'Rorschach' and the foot and nose episode

Do you remember the foot episode Rorschach? I mean, you, there, in the fish-eyed and doubly aberrant photographed near-present, do you remember my wing-tipped leather shoe and what you did to it? I remember. This is what you did. You did something cute. I'm somewhat confused on that point. You did something you made cute, that, all in all, is a more suitable qualifier (quantifier?). Anyhow, this is what you did: you fucked my shoe with your nose. This was a year ago, almost. I had bought these shoes the same day, at a thrift store (where that cute, but rather too tall shop-clerk was jealous they fit me and not her) and they went well with my brown Levi's, though they made me feel awkward, like I shouldn't be keeping up my jeans so well, like my shirt shouldn't be so imaculate, like I should be living in a loft somewhere in northern Mile-End, and failing beautifully at print-media or something similar. They made me feel like I was a 2002 alumni of a Toronto art's high-school. But I liked them anyway. I am detracting from my subject, i.e. You. So you were fucking my shoe with your nose. I was told your nose had herpes, which it no longer showed symptoms of. I didn't mind. Your nose is, was, quite lovely, inquisitive, personal, engrossed and probing, like a fluffy little alien. It was as if you wanted to carnally, intricately KNOW the nature of my shoe. Something like licking a pig to check on the quality of the bacon. That's disgusting. But you, little buddy, were not. My shoe enjoyed it, and so did I, and it made me a center of some attention, which I also didn't mind. He likes your damn shoe, eh the girls said. Oh yes. I was just starting out then, as a reformed David Bradford,  a Good Guy, and you made me feel welcome, like a gentle olfactory good omen. You then did the same to my hand. What a lovely little kitten you were. All this explains why I got you all nice and free from that chair you got all tangled and crazy in before skidding off to your own private no-man's land under the bed. I did it out of gratitude. Strange, subconscious gratitude. I remember discussing things I was wholeheartedly wrong about with the girls, while we waited, all three of us, for you to come out and play at that special brand of nosiness once more.What a plain little cute guy you were, growing into your name. You were whatever I wanted you to be; that was an allowance on your part. Thanks.

The Cultural Right Argument: A Rant.

I like Stephen Fry. He's a homosexual. He's a podcaster. They say he's a legend now. That makes sense, Jeeves should be a legend. His podcast is actually a bona fide killer. I was listening to the one he did at the Itunes Live Festival and he just shat on the music industry. It was surprising, delicious, free and informative as hell. It got me thinking and I think he's right. Copyright is there to protect the artist from diddling licentious types abusing and profiting off something he made. It's not there to keep us from culture, and call me dinky and new age and naive, but I think, and to a certain extent I think Fry thinks, culture is a right in this day and age. The internet has made that possible, and therefore, if it can't be stopped, then more power to us. That is what I, and assuredly you, use it for: culture. That and porn.

But here comes His Master’s Voice, saying that we've got a problem. Here comes the 80s billboards on an anti-cassette brain-melter of a crusade, big bold ugly slogans like 'Taping is Killing Live Music'. And now, post-Napster in the post-Google era, the inception of the torrent era, copyrights are raining cats and dogs and The Man (it's a little retro, but it's an appropriate moniker) has us believing we are ruining everything, that we are Sodom and Gomorrah and that yes, that crack in the sky is the DRM Armageddon, not global warming. The Man comes and let's us know that even Pacifist Swedish Pirates Get What's Coming to Them. It's sad really. And futile, to a certain extent. The internet, which Fry tells us is partly an English brainchild, is unstoppable. And I like to believe that's true. I don't know if it is, but nothing is pointing to the opposite. Mininova went legit and The Pirate Bay went on trial, so did Oink. Do you remember Oink? How could you NOT remember Oink? That's rhetorical. Oink was awesome. And you know what? If you were on the ins and proactive you replaced Oink with one of many worthwhile alternatives that popped up in its place. And those two others? They got replaced with Kickasstorrents.com and the likes. Things were, are, OK for us bittorrenters, even after some people got taken down. And things will continue to be OK. That crack in the sky is not because of you. We both know that new Flaming Lips album has got your name on it. We both know you can't afford it. And we both know you already got it, cause you can.

The question is, of course, are some people up top making less scratch because of your right? Yes. People who were making billions of dollars are now making fewer billions of dollars. This is in great part because of the people pirating and reselling--i.e. people who the word 'pirate' actually fits, aka the diddlers--but also partly, to a smaller extent, because of you and me. But the fact is, and the Wikipedia has told me so, your mentioned right has also evened the playing field. Let me give you an example of examples we can all relate to. Think of Animal Collective, Grizzly Bear, Beirut, Antony and the Jonsons, M. Ward, Black Mountain, Vampire Weekend, Arcade Fire, Iron and Wine, TV on the Radio, The Black Keys, Black Kids, Broken Social Scenes and 90% of the bands reviewed by Pitckfork Media: how many of those bands would you have attended a show of if you hadn't been able to illegally download their album first? How many of those bands can now, actually, live off of their music? Both numbers are surprisingly high. Now how many of those artists could live off their music before torrent days? They've profited from our new found right, because our right, as billions-chopping as it may be, has encouraged awareness and the dessemination of prosperity of smaller artist's and their work. And sure, the people we hear on the radio, aren't making as much dough. They are driving E-Class Mercedeses instead of S-Class ones and that pisses them off. But what are we supposed to do? Are we suppose to buy into those UK TV adds that say "You wouldn't steal a handbag, would you?" Are we suppose to buy shit cause someone tells us it's chicken? I, personally, know shit when I hear, smell or see it, and I can barely afford chicken, let alone shit. And I agree with the legend, Fry, when he says the handbag argument is fucking stupid. I also agree with him when he says that people in his industry, the Arts & Entertainment industry, make much more money than they should. I know what I'm doing is not entirely on the level, but I'm fine with that. I also know I'm not a hardened criminal cause I don't buy every record I own. I'm just poor.

The internet and torrent technology have made poverty nowadays, in the western broadband world, not that bad. I can be poor and, with a truly affordable high-speed high capacity internet connection, have access to an unprecedented amount of artistic culture. I can live on less than 300$ a week and have a completer musical culture than the queen of England. And to a certain extent, I think that the people who control the culture that's been engineered to be sold, period, are kind of freaking out cause now we've got access to all these smaller ports of authority, instead of just the big smelly one, and we don't need to buy our hot dogs at their crap-stand anymore. And when the people don't need to afford cultural enlightenment, when the people are no longer ignoring the different, smaller and often better artists, then they don't need to be bankers and middle-management, and they may, in our generation, stay at home and write, like me, all whilst downloading the lastest Atlas Shound EP. Most probably they won't, stay at home (money buys many things), but they will download. And then who's gonna be able to afford the new Coldplay album? They know I won't. A lot of those other people won't either. You won't. And this puts the music and movie industry into an eventual shit-storm. It puts them in a place where they may have to start making good stuff, instead of trying to turn shit into money. And if that's my doing, our doing, then I'm OK with that.

Fry might of gotten a lot of shit for the things he said in that podcast. But then again times are slightly changing. They have been for a while now. It was reported by The Los Angeles Times that by 2009 half the recording studios in the city had failed, shutdown, in great part due to the fact that people are recording high quality music in their bedrooms at home and no longer need them, i.e. were choosing NOT to go into the studio. And with people like fry, we've got literate people taking down The Man, dowloadable directly from the Itunes Store. Apple has announced the decision to remove the DRM software from their Itunes store downloads. They know that if Fry, a very popular podcaster, wants to shit on the industry, then there's nothing they can do that would not fuck with their business. It's what the consumer wants, and the industry has to understand, and may, in fact, be starting to, that with the internet, for once, the consumer is king. The consumer is not dead, as some would have us believe: he still goes to shows, to clubs, to the record store, on occasion. The consumer still needs to get laid, still makes less money then they do. The consumer is just, for once, king. There's a reason they call it a 'revolution'. It's a learning curb, but a good one. Now enjoy the kitten with the frog hat. It's your right.

Puppy Loving Sundays--Mastermind Manning and Bubba's day off.

Boss Man Chuck's gotta kick back sometime and he keeps, mind you he does not know I know this, a case of Coors Light in the walk-in ice box out back, for the Chicano gardener. So when he's out in his leisure suit curling at the curling club down by Saint-Marc on Sundays, well, Bubba over here is large and in charge and heads out back to Tap The Rockies, little ice cold blue mountain and all. I mean, I don't try to hide it, I am powerless to high heavens. I smell the brew out back and I imagine Peyton Manning going for 13 and O at Lucas Oil Stadium, getting Kyle Orton crying like you kow Matt Schaub, the only opponent to out-pass Manning this regular season, was in game 12, Manning taring it up in a plus 300 game, showing Brady who is in fact the boss with his 101.9 rating, and I just can't help it, there I am, me, the remote, a nap at half time, and an ice cold Coors big enough I can give it a ceremonial hump when I wake up. Sundays are golden. Bubba knows best.

The pitch

You left Ghost on on the TV and I finally made out from the corner icon that Swayze fudgin' died! Swayze tribute! oh mama.. I got sick on the carpet, and then I kept watching till the end and past Rodehouse and Dirty Dancing, yes Dirty Fudgin' Dancing, and I got into the icecream stash and then the valium and E stash and finally the scotch stash, which was hard to get into, and then I vomited on the carpet again, over there, a lot, and then some other depressing movie came on that I'd rather not discuss right now, OK it was The Big Chill, and now I'm like really emotionally depleated and realizing I took too much E and then drank way too much water and more scotch and I really think that if you just hold me and hug me and scratch my ear and pet my face and let me like get busy with my tongue all over your face and like, you know, let me into your Chang stash, like your junior, not your senior, of course, then I might just like hit rock bottom and die in the night of freaked out lonely souldom and I might just be kind of OK tomorrow. Maybe. Please. Now.

Lulu Lemon, suicidal exotic shorthair

So I'm just wandering round the house ya know and I'm all hunky dory and in a good mood as " da uge" and that dog's laughing at me cause as per every other day he's just put in a good mood by my face, only this time it seems more, this time it seems personal, and I can see that between getting distracted by noises and stuff he's kind of looking back and forth between me and like something on the wall and I'm like WTF, I mean, he's like squawking at this point I mean, not giggling, but like actually sqawking and I'm like what up Pancho Villas, which is a weirdo name for a Newfoundlander, which coffuddles me, and he's like just realized he lets me know that lo and behold the thing on the wall with some horrendous blond and cock-and-blue-eyed furball on it is like me and I'm like no f-ing way old P, I mean how's can that be, I mean it's been like a full four weeks and just now have you pieced it all together, I thought it was a cousin thrice removed P, this pains me, are you for serious? And he just sqawks some more and I kind of huddle up on his head and get up on all wabbly fours and he walks me over to it and I can tell, for the first time that he's like not BSing, he's being legit like it's back in style, he's being truthful like the mean old truth store is having a firesale and he got the best deal, and I can see that he's all fact to the big meaty bone because there's something at eye level next to the furball that looks like the furball, only it's sitting on something that looks exactly like P, only it's doing every movement I am, I mean it's moving one way when I do and the P thing is dribbling saliva when the dog is and I can see the TV behind us and the chew toys and my scratchy post and I just about loose it and let go some big not-so breed specific tears all over Pancho's big skully and softy and not brainy head. I'm fugly and distraught. I'm beside myself. Only I am myself. Which is problematic. F-Bomb.
P isn't sqawking or even laughing anymore and he gives my little butt-ugly butt-eyed face a long slugger of a lick and I still don't feel better, although I do feel refreshed. I sulk for hours. I become narcissus' flipside, Lulu Lemon, holistically ugly five week kitten, only survivor out of five, the horrible blue-eyed thing. After a while P gets tired and frankly bummed about having presented all this stuff to me and won't even hoist me up to that dreamy realm of nightmarish void again, where I see my one true self again, and he just kind of slinks off to lick himself privately somewhere dark. I just keep on hacking coughballs up on the carpet and spreading out some kind of a puddle of my own reflective tears and muff on the carpet. I'm bummed is what I'm saying, I'm out of furrballs, I'm all washed up. I'm bleeping sad moms. So no, lets not rent a kids movie, and no Ferris Bueller either. Let's just rent something about ugly people. You can drown me while we watch. Something with Andre the Giant, or maybe like 16 candles or ground hog day, if you can have me dead before it gets all happy. I'm pooped. There is no god.

Red Shoes and Landing Strips

So I'll be in the bar minding my own business with a swizzle stick umbrella in a juicy pussy and, you, some guy, comes up and you'll come up and start hitting real hard and like swear to God quoting Hank Moody. And I'll go who’s stupid enough to watch Hank Moody and think he’s a woman lover. What kind of girl is stupid enough to want to fuck Hank Moody. The man fucks everything that moves cause he’s a skewed version of his father, and because he fucked up his life with the love of his aforementioned life and he’s trying to get back at her for dicking around on him when he was being a dick, only it then degenerates into a weird cesspool of self-flagellation and 20th Century American men's lit kinkiness, not to mention just something to do, the gratuitous humping of dogs and parakeet near the composter. Puppies eating in the pussy bowl. But these chicks think he’s the cat’s pyjamas, he, the fucking genius, he the creative writing teacher cliché. Clichés really. The creative writing teacher who fucks his students. The creative writing teacher who doesn’t write. And I know what you’re going to say, I mean you’re gonna make an ill-advised point about David Duchovny’s charm and how he built an attractive version of the above clichés, how he convinces that he’s falling into shit, not stepping in it, how I hate him cause he reminds me of my self or something—and then I’m gonna call you a stupid faggot and I’m gonna ask you if you flippin' remember that goddamn softcore porn series he hosted, Red something. Then your going to say Well—and I’m gonna interrupt you and yell NOT TO MENTION THE FUCKING X-FILES. And then you’re going to tell me to fuck off. And you're going to call me albino. Then I'm gonna tell you to get your paws off my Juicy Pussy, get your own, albino cooties, fuck off. And then you're going to ask me if I'd like another. And I'll say why yes dumdum. You'll say I have striking eyes. There’ll be a pause. And then I'll tell you they're cock-eyed. And you'll say you hadn't noticed, no they can't be, really? And I'll say oh you. And you'll ask me my name. I'll say Hitler Mustache.

Puppies!

Cane and Abel meets Burt and Ernie meets Sunny and Cher, Syd and Nancy, Hansel and Gretel, Mort and Mindy, Kurt and Courtney, Sherlock and opiates, Mom and Dad, Walalce and Gromit, Lone Ranger and Tonto, Marie-Kate and Ashley, Joan Jett and whatever boxom young thing she's fingering that week meets Balto of Iditarod the 7th and White Fangs of LA and everyone just goes Awww.