pines Campground
How I wish I could be
Sitting 'neath the shady pines
Living carefree

Shady Pines Campground
How I wish I was there
Sitting 'neath the shady pines
Without a care

Ain't a one of you hillybilly motherfuckers who read my crap whose life would not be improved, whose lot would not be enriched, whose Anarchist spirit would not be sparked by Amy Honey and this red neck white country heat white Canadian light sing around the campfire song of hers. Rest of the record is pretty fucking good too. Kind of, sort of country, with a just enough flourishes of rusty metal garbage can guitar to remind you all you might be getting old but you are not dead yet. Not by a fucking longshot.

NHL To Expand To Mexico During Next Ice Age

2012-02-07T00:28:00.005-03:00

I was
Lying on a snow covered
Beach
In Mexico

Drinking tall
Green sparkling glasses
Of French absinthe
And sugar water

When I noticed
The ocean
Begin to freeze
From the shore

On out
So I poured another drink
Put on my skates
And got the fuck out of there

Skated across the
Hockey rink ocean
Until I reached the
Snow covered beaches of Jamaica

Take me home
Frozen ocean
To the hockey rink
I belong

On Paper

2012-02-06T22:03:00.003-03:00

Couple more teenagers died driving around like assholes on the weekend. I fail to see why such incidents make the news. About as newsworthy as a cat getting run over if you ask me.

Of course the fucking government makes as much hay out of the teenage death as they can. Some bullshit about their graduated licensing programme being such a huge success. Apparently there have been 65% less teenagers killed in high speed crashes since the introduction of the programme. Probably because teenagers, frustrated at how difficult it is to get their driving license, would rather stay home and overdose on ecstasy instead.

I have always said, if you are going to have a fucking law, no one under the age of 28 or so should be allowed to drive anything with more than two wheels. That would weed out quite a few crazy fuckers who would go on to kill more people than themselves once they get old enough to drive and limit the number of people they would be likely to kill besides themselves while they are young. Motorcycles are the most unforgiving and honest teachers on Earth.

Allowing 16 year olds to drive around in cars is chaos, something the fucking government is supposed to disapprove of, on paper. The government permits 16 year olds to drive because there is a cultural expectation that they do so. Auto makers and the ethical oil motherfuckers might also get a little touchy if this cultural expectation were to be challenged. We are, to put it bluntly as fuck, the killers.

Fuck the graduated licensing programme. Fuck the cultural expectation that encourages children to drive cars. I do not want any part of teenager killing. There has got to be a better way.

Kid's Birthday Party

2012-02-06T02:11:00.002-03:00

Sonja and I were invited to a child's birthday party on the weekend. It was held at one of those kid's funhouses that are declining in popularity as kids slip further and further into their very own Digital Hells. No one had ever invited us to anything like that before so we went. No one had ever invited us before because kid's funhouses do not sell liquor.

It was an even noisier experience than I expected. The kids (could have been a thousand of the little shits) were having a lot of fun doing the sort of stuff I did every day as I grew - physical stuff.

When the kids in the group we had been invited to party with were called together to eat pizza and cake one of the parents of the kids leaned over and asked me, "So which ones are yours?"

"None of them," I told him.

"None of them?" he asked back like his hearing had failed or something.

"None of them," I confirmed.

"You bastard," he concluded as if I had just told him I had won a fucking lottery.

Usually people ask me who is going to keep care of me when I get old and cannot wipe my own ass and that sort of thing when they find out I am unburdened by young ones. So far I am not having any trouble doing that. I am hoping wiping your own ass is not as important as people make it out to be if one day I forget how to do it or something. People still pay money and go see the Canucks when they stink.

I Have A Statement To Make Too

2012-02-04T12:03:00.000-03:00

I did not understand poverty when I was kid. I had very little pocket money, my allowance being a dime, later raised to two bits once I could safely handle the family chainsaw. Safely being defined as refraining from causing myself or anyone else to bleed so profusely that a trip in the family ambulance, our beastly station wagon, was necessary.

Our family never missed a meal however. The definition of just what a meal was in Newfinese helped make that possible. We ate shit the fucking Chinese would not touch with a ten foot chopstick.

There were poor kids in our neighbourhood however. We just did not think it was possible to be more poor than we were. The poor kids lived in the apartments, apartments that would become familiar to everyone around Dope City once some asshole tv producer figured out sending camera crews and a reporter with the police every weekend would result in enough sensational footage to give us our own local weekly Fear In The Streets show.

The kids from those apartments were pretty much the same as everybody else except they wore the shitty everybody gets the same ones no exceptions glasses that the fucking government would agree to pay for only because it would cost them more for the funerals of the little fuckers if they kept walking blindly into traffic like they did in the days before Fare Thee Well.

Later, when I would visit those same apartments to feed my various insatiable drug habits, and later still, when I moved into a few of those punk rock apartments, I got to see what the fuck was really going on in the lives of kids like the poor fuckers I had gone to school with.

Poverty is unhealthy for everybody. You know the fucking details. No one can hide from its effects. Lots of motherfuckers pretend they can.

Maybe you have heard about the growing gap between the fucking rich and the fucking poor. My province's capitalists, responding to news that the income gap between our high faluting neighbourhoods and our poorest was most pronounced here on Canada's west coast, came out with a statement defending the status quo. They said it was regrettable but capitalism is better than any other competing system that might replace it.

I have a statement to make too.

Fuck them and the Rolls Royce they rode in on.

Where You Can Put Groundhog Day

2012-02-03T01:26:00.000-03:00

Another year,
Another motherfucking
Groundhog Day.

Who are the
Assholes
Who come up
With this shit?

If the workers of the world
Do not get a day off because
Of your whatever the fuck you
Want to call your day you can

Take your day and
Stick it up your ass.

Beer Me

2012-02-01T23:03:00.000-03:00

My mom likes
That I write shit
Here on the internet.

"Except I wish
You would not tell
Everybody I drink
So god damn much."

Sonja likes me
Writing my shit
On the internet too.

"Except that
It is all
Fucking
Bullshit."

My dog likes it
That I write stories
About her on the internet too.

"Except for the
Ones about me
Eating homeless
People's shit."

A few other people
I know like reading
My internet shit as well.

I like it when
They call me,
"Beer,
You motherfucker."

What Do You Think of Stephen Harper?

2012-02-01T00:42:00.000-03:00

Kim started writing comments to Dope City's one and only Free Press not all that long ago. Best as I can tell she is every bit as bright as a freshly resigned member of the RCM -fucking- P. I have only been reading her electronic gift to the world, Sister Sage's Musings, for a very short time but she must be a Fellow Motherfucker - she actually asked to become one.

You may well wonder how I can spot a Fellow Motherfucker. Foreign Fellow Motherfuckers are the hardest to detect. A keen hatred of the papacy and all things pope-like, like fucking governments, is always a good sign. Canadian Fellow Motherfuckers are the easiest to spot. They think Stephen Harper is an a asshole.

They are right.

Welcome to the motherfucking club.

Sweet Logger's Perfume

2012-01-30T00:59:00.001-03:00

Today was Sonja's turn to remain indoors. Taking my freedom, the dog and I walked a wet river trail. It was sort of depressing but our spirits were buoyed by spring's faint timber wolf howl to us in the distance.

Stopped at the local standardbred track after our walk and made my bets long before the first race began. Found out later I did ok. Few favourites and a mid-price shot adding up to a 25% profit. I was lucky. I know better than to play the standardbreds when the track is so wet the day's proceedings would eventually have to be halted for a short while to maintain the questionable race surface.

Back home I watched the NHL all-star game. It was a hopeless affair as usual. Why I keep watching it is anybody's guess. I have watched more than four dozen such exhibitions. Predictably, the team with the Canucks on it lost.

Later I switched channels to watch the USA-Canada women's soccer match. After the USA had scored their third goal I took the dog out. I had not noticed behind my indoor television/alcohol haze that the rain had stopped.

A smell in the air caught my attention as if all that television and liquor had turned me into a wet nosed dog. I breathed in deeply, perhaps deeper than ever before. My brain went to work on the puzzling molecules swimming in the warm air. It had rained so hard the bark of the park's hemlocks had become drenched thereby releasing their sweet logger's perfume.

Pale Green Girl, Pale Green Boy

2012-01-29T14:43:00.000-03:00

It was a minute before nine when I heard the call. "Are you coming to watch your movie?" I pried myself from my book and my computer screen, poured myself another glass of pale green cloudy fluid and sat down with Sonja and the Hammer in front of our television. Turner Classic Movies was showing "Soylent Green."

It had been a while.

Earlier Sonja had suggested I would pass out before the film was done. That was all the encouragement I needed to see it to its end. The film is a metaphor for a world, our world, eating its dead to prevent itself falling to the ground, each man and woman, wittingly and unwittingly, preventing themselves from becoming part of the pale green food chain.

The film's appeal for me, the reason I saw it in a theatre in 1973, is to watch Edward G. Robinson's last work. It is not his best but it is, for me, his most memorable role. Robinson was my favourite old time actor, preceded only by Groucho Marx.

Mass consumption of our own kind has not yet come to pass. I wonder if there are, on a smaller, if more demonic scale, I suggest in a hopeful metaphoric tone, secret societies, who do partake of the porky meat that hangs from our own delicious bones. Modern medieval Satanic Majesties gathered in shameful rooms flinging the cooked remains of corpses about.

I call for a re-make of Soylent Green, motherfuckers.

Buds

2012-01-29T00:47:00.002-03:00

"If you let go a little
you will have a little happiness.
If you let go a lot you will have a lot of happiness.
If you let go completely you will be free."

Ajahn Chah (by way of the Teachings of the Horse)

Yet another fine day to remain indoors it has been. Snow, sleet, hail and rain - we had it all before the day had hardly begun. Read a little. Drank a lot. Sonja went out so it was just the dog and I. The dog slept. When at last she stirred I had to take her out. The evilness of the day was spent. It was ok.

We walked. In a tree above us a young eagle was watched by a single crow. The eagle looked at us, thought about attacking and then thought about something else. On the thin ends of the salmonberry bushes we were slipping through grew buds. In January. Spring, out here in the farm country, will arrive early.

Alright.

Take Me Home, Country Roads On the Moon

2012-01-26T22:49:00.000-03:00

I feel real good today. A man has a right to get down and feel like doing heroin every once in a while, doesn't he? When I am not right my sense of humour can get a little lost. Good thing the motherfucking Republicans are fighting over who is going to get to nuke Iran if Obama does not beat them to it. There is more good humour in the Republican Party than meets the eye.

Take Newt Gingrich. Asshole wants to build a permanent base on the moon. America will never be happy until they start a war on the moon so Newt is probably on to something. Motherfuckers might actually be able to win a war against those commie moon people.

It is going to be an American base. Which means it will have hookers. The most expensive hookers in history. Willie Picton will be in awe.

Newt Gingrich might be a cocksucker but at least he is a cocksucker with a sense of humour. Permanent base on the moon? What the fuck for?

The Junkie Month

2012-01-25T23:46:00.000-03:00

I am still making my way through Mark Leirer's biography of Bakunin. A few pages at a time. If you are an industrial worker, as I am, I would not suggest you do the same. Creative destructive urges are frowned upon in the workplace. An old foreman of mine put it this way, "The next one of you stupid cocksuckers who breaks something is fucking fired."

It is only Wednesday but if I had just a little less sense than I do I would have pulled off the main road in town on the way home and got myself a big bag of fucking Afghan heroin. January is a motherfucker. The junkie month.

Got myself a cider on the go. That will have to do. Tomorrow it will be whisky. Beer in the pub on Friday. Looks like I will be going toe to toe with the heavyweight champ on Saturday night. Bottle of Mexican absinthe I have been saving for a night when I need to see shit and not feel a fucking thing.

Into the Future

2012-01-25T00:20:00.000-03:00

Took a flying leap into the future today. A flying leap into the 1980s. Got myself my first cd player that plays more than one cd at a time. A Sony. Used. Best looking one on the thrift store shelf. Hard to say just how old the fucking thing is. It is a little smaller than a suitcase but not by much if that is any guide.

Cost me $25. More than I really wanted to pay since I figured if I could buy a new one I could surely pick one up for less than $50. Nobody seems to be selling new cd players any more.

When I got home I had to hunt around to find where I had put my old cables so I could hook it up to the stereo. They were in a box of old shit in one of my house's darkest creepiest corners.

As I was hooking it up Sonja came home. I was in behind the stereo, my hands tangled in wires, when she asked, "What the fuck are you doing back there?"

"Get me a fucking beer and I'll tell you," I guffed her back.

Got it wired up and turned on the power. Lit up like a nuclear reactor's control panel. Picked five cds from the cd shelf real quick. Leonard Cohen, Ted Nugent, KISS, Vibrators and Willie Nelson. Jews, rednecks and outlaws - my kind of motherfuckers.

Hit shuffle. Cohen was first up, then KISS, Ted, Knox and Willie. Fucking old piece of crap sounds excellent.

Now all I need is a good 8-track player.

Wheels of Death

2012-01-23T01:37:00.000-03:00

Now it has warmed up a bit it is slushy and shitty outside. Neither Sonja, my dog or I like that so we spent the day indoors only allowing the dog out to piss and shit occasionally.

Sonja made soup. I made spaghetti sauce. Soon after I turned on the television. American football was on.

"Why are you watching this shit?" Sonja asked during the first game. A sensible question. "You hate this boring American crap."

I do. I had no answer. Well I did but I was not going to say I was watching it to prevent her from watching her Sunday afternoon woman movies. You know the ones I am talking about. Jennifer Anniston is in half the fucking things. Comedy romance.

Was a time you could count on a good old biker movie being on television on a Sunday afternoon. Somebody really needs to make some good new biker movies. No comedy, just fucking, no romance.

Fell asleep during the first game. Sonja did not notice or she would have changed the channel on me. The second game was a little better. I stayed awake.

Sonja took a bath. The dog got up on the couch and lay on Sonja's blanket. I let her stay up there. She looked at me, then she fell asleep. I took her picture. Later I showed it to Sonja.

"She's not allowed up there," Sonja reminded me.

"Hammer," I told my dog who looked at me with great understanding. "Stay off the fucking couch."

What a waste of a fucking day. Life's so short I hate to do that but it happens. Could be worse I suppose. At least I did not waste Saturday afternoon watching the fucking Canucks.

Big Dog Next Door

2012-01-22T16:30:00.000-03:00

When I began writing here six years ago I did not anticipate writing poetry. I had not written any for decades. I am glad I do however. Being a poet is like being a plumber in the early days of indoor plumbing, an occupation for the 1%.

Poetry's form seems particularly well adapted to this media. A poet would have to write a very long, very bad one for the reader not to read it until the end.

My next door neighbour
Has a big dog
My dog
Likes to play with

The dog is
Big and dumb
And smells real bad
Just like its master

They look at each other
Through the fence
Sniff noses
And dance their dances

Sometimes they bark
Sometimes they howl
They wag their tails
And act like politicians

Hey! Ho! The Good Old Days Are Back Again!

2012-01-22T00:25:00.001-03:00

I hope Santa Rosa Jon will not mind my converting his comment to my own writing about the big explosion up in Burns Lake last night into a poem. Used to be Jon wrote lots of great stuff for his own Poetry Is For Assholes. Now he prefers spending his time on Facebook trying to get laid by the corn fattened good looks gone bad high school cheerleaders of his grand American youth. I have given it the title

Hey! Ho! The Good Old Days Are Back Again!

In one year
When I was at US Steel
I think six or seven people
Got killed on the job.

I mean in my one location.

It used to be
That you at least
Made decent money
Doing dangerous work.

Nowadays
They expect you
To die
For chump change.

When my grandfather
Was an ironworker in
New York
Unemployed ironworkers
Would hang out at job sites
And wait for someone
To fall to his death.

Welcome to the good old days.

Rest In Peace

2012-01-21T22:03:00.000-03:00

I am an industrial worker. Union one. Damn fucking proud of it. Could well be you live in a house constructed in part with forest products that have passed through my hands at some point in the last several decades. Probably there are some other wood products in your house. A non-conductive spruce ladder. A Quebecois fine grain cedar sound board guitar.

My fellow organized industrial workers are much the same as I. About the only difference is I can string a few words together better than most of them. Couple of them died by the sounds of it yesterday in Burns Lake. Couple Steelworker brothers. From what I know about serious burns a couple more may soon join them.

What the fuck else can I say?

Absolutely nothing.

Say it again.

Work is a motherfucking war.

Gimme Gimme Some Truth

2012-01-21T10:41:00.000-03:00

I am not exposed, directly, to many of the grander sickening aspects of modern life. Few of us are. Working for a living keeps our eyes averted from the big fucking picture. One of my biggest regrets in life was when I did not speak up when I once witnessed just such a modern clusterfuck in person.

It was several years ago. I forget the year exactly but it was somewhere near the middle of Gordon Campbell's time as the crooked motherfucking do anything for every corporate criminal and parasite in town Premier of our province.

Sonja and I were on our way into BC Place (now known as Every Corporate Criminal and Parasite Place) when we saw Campbell being interviewed outside his stadium office. He was surrounded by reporters and their television cameras and they were sucking his motherfucking dick like the very oxygen their life depended on came out of it.

I slowed, just about to a stop, and Sonja, wisely I guess, grabbed my jacket sleeve and moved me on. Sonja, to her credit, has endured my willingness to create a scene all too often. She was not up for it and maybe I was not either. It was still so early in the day I had not had a beer yet. Let's just say the entire confrontation would have been the most expletive deleted piece of television news in history. Trouble is, my ire would have been entirely misdirected. Politicians will be fucking people until the Air India bombing investigation is complete. What is inexcusable is a fifth estate that will not or cannot keep to its task of asking hard questions, often.

But it would not have made the least bit of difference. Campbell would have continued fucking everybody until, at last, people got wise to his pornographic people fucking act many years later. Nowadays only our Conservative Prime Minister and the people of England continue to be entertained by his high school cheerleader corporate porn star bullshit.

The media, every dick sucking one of them, does not want Mr. Beer N. Hockey on their dick sucking team. I am using my name metaphorically here. The media, every dick sucking one of them, does not want Mr. Beer N. Hockey on their dick sucking campaign bus.

I guess that is why I call the wee bit of electronic space you are reading here a Free Press. I think a free press is important. Too bad the very concept of such a thing as a free press is fucking near historical as the Dead Sea Scrolls.

On Fridays I Enjoy A Beer Or Two

2012-01-20T22:22:00.002-03:00

After I had walked the Hammer in the freezing rain I fed her, got out of all my work clothes except my long johns, got myself a fucking beer, arranged the couch pillows just so and laid there still as a lake frozen, yet not frozen enough to skate on. I had gone into work after all - about three hours late. Safety first.

All comfy now, I flipped the pages of the local newspapers as I drained the magic brown bottle. The only good news - yet another dead Hindoo gangster. Pretty soon they will all be dead.

I cannot fucking wait.

The Hammer looked out the window as the first molecules of alcohol seeped into my bloodstream. She was waiting for Sonja to join us for the motherfucking weekend.

As I emptied my bottle I let out a fart so loud the Hammer jumped. She did not turn around or anything. She knew who did it. Did not jump that high or anything. Maybe an inch or two.

Police Grant Beer A Snow Day

2012-01-20T11:05:00.000-03:00

Snow is no fun when it is hi-ho-hi-ho off to fucking work you must go. I woke this morning tired as a Newfie joke from the extra exertion required by all the snow we have had here in Steepleton. Just the same, I was up early, readying myself for another workday, when I heard on the radio a warning from the local constabulary to stay off the fucking roads.

Alright!

Tuesday In Canada

2012-01-18T00:47:00.001-03:00

Coffee
Shit
Drive
Work
Drive
Drink

Walk dog

Drink
Shovel snow
Drink

Walk dog

Drink
Eat
Watch hockey on tv
Write excellent poem
Sleep

Monday In Canada

2012-01-17T00:36:00.000-03:00

Coffee
Shit
Drive
Work
Drive
Drink

Walk dog

Drink
Shovel snow
Drink
Eat
Write bad poem
Sleep

News Hour Dull Sports Franchise Names of Canada

2012-01-15T23:04:00.000-03:00

There are some things I will never understand. Like why Dope City's NHL team has been named the Canucks since before I was born. Why not the Villains? Or how about the Hot Rods? The only good Canadian sports team name I can think of is the Murder Squad.

In fact, all the Canadian NHL teams have boring names. Same goes for just about any other sports team in this country. Seems like we figure we are doing pretty good at naming teams if we do not call another one Rough Riders. Canadians are good at a lot of shit. Some might say we are good at everything. Too bad we let the fucking JWs name all our sports teams.

El Niquel

2012-01-15T12:34:00.000-03:00

Was taken unsteadily down memory lane by a Christmas gift opened but unseen until last night. It was a dvd recounting Tom Waits' early career Sonja gave me which had been leaning hobo patient against a pile of recently played albums. Waiting for a cold winter night empty of entertainment.

I first heard Waits on an old Co-op Radio programme called "John's Wild Years" as I recall. That would have been somewhere around the middle of the '80s. Around about the time I began to broaden the scope of the music I enjoyed beyond Deep Purple and DOA. John, or whatever the fuck his name was, I did not know him, had a great radio show. A rare treat, then as now.

Soon thereafter I must have begun buying Waits' records until I had them all. Loved the Kerouac/Bukowski free drunken motherfucker sound of each and every one of them.

Do not remember seeing Waits on television until maybe '88. He sang "The Nickel" on Letterman's show. Jesus Fucking Christ never grasped human suffering, make that men suffering, as Waits grasped it then.

Ned Kelly and His Guns

2012-01-14T10:22:00.001-03:00

I try and avoid
Writing about the weather
It is all us Canadians
Talk about

The weather
Our boring Hollywood Starfucker
Our Ned Kelly
And his guns

My dog likes the snow
So she woke me up early
Walked me over to the
Front window to see

You are lucky you have me
To get your ass out of bed
So we can be the first man and
His dog to go out and play

She is pushy
My dog is
Got her own mind
Like me

I put her in the back
To blow off some steam
Made coffee
Wrote a poem

I will
Be going
Out now
To play

The snow
My dog
Cup of coffee
And me

The Hammer's Favourite Guy Besides Me

2012-01-14T01:13:00.001-03:00

Saw the guy whose shit my dog eats today after work. Despite his living in the bush just a stone's throw from my house I hardly ever see him. Last time I saw him, back in summer, he had a broken arm in a dirty cast.

The Hammer greeted him first. Does not look like he is a dog guy. Not afraid of the Hammer or anything, just not as happy to see her as most people are. It was getting to be dusk. I think he was heading for a warmer place to sleep for the night than his tarp home.

"How's the fucking arm?" I asked him.

"Not bad," he told me, swinging it a little to prove how well attached it was to him.

That was about it. He is anti-social as fuck. Our brief conversation more than he hears or says in a week when the weather is warm enough to allow him to stay in his tent without freezing to death.

Newfie Joke of the Day

2012-01-12T23:07:00.000-03:00

Every day since I have had a computer my dad sends me Newfie jokes, usually several each day. "You don't know what you're missing b'y," he seems to be saying, "living over there with everybody else that have convinced themselves they must be in Heaven because the Chinese and everybody else with a pile of crooked money wants to move there and pretend they are movie stars in Hong Fucking Kong."

Here is the joke that came in today.

A pharmacist in Dildo walks into his store to find a guy leaning so heavily against a wall you would have thought he was holding back the river of crap that keeps pouring out of Ottawa since Harper took over.

So he asks his clerk, a young b'y just graduated from Memorial University, "What's with the guy over there by the wall?"

The clerk, one of those wise ones unversities are pumping out nowadays who are proud they can think outside the box, tells his boss, "He came in this morning to get something for his cough and I couldn't find the cough syrup so I gave him an entire bottle of laxative instead."

The pharmacist blew his top when he heard that. "You idiot! You can't treat a cough with a bottle of laxative."

The clerk was having none of that old school guff from his boss. Told him, "Of course you can! Look at him. He's afraid to cough!"

100,000 Poems For You

2012-01-11T22:17:00.001-03:00

Walked the dog
Lit a fire
Fed the dog
Put Emmylou's "Last Date"

On my record player

Got pedal steel
Steel toes
One hundred thousand
Motherfucking woes

Just because
I have a smart phone
Does not
Make me

A modern man

In Anticipation of Spring

2012-01-11T01:28:00.000-03:00

Just like everybody else
Around here
I can sense our city
Is ready to let 'er rip
In another deep as space

Run by the Canucks
In the Stanley Cup play-offs.
We have never seen
What would happen
If the Canucks made it to the Final

Two glorious years in row.

I want to see
If the city can keep a lid
On the boiling pot.

It is not like everybody
Is going to switch
From Molson to Twinings.

Up Yours Honour Killers

2012-01-10T01:05:00.000-03:00

A mother and uncle of a young woman who was contract killed back in India when visiting the husband her family had not chosen for her were finally arrested by the RCMP for conspiring to have their young relative killed. Fuck knows why it took the RCMP so long to get around to it. The young woman was killed like a dozen years ago and everybody knew who was behind it all along.

Arrested her on behalf of the fucking government of India they did. Guess the RCMP figured, belatedly, rather than have their witnesses perjure themselves here in Canada and have the conspiratorial fuckers get off free as birds like the Air India suspects did they were better off to send them to India where perjurers get a good sound beating and the criminals get put in jail for a good long time or until somebody pays enough money to the right people to get them out.

That is justice, motherfuckers.

As I made my way around the mill today I encountered several groups of Punjabs who appeared to be talking over the latest neck deep puddle of mud the white man has dragged their people through. When I got close enough I could hear the words, "Blah, blah, blah, Fifth Estate. Blah, blah, blah. Fifth Estate, blah, blah, blah. Blah." No one volunteered to say anything in English about it and I did not fucking ask. Fuck them and their Old Motherfucking World ways.

Was a time a couple decades back people around here were beginning to think all the people from India who had settled around Dope City were not so bad after all, if only they would take driving lessons. Now, what with the gang bullshit, the honour killings and the political fixing a lot of people are having second thoughts.

This is Canada, motherfuckers. We do not kill our children when they fuck people we do not approve of.

War Profiteers, Anarchists and Sherlock Holmes

2012-01-08T20:38:00.001-03:00

Went to a movie again last night. You would think we received gift cards from a movie house. The place was packed once again. Had to stand in line to get tickets and to get popcorn. Took Sonja, Hunky and Kitty less time to snake their way to the ticket booth than it took me to get to the front of the popcorn line-up.

The room was packed by the time we had sat through the pre-movie bullshit and the new Sherlock Holmes movie began. Directed by Guy Ritchie, it is a better than average action packed movie sprinkled with what would probably pass as humour in fucking England. We all enjoyed it better than War Horse mostly because there was a plot to it slightly above that which would be comprehensible to a six year old.

Of note to me was the movie's portrayal of Anarchists as the dupes of capitalists impatient for a good war to make gunnysacks of money on. Oh yes, let's not let the world forget us Anarchists are a bunch of dumb motherfuckers looking for sadistic greedy capitalists to exploit us and help them start fucking wars.

Fuck you too Guy Ritchie. Let me guess: it was a fucking Anarchist who pulled Madonna from your bed. Motherfucker.

1970 Again

2012-01-07T20:07:00.001-03:00

From Christmas on I watch hockey, sometimes whole games of it, like I did today as the Canucks took on the team that gave Dope City reason to riot last spring. It was like game eight of the Stanley Cup Finals except this time the Canucks were healthier and The Bum was on the bench watching a fucking American fill his spot in front of the hemp hut.

Watched the game in my pyjamas, a blanket warming my cold feet. Sonja brought me beers and toast. There was fighting, high-sticking, a line brawl. A rookie Canuck, Cody Hodgson, who few still believed in, took centre stage with the game winning goal and an assist in the victory.

The fucking Swedes winning the world junior championship a distant memory. It was like it was 1970 again.

Know Your Product

2012-01-07T17:40:00.001-03:00

I heard Bruce Allen, manager of Anne Murray's golf schedule, commenting about how rock 'n' roll product is not moving like it once did. No shit Bruce. It is not a rockin' free world we are living in any more. This is twenty-fucking-twelve. It is a disco pussy motherfucking world we have got now. Disco pussy motherfuckers with guns.

You want to make fast money being a manager like Allen did in the '70s and 80s? Get yourself a job managing some disco pussy or a fucking bomb factory.

Helter Skelter

2012-01-07T14:59:00.000-03:00

When I was a young lad, when I was not dreaming of winning the Stanley Cup or the Grey Cup, I dreamed I would one day be a mountaineer. (There were still unclimbed mountains in those days. Now it has all been done.) I never did any of that shit. I did, however, get to add the Mount Everest Web Camera, to my sidebar list of Fellow Motherfuckers.

It is so fucking cool.

FM

2012-01-06T22:18:00.001-03:00

Yet another Fellow Motherfucker to report. This one is A LIFE IN HELsinki. I have been reading the blog for some time now but I was not sure if I wanted to be associated with him - he's a fucking German! A German living in Finland. And I thought they were all moving to the Cariboo.

In the modern world spirit of everybody pretending the Germans have done fuck all to attract our attention in the past century or six I can assure you he is a good little German boy. Traded in his gas chamber for a sauna. If you have not seen the Finnish Father Christmas videos he posted over the holiday season I suggest you do so forthwith. Funny as shit they are.

Home Early For Hockey

2012-01-06T01:36:00.000-03:00

Sonja got home early today.

"Why isn't the hockey game on?" she hollered from the still open door as the Hammer ran to greet her.

"What fucking hockey game?" I asked incredulously. Been a while since Sonja asked why a hockey game is not on tv. A thousand years. Maybe more.

"Sweden-Russia asshole," she reminded me. The gold medal game of the world junior championship from Motherfucking, Alberta.

She turned it on just in time to see the opening face-off.

Wicked game.

Good thing the Swedes won. I hate the fucking Russians.

Without A Net

2012-01-04T22:55:00.000-03:00

I do not download music. Do not often watch videos on my computer either although a few recent ones I have watched, Arcade Fire and Neil Young, Anti-Nowhere League and Lou Reed and Metallica make me wonder if wasting a little more time doing so might entertain me a little more than I am already entertained.

I listen to my music in stereo.

I listen to WDVX-FM.

I do not own a portable mp3 player. I do not listen to music I could store in my phone. I suppose I am an old fashioned motherfucker.

Out of date.

Out to lunch.

Out of touch.

Out of line.

Out of luck.

Out of it.

I buy new and used cds, new and used records, used cassettes and the occasional old 8-track. I could use a good quality 8-track player. I could also use a good quality cd player. I see used cd players for sale all the time but I am not sure which the best one to buy is. I play my cds, one at a time, on my dvd player.

I have two new additions to my music library. One is the Grateful Dead's "Without A Net" two cassette set. I never quite got the Dead though I really like all the country shit Jerry Garcia has contributed to that I have added to my collection over the years. The two cassettes are ok in a boring hippy sort of way. Almost fell asleep as I was listening to them. Just like any Zappa lp they are worth listening to for the guitar freak outs I guess.

The other addition is an old Emmy Lou Harris record. I am not going to listen to that yet. I will save it for the weekend. Save it for the weekend when, like last weekend, I just might let my freak flag fly.

True Story (Dedicated To My Dog The Hammer)

2012-01-03T22:19:00.005-03:00

The more cynical of you have probably thought,
"I bet Beer,
Or whatever the fuck his name is,
Does not even pick up his dog's shit
When they are out in the park."

Untrue.
I love picking up dog shit.
That is what working in a sawmill
Your whole life does for you:
It gives you an appreciation for the finer things
In life
Besides working in the fucking mill.

In fact,
On those rare occasions when I
Lose track of where my dog has shit,
Usually due to fog
(My dog's shit steam escapes traceless into it)
And darkness' early onset this time of year,
I find myself a couple cold wet dog shits
Some other dog owner has left behind.
Do not care for cold wet dog shit much.
I like it hot from my dog's ass,
Especially this time of year.
Feels good on my shaky cold fingers.

Then,
The next day,
I find my dog's shit from the day before.
My dog shits big so it is never hard to find
If it is still a little light out.

I have a dream.
I dream that dog shit will one day all be recycled.
If we made bricks out of recycled dog shit
We could use them to build government offices
Every time the motherfuckers want new digs.

Some people have
Trouble thinking
Outside the box.
Not this motherfucker.

Thirteen Lines For 2012

2012-01-03T01:05:00.000-03:00

January now
Santa and
Jesus and
Mary

Have fucked off for another year

Mom got Sonja and I
An emergency preparedness kit
She must be getting the same
Premonition I got a while back

2012 is going to be an evil motherfucker of a year

Sonja got me new binoculars
So I can see the horses I bet on

Screw me more clearly

Year of the War Horse

2012-01-01T13:27:00.000-03:00

The night started out sensibly enough. After a couple we, that's Hunky Z, Kitty, Sonja and I, went for Japanese. An early meal before catching a movie then going home to say hello to 2012. Our New Year's Eves are not the farmyard clusterfuck they once were. Or so I thought.

Our food was good, the Chinese beer delicious. Hunky Z insisted he order us all green tea to go with our meal. When it came he poured it into one of two thermoses he produced from the bag he had brought in with him. From the second thermos he poured us mushroom tea.

"New Years is a good time for hallucinations," he insisted like he had just thought of the idea.

We ate and we drank then we went to see the movie Hunky had also insisted we see. War Horse. "Nothing better than hallucinating and watching shit get blown up," Hunky further insisted like he had just thought of that idea too.

Lots of shit got blown up but War Horse turned out to be something of a boo-hoo movie. A big over-sized over-budget Lassie of a film. The four of us sat there hallucinating and crying our eyes out. I liked it, but then again, I am a sucker for horse shit.

It was the first time in years I have sat in a movie house that was almost full. It felt cool, like we had travelled back in time or something. Cost $5 to get in. Lots of First Nations families were there. They all looked real happy to be out on New Year's Eve with their kids having fun.

Back home we drank up and listened to records before we turned on the television shortly before midnight. I had recently lucked into a dandy pile of used '60s and early '70s records that were most suitable for the occasion. Tonto's Expanding Headband, Quicksilver Messenger Service, Spirit, Love, Zappa, and Quintessence's first album. Quintessence came out of the same lysergic scene as Hawkwind and the Pink Fairies. Some real groovy shit, motherfuckers.

It was a nice night. A night that leaves me feeling inexplicably energized for our New Year. A night which made up for the Hammer rolling in and eating the shit of the homeless just before Hunky and Kitty came by. She had not done so for quite some time but she remembered the routine that follows her shit eating behaviour very well. First the back yard hose down, then the long luxurious bath, which I gave her because Sonja told me, "I'm not fucking doing it!" It was not the stinkiest shit of the homeless. The Hammer smelled pretty good, for a change, once I was done.

Today it is a day at the races. Good luck today nearly always means good luck all year. See you motherfuckers by the finish line.

End of the Year Message From the Editor's Desk

2011-12-30T13:27:00.000-03:00

The comparative response by politicians and their henchmen the police to the recent roll of murders on our streets to that which followed the single death at Dope City's Occupy site is informative as fuck, don't you think?

When it is the legal powers that be who are responsible for public safety we hear a lot of bullshit about how despite the recent deaths, crime rates are really going down, we are doing everything we can to prevent this sort of thing, every cop not on vacation in Hawaii is working twenty-five hours a day trying to solve these crimes, some of them have not even opened their Christmas presents, etc. There is never a suggestion that society, as we know it, is a motherfucking failure, when people are getting gunned down in the street every day. And in time, I say in defence of my hyperbole, we will soon be having someone gunned down daily when you average the 400 murders a year Dope City will be experiencing in the near future.

When it is a group in society that challenges the legal powers that be, that presents people with a viable option to how our society is presently constructed, an egalitarian option, that has a single death on their hands we hear a lot about how that experiment is a failure and must be destroyed.

Same goes for our ferries. When it is the corporate buddy-buddies of government in charge when ferries crash a totally unacceptable number of times we hear yet more bullshit about how the problems are being studied and we'll get to the bottom of it and all those crashes were not really all that bad, were they?

From my perspective a group of people randomly picked out of the crowd at Dope City's Occupation could run B.C. Ferries better and safer than the handpicked government management team that does not look like it could run the Barnston Island ferry without incident for a weekend.

Chores, Church and the Heroin of Ciders

2011-12-30T03:38:00.001-03:00

Sonja does not really like it when I am home while she is working. Rest of the world thinks just like Sonja does. No one is grateful to the dogfucker for fucking the dog.

In the summer I could attend to the garden a little, maybe cut a little lawn. Make it look like I was not fucking the dog all day long. This winter I do not even have any snow to push around to make it look like I am doing something.

"There's laundry that needs doing and floors that need vacuuming. And put away your fucking clothes," were the last words I heard from Sonja last night.

I did as I was told. Did some dishes too.

Then I took the dog for her walk. It was quiet, just the hum of the highway in the distance, the rattle of a tractor engine left running outside a barn, four trumpeter swans squonking like Don Cherry in the hockey rink sky. The Hammer is going to miss her mid-day walks when I am back to work in the mill.

I am going to miss them too.

Our walk done, I drove to the store. There is always shit to buy. Coffee, laundry soap, pork chops, green beans, baking powder.

From there the liquor store. Always like going to the liquor store. The liquor store is church for me. Jesus died for somebody's beer but not mine. Did not need any but I strolled down the whisky aisle. Looked at the bottles, each one triggering warm memories from my past.

Then to the beer stacks. Henrik, my old beer drinking buddy now living in 69 Mile House, had tipped me off to Anarchist Brewery's Scotch Ale. There was none there. The Ministry of Liquor Distribution had let me down.

The cider is right there in the middle of the beer. Okanagan, the heroin of ciders, was on sale. Two and a half bucks off per case. I bought two. Should have bought more.

I am going back tomorrow for more.

I Walked With the Dog To the Pub

2011-12-29T00:57:00.000-03:00

If you do not like hanging around shopping malls (I am waiting to retire before I start in on that) there is not that much to do in my town at this or any time of year. So despite the rain I walked with the dog to the pub where I thought I might do some drinking.

Tied the dog up outside where I could see her once I was inside. Gave her a dog treat. Looked at the sky. Went in.

It was warm inside. A gas fire burned like the dickens in the corner. Sat down at the bar. Ordered. Looked around.

Were not many people there. Figured everybody must be home fucking. There is not much to do in my town. Go shopping, drink, go to church or fuck. The idea of shopping, going to church or fucking made me tired just thinking about them.

Bartender put a big glass in front of me. It was cold to the touch. I drank from it and several others just like it. After a while the idea of fucking seemed less tiresome.

There was a hockey game on television. I looked at it once in a while.

Then there was another game. I looked at it once in a while too.

Then I went outside, woke up the dog and went home. Had to take a route home that would allow me to piss in the trees. Pissing in the street is frowned upon in my shopping, church going, fucking town.

Christmas Lake

2011-12-28T01:47:00.000-03:00

It was Sonja's alarm that woke me up this morning instead of my own. No work for me thanks to Jesus Fucking Christ being born, the Three Fucking Wise Men, the Star of Fucking Bethlehem and the rest of that bollocks. Still got out of bed before my fartsack warm partner. Dog out, coffee for me, tea for the lady. Turned on the radio.

CKNW.

Another man shot in the motherfucking head.

I wondered, as I stirred my sweet as the Virgin Mary coffee, if it has occurred to anybody that shooting the Angel outside that Kelowna casino might have fucked up their Christmas vacations.

The Hammer and I waited for Sonja to choose which pair of shoes to wear to work then we kissed her goodbye.

"Don't work too hard. Ha-ha."

Then I took the Hammer to the lake. My dog had fun in the water. I looked, with Andy's eyes, into the wicked delicious mists of our exploding plastic inevitable universe. I had never felt so happy to be alive as I did that very moment. There were a few beach birds there to share the moment with me as my dog had thoughts similar.

Nothing beats being on the beach.

When it was time to go my dog did not want to. As I walked away from the lake she stood on the beach looking at me, then the water. Oh Beer! Do we have to go? If she made like Dog Jesus and turned the water into dog food she would still be there splish-splashing and I would still be there trying to convince her she was not Dog Jesus even if she had turned the whole lake into a million pounds of throbbing cat meat.

After our fun at the lake we came back home and I did a little more drinking for the Baby Fucking Jesus. A man could never write the words "a million pounds of throbbing cat meat" without having the phrase coaxed out of him by self-waterboarding himself with alcohol first.

Insult To National Pride

2011-12-27T17:52:00.001-03:00

Came across a delightfully well-timed bit of perspicacious writing in Time magazine's "Year In Review" edition for 2011. After a brief description of the Boston Bruin's shit-kicking of Dope City's favourite three time losers, this is how Time summed up Canuck Nation's response to the loss in game seven:

"The insult to national pride was so severe the fans leaving the arena started a mini-riot."

A mini-riot.

As in miniature.

As in not worthy of having its criminally charged participants' court proceedings televised.

Unless it is 1692 and we are living in Salem.

Let Freedom Rain

2011-12-26T22:04:00.001-03:00

Please welcome our newest Fellow Motherfucker, Let Freedom Rain. Proprietor Jymn keeps on writing comments to the Dope City Free Press, now in its seventh year, so I figured he was a good fit. He is a real Dope City fucker, unlike me who lives in a safer part of our riotous region. Go read his shit when you are not watching fucking hockey on your huge television.

Abomination

2011-12-26T21:42:00.001-03:00

On the radio
Sonja and I heard the
Malls were jammed with
People looking for deals.

We went to the supermarket.
Just a few people there.
We bought what we needed
And went to the pub.

Just a few people there too.
Sonja had wine.
Cider for me.
At a table near

Us I heard someone
Order a Guinness and cider.
In one glass.
I asked our waitress,

"What do you call
A Guinness and cider?"
She whispered to me,
"It's an Abomination."

Christmas Prayer

2011-12-25T13:56:00.000-03:00

"Come quick! Anne Murray's on tv!" Sonja called out to me this morning.

I ran from my office, cup of coffee and whisky in hand, to see what the fuck Anne Murray was doing on tv on Christmas morning.

"That's not Anne Murray," I told Sonja. "That's the fucking Queen."

"You sure?" asked Sonja.

"Yes, I'm sure," I answered. "Anne Murray doesn't have her own flag yet."

We watched the Queen deliver her message. She is getting more religious, as many people do, as they creep towards their graves. I may be getting a little more religious myself.

I am praying, like most all her subjects, Queen Elizabeth outlives the Prince of Wales.

St. Nick In the Air

2011-12-25T10:22:00.002-03:00

Flying has become a mundane experience for most of us who do it today. Not for me though. For me flying is still magic, magic as Christmas when I was boy skating on a frozen pond after drinking a little of my dad's whisky under the northern lights of Motherfucking, Alberta.

Part of the magic is Sonja's insistence that we hold hands as if it might be our last embrace when we take off and land. Magic as the poetry of Patti Smith that is.

As Sonja and most of my fellow passengers dozed in the many contorted positions the flying public gets itself into, I looked out the window like I always do even when there is nothing out the window to look at that is not black as the ace of spades.

As we neared the Canadian border just past midnight last night, already descending towards the beer drinking and Hell raising country that made me the man that I am, I saw something out the window that made all the hours I have spent looking out into the darkness seem worthwhile. It was St. Nick on his sleigh speeding south through the night sky having already delivered presents to all the good children of Dope City and Canada beyond.

Much to my surprise he was pulled through the air, not by fucking Swedish reindeer, but by snow dogs of my own frozen land. The lead dog was none other than the pink nosed ghost of my tireless first dog Strangler. She was snatching the night air with her big furry paws like she had got into my speed stash to make it through this one night a year tear.

Yes, dear readers, there is a motherfucking Santa Claus.

Hands clasped, Sonja and I landed with a fearful bump back in Canada. We left another piece of our hearts in Mexico this year. The rest of us is happy to be home, looking forward to seeing the Hammer, looking forward to what the Mayans have waiting for us in 2012.

Lulu - The Best Rock 'n' Roll Record Ever?

2011-12-23T22:52:00.000-03:00

I have learned one thing in Mexico this year. One more thing than usual. Let me explain.

Back on the day the chick died from a hot speedball at Vancouver's Occupation I listened to Lou Reed and Metallica's "Lulu." I had bought it that morning. It sounded like one fuck of a record but I was too distracted, too busy, too fucked up to sit down and give the record the number of plays necessary to properly appraise it.

On the beach, this past couple of weeks, I have listened to "Lulu" at least once a day on my Walkman (!). Only other music I listened to was a five cd set of Mountain's first five records. (Long live Leslie West.)

"Lulu" is the best motherfucking rock 'n' roll record ever made. The song "Dragon" has done the unthinkable and replaced "Anarchy In the UK" as my favourite song.

Lou Reed and Metallica are the motherfucking best. Anybody who tries to tell you different ain't no Pablo Picasso: they are an asshole.

No English

2011-12-23T01:55:00.000-03:00

Took a wander today. Got ourselves a good distance away from the tourist bars. Found out it was true that if you walk far enough away from the beaches no one you speak to can understand a fucking word you are saying.

Soon enough it was lunch time. We were hungry and neither Sonja, Jimi or I had eaten or drank anything for a good couple of hours. That is about how long anybody observes Advent in Mexico.

"I need a fucking beer," was how Jimi put it.

"I need a fucking margarita," was how Sonja put it.

I could not even speak. My throat was drier than Stephen Harper's sense of humour.

We had somehow found ourselves in a light industrial area. This, we figured, was where all the broken down shit in Mexico gets taken to be fixed. People who fix broken shit need to eat so instead of getting our asses out of the neighbourhood we were in we kept walking. There had to be a restaurant somewhere.

We found two right beside each other. One did not have alcohol. We went to the other one. A menu was posted on its front door. It was written in Spanish. No English at all. We recognized the words cerveza and margarita. We went in.

We were greeted by a pretty Mexican gal who showed us to a table. We sat down. The decor of the place was dazzling. Mexicans are big on dazzling shit.

"Everybody in this town but us must be on peyote," Jimi said as he looked around.

A boy came and brought us menus. Jimi ordered us a couple beers and a double margarita. The boy did not know what the fuck we were talking about.

"I think he thinks you just asked him if you could suck his cock," I said as I looked at the foreign looking menu.

"Let me try," Sonja offered. In her broken down Spanish she told the boy we needed two beers and a double strawberry margarita.

The boy said, "Si," and walked off to get our drinks.

He came back with two Cokes, unopened fortunately, and one beer. We were getting somewhere at least. Sonja waved off the Cokes as Jimi and I fought over the beer. She then resorted to pointing at the beer and holding up six fingers.

The boy said, "Si," and went back to the bar.

He came back with six beers. Our language barrier had been overcome.

We pointed at what we thought might be good on the menu as the boy looked over our shoulder. Si. Bueno. Si.

Our food was excellent. We ordered more beer. Before we left I went back to the kitchen, where the boy's mother appeared to be in charge, rubbed my happy tummy and gave her the thumbs up.

She smiled. I love Mexican people.

We are going back there next year.

Every year I tell myself I should take some fucking Spanish lessons. Then I get back to Canada, where no one speaks English either, and I say, "Fuck it. I am speaking English until I die. Everybody else can fuck right off."

Sailing

2011-12-21T10:29:00.002-03:00

Was a time Sonja and I spent just one week in Mexico. It seemed like that was long enough. That is what the all the Canadian observational comedians I had seen over the years had recommended. After a week of off the chart boozing it up it would seem natural for anybody, even Canadians, to tail off after about seven days or so.

Other people I had met over the years, more optimistic about Canadians' ability to hold their booze, suggested ten or eleven days of drinking like a fucking Newfie who had won the lottery, would about do it. After that a man would have to come up for air.

They were all fucking wrong. Two weeks may not even be enough. Personally, like Dee Dee Ramone, I am in favour of the endless vacation.

Yesterday we went on a booze cruise to a little island, of which Mexico has precious few, off the coast of our white sandy beach paradise. A bus picked us up in the morning. We stopped to pick up a few other people on the way to the boat, four French fuckers and six people from motherfucking Alberta.

When the French got on the bus they sat behind us and started in on their French talk right away. Jimi asked them, "Where are you people from?"

"We are from France," the oldest Frenchman told us. He had a hell of a time saying a sentence as simple as that in English.

"That's good," Jimi told him, "We thought you might be from Quebec. My name is Jimi. We're all from Canada."

I turned around and introduced myself, "Je m'apple Monsieur Biere."

The Frenchman thought that was pretty funny and repeated it back to me the way he heard it. "Juh Map Hell Mom Sure Beee Aaiirree."

Cunt.

The Albertans were ok. They came along to drink their fucking faces off which they did. Out drank us B.C. ers 2-1. We figured they must have been on something. Probably peyote judging by how many times they all had to lean over the side of boat and puke.

Once we were underway we thought the Mexican crew might have a word with us about safety, life jacket locations and such on their boat. Not a chance. All that separated their drunk passengers, many more of whom had arrived at the dock to join us were hard drinking Albertans, and the shark populated waters was a thin cable about knee high along the boat's deck.

The description of the tour we had read indicated we would not get any booze until we had done some snorkeling about half way to our island destination. We need not have worried. We started being served as soon as we left the dock which was a good thing: it was already 10:00 AM.

We sure liked the island once we got there even though, like the rest of the world, it is overpopulated as fuck. It's sheltered western beaches ideal for swimming; its unsheltered eastern beaches, the easternmost point of Mexico, crashing with great blue and white waves. We are going to look into staying at one of the hotels there next year.

As Sonja went to work shopping the narrow streets, Jimi and I sat down and kept on drinking. There were a lot of bars on this island. The Mexicans understand tourism: a drunk tourist is a happy tourist.

"Look what I got!" Sonja exclaimed when she found Jimi and I about the time we were supposed to meet our boat and sail back to the mainland. Christmas gifts for her co-workers and friends sparkled from within a little cloth bag like a pirate's treasure. We walked down to what appeared to be our dock only to realise it was the wrong one and that all the many other docks had similar looking boats tied up to them. One down side to drinking is that when you are lost, you are even more lost than most people. We finally found our boat, and our impatient fellow travellers, kept patient only by the ice cold booze already being passed out for the return journey.

The Albertans, now pissed to the gills, provided the entertainment on the journey home. They had all bought Mexican wrestler masks on the island and drank, wrestled and posed the whole way back to the mainland. Their wives and girlfriends even showed everybody their snow white Canadian titties. Canadian women, except Sonja, who likes to keep hers under wraps, sure do like showing off their tits.

It was a long way back to the hotel so we had to stop for more booze. When we got back to the hotel we had a late dinner, drank some more and called it a day around midnight.

We still have a few more days. Two weeks is not enough when you are on vacation in Mexico.

Movie Night With Randy Quaid

2011-12-19T18:14:00.000-03:00

Sonja and I took a break from socializing with our fellow hotel guests and invited Jimi up to our room to watch a pair of Christmas movies on our television. Jimi, as social as anybody you might ever meet (everybody in the hotel knows him by name), thought it a fine idea. Guess he was tired of being nice to Americans, after watching football all day with them, as we are.

"I like coming down to Mexico but I miss my favourite Christmas shows on tv almost as much as I don't miss the fucking Canucks. How did you spot a decent Christmas movie on the tv without the help of a tv guide?"

"We didn't," Sonja told him. "We brought a couple dvds down with us."

"Don't you think it is kind of weird that Christmas is not the same without watching the same old movies over and over again every year?" I asked them both.

They did not. Neither do I. But deep inside I am pretty sure it is fucked up as shit.

"Why don't you go get your pyjamas on and come up to our room and we'll get the first one started," Sonja told Jimi who shuffled off in his Jesus boots to get dressed for our little Christmas tv party.

I had never seen Jimi in his pyjamas before I let him in the door half an hour later. He walked in the door in a full set of Saskatchewean Roughrider pyjamas. "Left the scarf, toque and slippers at home," he explained as if he were somehow underdressed for the occasion before he made himself a drink at our bar and climbed into bed on Sonja's side.

"What's up first?"

First up was "Bad Santa." If you do not watch that movie every Christmas you probably should not be reading this. Highlight of this year's viewing was the three of us bouncing up and down on the bed yelling, "Fuck me Santa! Fuck me Santa! Fuck me Santa!" loud enough for everyone in our corner of the hotel to hear us and want to be fucked by Santa too.

Next up was National Lampoon's "Christmas Vacation," the greatest Christmas movie ever made. We all love Randy Quaid as much as anybody in Dope City. Motherfucker should have won a best supporting actor Oscar for his role in this one as the Griswald's cousin Eddie.

"Think Randy Quaid watched this movie every year like everybody else?" asked Sonja.

Jimi and I both took a drink as we thought about that one. Jimi answered first, "Most actors wouldn't but I bet Randy Quaid does. Playing a role like that and not getting an Oscar for it must be like painting the Mona Lisa and not being able to sell it. Motherfucker probably watches it in the middle of summer."

Merry Christmas Randy Quaid. You are one of us now, you Canadian motherfucker.

Got It Made

2011-12-18T12:24:00.000-03:00

Sonja thinks the cool towel sculptures our maid leaves us on our bed are half the fun of visiting Mexico. Swans, octopi, fish, beach bags - the maid can make them all. Our tips are included in the all inclusive packages we buy but Sonja makes sure the maid gets tipped extra every day. The maid is working class, just like us, and needs every peso she can get.

(We would prefer not to go all-inclusive, and did so before Sonja stopped eating the dead, but our hotel offers a wide variety of vegetarian food for her to graze upon. Once you get away from Dope City eating veggie can get pretty boring in restaurants.)

One morning, after the maid had cleaned up after us after we had some wild drunken sex and absent mindedly left some of our wild drunken sex gear under the covers before we went out for the day we found the maid had sculpted us a giant cock and balls for us instead of a bird or something. I later saw the maid in the hall where she gave me the you dirty old fucker look women have been giving me all my life.

Next morning, after Sonja had preceded me downstairs to get her cup of tea, I left a condom between the giant towel balls of the sculpture just to see what the maid would do with it. She kept it and now she is giving me the you dirty old fucker look worse than ever.

Having a maid is the coolest thing a couple can have even if it is only for a couple weeks a year. Too bad, as we all know, life is not like the Brady Bunch. We have to make our own beds.

No Money Back

2011-12-17T10:38:00.000-03:00

After Sonja had enough Jimi and I stayed up drinking with several Dope City gangsters last night. There are two such groups in our hotel. Does not seem to be any animosity between them but they do not socialize with one another.

They are young. Much younger than Jimi and I. They drop names. Names you have seen in the news.

Jimi and I do not drop names. We are old school motherfuckers. Fuck the names.

We drink and drink.

We will be having breakfast shortly and begin drinking again. Several hours later the gangsters will make their way down to the pool, look over at us blearily, and wonder how we do it.

We do not know how we do it ourselves. We just do it. We do it like Christopher Hitchens. Then we die. No remorse, no regrets, no money back guarantee.

American Wedding Guest of Honour

2011-12-16T12:50:00.000-03:00

Living in a resort hotel, even for a short time, is faster than the speed of life. You just get to know somebody, have a laugh, and they are back on a plane to their Frozen Fatherlands; and just as fast as they have moved on new neighbours take their place at the bar beside you.

Wedding party from Minnesota moved in yesterday. Maybe a dozen of them. One of them got so shitfaced his first day he was escorted from the bar to his room by hotel security. As he was led away he was shouting, "I hate this fucking country. You can all fuck right off," and other things you hear people shouting as Christmas approaches every year. The Spirit of Christmas is such motherfucking bunk.

Judging by the reaction of hotel staff they see that sort of thing pretty often. Another fucking gringo off his fucking rocker. The display did not do much for the blood pressure of some of the loudmouth's wedding party associates who have probably seen this act so often they consider him harmless.

We guests watched the whole thing like it was the best thing available on the crappy English television stations they bring in; each of us secretly hoping a chef would emerge from around a corner with a big cleaver and chop his head off.

Today did not go quite so well for our loudmouth friend. Not sure what the fuck set him off, besides a likely overdose of tequila. This is what I heard from halfway across the hotel. "I'm going to cut your fucking heads off! I'm going cut your fucking balls off! I'm going to kill you all! You fucking hear me you greaseball bastards? I'm going to cut you all into little fucking pieces!"

Was not long before the federales showed up. Eight of them in the back of a truck, couple more up front. All wearing balaclavas and carrying machine guns. Not sure if they threw him in the can, beat the shit out of him, put him on a plane or all three.

The wedding party appeared relieved about his ouster. Everything should go smoothly at the wedding now unless he cuts everyone into little pieces in jail and escapes in time for the reception.

Bloody English

2011-12-15T12:01:00.000-03:00

There's English in our hotel as well. Loads of them. Until they open their pie holes you would never even guess they are from the riotous country that once gave us William Godwin and the Pink Fairies.

They are all polite. More polite than Canadians. Not the obnoxiously pissed pint in your face kick in the head English people we are accustomed to at all. The English, for the first time in history, suddenly seem able to hold their liquor.

What it is, I suspect, is they are all still on their best behaviour, like the damp people of Dope City, on account of their own recent riots. That bit of riotous behaviour was not even up to proper English standards. Would have done that cunt Charles and his woman in before old Maggie civilized the lot of them except for the Westham and Millwall firms.

From all over their island they are. Norwich, the Midlands, Eastbourne, the fucking north. All the parts of England nobody gives a shit about. Everybody knows it is all about London, even the hicks from the sticks in our hotel.

All couples they are, except for a pair of head turning lassies from Birmingham. They are not like English girls of old either. We are travelling just with Jimi this year and he is fancying foreign pussy like always. After first ascertaining the lassies were not bent he has been doing his best to get into their pants but has yet to get within sniffing distance of his goal.

"Used to be English birds would drop their knickers for me and any other lad with more than a fiver in his trousers after a couple glasses of shandy. All the Muslim crazies that country is jammed full of now have infected the natural desirous state of English females with their transit bombings, veils and no fucking until we are married bullshit," Jimi protested before retiring to his room for a good old fashioned bit of masturbation.

Oklahoman Rednecks

2011-12-14T01:09:00.000-03:00

I'm thinking of you down in Mexico,
Feeling free as the air,
Here I am stuck in the city,
Still going nowhere.

- Edward Bear

Meet a lot of strange motherfucking people down in Mexico. Strange motherfuckers from all over the world. I imagine everybody who spends a little time down there comes home thinking the same thing.

Even the Canadians are strange down in Mexico.

My favourite people thus far are two couples from Oklahoma. Turns out both couples are associated with horse racing: thoroughbreds at Remington Park,
whose season just ended; and pintos they race on some dusty track called the Middle of Fucking Nowhere Downs.

All four of them are a little younger than Sonja and I and about ten times as loud. The men were taking turns throwing one another in the pool, comparing the banana hammocks bulging from their overly tight speedos and pretending to hump one another every chance they got.

"Once I have got about five more of these here Mexican Hurricanes in my belly I am going to take you up to my room and give you a better butt fucking than you got from our high school football coach."

"You'll never fuck me as good as that you redneck motherfucker. Your dick is too small!"

All the while their wives were pissing themselves with laughter in their beach chairs and egging their men on.

"It is too small. But that's ok. I like motherfucking rednecks with cute little dog peckers."

It was 10:30 AM when they were carrying on like this. Five hours after they had woke both Sonja and I up as they returned, just before dawn, from a damn decent night of partying.

Fucking Oklahomans are my kind of people.

Green Beer

2011-12-13T01:38:00.000-03:00

You know what
The weirdest thing
About my holidays
In Mexico is?

People recognize me
From year to year.

Some of the people
Are not even bartenders.

Some of the people
Are not even police.

"If you laid off
The absinthe
Maybe we wouldn't."

Bar Stool in a Dusty Cantina

2011-12-11T20:43:00.000-03:00

I am trying not to think too much about Christmas like usual. Pretty fucking easy to do when you have just dipped your toes into the open bar available to me until Christmas Eve here in Mexico, before the real back home Canadian Christmas drinking begins.

A tequila and soda was thrust into my hand, a glass of red into Sonja's, before we had even checked into our hotel. As returning guests we were given a better room with a better view, this time equipped with four upside down bottles of hard shit, two of which I drink.

Around the corner, just out of sight, a bar stool awaits me in a dusty cantina where they keep their bottles lined up alphabetically on glass shelves behind the bar.

A is for absinthe, motherfuckers.

2011 Christmas MessageTo the World

2011-12-10T02:09:00.003-03:00

Am I in the Christmas mood? We all ask ourselves that when we are not fucked up as the baby motherfucking Jesus as Christmas approaches all tinselly as Nine-One-One every year. Sometimes we are Christmas as fuck, sometimes not.

This year I am Christmas fuck.

Don't bring me down, motherfuckers.

Some of you don't, but I got it all.

Sex, drugs, Santa and rock 'n' roll.

Fuck the pope.

Fuck the government.

Fuck Jesus and his mom.

Fuck you too Gordon Campbell.

It is early but that is my Christmas Message To the World.

Cannot Light A Fire Without the Spark of Absinthe

2011-12-07T15:52:00.005-03:00

Dreamtime. Do not have many I remember like last night's. It was a fire dream. Last time I had one of those was about ten years ago, a week before the loon Muslims dialled 911. The dream came to me in three installments.

I was at work in the first chapter. Operating millwright was over trying to set something right when we noticed sparks passing between my machine and a tool the millwright had laid right near it. The machine was hot, electrified. We backed away from it and as I ran to kill the power the machine began sparking like a motherfucker before it finally exploded sending flames, saw shrapnel and all manner of shit everywhere just before I reached the electrical panel.

Burned down the fucking mill before the fire department even arrived at the scene.

Guess I had to get a job after the mill burned down. Turned out that job was gas jockeying. There was a gas spill someone leaned into with a cigarette. You know how that goes. Had to get yet another fucking job. Guess I lost my own ride in the explosion so I was hitch-hiking. Got picked up by a nice enough couple, one of whom recognized me.

"Aren't you Mr. Beer N. Hockey?"

I was.

"Your writing reminds me of Don Doansie. You know Doansie?"

I did not.

That was when they both turned into aliens.

After I had turned down the aliens' job offer there was another fire. Three fire dreams in one night. Thinking I may have to lay off the absinthe for a while.

Small World, Big Booms

2011-12-06T19:41:00.004-03:00

I have been reading Mark Leier's biography of Bakunin. Not done yet so this will not be a book review. I am reading it slowly, the way I usually read books. All full of history, philosophy and crap it is. Such subjects get me feeling reflective because they are about the way we have been and the way we might one day be if today's questioning of the present leads to desires that increasingly mature into action.

One of my favourite realizations is how motherfucking small we are. Our hate and war planet; our lifeless solar system; our pea of a universe. Mistakenly, I used think our universe was big. Changed my mind about that when I started believing the universe was comparable to one shitball in Santa's reindeer shed. Not very big but a little smelly.

Thanks to my formal and informal education I have the whole little smelly shitball of the universe in my head. For a couple of decades now I have been waiting for our planet to explode. Now it is. Some pretty big booms too. Big enough you would think everybody would be paying very close attention, the way people huddled around radios in WWII, but we are not.

Pay close attention, motherfuckers, the biggest booms are yet to be detonated.

Sunday Morning With Tomorrow's Future Citizens of Hell

2011-12-05T14:22:00.011-03:00

Took it easy Saturday night. Big fire, small glasses of wine. Needed to get up early and take the long walk with the Hammer to Jimi's place. Sunday football. Good morning America. How the fuck are you?

I live in a quiet place and, like most such places, it is quiet as a fog shrouded necropolis early Sunday mornings before the shopping malls open their avaricious glass doors. Just me, my dog and the polar bear dotted outdoor hockey rink on Christmas morning that is Canada.

Except it was not quite just us and the polar bears. Every minute or two a carload of motherfucking Christian zombies would roll by in their Volkswagen. We have every Christian sect except Ranters here in Steepleton and they all have the same expression on their faces as they roll towards their Houses of Superstition. An expression that makes me wonder why the fuck anybody would become and remain a Christian at all. An expression that warns me every time I see it I will one day see those same grim faces in Hell.

Jimi greeted me at his oversized Douglas Fir front door with an unopened bottle of absinthe in his shaky hand.

"It's French shit!"

You know the rest of the story by now.

Drinking, Thinking and Fucking With Birds

2011-12-04T02:06:00.001-03:00

The birds
At night
They go
To sleep

We drink
We think
We drink
We fuck

Drink
Think
Drink
Fuck

We are not birds

I Am All Beers

2011-12-02T23:04:00.001-03:00

Listened to a man
Tell a long detailed story
In the pub today

The man was good and drunk
I cannot share the details
Of the story with you

National security
People tell me
All kinds of shit

I have the kind of face
Motherfuckers trust
All I can say is

Shit is not always what it seems

Chief Justice Beer N. Hockey

2011-11-30T18:20:00.001-03:00

Guess most everybody has an opinion on the guilty verdict and subsequent sentencing of Michael Jackson's quack croaker. I sure as Hell do.

That doctor should have had the biggest children's hospital in America re-named after him for hurrying Jackson into his wooden overcoat.

Yet Another Grey Cup Aftermath

2011-11-28T12:55:00.004-03:00

OK, so the Grey Cup was a little dull. Everybody was thinking the same thing before the first quarter was over. It was Jimi who blasphemed first. "I don't know how you cocksuckers can watch this amateur shit," he said as he produced a big bottle of absinthe.

"Fuck you traitor boy," Henrik shot back at him. "And keep that green shit away from me."

Legs, noticeably, and probably a few other guys had already turned a little green at the mere sight of the green bitch. I had already been drinking tequila since the pre-game show began almost fours ago. One of the pre-game hosts had actually predicted a Bomber win. Asshole had clearly been concussed several times too often as a player.

Jimi poured us a shot. No sugar water French bullshit for us. Before long the bottle was gone as Bomber hope. Turns out tequila (I was drinking it with club soda) and absinthe (shoot it back, motherfuckers) go together just fine.

Anti-Canadian

2011-11-27T17:39:00.002-03:00

Us Canadians do shit that is anti-Canadian just like people of every other nationality do. The most popular anti-Canadian expression is shopping in the USA. Fucking assholes who do that should all be squished to the thickness of a loonie, frozen, and then skated on by Todd Bertuzzi.

I try and stay away from anti-Canadian activities myself but sometimes I cannot help myself. I buy booze made outside my country's borders. Beer, cider, whisky and wine mostly.

Sonja is only anti-Canadian once per year. Today. Grey Cup Sunday. I tried to get her to watch the game with me today. Not a chance. If there were a few sexy Swedes that played football, like they play hockey, she might. "I'm not watching football," she told me today. "You go out with your bumhole football buddies and have fun without me and don't come home expecting anything either. Every time you watch a bunch of grown men spending three and a half hours tackling one another you come home thinking today is your lucky day. Fuck that. Get one of your football buddies to do you before you come home!"

Retreat

2011-11-26T10:51:00.003-03:00

Dreamed Sonja and I were staying at a martial arts retreat on 24th Avenue in Alderdale. Had its own lake and all the outbuildings and such of your typical hobby farm. The Master and his family were not typical at all however. They were fucking Martians! (Actually they were fucking Koreans but it makes for better reading if they are Martians.)

The sparring was full contact, including knives, guns and rocket propelled grenades. It was our first day so Sonja and I only sparred once and did so under the close scrutiny of the Master. His interpreter told us we did ok which we already knew because we had lived to hear about it.

After the sparring was done we sat around drinking beer. Those fucking Martians know what us humans like to do: drink beer and kill each other.

There Was Occupy

2011-11-25T02:31:00.000-03:00

There was
Occupy
There was
Rain

There was
Snow
There was
Wind

Those motherfuckers

At
Adbusters
Do not know shit
About weather

Suzi the Driver

2011-11-24T01:44:00.000-03:00

There is a woman that goes to my gym who is not quite right. Her name is Suzi. We had been gym mates for years before we got to know one another at all. I do not know what is wrong with her. I try not to be nosy with people who do not seem to be all there and she is not even close. That and I do not give a fuck. None of us are all there if you ask me.

Today she comes up to me and asks, "You know anything about insurance, Beer?"

"What kind?" I asked back, seeking clarification.

"I was in a car accident today," she confided in me. "Just a little one. I rearended a fucking Subaru."

I was the one who taught her to always use the adjective "fucking" before the noun Subaru. I think Steve Earle may have taught me. What I wanted to say back to her was, "You fucking drive?" I had never considered the possibilty of her driving before and had somehow never seen her driving in the parking lot which was probably a good thing because she probably would have plowed into me. "Sorry about that Beer," she would say, "You know anything about insurance?"

Suzi continued. "It's my first accident. I have to tell my mom and dad. I was hoping somebody could tell me how this insurance thing works before I talk to them later."

"I guess I do know a little about insurance. Enough to tell you you're so fucking screwed. You'll have to pay for the damage, even a little scratch will set you back $600, or you can use up your smash into one fucking Subaru free card on your insurance. Mom and dad will probably help you pay the $600. You want to save that smash into one fucking Subaru free card for when you kill the anti-North American Labour bastard driving an overpriced tin can like that. Don't sweat it. People cause accidents all the fucking ime."

"You ever cause one?" she asked, hoping I had.

I have never caused an accident. "Fuck no. I learned to drive on a motorcycle. Motorcyclists are a little more careful about not causing accidents than most people because when we do it is usually good enough to call the undertaker."

On my way home from the gym I looked as carefully as I could at my fellow demented drivers. There must be millions of them just like Suzi driving around thinking whatever it is people like Suzi think about instead of keeping their eyes on the fucking Subaru in front of them.

It is bad enough having the knowledge that half the drivers on the road are shitfaced, now it was beginning to sink in the the rest of them were a little kookie. The best of us we elect into fucking government.

Thirteen Lines of Fear

2011-11-23T02:15:00.000-03:00

It is the dark days

The dark days of November
When the fear
Ken Kesey saw
In the eyes

Of Oregon loggers
Is what he would
See in our eyes
If he could be here

To drop some acid
With the Merry Occupy
In Terry Fox Plaza
For the Grey Cup

Grey Cup Prediction

2011-11-22T01:47:00.000-03:00

As of this morning the British Columbia Lions are favoured by seven points to kick the Winnipeg Blue Bombers' ass in Sunday's Grey Cup. The same Winnipeg Blue Bombers who twice kicked the Lion's ass during the regular season.

(I know most of you foreigners, who do not smoke dope, who read this, must wonder where the fuck British Columbia is. We are the people who riot two out of every three times our hockey team loses the Stanley Cup Final, not counting the Vancouver Millionaire losses (and one win!) in the early decades of the last century, long before television and other anti-social media made rioting fashionable. Winnipeg is located on the southern tip of the Manitoba Polar Bear Reserve. No one knows if Winnipeggers will riot if they ever get to lose the Stanley Cup Final. We do, however, have our suspicions.)

I am cheering for the Lions. A man has to have one home team to cheer for. Used to watch them practice with Strangler back when I lived near their training facility in deepest, darkest Sliverville. In those days there were few people who could pound Bud like me. Those few people were all B.C. Lions. But my money is on the Bombers beating that seven point spread. Would not surprise me to see the Bombers win the game outright. Their success will depend on one thing: beating quarterback Travis Lulay within an inch of his life. Something they are more than capable of.

I am also going to go out on limb and predict a perilously drunk Calgary Stampeder fan will ride a horse through the remnants of Occupy Vancouver before Grey Cup Week is over.

Red Green's Ass

2011-11-20T11:38:00.000-03:00

Yesterday morning Sonja and I went our separate ways for the day. Too much to do, too little time.

Brought the dog with me. Nice that it is cold enough for her to tag along on my errands. Had to go to several stores. You would think, given the bloated blue whale size of the many Shopper Heavens that dominate the Dope City shopping scene, you could buy everything possible that is smaller than a big bag of dog food in one store. Not yet. One day, when 1,000,000 square foot Shopper Heavens come our way, we will be able to do so. That's progress, motherfuckers.

That done I took the Hammer to the Cherrydale River for a long run. As we rolled into the parking lot we saw the RCMP looking at someone's car that had its window smashed out. Cop was telling the car's owner that they could look for fingerprints and shit but hey this is not fucking television lady and I mean really there is a new female recruit that I want to fuck on the back seat of my cruiser like the Canucks want to win the Stanley Cup so how about I just make a file and your insurance company will fix you up, eh?

It was a beautiful morning. Been cold enough for the snow not exposed to the sun the last few days to still be there for my boots to grind it up with the frozen fallen leaves. My dog and I love days like this. Winter, like Neil Young once sang, is the best time of them all.

The Hammer poked at the many dead salmon on the river bank and in the shallow water. Good thing she does not eat or roll in the stinky fuckers any more I thought as I watched the many birds and a couple fishermen downstream enjoy the day every bit as much as we were.

That was when I saw the Hammer rolling in something on the bank. Something a little high up the bank to be a salmon carcass. When she came running back to me my fears were confirmed by my nose. She had been rolling in some not yet frozen fisherman's beer shit.

Fuck.

Even after she had been for a good swim in the slow running water of the fucking near pristine Canadian wilderness and I could not see shit on her any more she still smelled like Red Green's ass. My car windows would have to be rolled down and my toque pulled down over my ears until we reached home.

Good thing I can cook and do dishes. That was what I was doing while Sonja bathed the Hammer at home. She still smells a little shitty this morning, just like I feel, after getting my hands dirty in the local election.

The Beer Vote

2011-11-20T01:43:00.003-03:00

Yes, I voted today. My city cannot imprison me, send to me to war or otherwise fuck me around all that much. It is true my city pays for the police but the police derive their power from higher powers than my city has and will continue to have until it declares itself an independent nation, something that appears to be on its out of date radar by the way.

There was a big sign on my polling station's front door warning me there was NO EATING permitted inside. A further couple steps inside there was another bigger sign, in case I was not very obversant, again warning me you cannot vote and eat and the same time. Made me wish I had brought a couple hash brownies with me to sneak into my pie hole in the privacy of my voting booth.

All I had was my flask. No fucking big lettered sign about that. After I had signed in and chatted, as is my way, with the polling clerks and sat down behind the cardboard privacy screen I reached for the cold stainless steel in my jacket pocket, unscrewed the lid and drained it of the half of its overproof contents I had not drank during my walk to the poll.

I was ready to vote and every bit as prepared to do so as most people.

Voted for the kid who ran for mayor, the rest of them are shits, the kid had style; voted for one alderman who is a stand up guy who works with fucked up kids; voted for one school trustee because he was the only name I could remember from the list of names somebody from my union phoned me about; voted to stick the P3 water project up the outgoing council's ass.

None of the first three have a hope in Hell. Not sure about the water project. My town has long been dominated, voting wise and otherwise, by people who say, "How far?" when anybody with the least bit of authourity asks them to bend over but they are real quiet about it. Have not heard one person say anything good about the P3 except for elected officials and their hired hands but the same was true for the HST vote and 55% of my fellow citizens kissed Gordon Campbell's ass good-bye with a YES vote.

Who The Police Beat

2011-11-20T00:12:00.000-03:00

I
Am
An
Anarchist

Random
Sadism
By
Police
Against
Occupy
Surprises
Me
None

Something Better Change

2011-11-19T13:17:00.004-03:00

If a man can, he should afford himself a luxury. I think I may have learned that from Kerouac. Remember the stories he wrote about eating big plates of Chinese food on cold dirt poor San Francisco dark sweet chocolate nights of the soul? For some it is fast cars, speedboats and old motorcycles; for others it is heroin, cocaine and drugs you never dreamed of. Mine is the occasional bottle of good whisky. Buy it when the horses have been especially kind to my wallet. Tricks me into thinking I have it fucking made, which I do.

I need to be tricked into thinking I have it made every so often because, in my head, it is always 1982. That was when my first sawmill closed its gates and I found my prospects to be poor and none. I was reading Kerouac then, wondering if I would have to leave Dope City, find my fortune on the road. Looking in the steamy windows of Chinese restaurants without a fucking dime, nevermind a bottle of scotch, in the pockets of my black leather jacket or my ripped up jeans, my underwear hanging out long before it became fashionable to do so.

I am not the only man to deeply identify with the empty pockets no bottle no drugs no motherfuck all dreams of the Occupy Movement. Their dream, our dream, the Anarchist dream, is the same dream Hugh Cornwell sang about in the Stranglers, the band I named my first dog after: Something Better Change.

Yes, I am rambling. Often happens after a week of working in the sawmill without a typewriter to compose some sense out of the chaos of the brainstorm I have been both gifted and cursed with.

Which brings me to what I think is the most important conclusion I have come to as a result of bringing my brainstorm to a few weekends at Occupy Vancouver and more than a few hours here on my computer with Occupy the Motherfucking World. I have been reminded that there is a hunger, down here in the street, for direct democracy. People, better informed than ever in history, know what to do to improve the civilization we share, grudgingly, with the upper crust of society we have threateningly labeled the one motherfucking per centers. We must all be integrated into the decision making process, integrated more fully than the every three, four or five years we are permitted in general elections now. The top down bullshit of democracies past is not cutting it any more.

We want the world, as someone once said, and we want it now.

Without any great immediate changes to the way we do things, there are some things we could change right away. We need to get the direct democracy train out of the station. I bet everybody has ideas on this subject that would work or at least be worth trying. Some democratic experimentation, the boogeyman of our present day democratic institutions everywhere, is overdue.

For example, recently Suzanne Anton, who makes me cringe because she is about as real as Occupying Mars, put forward a motion that Occupy Vancouver be shut down. No one seconded her motion. Therefore there was no discussion. There should always be discussion, even if it is a discussion the majority are not comfortable having. One of the duties of the mayor, of any meeting chair, ought to be ensuring that all motions be seconded. Everyone has the right to a length of hemp generous enough to both hang themselves or their opponents.

Same goes for the Occupy Movement: no one should be shouted down just because a consensual majority thinks they have shit for brains. No one.

Same goes for unions. If a member makes a motion, no matter how contrary it may seem, such as, "I move the President go fuck a goat," if no one else seconds the motion, the president should. Those in favour of Presidents fucking goats have a right to be heard just as much as those who think Presidents should not partake in such goat fucking. Pardon the hyperbole.

The sun is shining through the trees. My dog is waiting on me. So are the polls. A member of the Dope City Free Press Nation has made a motion that I go fuck a goat. I second the motion, motherfuckers.

Arran Hits the Mark Yet Again

2011-11-19T02:49:00.001-03:00

Unless I have gone into the liquor store to purchase something in particular I like to look around the store the way I used to look around toy stores when I was a kid in the months before Christmas.

I want every bottle in the store, motherfuckers.

I was looking through the whiskies yesterday. Could not make up my mind. Luckily for me there was someone there to help me make up my mind, as there always is when I am taking my time choosing what it is I would like to get me shitfaced. The Hindoo. Motherfucker shadows me every time I am in the store. Does not really matter if I am doing a quick in/out or I am reading the fine print on the back of every bottle in the store. Guess I do not look like I can afford to get bombed without loading up my coat with free liquor.

"This shit any good?" I asked him, holding up a bottle of Arran's.

"It must be. Look at the price," he instructed me.

Fucking asshole, I thought. Then I thought some more and decided I was the fucking asshole. Who the fuck asks the security dick what scotch to buy? Especially since I had just seen him help a pair of his friends from the Fatherland they had all escaped from pick out a bottle of Catto's.

That is heaving scotch.

I gripped the bottle of Arran's, Amarone Cask Finish, and walked over to where I grabbed a box of cider in my free hand. If I had slipped and that bottle of scotch had left my hand as I fell the Hindoo would have caught it before it hit the floor. That is how close I get watched in the liquor store even though I have never, in more than three decades as a loyal customer, ripped off a fucking government liquor store for so much as one of those little airline bottles. I do not even drink the free shit the pretty girls push on me every time I walk in.

Brilliant whisky. Unlike any other. Tasting notes on the box the bottle came in say chocolate, cherry and Turkish delight. Whatever. Odd colour, similar to that of raspberry cider when poured over ice, as I prefer my whisky. It is the American in me.

What does not kill us, gets us wasted.

Which is why I prefer overproof scotch to overproof speedballs.

Hate and Hockey

2011-11-18T01:04:00.000-03:00

People who know me at all well know I hate the fucking Canucks. Used to be I just did not like them very much. Now I hate the Canucks like our motherfucking Prime Minister hates people who disagree, even a little, with him. It is not the team so much, a hockey team is a hockey team, it is their fucking fans. They have no class, a bad history and they cannot hold their booze. Three time losers is what the Canucks are, if you are counting.

So when I see people these days the first thing they say is, "You must be happy," because the Canucks are stinking like that old dump on the north side of the Port Mann used to in the summer.

I am.

Leadership

2011-11-17T02:02:00.001-03:00

Much has been made of the leadershipless nature of the Occupy Movement. I do not believe the Occupy Movement is leadershipless for a second but let's leave that aside. Let's address what people think, rather than what is.

Here in Dope City the apparent lack of leadership within the Movement has created a certain amount of chaos. I assume that this was the intent of the hidden leadership of the Movement here in Dope City. Chaos is often, if not always, an antecedent of change. People rightly fear chaos but most any old order has to be scrambled before a new order takes its place. There are many present day examples of this including, possibly, our own, where the chaos may have only just begun.

I prefer leaders. There have been many, many notable Anarchist leaders in the two centuries since modern Anarchism began to challenge fucking governments and their gestapo bullshit. Anarchy is order. Generally speaking the main thing we would like to see changed about leaders is the ability to get them the fuck out of there should we prefer a new leader to take over or if we are otherwise displeased with their performance. Easy, low threshold recall. Every democratic institution should have this as a feature. Why should a couple hundred thousand people have to get killed to recall a leader like what happened in Libya? And I doubt they will Constutionally institute easy recall of politicians to prevent similar mass killing in the future. Motherfucking politicians all think they are God and no one takes out God but the Devil.

I still do not see why Gordon Campbell resigned. Under our present system, if I was at 9% in the polls, I would go around giving everybody the finger the way Trudeau used to. Trudeau knew shit. "Fuck you, man. You're the assholes that voted for me or didn't vote for me. I don't really give a shit one way or the other."

Under the present system, if I were 9% in the polls, I would name the new Port Mann Bridge the Mr. Beer N. Hockey Bridge and I would tell everybody to forget their fastbus lanes, those lanes are reserved for drunk drivers and rush delivies of politicians to Trash Creek.

Get the point? Most all the world's present systems are disorderly as fuck. We need new leaders, new leaders we can easily replace, because sooner or later they will fuck up, that is human nature, and we will want to bring in someone else until they fuck up too. Waiting four or five years to plant your size 13 on their ass is too long.

Look at Christy Clark as an example. When she first got elected leader everybody thought she was great. A few months later everybody wants to throw her and her fucking Canuck uniforms in the back of one of those highway trucks that bring our crap up to Trash Creek.

The people are not always right but we recognize when we have voted in the wrong motherfucker pretty quick, we just do not have the mechanisms in place to kick them out fast enough. And I will tell you something else, Christy Clark's eyes tell me she wants to start giving everybody the finger real soon. So far she is only fingering you with her eyes.

Old Neighbour In the Pub

2011-11-15T22:49:00.001-03:00

Saw an old neighbour in the pub after work. We have less to talk about now that we are not neighbours.

"I see your hockey team still sucks ass," he said.

"I see yours still wants its own fucking country," I shot back.

"How's the forest industry going," he asked.

"If it went any slower it would be the perfect mirror for our fucked up world," I answered. "How's retirement?"

"The cheques keep being deposited in my account." He grinned his old fucking government grin when he said that. The grin that makes people go out and buy restricted firearms.

"You buying then?" I asked. He knows I know he is a cheap fucking Frenchman. Motherfuckers expect Ottawa to buy them everything. He also knows I drink like an off duty cop.

"I guess I could buy us a few as long as you lay off the frog shit."

"You're on."

Whether I like them or not, I miss all my old neighbours when they are gone.

He was a city worker before he retired. He knows everybody coming up behind him is going to get fucked over good when they reach their golden age. He pretends to give a shit, which is more than most retired people do.

Thanks For Reading My Shit

2011-11-14T22:53:00.003-03:00

The letters I wrote to Gregor Robertson and the organizing committee of Occupy Vancouver and then published here were the most read pieces I have written here in the six year existence of my one man electronic press. I must thank Gazz over at the Pacific Gazetteer for suggesting, sight unseen, that I publish them. I try and lay off writing about politics, figure there are better informed people who write better about the subject than I. Plus, I wrote off the world as completely fucking hopeless over twenty years ago and have seen damn little in the last couple decades to convince me otherwise.

Here is the thing though - I am an Anarchist political scientist so having anybody other than me reading what I write, even if they do not agree with me, maybe especially if they do not agree with me, makes me feel pretty fucking good. You do not even have to guess how many job offers this Anarchist has received over the years to put his political knowledge to use. That's right - zero. I have even applied for the job I figure I am best suited to - Ombudsman of British Columbia. You would know you have a fucking government with guts the day after they hire me to be the Ombudsman. I even told the government that would not hire me that I know more about buds than anybody.

I told Sonja about the numbers generated by the shit I have written associated with the Occupation. She said, "That's the crap you know about. All that political bullshit. You should write more of it. That's you."

Even though Sonja is right about everything I have my reservations. There is something appealing about writing political shit about a world that is completely fucking hopeless. Imagine old Beer with a seat on the Christy Clark campaign bus, if you will. Makes me belly laugh just thinking about it. But who in their right mind would pay for my seat on the bus, nevermind pay my bar bill for six weeks of hard campaigning?

Think I will just stick with what I am doing now: writing about what ever the fuck I want to, whenever the fuck I want to. No boss to please, no boss to piss off.

Today that is country music. One of the reasons Sonja would like to sabotage my brakes before I go to work most mornings. I have to listen to country music when she is at work or asleep in the car. Today, when I got home from work, I put on one of the cassettes I bought at a thrift store recently. Put out by the Franklin Mint Record Society, it is a Country Music Foundation Official Archive Collection, further titled The Greatest Country Music Recordings of All Time. Gram Parsons, EmmyLou Harris, the Byrds, the Burrito Brothers, Jerry Jeff Walker, Linda Ronstadt, the Band, Jesse Winchester, Michael Nesmith (!), Pure Prairie League, on and fucking on. This is the shit I never thought I would listen to after I heard "Smoke On the Water" first time.

Makes me wonder if there is some other golden shit the Franklin Mint has put out that I missed out on.

You think Anarchists are dangerous? They are not half as dangerous as these long hair dope smoking motherfuckers.

Banks vs Credit Unions

2011-11-14T01:47:00.002-03:00

Many of you have heard about the recent move by many consumers of financial services from fucking banks to credit unions. What many of you may not know is that credit unions are the creation of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, a damn fine Anarchist from France a couple centuries back. He called them People's Banks. They were meant to be run with just enough of a profit for them to keep spruce and hardy. Today's credit unions have strayed from that principle some but they remain the ethical choice when it comes to a place to do your financial business with.

Fuck the banks.

Was a time I used banks. Pulled out of my last one about 30 years ago because it looked like they were supporters of Racist South Africa. Motherfuckers. The rest of them are no fucking better.

Like I said, fuck the banks.

Down Home Hammer

2011-11-13T23:16:00.002-03:00

With the Lions not playing until next Sunday I thought today might be a good day for gambling. First things first though. Got some pasta e fagioli sauce going in the slow cooker. Put the bread maker to work on a loaf of multi-grain. The grain I add to my multi-grain recipe that you may not is hemp seeds.

Must be the George Harrison in me that likes hemp seeds in everything.

Once that and a couple other small chores were taken care of I then took the Hammer for a walk in the cool mountain air. She was wondering when I was going to get around to that this long weekend. It was only three degrees, which she likes, but the temperature got me thinking about whether or not, and how often, the Chaos we call snow will invade this warmest corner of Canada. I could not make up my mind. The November 11th snows that were the first of note for the southern interior is about normal and therefore of no help to the weatherman all of us Canadians think we are.

I got all that done because the first race at Loverdale Raceway is now at 1:45 which is handy for us horse racing fans who have a life besides our all important gambling. Lost my confident touch with the game in late summer and have been staying away from the track trying to get it back. When winning turns to losing I return to my books which generally remind me of where it is I have gone wrong.

Hit a couple in the 5-1 range and a couple favourites leaving me with enough of the crowd's cash to make an optimistic bet on Down Home Hammer in the final race of the day. Put him on top of a couple exotic bets as well. About time I bet that horse on one of his winning days. Made a bit of a scene as the horses crossed the finish line in my preferred order. I do not crush as many races as I should but I sure crushed that motherfucker.

Knoxville Anarchist Crucible

2011-11-13T03:02:00.000-03:00

Feels like late November. But it is not. I am just wishing it was. I cannot put my finger on it but everything seems slightly off kilter. Maybe it is just the changing of the clocks last weekend that has everybody messed up.

Sonja and I got to the pub at 12:30 today. Parking lot was empty. Maybe half a dozen other people inside. I did not even notice what, if any, music was being played as we ate and drank by the gas fire. By 1:30, when we were deciding whether to have a Bailey's and coffee with a piece of winter cake, the place had filled up like it was Saturday night.

The Hammer still wants to eat an hour earlier than we are ready to feed her. This daylight savings time bullshit has got to stop.

She is on her winter schedule besides that. She likes me to take her for a walk in the evening just before she hits the sack. The black motherfucking drizzle of November was ready for us as we left the door.

As we walked I cleared the clogged catch basins of their leaves. That is what us Anarchists do when we are walking around our neighbourhoods in the dark this time of year, in case you were wondering. We know better than to wait for the government 's street sweeper to make its rounds.

When we reached the park my dog seemed especially alert, stopping here and there, stretching her big muzzle into the breeze. Something was out there somewhere.

At home Sonja gave the Hammer her toweling off. By the time I had poured myself a whisky my dog was curled up with her monkey in the dark.

Sonja is watching a movie on the fucking women's network. Jennifer Anniston. I bet you would like to fuck her just as much as me. Is that not why we watch movies on tv? Just me? Ok.

I have sat myself down in my office. The whisky is at hand. Got WDVX-FM playing on the radio from Knoxville, Tennessee. DJ Wayne Bledsoe is playing a song by David Bowie called "Pretty Pink Rose." Two lines catch my ear.

She's the poor man's gold, she's the Anarchist crucible

Flying in the face of the despot cannibal

Those good old boys from Tennessee ain't what they used to be.

Hot Chocolate and Bailey's

2011-11-12T19:30:00.001-03:00

After I had put my order in to get new snowies put on my car I waited outside the Canadian Tire for Sonja to pick me up and take me to the pub for lunch. As I awaited her arrival I stood near a couple girls selling heart stopping doughnuts in aid of their Jesus approved mission in Haiti.

How many people do you think suggested the girls, and they were girls, should have a thermos full of hot chocolate and Bailey's to keep them warm? (Not Bailey's and coffee. Everybody reckoned the girls were too young for coffee but old enough for Bailey's.) I counted six in ten minutes as I listened and watched people walk into the store with nothing and come out with snow shovels gripped in their now ready for winter hands.

Ready, that is, if they had already picked up a bottle or two of Bailey's.

I Only Want To Be With You

2011-11-12T15:02:00.005-03:00

I am glad there are still some old establishments left in this world, this world so preoccupied with tearing down old shit, replacing it with new. Sonja and I got breakfast yesterday in Sliverville's Hold Up Cafe. It is a busy place but with my old knowledge of the neighbourhood I knew we would get a table without waiting at eleven, just as the Remembrance ceremonies were getting underway around the corner outside the Legion.

The old place has warm memories for both Sonja and I. There is something about having been in a place with steamy windows that sticks to you like resin. I associate the place with hot meals eaten before a night's work and hangovers only a plate of fried perogies and onions can settle; Sonja associates the place with devilled egg sandwiches eaten with her tea swilling girlfriends after a night of dancing at nearby Humper's Cabaret or rollerskating a few blocks away at the even noisier roller rink.

We were just about to be served our breakfast when a whole team of slo-pitch players came in the door to join a couple of their team mates already holding a table for them beside us. Never seen a slo-pitch team away from the diamond anywhere besides a pub before. So right away I knew they must be Martians. Sent here to gather intelligence from where they expected to get the most fierce opposition when they finally make their spaceman move to take over our planet.

We gave up our table to the fuckers and sat down a couple tables away from where I could observe them. Never appease fascism, always appease Martians, that is the Anarchist way.

First thing they wanted to know is could they have Bailey's in their coffee. These Martians had done their homework before they arrived on the dirty boulevard the Hold Up sits on the edge of. There are few things more typical of a human to ask for than booze in their coffee for breakfast, especially a late breakfast. Too bad for them, the Hold Up only has beer, no Bailey's.

I thought they would order beer but I guess Martians must be allergic to barley or something. "Just coffees for everyone then," their coach said as one of the women on the team went out to her car and came quickly back in with a bottle of Bailey's she topped up everyone's coffee with under the fresh wiped formica table top. Once the Bailey's started to do its work they all started talking at once really loud about the arcane rules of baseball. Only the inhabitants of a planet gifted with superior intelligence to our's could understand that shit.

Later that day, still warmed by breakfast and our quality time in an old favourite place, Sonja and I sat near the fire and watched the Canucks on tv. Between periods I found the lyrics to an old song Sonja loves and I sang them to her.

I don't know what it is

That makes me love you so

I only know

I never want to let you go

Cause you started something

Can't you see

That ever since we met

You've had a hold on me

It happens to be true

I only want to be with you

It doesn't matter

Where you go or what you do

I want to spend

Each moment of the day with you

Look what has happened

With just one kiss

I never knew that

I could be in love like this

It's crazy but it's true

I only want to be with you

You stopped, you smiled at me

And asked me if I cared to dance
I fell into your open arms

I didn't stand a chance

Now listen honey

I just want to be

Beside you everywhere

As long as we're together

Honey I don't care

Cause you started something

Can't you see

That ever since we met

You've had a hold on me

No matter what you do

I only want to be with you