Four Doors To Truth

If you take the right door,
If you turn the right key,
Language doesn't matter:
The truth will set you free.

Yesterday's Inventory

Yesterday I purchased, in order:



Before & After Science by Brian Eno for $13.99.



Notebooks: 1935-1951 by Albert Camus for $9.99.



Coffee by Coffee Machine for $1.75.



Blue by Labatt for $3.75.



Rum & Coke by Bartender for $3.75.



Liquid Cocaine by Bartender for $4.75.



Bottled Water by Mother Nature/Heartless Multinational Corporation for $1.50.

The Gospel Of Worms

I was born of a sinkhole that was impregnated by a stroke of lightning, raised by Mother Nature and spanked daily. Her favoured children spit at me, built an upside-down crucifix and buried my head in the dirt. Worms crawled through my brain and whispered their secrets, like the meaning of life and death. I compared the two in detail and decided on the latter, but God raised his voice and objected.

"You still have work to do, son," He said. "Do I have to, dad?" I asked, but He was already gone. I'd never seen a worm disappear so quickly.

Then another worm approached, and as it crawled through my ear I became privy to its secrets.

It seems that at the moment of time's conception, an unknown knife sliced the Eternal Worm in two. Equal in intelligence and size, God and Satan were created. After an eon of warfare, each became further cut in size until there were millions of worms from the original two. These were the demons and angels, and they existed to penetrate the corpses of Men, read their thoughts, and determine their proper place in the Afterlife.

I, by a fluke of creation, was able to hear the thoughts and machinations of the worms. In my eagerness to share the mysteries of the universe, I preached the word I received and was proclaimed by my followers the King of the Worms.

The Empire, having proclaimed its dominion over all of creation, including worms, did not take kindly to this claim. The upside-down cross was deemed an appropriate punishment by the offended Proconsuls, and it was then, with my head in the ground, that the final Gospel of the Worms was revealed to me.

My followers proclaim that in, some future era, when the false lords of the earth are cast down, the King of the Worms will take his place on his upside-down throne. I don't know where they came up with this idea. Worms can be split in half, but they cannot be brought back to life.

Blackout Blues? I've Got Nothing To Lose!

Last night I think
I poured myself a drink
And said "Tomorrow I will rise,
Happier inside"
And maybe I did
In a roundabout way
After forgetting
The black part of the day.
I poured myself a bottle
Of dark rum and coke,
Walked to the store
And nearly choked
Before I drank it down
With some rye and ginger,
And finished the mix
With a tap of my finger.
What happened to the hours
Between outside and home,
Between departure and arrival,
Between getting drunk and stoned?
I woke up this morning
Feeling parched and alone,
But I still have my wallet
And I found my way home;
So I won't mourn the cost
Of the hours I've lost:
I still have today,
And that's more than most can say!

Mohammed Yousaf Qureshi, I'm Calling You On Your Bullshit

In response to the million-dollar bounty placed on the head of Danish cartoonists by Pakistani "prayer leader" Mohammed Yousaf Qureshi, I'd like to announce my counter-bounty. Anyone who hits Mohammed Yousaf Qureshi in the face with a pie, preferably in the middle of leading prayers, will get $50 and a signed letter of appreciation from me. I know it's not a million dollars, and I know the pie-assassin will probably be doomed to a lifetime on the run from assorted Islamic virgin-seekers, but I feel it's the least I can do in the face of the flagrant douchebaggery emanating from Qureshi's dirty mouth.

Listen, dude: I understand you feel obligated as a macho religious prick to call for the deaths of people you never met to protest cartoons you've probably never seen, but you need to understand that, in the classroom of the world, you're the unwashed delinquent wearing a dunce cap in the corner. Nobody likes you, nobody thinks you're cool, nobody's impressed. Your country has just recently been hit by a terrible earthquake, people are homeless, dying in the cold, and you're worried about... cartoons. Mohammed Yousaf Qureshi, I'm calling you on your bullshit. You're a bad person and a bad Muslim, and you've done more to defame your own religion than any petty Scandinavian shit-disturber ever could. Dick.

Dick Cheney Vs. Kraven The Hunter

"Without game, men prey on each other." - Jane's Addiction, "Three Days"

Kraven the Hunter was a maniacal big game hunter who sought to defeat prominent superhero Spider-Man to prove that he was the greatest hunter in the world. Dick Cheney is a maniacal small country hunter who sought to defeat prominent Texas attorney Harry Whittington to prove that he was the greatest hunter in the world. Let's see how else the two comical supervillains stack up against each other.


Kraven the Hunter
Real name: Sergei Kravinoff
Ethnicity: Russian stereotype
Prey: Spider-Man
Status: Deceased (committed suicide after defeating Venom)
Theme Song: "The Chase is Better than the Catch" by Motorhead
Powers: Superhuman strength, endurance, speed, agility and reflexes through imbibing mystical potions. Slowed aging process. Master of many forms of armed and unarmed combat; deep knowledge of esoteric poisons, medicines and tranquilizers.
Children: Vladimir "Grim Hunter" Kravinoff, Alyosha "Al Kraven" Kravinoff, Ned "Disappointing Jewish Step-Son" Tannengarden
Best Friend: The Chameleon
Lover: The voodoo priestess Calypso
Affiliations: The Sinister Six


Dick Cheney
Real name: Richard Bruce Dastardlio
Ethnicity: Stygian-American
Prey: Quail, Iraq, prominent Texas attorney Harry Whittington
Status: Undead (reanimated by the American Enterprise Institute in 1993)
Theme Song: "Come to Daddy" by Aphex Twin
Powers: Superhuman speed, agility and reflexes through imbibing mystical potions. Invulnerable to all but silver bullets. Master of the Cheney Chop and withering gaze; deep knowledge of back-room political machinations, the oil industry and tranquilizers.
Children: Elizabeth "She-Cheney" Cheney, Mary "Sapphic Samurai" Cheney
Best Friend: Rhino
Lover: The voodoo priestess Condoleeza Rice
Affiliations: The Republican Party

Winner: Dick Cheney!

Weeks Worth Of Insight

Sitting, reflecting, in the sunlight writing. Lucidity: a beautiful word, the killer of confusion, to see through life and face the facts behind the trappings. Experience is the only way abstract concepts can be made real. And without abstract concepts--abstract concepts like freedom, love, passion, principle, ambition and vision--what is there to life? Each day should be about proving those abstract concepts real.

Earn your blisters, stain your share of carpets, go where instinct wouldn't normally take you. Write your memoirs on the street, sing along to your favourite song, shake hands with a Turk, show strangers your strong side, explore a different part of town. Surprise yourself by being yourself. Inhibition, trepidation, apprehension, irritation: so many big words for such small petty things. Take a chance, and let the days roll by with a casual flicker of the dice.

The insight you receive in the middle of a conversation or adventure should never be forgotten. Smoothly, and with a minimum of fuss, incorporate the lessons you learn throughout the day into your frame of mind. See how people interact, the unwritten rules they follow, how there are so many things we take for granted which aren't set in stone at all. It's not just movies that have protagonists, stars, heroes and icons. Dream the perfect plot, write the script with your stream of consciousness, and act it out with gusto. Enjoy the people playing their parts, but remember it's up to you whether they're major or minor characters.

What does my script call for? I'm seduced by images of sunny places and foreign races. I think of California and Brazil and the pier and the ocean. I think of ruins I want to visit, different types of people I want to meet, food I want to try, pictures I'd like to take, experiences I'd like live out then write about. I don't want to die where I was born, or even where I was ten minutes ago. I want to always be moving on, not in a state of drift but in a state of evolution. Discussing, recording, thinking, drinking, eating, smoking, watching, working, conquering: all these common verbs, filled with such uncommon possibility.

I declare: Let life be lively, let nights be dangerous, let days be productive, let your stream of consciousness fly. Be beholden to no one, but open to anyone. Talk to other people and really hear what they have to say. Laugh at the ridiculousness of it all, but never mean-spiritedly. I like home and away, sober and buzzed, listening and talking, giving and receiving, recording and experiencing. When you feel lucid and genuine, it's not enough just to feel it: you have to declare it. So today I'm going to declare, in an entirely unplanned, spur of the moment, end of the paragraph leap, what I've never been able to say before: I believe in the human spirit!

The Morning Grind

Hacking coughs and brittle bones; cracks spread like dry rivers in the internal glass frame. Stale breath is shortened to bare survival minimum. Throat is weighed down by hooks linked to anvils. Where do they take me? Into the deep, dark, dull magnetic depths. Wheezing bagpipe lungs provide half-life support. Forgetting unconscious knowledge, innards run on trace memory. Coffee-sugar-acid pours down to grease the gears; a blast of sand in the borrowed time hourglass. Legs begin to creak like a stone golem stirring, lost in the ruins of its forgotten creator. Arms swing forth like clockwork motions of rusted tin soldiers. The heart pumps its precious gallons from the dwindling desert wells. Till a final tap on glass makes the dry rivers flood, the morning grind continues well into the night.

Jihad 2006: Best Of The Protests

The Message: "Drawing Mohammad wearing a bomb as a turban is a blatant act of disrespect to the religious beliefs of millions, so to protest we're going to draw a burning Star of David as a blatant act of disrespect to the religious beliefs of millions. P.S. Jesus roolz"


The Message: "No, no, no, don't phunk with my heart."


The Message: "One love."


The Message: "Let's use our freedom to protest to protest freedom!"


The Message: "United Nations supervision is needed to protect us from Danish rapists."


The Message: "To spice up the bland Danish flag, we added some footprints and calligraphy and shit. Art class rules!"


The Message: "Pink: it's the new Green."


The Message: "Pot, meet kettle."


The Message: "Muslim and lesbian and happy."


The Message: "It is OK to bash Muslims... not!"


The Message: "Mohammad is fabulous!"


The Message: "Fight for your right to party! And exterminate those who slander Islam!"


The Message: "Forget Denmark, blame France!"


The Message: "Forget Denmark, blame Canada!"

A Day In A Life In A Day

Yesterday was a pretty full day for me. I woke up early, scrounged up some pennies and American dimes for a coffee, and attended my 9:30 History of Slavery "workshop." After watching the professor bumble about the Internet and drop the mouse, I retired to a booth in the concourse to buy, eat and then help sell home-made hummus. The guy who was selling it was raising money to pay for his research trips to the former Yugoslavia, and he helped explain the history of the Balkan conflict to me while practicing his Korean. The people at the booth beside us were selling baked goods to raise money to build a well in Africa, so I bought a cookie and cupcake to wash down the jalapeno hummus. I later panicked upon mistakenly thinking I had a presentation to do in tutorial, but fortunately it was not to be and the 1:30 class passed without incident.

Afterwards I went with my friend to his apartment, to admire his two bearded dragons and watch the movie Mother Night, based on the Kurt Vonnegut book and starring the irrepressible Nick Nolte. After lighting up and starting the movie, his offbeat friend came over to return a book. He left after a strange conversation, whereupon I was informed that he hated the government, hoarded weapons up north, was obsessed with World War II military history and family lineage, went on homoerotic hunting trips and thought the Rothschilds controlled international finance. We then smoked the pipe, had some peanut butter on Greek buns, drank some Turkish coffee and walked to meet his girlfriend at her work, a downtown esoterica/head/vintage-clothing shop. There I bought a fluffy Hamid Karzai-style hat for eight dollars. We had some Ting, a carbonated Jamaican grapefruit drink, while taking a scenic walk back.

Back at their place we drank white wine, finished the movie, lit a joint, and looked at pictures from their trips to the former Yugoslavia. I arrived by bus back at my place around 10:30, and watched an episode of South Park whilst dipping pitas in jalapeno hummus. I then hit the pipe with my roommate and his friend, rode in the back of his pick-up truck to the pool hall, played darts and had a couple of bottles of Labatt Crystal. The night's festivities finished with hits from the bong and a bit of cinnamon whiskey shooter. I then watched a bit of Mr. Show before going upstairs, writing some of my thoughts down and going to sleep. A cool dream would've been a nice way to cap the night off, but alas it was not be... unless the whole day was a dream?