May 2012
2 posts
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Happy Birthday, Stephen Harper
The Right Honourable Stephen Joseph Harper, PC MP (April 30, 1959) has some scary eyes and a liar’s mouth.
Grandma Nina
My Grandma Nina loves movies more than anything but she is the last person anyone wants to watch a movie with. If you sit down with her in front of the television or take her to the movie theatre and the thing has played long enough for the plot reveal that some sort of...
April 2012
22 posts
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Unbelievable Norwegian
For a long while there was nothing and then, after Tin crested a very gentle hill, orange traffic cones appeared, arranged in a long line that divided the road in two. A sign immediately followed, instructing him to reduce his vehicle’s speed as he moved ahead, directions he decided to ignore. Soon, a much larger sign with an electric generator attached to the back of it said that Tin was to...
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WatchThis comic book man answers my comic book question (unsatisfactorily)
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Man-made Lake Town
Since he grew up here, he had often wondered what it was that they put in the water that kept this ridiculous lake from evaporating. Man-made lakes bring out the absolute worst in people, he’d always thought. Once you put something that by no stretch of the imagination natural to be inside something else, that’s when the problems started.
He lit a cigarette and drove slowly along the shore. He...
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Ugly Carpet
Underneath the carpet was a sheet of paper with the confession on it. I laid out what I did and how I did it and why I thought what I’d done needed to be done, personally I mean. I wrote the thing out in two pages, which I stapled together, laid it out in my neatest handwriting. If I caught my handwriting getting lazy or illegible, I took a moment to relax my hand, and I kept writing. I...
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Happy Birthday, Wilbur Wright
Wilbur Wright (April 16, 1867 - May 30, 1912) created the control system to do something unnatural.
My Infiniti Had Been Hurled into Space
I heard the shrieking first before I saw that everyone was running frantic, moving as fast as they could down the Gardner Expressway away from Toronto and, thank God, I didn’t take the time to think about why it was happening. I just opened the car door,...
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Happy Birthday, Tom Clancy
Thomas Leo Clancy, Jr. (April 12, 1947) did for right-wing politics what the Devil did for Rock Music.
The Finer Distractions
23:12 hours
We were on a plane, that’s all I know. That’s all any of us knew. Who knew what was underneath us. Jungle probably. Most likely it was going to be the hottest, most snake-infested patch of part jungle part spider hive that they could find for us. Behrns was...
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Happy Birthday, Vladimir Lenin
Vladimir Illyich Lenin (April 10, 1870 - January 21, 1924) temporarily replaced one power system with another power system.
Peach Scarf Lyrics
She was wearing a peach-coloured scarf and was whistling a song that I couldn’t quite place. I know that I’d heard it somewhere but I just couldn’t remember the name of the thing. That was the reason why I started following her, not because she was...
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Hugh Hefner
Hugh Marston Hefner (April 9, 1926) aka “Hef” bought a mansion with the money he made from taking pictures of women that men used to masturbate with.
A Sad and Collective Disappointment
The baby was sitting on the rug making noises to herself, trying to figure out how the rest of us were able to communicate so effectively. She was even gesticulating towards Geoff and I, where we...
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Biz Markie
Marcel Theo Hall (April 8, 1964) aka Biz Markie aka The Diabolical Biz Markie aka The Markie Kidd recorded an album that was all the rage and my grandma bought it for me when I was young and we were at Target.
The Corpse was Dressed as a Parody of Itself
What little was left of the head had a big red fright wig sitting on top of it and a drug store costume pirate’s hat had been sat on top of...
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Paul Rudd
Paul Stephen Rudd (April 6, 1969) is handsome and funny.
Mark Eithers
Powell looked at his television set, which had fallen off the table to the ground after having been struck with a shoe and was now perhaps in a permanent powered down state, and decided right then that he was going to get off his ass that very instant and save the acting career of Mark Eithers, who played the cryptic and...
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Frank Gorshin (The Riddler)
Frank John Gorshin, Jr. (April 5, 1933 - May 17, 2005) will be remembered for playing someone who couldn’t help but compulsively want to be caught.
Feathers and Shells
I thought that I’d heard something and my eyes opened. The sun wasn’t up yet and the streetlights from the park across the street made only the outlines of everything into the bedroom visible. Cassie was on the other...
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Muddy Waters
McKinley Morganfield (April 4, 1913 - April 30, 1983) aka Muddy Waters knew where it hurt
Long Distance Call (Yukon Blues)
We got a woman that will to you first, that’ll get a feel on what’s troubling you pretty quick. It’s always easy for a man to spill it for a woman and Shirley knows where to dig, if digging is what’s needed. She grew up rough and knows what hurts, but since most everybody...
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Edge of the Swimming Pool
For Michael James Ness (April 3, 1962) who is only three years younger than my mother but who should have been born thirty years earlier.
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She’d marked him, or rather, she had taken his hand and said that this will be the best it will ever be, right now, you and I and this moment. And she reached over and ran her fingers over his and then she kissed him while they sat at the edge of the...
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The Bettering of the Body by the River
I unpacked the telephone from my bag and put it on my new uneven and severely water-damaged hardwood floor in the living room. I plugged the thing into the jack and looked at it while I counted to one-hundred. I picked up the receiver. Tone. I had a tone. The phone company had turned the thing on at least. She was supposed to call, she said she was going to call, so I waited. I placed the...
March 2012
26 posts
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Happy Birthday, Patty Smith Hill
Patty Smith Hill (March 27, 1868 - May 25, 1946) co-wrote the song that waiters and waitresses around the world sing everyday, celebrating the miracle of life, holding that cake in front of them, burning for just for you.
The Good News
Wednesday:
I was cutting through the park on my way back to work when my phone rang. Jodi. I’d met her at a hotel bar. She’d been a part of some conference...
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Happy Birthday, Joseph Campbell
Joseph John Campbell (March 26, 1904 - October 30, 1987) drew the most detailed map I’d ever seen.
Departure
I remember being at home and my head was in your lap and I thought about going to sleep. I looked over and saw that the cat was peering through the bannister and into the living room where we were sitting. You were reading a book. I looked up at the ceiling because I felt the pits...
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Happy Birthday, Harry Houdini
Harry Houdini (March 24, 1974 – October 31, 1926 aka Erik Weisz aka Ehrich Weiss aka Harry Weiss) performed seemingly supernatural acts for the masses by employing tricks while working to expose the tricks of the seemingly supernatural for the masses.
Master Constraint Artists
The master constraint artists are the ones that can make their audience believe in an instant, right down to their...
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Happy Birthday, William Shatner
William Alan Shatner (March 22, 1931) is an icon of a genre that looks forward to what we are all capable of doing.
Light Engine Design
Ten years of Engineering study, it took, for me to be able to kill myself this way. Because of that, how I’ve had to specialize my mind in this way, the light engine is who I am now. It’s what I think about when I lie in the dark and wait for sleep to turn the...
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Happy Birthday, Matthew Broderick
Matthew Broderick (March 21, 1962) was an actor who could play the hell out of the kind of person we all want to be.
Eviction
“No hard feeling, I hope?”
“Probably.”
Everything that was his was now contained within six fairly large cardboard boxes, secured with packing tape, and stacked into two piles near the front door.
“Probably,” I said again.
“You could come with me, if you wanted to.”
“I...
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Happy Birthday, Wyatt Earp
Wyatt Berry Stapp Earp (March 19, 1848 - January 13, 1929) wore many hats throughout his life: investor, farmer, teamster, bouncer, saloon-keeper, buffalo hunter, boxing referee, gold miner, copper miner, barber. He’d been arrested and tried on charges of theft, horse theft, falsifying court documents, extortion, and solicitation of prostitution, murder, and attempted murder. He escaped...
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Happy Birthday, Flavor Flav
William Jonathan Drayton, Jr. (March 16, 1959) aka Flavor Flav was a member of the group Public Enemy. Time hangs heavy from him.
Run From Never
Neither of them is asleep. Or maybe they are, I can’t tell. Perhaps they are together in some other place entirely and not lying together on this bed. The two of them look as if they are trying to climb inside of one another. They’d been crying...
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Happy Birthday, Jimmy Swaggart
Jimmy Lee Swaggart (March 15, 1935) was the televised voice of God in the 1980’s as Reaganomics was coming into its own, showing people what sin really looked like.
Open Outcry
Flaherty was so god damn flamboyant sometimes, I swear. I’d been walking up and down Wesley Street looking for anyone that I might recognize and I was getting restless because it was almost three in the morning...
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Happy Birthday, Alexey Troitsky
Alexey Alexeyevich Troitsky (March 14, 1866 - August 1942) was one of the world’s greatest composers of chess endgame problems. He died of starvation during the Siege of Leningrad.
Help Me Out
She’d requested that I meet her at the all-night restaurant across the street from St. Joseph’s Emergency Room at two in the morning and that I was to bring the first cheque with me. Radiology...
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Happy Birthday, Percival Lowell
Percival Lawrence Lowell (March 13, 1855 - November 12, 1916) built an observatory up in the mountains near Flagstaff, Arizona and worried about what must surely have been the desperate situation he was observing on Mars.
The Discovery of Her
She was located seventeen blocks east, four blocks north, and six storeys above me. I had discovered her a little after ten in the morning while I was...
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Happy Birthday, Charles Boycott
Charles Cunningham Boycott (March 12, 1832 - June 19, 1897) was a British land agent and the target an organized campaign of imposed ostracization by the local share farming community. Every single person around Boycott made an agreement to have nothing to do with him.
Leper Spray
She took the tiny spray bottle out of her purse and pointed it at me. I recoiled out of pure instinct to the...
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Happy Birthday, Rupert Murdoch
Keith Rupert Murdoch (March 11, 1931) recognized and harnessed the power of the petty and vindictive gossip. He then poured a knee-high layer of this highly marketable venom over the world and now, as a result, a fundamental disagreement between strangers leads almost invariably to distrust and alienation.
Everyone in Mrs. Doucette’s Class Loves Each Other and Wants to Get Married
Mrs....
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Happy Birthday, Chuck Norris
Carlos Ray Norris (March 10, 1940) is a God-fearing Okie who dedicated his youth to martial arts training. He has made his livelihood by pretending to inflict violence on others with such style the average person has no other choice but to watch and be entertained - seeing him do what they never possibly could.
When No One Can Touch You (A Power Fantasy)
You discover that no one can touch you...
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Happy Birthday, Yuri Gagarin (originally posted...
Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin (March 9, 1934 - March 27, 1968) was the first man, Soviet or otherwise, to witness with is own eyes that there was no such place as Heaven located on the other side of the Earth’s atmosphere. Human beings no longer want the bravest members of its tribe to travel into the vacuum and report back such things.
Spiders Along the Bridge
My Commander sat me down on...
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Happy Birthday, Joseph Lee (originally posted...
Joseph Lee (March 8, 1862 - 1937), a wealthy Bostonian lawyer and philanthropist, was the inventor of the playground.
Child-Evil
My parents had made the decision when I was about eight years old that I was old enough to start watching out for myself after school. This was a decision that, if made today, would surely have either landed the two...
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Happy Birthday, Abigail and Brittany Hensel...
Abigail Loraine Hensel and Brittany Lee Hensel (March 7, 1990 - ) are highly symmetric dicephalic parapagus twins. Each twin controls one half of their shared body, meaning that normal motor functions such as walking or typing require combined movements. When the two compose a letter and are in agreement on a topic they use the first person singular but when they disagree they employ the third...
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Happy Birthday, Gabriel Garcia Marquez (originally...
Gabriel Jose de la Concordia Garcia Marquez (March 6, 1927) has made me cry more than any other man on the planet.
The Tearful Separation of the Devil from the Vice President
The public squares filled that night - every single one of them in every single town across the country. The priests brought in supplies of bread and water, both holy and otherwise, and each priest stood underneath the...
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Happy Birthday, Momofuku Ando (originally posted...
Momofuku Ando (March 5, 1910 - January 5, 2007) was the inventor of instant noodles and cup noodles. The fruits of his life’s work of combining taste with ease of convenience was indispensable during my time living below the poverty line but has done irrevocable damage to my heart.
Cooking Goodbye Noodle Soup
The door slammed and before I knew what had happened I was in the kitchen.
I...
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Happy Birthday, Greg Craig (originally posted...
Gregory Bestor Craig (March 4, 1945) was the 33rd White House Consel under President Barack Obama. During the presidential campaigns of both Obama and John Kerry, Craig was known for playing the parts of their Republican rivals, John McCain and George W. Bush respectively, in preparatory mock debates.
The Virginian Part of My Heart
It’s been four months since Rob and I met and I’ve never been so...
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Happy Birthday, Charles Ponzi (originally posted...
Carlo Pietro Giovanni Guglielmo Tebaldo Ponzi (March 3, 1882 - January 18, 1949) aka Charles Ponzi aka Charles Ponei aka Charles P. Bianchi aka Carl was a philosopher whose groundbreaking innovations in the world of fucking people over are still, a century later, being felt by billions.
Porter Schemes
The main problem was that the world just didn’t yet possess the technology that would have...
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Happy Birthday, Mikhail Gorbachev (originally...
Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev (May 02, 1931) served as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1985 until the USSR’s dissolution in 1991. He was the only general secretary in the history of the country to have born under Communist Rule. He was the political boogie man of my youth.
Comrades of Queen Street West
2010 was the year I lost two of my front teeth,...
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Happy Birthday, Mark-Paul Gosselaar (originally...
Mark-Paul Gosselaar (March 01, 1974) is often mistaken for super-powered and attractive fictional teenager, Zack Morris. Zack’s smile could tear apart the fabric of space-time and allow him to communicate with parallel dimensions. The universe itself shuddered and moaned with pleasure whenever Zack showed any physical affection to a person of the opposite sex. And most telling of Zack’s fortitude...
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Happy Birthday, Herman Hollerith (originally...
Herman Hollerith (February 29, 1860 - November 17, 1929) invented the mechanical statistical computer and those information punch cards that we find so adorable.
Theodore
When Gerald’s breathing slows down enough, I nudge him slightly and wait. Then again. He rolls over on his side and curls up, gathering the blankets around him. He snores once and I slide out of our bed and put on my coat....
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Happy Birthday, Gavin MacLeod (originally posted...
Gavin MacLeod (February 28, 1931 - ) played the role of a matchmaker on the high seas.
Der Hass Boot
Every other night, at the stroke of eleven aboard Der Hass Boot, they hold bare knuckle fighting for anyone who feels like getting the shit kicked out of them by Karlheinz Komfort, who is more or less the ship’s head security officer. They hold the fights at the bow of the ship in a little ten...
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Happy Birthday, John Steinbeck (originally posted...
John Ernst Steinbeck Jr (Feb 27, 1902 - December 20, 1968) wrote a book that, when people ask me what my family is like, I say, read that.
The Whale in the West Valley
In the West Valley, the summer monsoon season used to be that special time of year when the very youngest children would turn their eyes skyward at that black wall of rain that year after year steps easily over the mountain...