We Should See Other Blogs

Watched Gone in Sixty Seconds with Gus and Nick. The actress — I forget her name — is there for eyecandy only: she serves no purpose in the film. Annoying. On the QEW Toronto I saw a VW Golf sitting ass-forward on the shoulder, front crunched in like it had a piano dropped on it. A couple cop cars, lights on. The whole highway stopped to look, but at that point it was light traffic; the delay was momentary. Later, on the 403 Toronto, I was nearly rear-ended, a combination of three complete idiots doing 100 kph across all three lanes and an even more complete idiot behind me going at least 160, a person who didn’t seem to understand that driving a Sunfire that fast requires twitch-like reflexes. The lady that served me at Tim Hortons was far too cheerful for that time of night; why do they get the B-52 and I just get regular coffee? Operating a franchise restaurant must be at least as dangerous as driving a car. Listened to Mae’s Embers and Envelopes, the Pipettes’ selftitled disc, The Postal Service, Bright Eyes’ I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning, and just a very little Death Cab for Cutie. Just revewed this paragraph. It’s very long.

I’m contemplating making up one of those viral surveys that goes around the blogosphere every once in a while. Of course, I haven’t the faintest hope of it actually being viral: you know me, with the hard questions and long answers.

J.D. at the end of season 4 (I think). Interesting situation he finds himself in.

Have you ever taken a moment to celebrate the women in your life? You should. So should I. They’re wonderful… well, not quite people, you know, but… something. Creatures. Okay, you may hit me with your rolling pins for saying that. Digging myself out of a hole doen’t work? What?

1. The Vikings believed that the Northern lights were caused by Daniel Josph Xhan as he rode out to collect warriors slain in battle!
2. Daniel Josph Xhan can run sixty-five kilometres an hour – that’s really fast!
3. The international dialling code for Daniel Josph Xhan is 672!
4. Daniel Josph Xhan is 984 feet tall!
5. Daniel Josph Xhan has four noses.
6. There are now more than 4000 satellites orbiting Daniel Josph Xhan.
7. Daniel Josph Xhan can give birth ten days after being born, and is born pregnant.
8. During World War II, Americans tried to train Daniel Josph Xhan to drop bombs!
9. You would have to dig through four thousand kilometres of Daniel Josph Xhan to reach the earth’s core.
10. The first American zoo was built in 1794, and contained only Daniel Josph Xhan!

Courtesy of The Surrealist

I was looking over my sister’s shoulder this morning as she was being productive in the work place (reading blogs) and I made a connection that’s been lingering in my mind for a very long time. Bill Vandoodwaard – if I spelled that wrong, you may feel free to apologise for that last name – bears a striking resemblance to Thom Yorke. Pictoral evidence:

vs

You see what I’m saying here.

…to the airport! See ya later, suckers, and have a great weekend!

Really. Do it. I will answer them, here. Not all of them, of course. But the ones I can, I will. You can email questions, humourous, absurd, surreal, sublime, serious, or probing to naked.ashamed@gmail.com. Ask as many as you like. I will endeavour answer.

I mean, come on, there must be things you people wonder about me. I know I constantly parse other people’s lives trying to categorise things; maybe you have the same feeling reading these bits of writing.

Please, if you can, include “Question Period” in the subject of your email, and don’t ask questions in the comments: I probably won’t answer anything there.

Note: all questions will, of course, be posted anonymously. No personal or identifying information will be released on this blog, whether you care about such things or not. Also, the wicket is open till Friday.

I feel like a small child again: I’m playing Eye Spy. Gosh, Beav, this is fun!

So my body decided to go ahead and wake up at 3:00am and juuuuuust not go back to sleep again! In the meantime I’ve done what any sensible housewife would do: cleaned up the house, run some laundry, and watched some crazy internet videos. Like this one.

Having sucked down a Red Bull and come close to finishing a very large cup of joe, I now realise that listening to Steve Reich‘s Music for 18 Musicians is probably not the best way to make the world feel less trippy: I feel as if I’m going to be smelling colours and seeing sounds and second now. Silibant, wasn’t that?

There isn’t one Manfred. Well, technically, that’s not true, as there is one concrete Manfred from which the Manfred theory is derived. But that’s neither here nor there as that Manfred is as much an abstraction of the ideal Manfred as any other Manfred.

You see, there exists the concept of Manfred (whether that concept is embodied on a spritual plane by some celestial Manfred who does incorporate the concept fully or not is irrelevant as that is something fundamentally unknowable) in the minds of – let’s be honest here – mostly women. The Manfred Ideal then is really an aggregated imaginary Manfred. However, to suggest that simply because Manfred is nothing but an ideal concept he does not exist is completely backwards.

Manfred is embodied – imperfectly – in the many real, solid Manfreds. They are, one might say, a reflection of the ideal Manfred, although none of them fully embody the conceptual Manfred.

This is because everything in this world is fundimentally flawed, so every derivative of Manfred on the physical plane will diverge somehow from the ideal Manfred. They are, one might say, imperfect copies.

However, the concept of Manfred is not marred because of the inaccurate reproductions in this plane. That is to say – Hollywood, for instance, is very good at creating the ideal Manfred, considering that though their works exist in the physical plane, the concepts expressed exist in the spiritual.

Also, Plato, dude, smoke fewer bowls next time, eh?

Tonight, I have been contemplating the matter of manners. Or, more to the point, their usefulness in socially awkward situation. Now there are many more pressing issues one could write about, such as war, poverty, violence, or British dentistry, but I am hard-pressed to remedy any of those in the few scant paragraphs I intend to write, so manners it is. Besides, the British pretty much invented manners as a method of being able to tell eachother how ugly their teeth were without actually having to say the words.

See, since the beginning of civilisation, there have been things you can and cannot say, and things you can and cannot to. Why is this? It’s anyone’s guess. But can you imagine Plato saying to Socrates, “Hey dude, you’ve got a huge booger on the end of your nose,” and Socrates just taking that one on the chin? Of course not. Which is why Socrates killed himself either by drinking hemlock or by too closely viewing a picture of Paris Hilton brought from the future by a vengeful college student, sick of the Socratic Method. Historical account vary, but either way he died peacefully or burst into flame. You see, manners hadn’t even been invented yet! Nowadays we don’t have Roman soldiers walking around in short leather skirts, nailing people to crosses and occupying the known world for just this reason. Manners. Or in the words of Steve Balmer, “MANNERS MANNERS MANNERS MANNERS!” (Best performed whilst jumping around like a monkey, sweating copiously.)

In fact, it would take a good thousand years of barbarian rituals and people beating eachother senseless with sticks until the gun was invented, and along with the gun, manners. It came down to this: in the old days, one could say, “Your wife is a cow!” The only repercussion would be a beating with sticks, and let’s be honest, the British have never been known for having very large sticks. So there wasn’t really anything to fear. You could pretty much say and do what you like as long as you could take a good lashing every once in a while.

Upon the invention of the gun, however, people began to figure out that they could actually KILL eachother over what others said and did. At which point His Majesty, King James, decided something had to be done. The killing had almost gotten out of hand when he invented (in a masterstroke of genius) the words “thee”, “thou”, “shalt not”, and “the dogs bollocks”. So inspired was the king that he decided to have The Holy Bible translated into his new Language of Manners so all British people everywhere could speak to eachother without fear of reprisal. Thus thou hast the King James Bible and thou shalt not read any other lest thou be the dog’s bollocks.

And so it went. Every time an awkward social situation arose, King James would invent another time-consuming ritual, so that should one take offense, one would be so busy trying to fulfill your Manners that by the time all was said and done you’d be too tired to actually lift a gun let alone seek out and kill the man who said, “Behold, thy wife dost appear muchlike unto the bovine species.”

Let me give an example. Were someone to speak the above sentence, before killing him, one would have to,

1. Dance a graceful three-step to a string quartet,
2. Lift a cup of tea to ones lips, pinky finger outstretched,
3. Snip the end off of and light a fine cigar and smoke it without said cigar touching ones teeth,
4. Bow seven times in the direction of Buckingham Palace,
5. And finally kiss a small statue of King James (this was later abandoned during Queen Victoria’s reign, as most men found it distasteful to kiss something that didst appear muchlike unto the bovine species.)

Then, should one of the men say, “Behold, thou art gay for kissing a King!” the whole process would start over, and let’s be honest, string quartets are hardly cheap and they charge by the hour.

So you can see how these rituals, though pointless in themselves, helped save the lives of countless Britons. This bring us to today. You see, there was a whole group of people called “Puritans” who didn’t believe in these rituals, and decided instead to immigrate to America where they could kill themselves and the natives at their own leasure. Thus, America became the world’s bastion of Rude People.

But you don’t have to be that way! I, a good Anglo-Saxon of the Canadian variety, am here to teach you how to use manners in a constructive way. First off, what to say. A normal American, upon seeing a pretty woman, might whistle and say something like, “SAY HONEY HOW BOUT YOU GIVE ME SOME SUGAR!” Of course, this doesn’t often work. Women prize sugar like it’s gold and don’t often just give it out to anyone they meet on the street. But the Briton, ever suave, would instead use more graceful language and never EVER type in all capt. He might say, “Excuse me, miss, but, if it isn’t too much trouble, if you can spare the time, could you slip me some sugar baby?”

What’s the difference? Note how the second sentence uses about twice as many words as the first, and has words that even exceed two syllables. Wow! That’s the mark of true manners. If it takes twice as long to say, if you need a thesaurus, and if it needs interpretation to fully grasp the meaning, you have either been polite, or you are becoming a lawyer.

And – because, if I may intrude upon you another time to read more words in the same vein, should you be interested – I will finish by telling you what to do another time. So stay tuned. If you will.