twistedhip

frogtoggle.com! Do it!!

2006-08-02T02:10:32Z

i can't do it no mores! i can't keep updating two different blog sites.

Go to frogtoggle.com to read twistedhip, which is awesome. Stay here if you wanna read Suzy's blog about lip gloss.

- the Author

... until i saw hobo porn.

2006-04-27T03:13:03Z

i was having a conversation with a friend at work the other day, and it was interesting enough to record for posterity. Or, at least, for Internet posterity, which means as long as the electricity lasts. One fine day we’ll be banging rocks together to make fire, eating beans from a can with a switchblade that we plundered from the rubble of the local supermarket, and my seemingly indellible online journal will be no more, but the poetry of Yeats, being available in hard copy, will persist. i ask you, where’s the justice in that?

This and a wackload of other skipped posts are waiting to be read by YOU at frogtoggle.com!

Ad infinitum

2006-03-15T03:54:44Z

It amuses me to imagine the person who defaced this billboard. It was probably a woman. i don't know why i think that. But it was probably a 50-year-old former schoolteacher who took the early retirement package and now roams the streets of Toronto with her felt-tipped marker looking for spelling and grammar to correct because there are no children left in her life and no eggs left in her ovaries, and her husband left her two weeks ago because she constantly corrected him whenever he dangled his participle.

It's sad, really. At first i thought this picture was amusing, but no. It's actually quite sad. Mostly because of the part about the teacher.

Read it HERE at frogtoggle.com!

Joseph and the Amazing All-White DreamCast

2006-03-13T13:01:35Z

i managed to drum up a little controversy with my last few entries, and i hope i don’t generate too much serious discussion with this entry about rassism in all its ugly forms. Silly discussion, as usual, is welcome.

i’ve told you all about how i’m not exactly racist, but i fear that i am, and that fear makes me more race-paranoid than anything. i’ve got sort of a racism Spidey-sense now, having moved from a distant, white suburb of Toronto to the city itself, where skin colours range from deep brown to even deeper brown. There are a few white people kicking around too. (Note: for the purposes of this discussion, by “black people” i mean people with very dark brown skin, and by “white people” i mean people with very light brown skin. Rest assured that now matter how you slice it, it’s aaall brown, baby.)

Read it HERE at frogtoggle.com!

A clear present danger

2006-03-13T12:57:59Z

It’s been a rough week for the mysterious caged present i discovered on my first day back to work. It seems that while i was able to resist its unseemly allure, other Torontonians succumbed to their passion and curiosity.

i returned to find the bars bent open and the prezzie ... investigated in a most uncivilized manner.

Read it HERE at frogtoggle.com!

You're fired

2006-03-13T12:55:21Z

i’m sure many of you have had the experience of coming home and there’s a firetruck at or near where you live, and for a moment you think “oh man - did i leave the toaster oven on or something?” There’s usually no cause for “alarm,” so to speak - Mrs. Herpleschmidtz next door left lint in the dryer vent or something.

But today i came home to this:

Read it HERE at frogtoggle.com!

The Ballad of Chad Tautbottom Pt 2

2006-03-09T03:02:18Z

My opinions on homosexuality, being Bible-based and formed by my unique experiences growing up a 90’s teenager in the community theatre of a Toronto suburb, are not popular. i would hate to harp on a sin that gets altogether too much coverage by angry, intolerant Christians (of which you may just consider me one). But when i started journalling, i only wanted to write down some entertaining stories from my life that people might enjoy reading … and friends, this one fits the bill.

Read it HERE at frogtoggle.com!

Eat More Amato's

2006-03-09T03:01:20Z

Read it HERE at frogtoggle.com!

On my first day back to work ...

2006-03-09T03:00:41Z

Here, then, are a few of the stranger things i saw on my way to work this morning:

Read it HERE at frogtoggle.com!

Babies and Hades

2006-02-28T04:42:05Z

i once worked in a college library, and doing so gave me the utmost respect for anyone who isn’t a librarian.

Read it HERE at frogtoggle.com!

Over-the-shoulder boulder breakdown

2006-02-23T03:12:22Z

i was told well ahead of time that having a baby was going to be difficult. i was amply warned that things were going to change. But when people said that, they’d cite things like having to wake up all through the night, and having to change diapers all the time. Changing diapers is fine. Waking up is no problem.

Breastfeeding … is a BITCH.

Read it HERE at frogtoggle.com!

The stork rips my wife a new one

2006-02-21T04:31:05Z

My daughter was born on Friday night at 11:15 PM. Her mom laboured for 20 hours at home with no medication. She is 6 pounds and 14 ounces. She is the softest thing i have ever touched.

Read it HERE at frogtoggle.com!

i married grandma

2006-02-16T04:38:14Z

i remember quite clearly when i was a kid that when i grew up, my house was gonna be a certain way.

i’d go to other people’s houses and they’d have stuff there that i really didn’t like, and i composed a little mental checklist and promised myself that when it was my place, i wouldn’t have any of that.

Macrame owls are a great example.

Read it HERE at frogtoggle.com!

Reverend Whitey

2006-02-15T03:35:55Z

Read it HERE at frogtoggle.com!

Drawing shapes on backs.

2006-02-08T18:21:58Z

My wife and i drew shapes on each other's backs in bed last night.

It was something i suggested, and i posed it as a sort of a guessing game, when really i just wanted her to rub my back. Sometimes that'll fly, and sometimes it won't. By introducing formalized rules to the backrubbing, i gave it purpose, and thus made it more of an appealing, productive exercise than just frivolous touching. And my wife fell for it.

The first thing she drew on my back was very easy to guess. It went like this:

"It's a flower!" i said. And i was right. We weren't keeping track of points, but if we were, that would have been one for me, and i'd have been winning. But really, i had tricked my wife into rubbing my back, so i was already winning. She didn't suspect a thing.

The second thing she drew on my back was difficult. It went like this:

i thought that it was a very stylized giraffe, and i was kind of impressed that my wife had cooked up such an interesting interpretation. But i was wrong. It was, in fact, a banana.

Truth be told, i did not think that my wife would draw such a bendy-legged giraffe, unless she had meant to draw a very nervous giraffe, perhaps one that was due to give a speech in front of a lot of other giraffes ... but of course, that's a very difficult thing to guess when someone is drawing shapes on your back. Best to keep things simple.

By this point, my wife was running out of ideas. The very next thing she drew went like this in my mind:

i remember that the bottom part confused me. i thought it was our baby, due to be born in the next couple of weeks, but i was worried because her legs felt all wiggly. It was worse than the giraffe. i thought that maybe my wife was depicting our baby with polio, but again, that's a very difficult thing for someone to guess when you're drawing shapes on his back. At any rate, i guessed "Baby?"

"No - it's not our baby," she said. i was kind of relieved.

She rubbed my back with the flat of her hand, which meant she was erasing or starting over. Then she said she was drawing a close-up of the bottom part, the part that had confused me. It was like this:

Ah! It was all clear. "Kermit the frog!" i said. It was a cartoon frog, she said - not necessarily Kermit. i feel it necessary to point out that Kermit the Frog is not a cartoon, but a Muppet, so my guess was technically wrong. But as i mentioned, i was already winning.

By now, i felt that my wife was beginning to get tired of my game, and i really wanted to keep it up. But it had taken her a solid three minutes to cook up her frog idea, and i could tell she was drifting off. So i suggested she roll her big pregnant body over and let me draw shapes on her back.

Now i know i'm not a terrible artist, so it must mean that my wife was either borderline comatose, or a very very bad guesser. This is what i drew:

i thought that the square heel part was a dead giveaway, but she didn't know what i was up to. Nervous, i rubbed the image away with my hand and drew something different in the same series:

By now, i thought that i was just handing her the point. i mean, there was no mistaking that bow. But still, she couldn't guess it. Nearly at a loss, i tried another object in the series:

This one was vague enough on its own, but putting the three of them together should have painted a crystal-clear picture, or so i thought. But she had no idea. In a last-ditch effort, i drew an alternate third picture:

Nope. She had no idea. i had failed. "It's footwear," i said. "A pump, a sneaker, and a boot - both laced and unlaced." "OH," she said. She must've been half asleep, but i felt a little paranoid because i had done alright with her shapes. i needed to find out if it was her or me.

Here's what i drew next:

"A broom?" Not a bad guess! But close enough that i thought i could draw a few more things, again in the same series, and she'd figure it all out in no time.

i forget what she guessed this time ... maybe a shovel, or a noose. Fair guesses, but i thought that putting them together with the first shape made it all clear. Not so. So i drew again:

Obvious!! There was no screwing this one up. i thought. But my wife, through mumbled sleepy words, couldn't figure it out. i was devastated.

"It's cutlery!! A fork, a knife, and a spoon!" i drew the knife again, just to prove my point:

No good. By this point, my wife was also starting to feel kind of bad. That's not a good thing, because drawing shapes on backs is supposed to be a very pleasant experience, and guessing things right just adds to it. i felt that i was denying my wife the ability to guess things right, and therefore robbing her of one entire half of the pleasant experience. i was determined that she guess the next drawing.

i pulled out all the stops for my final shape. Thinking back to her choices, specifically the flower and the cartoon frog, i decided to choose something alive and flower or nature-related to hopefully jog something in her brain that would conjure a correct guess. She was rapidly drifting off, so i knew i only had a few shots at it.

"Ok," i said, "Maybe you're getting confused? This here is the top of my drawing." i drew a line with my finger across her right side. "And this" (another line) "is the bottom. Maybe that'll help?" She was lying on her left side, and her back was hard to get to because of pillows and blankets. That's why i clearly outlined the territory and shape-drawing boundaries before i began. People don't enjoy playing games, especially shape-drawing games, when they don't know the rules.

With these ground rules firmly in place, i began to draw:

With bated breath, i awaited her guess.

"Um .... "

"Um ... i don't .... i don't know."

What?? It was impossible. How could she not know?? Anxious, i erased the drawing and told her i was making a more simplified version:

"Um .... i .... i can't figure it out. i'm sorry. Can i go to sleep now?"

"No!! You have to guess one of my shapes!" It wasn't exactly fair, but i really wanted her to get one. My shape-drawing reputation was at stake. i needed to feel vindicated. It was ... such an empty feeling, not having your shapes guessed.

"Let me do the close-up version again!"

And so i did:

"Do you know what it is?"

"... um ... "

" ... come on .... think ... "

" ... it's ... Is it something alive?"

"Yes! Yes, it is! You know what it is!! Now tell me!"

"Um ... Can you maybe ... can you ... "

"What - you want the simplified version again?"

"Um ... yeah."

There i went:

"Uh ... Can you uh ... Which side is the top again?"

i felt like i was watching a Jeopardy contestant in the Special Olympics.

"This side." i drew the boundaries again.

"Oh! Ok. That's where i'm getting confused. Can you rotate it so that my neck is at the top?"

"Sure!"

"Um ... "

This was it.

"It's a .... "

She was about to guess.

"What you call one of those ..."

She had it ... she had it ...

"A kangaroo?"

A kangaroo. Four wings and two antennae make a kangaroo. Clearly.

i was finished drawing shapes on backs. Game over. Sure, loving touches are nice and all, but a kangaroo??" Was it me? i felt somehow inadequate, like i had failed to live up to some masculine ideal touted by cologne companies and Ford truck ads. Built tought. Suave and sophisticated. Draws good shapes on backs.

We fell asleep, and i vowed that the next time we drew shapes on backs, things would be different. i might practice on the cats. But truthfully, they can't guess anything that's not tuna, liver or chicken. And even then it takes them three tries.

Anyway, did i ever mention how awesome marriage is? ;)

Our water breaks.

2006-02-08T02:31:51Z

Being that my wife is now 8 1/2 months pregnant, i've had to get used to the fact that i could be nudged, phoned, hollared at, or downright wrenched out of a comfy sleep in which i've been dreaming about sexy princesses to hear that her water has broken. And so it happened yesterday at four in the morning. In a manner of speaking.

The sexy princesses and i were about to go windsurfing when i heard my wife yelling at the top of her lungs that water was streaming out of our bathroom ceiling fan. Immediately, i dispatched the Plumbing Kangaroo, a good and faithful friend of mine in DreamLand, to go help her out. The trouble, of course, was that the water streaming out of our bathroom ceiling fan was, to the surprise of everyone (not least of all the sexy princesses) a real world thing, and so the Plumbing Kangaroo's expertise was useless.

i jerked out of bed like a staked vampire and sped into the bathroom where, indeed, water was literally pouring out of our ceiling fan, as though a tap had been turned on and that's how people were actually meant to fill the tub. My wife was doing a good deal of fussing, stressing, and crying, which left me to the practical task of catching the water in something - in this case, some blue mixing bowls. The little bowl was to catch the narrow, dribbly stream. The big bowl was to catch the inch-wide jet of soapy yellow water.

We live in a condo, and are no strangers to leaks. Last year, in a different building, we had to replace our entire tub area because the guy below us was getting a bubbly ceiling from our dripping pipes. In this building, it was all paid back and then some. The lady above us was on her fourth leak by the time a laundry pipe burst and the soapy yellow water came streaming in through the bathroom ceiling fan. In another corner of the combo, the inside of the air duct sounded like a thunderstorm.

After my wife made a frantic call to the front desk, on of our concierges showed up, soaked from head to toe, after doing battle with the burst pipe upstairs. He left us with a very large blue recycling bin and went back up to the front lines. The next time we saw him, it looked like he had been swimming with his clothes on.

All this, as you can imagine, is unsteady ground when you have a wife who is 8 1/2 months pregnant. i have heard that stress can bring on a baby. My wife was experiencing not stress, really, but more of a shrieking hysteria. She was freaking out so bad i thought she was gonna have twins.

Most of her anxiety came from the fact that our midwives were due to pay us a home visit that day. i didn't know what dirty hippie midwives got up to at a home visit; they'd probably eat our food and play Joan Baez songs on the guitar for a few hours, and then we'd probably get all uncomfortable and ask them to leave. For her part, my wife thought that they were coming to proclaim judgment on our living space to tell us that we could or could not have a baby there ... and if there was any place you could not have a baby, even by hippie standars, it was one where all the carpet had been peeled away from the walls and siz large blue industrial dryers were blowing day and night to remove the water from our flooded condo, as by that time they were.

The midwives came a few hours later - an hour and a half behind schedule, predictably. (You just can't rely on hippies - or midwives, for that matter ... and when you combine the two, look out.) They didn't bring a guitar, but they did mention that while my wife was labouring, they might help themselves to some toast (honest to goodness). My wife asked if there were any other snacks they enjoyed and i thought "granola - duh," but they sorta said that whatever we left lying around was fine.

They were wide-eyed at the state of our place, buried as we were in unopoened baby toys and boxes upon boxes of hand-me-downs from some very generous friends. They tried to pretend that it was an okay place to have a baby, but i could tell they were just being kind. We just have to hope that baby doesn't fight her way out within the next few days, before the big drying machines are sent back and we can push all the furniture against the walls.

Add to all this the fact that i'm duking it out with the common cold and you have a recipe for baby-unreadiness ... we couldn't be any less ready if the floor was covered in broken glass and we had invited the McBabyEater family over for dinner. (They're Scottish.) i hope that we're able to put the place back together soon, but i've always said that babies happen when God wants them to happen.

i just hope that in this case, God cuts us some slack.

Lawless birth.

2006-02-03T03:42:43Z

My wife and i have spent the past three Saturdays and one hundred seventy five bucks on birthing classes.

This was time better spent of slaying the hordes of evil monks in a fantasy video game of my choosing, since Lord knows i'm going to have my fill of baby when the day finally does come. But it takes two to make a marriage work: my wife makes all the plans, and i agree to them. By this delicate and nuanced arrangement, we remain wed.

i have to tell you that birthing class was good for a few laughs, once i stopped thinking about all the great LEGO playsets one hundred seventy five bucks could buy. It was good for laughs because when you are an illustrator, and you're not very good at what you do, you get to draw posters for birthing class.

The instructor was trying to explain to us how the various stages of labour work, while using a visual aid poster. In the centre column, you can see the intensity graph and timing of the contractions. On the far right column, you'll notice a badly-drawn cartoon face of Xena: Warrior Princess. For the purposes of this demonstration, Xena is having a baby.

Note that in the opening volley of labour, Xena has an inquisitive look on her face, as though she's about to begin the exciting new journey that is childbirth. It's a look that says "Oh! Oh, gee - what's this? It ... it feels as though my uterus is contracting! Wow! That hurts a whole damn lot, but ... but it means i'll be having my baby soon!" (note: labour typically lasts between 3 and 53 hours. That's the kind of knowledge that one hundred seventy five bucks buys, baby. And that's how i choose to waste that knowledge, sarcastically in a seldom-read blog.)

Fine. Dandy even. Let's move on to phase two, as Xena's contractions get closer together.

You may notice Xena's plucky optimism has all but faded away, and she's figuring "Oh. When they said it would hurt, THIS is what they meant. This horrible pain in my gut that feels like my insides are imploding. THAT kind of pain. i uh ... i see. How many hours has it been? Heh heh. Hoo."

Chart #3 is my personal favourite. This is what, in class, we called the "angry orange spiky" phase. We asked if there was anything we could do to minimize this phase. There is not.

Those of you who are most astute will notice that Xena's hair has grown more and more dishevelled across the different charts. In the angry orange spiky phase, Xena looks downright pissed to be having her baby. She looks like she wants to bust out some of that crazy She-Ra sword action on someone. Actually, it looks as though her wrath is directed straight at the actual graph of the labour contractions. She wants to annihilate the conceptual depiction of the labour pain she's enduring. That's very heady. Perhaps too heady for this type of journal. Let's move on.

In the final phases of labour, someone has slipped Xena four or five pieces of Juicy Fruit chewing gum, most likely because she requested it, and who's gonna say no to that face? i think that's what's going on here. That, or Xena has gained a final fifteen pounds of fat on her cheeks in these, the final moments of her pregnancy. At any rate, the good news is that there's no bloody way this chick ain't having her baby. If i were her baby, i'd be clawing my way out of her womb just to escape her terrible ire. Xena's gonna split some heads, friends. You'd be in a hurry to get born too.

Of all the charts and diagrams we studied in birthing class, (the same birthing class that robbed me of three Saturdays and one hundred seventy five bucks, by the bye), Xena: Warrior Princess's chart was the most entertaining, if not the most informative. Here's a quick survey of the others:

Mommy's Innards With Baby vs. Without

The point here, i guess, was to discover how much Mommy's organs got squished by virtue of the fact that she's playing host to an eight pound parasite in her body cavity. In an effort to make the study more demeaning, we were asked to point out various organs on the picture. The teacher gave us a list. i pointed to the anus.

Sorry, Mom - Your Baby's Effed

This one had a series of illustrations depicting babies who are deciding to shimmy down the birth canal in increasingly creative ways, including spine first, umbilical cord first, one foot hanging out of the chute, double baby fakie. (That last one nets you 50 000 points in Tony Hawk's Pro Foetus.)

A Pict... Oh GOD - Is That an Episiotomy??

There w... you know? i dunno. i have no good business discussing this chart. It was not pleasant. i am doing my best to unlearn, but i fear the image is branded into my psyche. Let's just say that there's a reason your mom told you never to run with scissors, and it's because you might injure yourself like that.

It's becoming clear that the baby is as anxious to come out as we are to get her out. i've not spent much time around pregnant ladies in my life, and one thing that's come as a surprise is just how ... real it is that a lady's belly holds a baby. Earlier on, the midwife said that i'd be able to see the baby kicking from across the room. i thought she was just teasing. No - it's true. It's like seeing something unholy writhing around in a gellatinous pus-filled alien egg sac in a Cronenberg movie, but in a good way.

At any rate, whether she decides to pull a double baby fakie or not, i'll be quite pleased to meet her. And it won't be long!

The High Fashion of Hammer Pants

2006-02-01T01:31:52Z

When i was a kid, i was not a snappy dresser.

That shortcoming has followed me into my adulthood when now, i consider "dressing up" to be when i wear the T-shirt with the intact neckline. It doesn't really matter a whole lot now - i may be overlooked for promotions at work, and viewed with disdain - even disgust - by my fellow man, but at least they keep quiet about it. Things are different when you're a kid.

Kids are real quick to latch on to the lies peddled by brand managers. If a commercial says that a certain brand is good, and it's perceived as cool, and the manufacturer's suggested retail price is sufficiently high - when these three factors come together, it enables the cool kids to stay cool, and everyone else to be ridiculed by the cool kids.

i remember when i was in junior high, shoes were very important. Anything made by Nike was okay. Kids read each other's shoe labels fanatically, and if you had Nikes, you were okay. Otherwise, no good. One time, my mom bought me some shoes to replace my old, faded and delapidated Nike Air sneakers. The new shoes were much more comfortable, but they weren't fashionable. i had a man on the inside, a cool friend who stuck up for me and made sure i didn't draw too much heat from the cool faction, and he advised me to switch back to the Nikes.

A few years later, my mom bought me a pair of sneakers that said "Winner" on them. That was a bad scene. This cool kid came up to me, read my shoe label, and said "So ... i hear you're a winner." i tried to shrug it off.

"Are you a winner, guy? Do you win? Do those shoes help you win at things?"

"No, i'm not a 'winner,'" i mumbled. i wanted to throw those shoes in the garbage. But you know - it was hard to sell a single mom on the virtues of Reebok Pumps, those shoes with the big rubber basketball on the tongue that you pressed to inflate the soles with air to get better performance on the basketball court. i thought Pumps were kind of stupid, but if i had them, i doubt i'd be harassed for being a winner.

Or so i thought. The fact was that you just couldn't win with the cool kids. When i was in school, there were a lot of fun California-themed labels that were all about surf and sand and palm trees and stuff. One of the labels was called Ocean Pacific. i liked Ocean Pacific clothes because i really liked beaches and water. If Southern Ontario had a viable beach, i'd have been there. (As it stands, we have an enormous body of tepid water called Lake Ontario which, because i rowed a dragonboat in it for one summer, will probably give me prostate cancer.)

So i'd wear this Ocean Pacific stuff, and on more than one occasion, the cool kids would talk to each other while i was in earshot (a very passive-aggressive way to bully someone) and say "The thing i don't get is why nerds wear all of these sports labels when they're not into sports! It doesn't make sense! Ha ha ha! Point point laugh! i'm going to get divorced when i'm thirty and die from an expensive cocaine habit!"

You couldn't win. If you wore "nerd clothes" - i dunno ... button-down plaid shirts (pre-grunge era) and Dockers (pre-grunge era) and trucker hats (pre-ironic dotcom trucker hat era), they'd make fun of you for being such a geek. It upset the cool kids that geeks had access to the same clothes they did - namely Ocean Pacific sportswear - so they had to get you somehow.

i often think, and i know i'm not the only one - that i wish that i knew what i know now. These same kids felt really threatened in gym class when we started lifting weights. The teacher had us rotating in a line-up at the bench press, and every time he cycled through the entire class, he'd up the weight on the bar. Eventually, all the weak kids would be weeded out, leaving the strongest kids still "in the game" trying to best each other at pressing heavier and heavier bars. Keep in mind here that gym teachers themselves, despite their ancient 70's hairstyles and gross ponchy manflab, were once part of the cool crowd, so it's no surprise that the way they structure their gym classes is perfectly devised to humiliate the nerdy kids and glorify The Hated.

The point here is that, while far from being at the top of my class, i lasted far longer in the weight competition than any of the cool kids expected me to. i wore Ocean Pacific clothes, and they attacked me because i'm not athletic. But then what happened when i actually showed myself to be somewhat athletic? Cool kids do not handle a threat like this very well.

One of them came up to me and said "Are you strong, guy?" Exact same tone. Might've been the same kid, now that i think about it.

Of course, he had nothing. It was a total stab in the dark, because he felt threatened. Was i strong? How is anyone supposed to answer that? And when it's said in a belittling way by a bullying cool kid who's put you down so many times in the past, your likely response, as mine was, is to say "Me? Uh. Naw. i dunno. No. i mean - no, i guess not." And then slump away.

i know that i could have lifted a lot more weight that day. Because you know what? i am strong. i don't have very big muscles, and i can't lift nearly as much as someone who trains regularly, but more than a few times in my adult life, someone has raised their eyebrows at me and said "Well, there's no question about it - you're strong." My squash instructor, my personal trainer, my dragonboating coach ... and that scrawny little kid in junior high who, if he had faced me now, would be feeling the full wrath of my Winners in his ass.

i mention all of this because on my walk to work this morning, i came up behind this junior high kid wearing a really unfortunate napsack:

Sorry if you're squinting to see it - it's kind of hard to take candid shots of children while walking closely behind them through public parks without getting thrown in totally jail. What you're seeing is a kid wearing a napsack that says "Fun Satchel" on it. Fun Satchel comes with a picture of a monkey. Additionally, the monkey enjoys soccer.

Cool kids will be mean when you don't conform to their concept of what's cool to wear. We've established that. There's not a whole lot you can do; if they want to pick on you, they'll pick on you. But there is some onus on the nerdy kid to keep from directly asking to be mercilessly ridiculed. So take my advice, kids - the next time Mom drags you down to Chinatown and wants to save a buck by buying you the napsack that says Fun Satchel on it, just say HELL no.

Fecal Point

2006-01-12T04:07:43Z

Forget what i said about my imagination opening a portal to my anus. i have it on good authority from a friend at work that i'm (reasonably) normal in that respect. He says that it's perfectly natural for a lot of cardio work and bouncing around to provoke what doctors and scientists call your body's instinctive poo reflex - so much so, he says, that incontinent patients are encouraged to buy a tiny trampoline to encourage their bowels to move. Faithful readers, can i get a seconder on that one? He may be full of baloney, but come to think of it, i swear i've seen these little trampolines kicking around. The work friend says you'll see them at old folks' homes, where pooing is a priority.

(note: if i ever open up a retirement villa, that'll be our slogan. "Shady Winter Overhill: Where pooing is priority." The billboards will have a close-up on the wrinkled face of a happy, wizened old gentleman who obviously just went. Hooray for him! That tiny trampoline's a keeper.)

i thought for sure these details were interesting enough to write in a journal entry, and i'd thought it through to this point, but then what? Should i just end it abruptly and sign off right there? Don't you people deserve - nay, demand - a beautifully segued anecdote about my childhood? And preferably poo?

The one interesting tale i could cook up begins with the startling discovery that at age 8, i had made a green poo. i'm not talking about a had-a-lot-of-salad, leafy-greens-poking-out kind of poo. This is not some generally pale brown, squint-and-it-looks-kind-of-forest-greeny kind of poo. i am talking about an unapologetic, no-holds-barred kryptonite green leafy lime Weed Man logo nobody's-favourite-colour kind of shockingly green green green log that came from my body by way of my butt. It was green. And i was kind of concerned.

Shrugging off the embarrassment and discomfort i felt at disclosing this most intimate part of my daily routine, for fear i might be dying or alien possessed, i told my mom about it. It happened a few times in a row before we made it in to see the doctor, whose only guess was that it was some kind of parasite. Or, as he put it, a worm.

Friends, as an eight year old, you'd much rather be possessed by aliens.

i can't recall which came first - the Irish log or my fear of parasites thanks to a certain missionary - but i do clearly remember listening to a Baptist missionary talk about the problems in the African country where she was stationed. During one part of her horrific, unappealing pitch (which was somehow intended to get us Sunday School kids all excited about doing missions in Africa), she said that a girl - probably around our age (naturally) - visited her with a ghastly look on her face and said "Miss ... i vomited a worm." And the missionary said this with a creepily authentic Kenyan accent. Then she went on to explain that the girl had been host to a tapeworm that had grown so large in her belly that the end of it had come spilling out her mouth.

This story was indelibly imprinted on my impressionable brain, and now i bequeath it to you.

i came out of there knowing two things: i did NOT want to do the Lord's work in Africa, and i most certainly did not want to be host to a worm.

The doctor gave me worm-killing pills to kill the worm that he thought had holed up in my belly and had been eating the brown out of my poo. Soon after that, i stopped having green poos.

Some years later, i had green poos again. What on Earth had i done to somehow invite more parasites into my body? Other kids my age didn't have worms, and i did all the same crazy kid stuff they did. i ate sticks, i rolled around in dirt, and i ate gum off the ground as long as it was still partially delicious. What had i done wrong?

When we went to the doctor, i told him i had a worm again. This was a different doctor, and he had a different diagnosis: beats me. He thought the worm idea was far fetched, and he advised me to go home and let it work itself out. And it did. A mystery.

Flash forward fifteen years later, and i have a green poo. But if there's one thing that had changed since i was a kid, it was that i didn't have to put up with doctors' bullcrap guesswork any more. i had the Internet.

Word.

So a quick search of "green poo" brought me to a very useful but upsetting forum where people sat around all day talking about their poo. It had pictures. i tried not to look. Except at the really interesting ones.

i found a message a guy had posted about ordering packets of Purplesaurus Rex, a sugary Kool-Aid brand drink of his youth, from eBay. After drinking a huge pile of the stuff, he started having green poos. And guess what? i used to drink Purplesaurus Rex all the time!! It was such a relief to have that traumatizing episode cleared up. But that didn't explain why i had just launched a green poo in my twenties, with no Purplesaurus Rex in sight.

The green poo culprit: Purplesaurus Rex. i'm especially glad that they clarified it has "artificial flavour," in that it's merely simulated to taste like a pink polka-dotted dinosaur. Phew! Thanks for clearing that up, Kool-Aid! Oh YEAH!

So i thought back to what i had eaten recently: a chicken sandwich ... a glass of chocolate milk ... thirty some-odd Rocket Pop frozen novelty treats ... a carrot ...

...

Wait a minute ... ! Could it be that the same anti-browning agent found in Purplesaurus Rex of yore could also be a key ingredient in Rocket Pops? And could eating thirty or so frozen space-themed treats really be unhealthy for me? It's true, i have been known to enjoy an inappropriate and ungodly amount of popsicles on occasion, but could these innocent, these patriotic red white and blue popsicles be the source of my other-worldly bumfruits?

i think so, yeah.

Virginia volleyball cutie Jessica Church enjoys green poo culprit number two, a tasty Rocket Pop, after a sweaty all-girl volleyball practice with her volleyball-playing girlfriends who play volleyball.

Be careful, Jessie! You're liable to get green poo from that thing!

(note: i've never met Jessica Church from Virginia, but her picture came up when i searched for "Rocket Pop." One day, she'll do a vanity search for her name and will be mortified to learn she's part of my blog. But that's okay, Jessica ... i'll send LOTS of business your way once i'm famous and i have readers who need someone to ... volleyball for them.)

i do my best to include a poignant moral take-home in each of my stories. So what life lesson can you take from this particular tale? Well, my astoundingly pregnant wife has sworn off any foods that contain food dyes Red 60 and Yellow 7 because they can harm the foetus and cause birth defects. Yet i guess we feel that since we're not foetuses, it's okay for us to ingest that stuff at rate of thirty Rocket Pops in a single sitting? Anyone care to guess why our day-to-day living is so rife with people contracting and dying of cancer?

And can anyone please explain why my colon is so itchy?

Gifted.

2006-01-05T02:55:08Z

Having a 7 months' pregnant wife is torture. You've got this big, exciting belly on her that ripples and twitches with the promise of something really good inside, but you have to wait a LOOOONG time before you get it. It's kind of like Xtreme Christmas. Except more agonizing.

At least at Christmastime, you can peek at your presents. Technicially, we did have a six month's ultrasound, but that's not like peeking at the finished thing ... that's more like peeking at your present while it's being built in the factory. You don't get a good sense of things at all. And you're not allowed to open a different, less significant present the night before your wife goes into labour either, like some people do on Christmas Eve. It's not like "well honey, i'm going into labour tomorrow. Here- have a Chinese baby." *

It's also more difficult because when the time finally does come, you can't go all Professional Wrestling on it and tear it open. There's a lot of delicate pushing and squeezing and yelling that comes first, sometimes for hours and hours, before you finally get what's inside. It's like your present's wrapped in an impenetrable hardened metal shell, and you can claw at it with your fingers all you want - that's not the way to get it out.

Add to that the danger of opening your present, and the very real possibility that after a whole nine months of bullcrap, you still might not get a working thing out of the deal, and it becomes almost too much to bear. But i hear it's worth it.

In thinking about all of the presents i could have received over Christmas, i compared my upcoming baby present to Robosapien, a mechanical, programmable toy ape who dances. i weighed the pros and cons of each of them. On the one hand, a baby is very expensive and she takes a lot longer to arrive than just a quick trip to the RC Depot to buy Robosapien. But on the other hand, if i raise her well, my daughter will have SO many more programmable dance moves than Robosapien. And Robosapien can't talk or ride a bike either. So, despite the price tag and time commitment, i think a baby girl will provide far more lasting enjoyment than Robosapien. A friend of mine put it beautifully: she's the ultimate tamagotchi.

True dat, yo.

* this comment, i realize, may be misconstrued as being incredibly racist, but all i'm trying to say here is that caucasian babies are generally more precious and valuable that Chinese babies. That's all.

Bad Wrap

2005-12-29T19:55:08Z

The new year brings a spate of awards shows over in Hollywood, but i'm sure that if the movie cameras were pointed at the living rooms of North Americans everywhere on Christmas morning, there'd be some serious hardware to hand out.

(Incidentally, "hardware" is a word you can use instead of "trophy" or "award" when you want to sound absolutely awesome.)

To lift a phrase from Stephen Leacock: when i open presents, i get rattled. Emotions are high, tensions are tense, and your hands tremble while you tear through that wrapping paper while you try hard not to cut an egg nog fart. It's uncomfortable. The person who handed you the gift invariably wears an excited expression that requires you - nay, defies you to enjoy the gift. They wear this expression whether the gift is a harem of 72 cuddly virgin princesses or sports socks from the local athletics store. It's unfair. In a perfect world, their expression should be proportionate to the actual quality of the gift. But it's not so.

No. Instead, you find yourself gnawing through layers of ribbon and tape, clawing past bows and tags and repeating pictures of snowmen and santas, wondering what could possibly be so great as to strike the gift-giver that moony-eyed sublime stupor. Finally, there it is - it's shoes. And in that moment, before God and men, you conjure up a swell of elation and clapping a squealy gasp of relief and joy that, by some unwritten and needless contract, must either match or completely outdo the quivering, pregnant expectation on the face of the gift-giver.

i've found myself in this situation too many times. "Oh boy - Birkenstocks!!" i shouted at the top of my lungs, wondering why on Earth my then-girlfriend Nutjob had decided to buy me a pair of yuppie sandals. "Um ... the gift is inside the shoebox" she said cattily. Awkward. i mumbled something dismissive and set about opening the shoebox. She drove the Embarrassment Knife deeper. "Birkenstocks cost, like, over a hundred dollars, you know?" "Uh-huh." "So ... so WHY would i buy you a pair of Birkenstocks?" (frantically opening the box) "Oh, look - it's a CD and a bag of your hair. Hooray! Let's just forget it, ok?"

This year, i decided to do away with the whole torrid charade and dole out honest reactions to my benefactors, while keeping my own expectations low as they opened gifts from me. If i opened a gift and it sucked, a simple "thank you" and a frown would do, with perhaps a sarcastic eye-rolling or a playful punch in the groin. No need to be a damned phony about it. If the gift sucks, you know it. You know when you give sucky gifts. i gave a couple of sucky gifts this year. So what? Big deal. The pain and tingling in your crotch wears off, and everyone has a happy Christmas.

With that out of the way, though, the other problem i faced was with people who said "ok, now don't go crazy this Christmas, because i'm not going crazy with your gifts this year." Ok. Fine. In retrospect, the correct response to that is to go crazy. Buy a big assload of presents for that person, because they'll screw you. Both my mother and my wife told me not to "go crazy," so i didn't. i found a few nice gifts that they would enjoy, wrapped them up, and arranged them pleasantly beneath the tree. They, meanwhile, rented a backhoe to dig me out of the avalanche of obscenely numerous gifts totalling hundreds of millions of dollars and hours spent shopping until i wept with shame. Why would you do that to someone? If you say you're not going to "go crazy," you should keep your word and "stay sane." It's a lot better than "Don't go crazy - oh, and by the way ... MERRY CHRISTMAS, CHEAPASS!" It's not a nice feeling. i can't even touch my presents now. They are ruined for me. The very texture of them reminds me of my humanity and brokenness.

Once again, i've managed to turn the sport of the upper class, world-wealthy elite into something ugly and hateful. i believe this makes it a series. Look forward to my future journal entries disparaging the joys of having a well-paying job and sitting down to a dinner table full of food.

Listen up, developing nations: embrace your abject poverty! You never had it so good!

twistedhip @ 2005-12-25T10:20:00

2005-12-25T15:30:58Z

Merry Christmas, everyone!

Let Heaven and nature swing

2005-12-22T23:12:56Z

My keyboard is broken, and it's very traumatizing. How am i expected to dispense my chewy nougats of truth to you people when my most important communication tool is on the fritz?

Here's what i have for you today: it's a fine point, but there's a very ridiculous Christmas song lyric out there that i feel the need to draw your attention to.

The Little Drummer Boy, while not dogmatically accurate, is a nice little story of a poor boy who visits the baby Jesus and has nothing material to offer him, but instead plays his "best for him" on his drum, and the baby Jesus smiles. In other words, the baby Jesus likes to rock out like the rest of us. This is all fine and pleasant, and i'm willing to forgive the fact that in most recordings of the song, the titular musician sounds as though he's playing a marching drill on a bugle corps snare, but whatever.

Mary nodded
Pa rum pum pum pum
The ox and lamb kept time
Pa rum pum pum pum
I played my drum for Him
Pa rum pum pum
I played my best for Him
Pa rum pum pum pum

We, as a society, should rather take issue with the lyric "the ox and lamb kept time." Has anyone else noticed this? It baffles me. i can't imagine what the author meant. It's not a very old song, so i've ruled out the possibility that there's some olde English action happening in those words that implies the animals in the stable held the moment at the present time, making everyone feel the weight of the moment at the present time. No - there's none of that happening here. "Keeping time," to me, means regulating the beat. Does that - could that - mean that the ox and lamb were somehow .. .what? Tapping their hooves? Nodding their heads to the beat so the little drummer boy could pa rum pa pum pum out his tune at 120 beats per minute? How does that make any sense? And .. argh! It frustrates me to no end.

Forget for a moment the fact that the ox and lamb are animals. Why is anyone but the drummer keeping time? He's the damned drummer. If anyone in the band is supposed to be keeping time, it's the guy hitting things with sticks. i.e. the ox would be on sax and the lamb would be - i dunno - playing the vibraphone or something, and the little drummer boy would be keeping them all on the beat. Problem number one, lyricist.

Now forget forgetting the fact that the ox and lamb are animals. They're animals. How is the lamb supposed to hold vibraphone mallets anyway? Why ..wh ... ? It eats at me, people. It really does. i mean, i know baby Jesus is magical and all ... is the lyricist implying that the baby Jesus somehow imbued the ox and lamb with the spiritual gift of rhythym so they could keep the little drummer boy from screwing up during his big moment? Is that what's being required of us, as a listening audience, to believe?

Or is the lyricist a trouble-maker? Now we're getting down to it. People listen to lyrcis so seldom that i don't find it far-fetched that a lyricist could slip in a completely retarded line like "the ox and lamb did the Charleston", as long as it was sung slowly and beautifully like all the other lyrics. Have we been played this whole time? i don't know exactly how long the song's been out, but it's certainly been around longer than i have. How long has this lyric slipped under the radar? Are the ox and lamb hiding out in other beautiful Christmas songs windsurfing or something and no one's noticed that either?

Silent night,
Holy night
All is calm
all is bright.
Round yon virgin
mother and child
holy infant so tender and mild
sleep in heavenly peace
sleep in heavenly peace.

Silent night,
Holy night,
ox and lamb
put money on a cock fight

IS THIS REALLY HAPPENING??? Dear readers, i encourage you to scour your Charlotte Church Christmas albums and search for these insidious subliminal messages featuring the ox and the lamb engaging in all manner of unnatural exploits. It's simply not Christian.

In my brief search for the Little Drummer Boy lyrics, i came across another blogger beating me to the punch with a similar exposé . In my creative defense, the idea struck me independantly long before i stumbled across her entry. It just goes to show that mischievous Christmas song lyricists can't pull the hoof-tapping wool over all our eyes.

Or, if we're feeling Christmassy and charitable, we can downgrade our assessment of this lyric from "treasonous" to "dumb".

While i was walking through the bookstore looking for Christmas presents, i saw a book out of the corner of my eye in the Food and Lifestyle section: "The Entertaining Bible." i thought Good. Someone's finally decided to spice it up a bit.

Back up the chimney, fatty

2005-12-19T13:20:15Z

i'll admit it - i didn't know what a moblog was, so i looked it up on Wikipedia. i followed that up by reading the entry for "blog," which was full of history and self-importance and an almost desperate bid to paint blogging in a vital light. All of the famous blogs the entry linked to were political. It made me compare the lofty, high-brow ambitions of other bloggers with my own low motives - to write a bunch of funny and/or interesting crap that a lot of people want to read on a regular basis. Does that make me a bad person?

i'm sure it doesn't, but you might change your mind when i tell you about all the evil junk i have planned for my unborn daughter. For starters, and to be as inciteful as possible, no Santa Claus.

You heard me. No Santa. And it's for exactly the same reason you've heard before, a perfectly-argued reason that you nonetheless cram into your brain's "reject" heap while you carry on humming "Here Comes Santa Claus." There goes Santa Claus - that's what i say. And don't let the door hit his fat ass on the way out, either.

i don't - i just don't understand how grown-ups think Santa Claus is a good idea. It's basically a gigantic lie that you tell your kids until they're twelve, at which point, when the lie starts spiralling out of control, you tell other lies to keep up the charade, and then wonder why your daughter left home and got her girlbits pierced and is moving in with a stoner named Lief.

The first batch of lies is fun for you and for the child. There's a jolly fat man who lives at the North Pole employing elves to make toys from your child's wish list which he delivers down the chimney Christmas Eve with the help of a baker's dozen of magical flying reindeer, in exchange for a plate of cookies and a glass of milk. Fine. We're all familiar with the mythology. You're having fun, your child is impossibly excited - it's all fine and dandy.

But then, as a child, the inevitable suspicions start to creep in. The ones we're all familiar with have ready-made answer/lies:

Q: How can Santa be in Sears and the Five Points Mall at the same time?
A: Those men are just Santa's helpers who ferry all the children's wishes to the real Claus up North.

Q: How does Santa cover the entire world in one night?
A: Time zones and/or magic.

Then we get into the specialized cover-ups:

Q: How does Santa get the presents inside if we don't have a chimney?
A: He uh ... goes through the sliding glass door.

Q: Mommy, can we make sure the sliding glass door is unlocked tonight?
A: (my mom was absolutely terrified of the house being broken into) Uh .. NO!! Santa can open it with his uh ... his maaaagic.

Q: Why does Santa have your handwriting?
A: Buh ...

Q: If Santa's elves are toymakers, then how come the toys i ask for on my list are already on store shelves? Do they make all the toys for the whole world all year? How come the stop-motion Rankin/Bass Christmas specials show the elves banging together wooden toys like boats and cars when i want a Transformer? Do the elves have a tool and die shop? i thought Hasbro made Transformers? What about the TV show? Do the elves make that too?
A: Uh ... well ... (sweat) ... the toys that the elves can't make, like Transformers, just go on your list and then Santa goes out and buys them for you ...

Q: Oh - so Santa buys them for me? What the Hell happened to the elf-infested toy shop? Are you just throwing that one out the window? How come we're spending Christmas in Florida this year and Santa still knows where to find me?
A: He um ... he sees you when you're sleeping?

Q: That's just creepy. Grandpa's beachfront condo doesn't have a sliding glass door, and it's on the 4th floor.
A: He uh ... the reindeer ... they ... uh ... and grappling hooks ...

Q: But ...
A:</i>Maaaagical</i> grappling hooks ...

Q: The Tooth Fairy didn't come last night!
A: Ack! Um ... wait downstairs and i'm sure she'll visit sometime this morning ... (true story - this happened to me)

Q: But they're mammals, and mammals give birth to live young ...
A: But the Easter Bunny is maaagical, and the chocolate eggs it lays ...

Q: How does that serve any practical procreational purpose? And why do i want to eat chocolate that's squeezed out of a rabbit's a...
A: Woho! Let's turn that teevee on and find some cartoons, shall we?

Q: Why doesn't Santa ever remember to bring batteries?? i mean, it says right on the box ...
A: He's a forgetful, fat old man! Give him a break! A billion households in one night, and ...

Q: For someone all-knowing and all-seeing, a small detail like batteries ...
A: We'll go out to the convenience store and get you some batteries right now! Crimony!

Q: We don't have any milk or cookies in the house! What the heck are we supposed to leave for Santa?
A: Uh ... lemmie see ... we have a can of tomato soup and uh ... some Purplesaurus Rex Kool-Aid ...

Q: But ...
A: ... and some Bovril cubes for the reindeer ...

It's not only the first time in your life you have hardcore confirmation that your parents are liars - you also find out that your parents are bad liars. Suddenly, the "fun" of Santa Claus that you thought would bring so muh joy to your child is just bringing anger and confusion. Way to go, mom and dad.

It just drags on into such unacceptably lingering, lying degrees where you have movies like Miracles on 34th Street where they basically put it right out there that Santa Claus is a big phony, but the movie ends with "if you truly believe ... " Give it up already!! The Santa Claus myth is obnoxious, plain and simple. Let's face it - kids want presents, and whether they're given by a fat man through the non-existant chimney via his magical troupe of flying reindeer or dad in his underpants having forgotten to wrap the presents until the last possible second, when all is said and done, that child unnwraps a brand new Lite Brite or Skeletor's Snake Mountain and all is well with the world, flagrant adult lies notwithstanding.

It's insidious. i think it's insidious. It plays into adults' smug ability to put one over on younger, lesser human beings who are still trying to figure the world out. How can they do that with false information? How can you preach telling the truth when peppered throughout the year you have visits from phony baloney elves and fairies who take their teeth for money and hide chocolates in their sofa cushions? i'm not even trying to play this up for laughs or anything - it really, truly makes me angry.

Add to that the challenge of getting a kid to believe some really far-fetched stuff, like the virgin birth and the Holy Spirit and the man eaten by a fish and the man walking on water, stuff that i believe is absolutely true but often a hard pill to swallow, and i don't think you're satisfying anyone by confusing it with mythology about a fat man bearing presents. When you're a very little kid, Santa Claus is far more real than baby Jesus, because you can clearly see how Santa Claus immediately affects your physical and emotional worlds. You get the Kenner Star Wars AT/ST Imperial Walker, and the absolute joy that the Kenner Star Wars AT/ST Imperial Walker brings. The lasting joy that Jesus brings is far more difficult to grasp like that; once you do experience it, it lasts far longer than a Kenner Star Wars AT/ST Imperial Walker. That thing's left leg snaps right off whenever Zoltron attempts a daring rescue of the Popples from Castle Greyskull. At any rate, the last thing a burgeoning Christian kid needs is mythology that parents swear up and down is true until he's 12 years old, and then suddenly the jig is up. But Jesus? Uh, yeah. That's totally ligit.

So for those of you worried that my non-Santa'd child will go blabbing your precious Santa secret to all the other kids at school, fear not. Your lie is safe with me. i'll do what some Jewish parents do and explain that while the whole thing is completely bunk, some children really do believe and we shouldn't ruin that for them. We can sit down and enjoy the Santa mythology through the magic of teevee stop-motion, we can sing songs about him and colour pictures detailing his rich and storied past, just like we'd colour pictures of unicorns and sing songs about Puff the Magic Dragon. But i'll be damned if i'm going to set myself up as that little girl's authority on life, on the pursuit of truth and knowledge, while lying to her face about what happens on Christmas morning.

And if she leaves home with her girlbits pierced to move in with a stoner named Lief anyway, i'll probably blame video games.

The Ballad of Buck Ruckman

2005-12-14T23:55:12Z

When i ran for Student Council in high school i created a fake opponent and ran against him. And lost.

i mention it because i have elections on the brain. i just submitted my resumé to run for a position on the condominium Board of Directors in my building, and a lot of it reeks of high school Student Council, except that everyone on the condo Board is 90 years old. They're also very cranky, and they have a way of turning anything cool and hip into something safe and dull. i believe that's what ruined the last building i lived in, so i'm making sure to run for a position this time so that my building doesn't become sucky. For example, flames shooting out of the front doors to greet visitors? Cool! Take THAT, old ladies. And anyway, how are we supposed to compete in the Toronto condo market without them?

So back before high school, before it all began, i sat in my bedroom and dreamed about what it all could be - about what it all could be. What could i make of myself in high school? i think psychologists have a term for it, but it escapes me now. Anyway, my eventual answer was that i wanted to be a high school SUPERSTAR. Honestly. i wanted to be the guy that everyone in school knew, for better or for worse. i wanted to be remembered. i wanted to be, at least on a small 1300-person scale, famous. Whether i was to achieve that goal via the powers of Good or Evil i had not yet decided; in the end, i think, it was a combination of both. The power of Goovil.

When i hit the halfway mark in high school, i saw my chance to take a stab at small-time fame. The kids in Student Council were fairly well-known amongst the students who gave a damn; after all, they got to make speeches at an election assembly and put up posters. But there was one portfolio in particular that whetted my appetite and eventually drove me into a fame-hungry furor: the Minister of Communications.

This was the guy who had to advertise the Spirit Minister's crummy Spring sock hop every year by putting up posters. The posters were usually boring - they said stuff like "there is a dance on Friday and everyone should come. $2 at the door." Every once in a while, this person would make an announcement to the entire school over the intercom. Again, it would be something like "hey um ... *cough* ... hey everyone. There's a Student Council car wash this Friday afternoon. One dollar a wash. Uh ... thanks, bye."

What was the deal? Had these people never watched teevee?? Had they never listened to radio shock jocks? Were they not inundated with the same slick, clever and utlimately morally debasing advertising as i was? Were was the glitz? Where was the sleaze? Where was the ultimately soulless but undeniably appealing flash n' pizzaz?? Clearly, this was a student council position i could sink my teeth into. And friends, i tore it a new one.

Much like today, no one had ever heard of TwistedHip at this point. i was up against this typically Student Councilly over-achieving girl in my grade who had a lot of friends in over-achieving places, the kind who made cute little buttons and got good grades in English class. i was a bit of a rogue entry, putting up posters advertising the fact that my last name rhymed with "Satan" (and, incidentally, "Dayton"), for whatever reason. She ran the clean campaign, while i ran the sort of subersive, counter-cultural promotion best suited to an indie album release or a banned Looney Tunes festival. Either way, no one really cared - the only people who took notice of Student Council elections were the people running for Student Council.

The campaign speeches sealed the victory for me. i had had a little more microphone practice than my opponent, and while i made a humble, self-deprecating appeal for cooler posters and better promotions for events, she screeched an obnoxious morality tale into the squawk box about how miscommunicating during the big baseball game will lose you the World Series. i remember the climax of her speech vividly, because my friends and i imitated her shrieky, pandering librarian drawl for weeks afterward. "You looooose the wuuuuuuurld seeeeeries." (hands raised in a defeated shrug).

So the votes were tallied, and i won. She had lost the World Series.

It was kind of a depressing year for me when i finally did take over the position; i spent all my time taping up promotional posters for the dances only to find them ripped off the walls the next day. i was ready to throw in the towel, because obviously the student body didn't appreciate the effort that went into my charmingly crude dance doodles. But about a week later, i began catching glimpses of my posters as people rushed around between classes. They were taped up in students' lockers. i asked a few people why, and they said that they'd become collectors' items, and that everyone was trying to grab one of each. Flattered and encouraged, i continued in the role.

Every morning, i was on the announcements. Every morning. If teevee had taught me one thing, it was that Southern California high schools had kids doing teevee shows on the closed-circuit teevee network airing in all the classrooms. Our school had no such thing, but we DID have that little microphone that could beam my voice into all the rooms, so by cracky i got on that thing like an itchy-thighed cowboy on a stubbly horse. The announcements were dull, to be sure - usually stuff like "grade 10 jazz choir meets today after school in Mrs. Holfetner's room," but i injected as much blue humour and entertainment value into them as i possibly could. i was faced with expulsion numerous times for increasingly ridiculous reasons, but i'll save that for another entry. You came to hear about Buck Ruckman.

By the time the next year's elections rolled around, i was famous. And for good reason. Students around the place generally enjoyed what i was doing, and there was no reason to nominate anyone else, so i ran uncontested. i would have been acclaimed to the position, but that was no fun. Much of the magic in my first shot at bat was the thrill of defeating my shrill A+ opponent. i trolled around the school trying to drum up some competition - sort of a set 'em up, knock 'em down strategy - but no one would bite. It looked like i was gonna miss out on all the fun.

That's when i got the idea to invent an opponent. Someone way better than me. Someone so charismatic and talented that i could never hope do defeat him in an election, but it would be fun trying. i tried to dream up the most suave, glib used car-salesmanny name i could muster. And that name was "Buck Ruckman."

Buck was older than me. He had straight brown hair in a part, the way i always wished my hair looked, kinda like that plastic molded news anchor gameshow host Ken doll hair. He had gleaming white teeth and dressed very nicely. When he talked to you, you could tell he was very slick and not quite on the level, but he was so damned charming and good-looking it would hardly matter.

i didn't make any campaign posters for myself, but i did make some for Buck. Actually, i made a LOT of posters for Buck. They were pure white and empty, except fo the big black bolded word "BUCK" in the dead centre of the page. My rule-bending campaign staff stole the teachers' photocopier password and ran off tens of thousands of copies - reams and reams of paper. We wallpapered the school with them after hours using the room keys they'd collected through their ties to the A/V club. When i say "wallpapered," i'm not using some hyperbolic descriptor indicating that we put up a lot of posters; i'm saying we wallpapered the school with these things, taping hundreds of posters together in gigantic sheets and plastering them across entire walls. The tree-hugging hippie liberal teachers cried foul. Grade nine kids trembled in fear. For that campaign, we felt like gods.

It was very important that Buck Ruckman appeared very real to the people in the school. Because i would be acclaimed to the position, i wasn't allowed to be on the ballot or to participate in any of the campaign events, but i weaseled my way into a few of them - most notably the campaign debates, wherein i angrily lambasted my opponent for plastering the school with posters, but lacking the decency to attend the debate. The students who cared enough to waste a lunch hour on those debates got pretty riled up about Buck Ruckman, and i had them using his name as a cuss word by 3rd period.

When the votes were finally tallied, no one wrote my name for Minister of Comminications. The usual suspects - Bart Simpson and the anarchy symbol - topped the charts. That's okay, because i wasn't even on the ballot anyway. But what i find amusing is that Buck Ruckman - sometimes even Buck Ruckman with the anarchy symbol worked into his name - got about fifty votes. Clearly, i had done my job. i had communicated, and the people responded.

When jocks reminisce about their high school glory days, they recount the tales of when they threw that great pass in the semi-final football game or when they slept with what's-her-name from the glee club. But me, i remember the time i convinced fifty people to vote for my phony opponent in an election i had already won.

They say high school is a microcosm for the life you'll lead as an adult. i don't know if that's true or not; by the time the five years had ended, every single person in that building knew my name, for better or for worse. i had absolutely achieved high school superstardom. Flash forward 10 years later, and i'm still not famous. i don't know if i ever will be if i'm stuck in a dead-end job selling sugar cereals and crappy toys to kids who don't need or want them. i wonder lately whether i shouldn't sit down in my bedroom and dream about what it all could be - what could i make of myself in my thirties? What is the real-world equivalent to my success with those posters, or my Buck Ruckman scam?

Whatever it is, i'm sure some day i'll look back on it and laugh and laugh and laugh. From prison.