Did I Say That?

I've had a few people email me with some links that reveal the power of the internet. Here's one.

http://www.jimpoz.com/quotes/speaker.php?speakerid=435

The Sky Is Half Full

What's the difference between a forecast that's partly cloudy, and a forecast that is partly sunny?

Icy Glares

So I'm riding along the Lakeshore bike trail, fresh from Arizonian warmth, hating every minute of the ice and snow and sleet and dogshit. The trail becomes a sheet of ice; I'm forced to walk/ride it until the next intersection so I can get back on the road. There's a good 500 metres of ice-covered trail, with less than a centimetre of "pavement": I push my bike along that by taking my feet out the pedals and push on through the ice flinstones-style. Halfway along this sheer stretch, I see a female jogger, running directly towards me. By directly, it's not just that I mean opposing direction--I mean *right* at me.

I'm precariously trying to keep my bike upright on this centimetre of pavement, (which, with every second, is rapidly decreasing) making sure I don't slip--and she is coming right at me, scowling. Finally, she almost brushes against me, and I'm stupified.

"Are you going to move?" she grunts.
"Are *you* going to move?" I laugh back, incredulously.
"You're supposed to move out of the way!" She glares, running by.

This is where I stop, and look around. It's -5, and we are both running on a trail that is covered in ice. This isn't hyperbole--it really is ice. Complete ice. Ice, ice, ice. Practically unrunnable, definitely unrideable. We've both just landed on this ice by happenstance and I'm sure she will take to the road once she can. I can't believe that she's ready to knock me over in a territorial fight for the millimetre of "trail" that is left.

"I'm supposed to move out of the way?" I say, "Where, I say, where, is the sign that says `Please yield to bitchy slow-moving yuppy joggers on the Lakeshore Sheet Of Ice Trail?' Where is that sign?"

And I look around, gesticulate a bit, shrug my shoulders.

She stops, opens her mouth to say something but instead all she can do is shake her head in a way that mimics Scarlet O'Hara saying, "Well, I nevah!"

"Is there a sign?" I repeat, "Maybe it's covered in ice?"

p.s. I was smiling the whole time through this incident. Please don't arrest me for road rage.

The Dream Machine

I went and saw "The Dream Machine" last night at the Theatre Passe Muraille and was so moved by hearing Allen Ginsberg's "America" read aloud that I just have to repost it here:

America

America I've given you all and now I'm nothing.
America two dollars and twenty-seven cents January 17, 1956.
I can't stand my own mind.
America when will we end the human war?
Go fuck yourself with your atom bomb
I don't feel good don't bother me.
I won't write my poem till I'm in my right mind.
America when will you be angelic?
When will you take off your clothes?
When will you look at yourself through the grave?
When will you be worthy of your million Trotskyites?
America why are your libraries full of tears?
America when will you send your eggs to India?
I'm sick of your insane demands.
When can I go into the supermarket and buy what I need with my good looks?
America after all it is you and I who are perfect not the next world.
Your machinery is too much for me.
You made me want to be a saint.
There must be some other way to settle this argument.
Burroughs is in Tangiers I don't think he'll come back it's sinister.
Are you being sinister or is this some form of practical joke?
I'm trying to come to the point.
I refuse to give up my obsession.
America stop pushing I know what I'm doing.
America the plum blossoms are falling.
I haven't read the newspapers for months, everyday somebody goes on trial
for
murder.
America I feel sentimental about the Wobblies.
America I used to be a communist when I was a kid and I'm not sorry.
I smoke marijuana every chance I get.
I sit in my house for days on end and stare at the roses in the closet.
When I go to Chinatown I get drunk and never get laid.
My mind is made up there's going to be trouble.
You should have seen me reading Marx.
My psychoanalyst thinks I'm perfectly right.
I won't say the Lord's Prayer.
I have mystical visions and cosmic vibrations.
America I still haven't told you what you did to Uncle Max after he came
over
from Russia.
I'm addressing you.
Are you going to let our emotional life be run by Time Magazine?
I'm obsessed by Time Magazine.
I read it every week.
Its cover stares at me every time I slink past the corner candystore.
I read it in the basement of the Berkeley Public Library.
It's always telling me about responsibility. Businessmen are serious. Movie
producers are serious. Everybody's serious but me.
It occurs to me that I am America.
I am talking to myself again.
Asia is rising against me.
I haven't got a chinaman's chance.
I'd better consider my national resources.
My national resources consist of two joints of marijuana millions of
genitals
an unpublishable private literature that goes 1400 miles and hour and
twentyfivethousand mental institutions.
I say nothing about my prisons nor the millions of underpriviliged who live
in
my flowerpots under the light of five hundred suns.
I have abolished the whorehouses of France, Tangiers is the next to go.
My ambition is to be President despite the fact that I'm a Catholic.
America how can I write a holy litany in your silly mood?
I will continue like Henry Ford my strophes are as individual as his
automobiles more so they're all different sexes
America I will sell you strophes $2500 apiece $500 down on your old strophe
America free Tom Mooney
America save the Spanish Loyalists
America Sacco & Vanzetti must not die
America I am the Scottsboro boys.
America when I was seven momma took me to Communist Cell meetings they
sold us garbanzos a handful per ticket a ticket costs a nickel and the
speeches were free everybody was angelic and sentimental about the
workers it was all so sincere you have no idea what a good thing the party
was in 1935 Scott Nearing was a grand old man a real mensch Mother
Bloor made me cry I once saw Israel Amter plain. Everybody must have
been a spy.
America you don're really want to go to war.
America it's them bad Russians.
Them Russians them Russians and them Chinamen. And them Russians.
The Russia wants to eat us alive. The Russia's power mad. She wants to take
our cars from out our garages.
Her wants to grab Chicago. Her needs a Red Reader's Digest. her wants our
auto plants in Siberia. Him big bureaucracy running our fillingstations.
That no good. Ugh. Him makes Indians learn read. Him need big black niggers.
Hah. Her make us all work sixteen hours a day. Help.
America this is quite serious.
America this is the impression I get from looking in the television set.
America is this correct?
I'd better get right down to the job.
It's true I don't want to join the Army or turn lathes in precision parts
factories, I'm nearsighted and psychopathic anyway.
America I'm putting my queer shoulder to the wheel.

A Keep It Simple Stew

Some basic rules that stewed in my head today that I believe can make life simpler and easier.

1. There's only a few people who truly need cellphones or pagers: Hookers, drug dealers, bike couriers and real estate agents.

As for the rest of us--come on--is there anything that important that we need to talk on the phone in the subway, on the bus, in the car or at a restaurant? Throw the phone in the lake. You'll feel better.

2. Stop watching so much TV. Honest. Think of the hours of your life that have been spent in front of the boob tube. Are you any smarter or wiser knowing who killed J.R., or who Rachel chose over Ross and Joey? Does it really matter who Donald Trump picks? In short: sitcoms make us feel fat and ugly and the news makes us feel scared. Turn it off, go sit on a bench in the park and read a book.

3. The only people who should wear matching tracksuits are athletes walking around the Olympic village during the Games. Everyone else, ditch them. You look ridiculous.

4. The only people who should regularly go to tanning salons are strippers. (Or chain smokers who are trying to look "healthier"; the raspy-voiced, wrinkled nicotine addict simply must have a nice golden hue.)

5. If you are one of those people who is always told, "you give crummy directions", it's probably because you don't know how to read a map. Learn which way North and South and West and East are. It's much easier than saying "go left here, and right there."

6. Resist the urge to rage on the road. As long as you don't die, it's not worth trying to educate someone on how they should drive. Screeching at someone through a near-soundproof car window and giving the finger at 120km/h on the highway won't teach them anything. Let it go. Life's short enough.

7. No matter how funny they sound in private, no one likes a public fart once you pass the age of 11. Once you hit twelve, hold it in until you can be alone. Then, let it rip.

Torawna Or Bust

Friends, neighbours, and lima beans:

I'm a' comin'. Toronto-bound; Canada-set; I'm leaving on a jet plane to Canuckistan.

Youppi! Back to the freakin' cold weather, insecurity and cynicism of our home and native land!

Oh.....Canada?