All Set (For Home)

Written Friday, DecemberYesterday

I saw a man hold his breath for over two minutes last night.
Not in person.
It was on a documentary.
It's probably something that you should see.
Some might say his effort outweighs his reward (don't worry; he doesn't die).
What we can push ourselves to do is remarkable if we just meditate and eat enough peyote.

Speaking of trips, I did my first feature spot last night.
It felt great, which feels even better.
The second is tonight.
Today is far less uncomfortable now that yesterday is over.
Do you ever contemplate what you might contemplate if there was no opposite sex?
We'd be thinking whatever it is snails are thinking, probably.
"Man, I wish I had more direction in my life."
I ended on a Newfie joke during the show.
Which is 100% shameful.
But they really talked me into it.
I explicitly told them that they were receiving special treatment.
It was my biggest laugh of the night, which is much more embarrassing.
Now I see how Buddy Wassisname gets the dollars.
Of course, they do Sarah.
I could never do Sarah.

Speaking of which, Turpin still hasn't ejected her baby yet.
But we're all crossing our fingers that it will grow into its giant head.

Snails do screw other snails.
It looks like this:

New Heights

Written Thursday, December 29th:

Tea is the new coffee.
Which is funny, since coffee was originally the new tea.
I think I'm a lifetime behind on my multivitamins.

I'm acting like I'm not thinking about my show tonight.
And you have to do that with me, okay?
Do you ever feel like shouting stuff from mountaintops?
Who here got laid for the first time and then wanted to tell everyone?
If you were on a mountaintop right now, what would you-
Scratch that.
You are on a mountaintop right now.
Oh sure, it looks like you're in a shitty cubicle or office.
But if you pay attention, you'll notice that the ground feels jutted and indecisive beneath your soles.
You know that it's not going anywhere.
But you feel unsteady just the same.
The panorama is almost as good as TV.
It yawns all around you, leaving agape the staggering view.
Dry ice made from real snow whispers from the distant peaks that surround you.
The gaping maw of some prehistoric sea creature.
As far as the crags are, they seem even farther.
The silence whistles.
Then falls quiet.
Noise is something you brought with you to this place.
When you leave, the ambiance will go with you.
You can't look down because of the clouds.
They look as soft and plush as so many glued-on cotton balls to childhood sheets of construction paper.
You close your eyes and you can swear you're in an office somewhere.
What do you shout out?
No one's around.
Now's your chance.
"I hate my roommate!"
"I enjoy shoplifting!"
"I'm cold!"
Meanwhile your pack mule is thinking, "Can we get on with this?"
I didn't mention him before.
He would have ruined the mood.
It doesn't hurt to isolate yourself sometimes.

Let's cook up another paragraph without much of a point.
I'm in the coffee shop across from the coffee shop.
I'm still pretending I'm not thinking of the show.
One day these shows will be long past and this writing will be embarrassing.
Y'know, that's the shittiest thing about writing.
Particularly personal writing.
Sure, a journal is a great way for your mom to discover that you smoke weed.
But otherwise, no matter your age, they are a growing pain.
The more the years go by, the more embarrassing the process becomes in the present.
Maybe people believed in sea monsters centuries ago because someone kept drawing them on all the maps.

Ditto for mermaids.
You know why men were so attracted to the concept of mermaids?
An exotic woman who isn't looking for a commitment.

Not What I Had In Mind

You think your blog is a real hot tamale.
16 page views yesterday, thank you very much.
Until you go into the statistics section and check the keyword searches that brought about those page views.
Wanna know the top three?
Ahem:

dog caskets for foxhounds
pregnant piss
pregnant orgy

Yes, there are a lot of dissapointed fans out there.
Sounds like I've found my target audience.
Maybe it's you...

Buy As You Might

You think you have a handle on what has always been your struggling masculinity...
...Then you one day select, order and purchase spectacle frames identical to your girlfriend's.
The only difference being that mine aren't covered in semen.
Too far!

So Christmas is over and Fridays will now fade to lighter and lighter grays.
Until they become Black again.
And we all know a Good Friday is a Black Friday.

 

I apologize if this clip turns into a Rick roll halfway through.
I couldn't check the content because I could only stomach about eight seconds of it.

People initiating the first fistfights of their lifetimes at the age of 50.
Over a toy no one will give a shit about come May.
"Tickle Me Who?"
Perhaps you pause from being a shitty parent long enough to watch the news.
"And that, researchers say, is the most Mariah Carey ever vomited.
I have to interrupt the broadcast ladies and gentlemen.
I've just been handed this bulletin:
There are no Furbies remaining in Delaware.
Scott, get it up on the ticker.
Everyone, once more:
Delaware's Furby stocks have been depleted."
If you live in Delaware (pity), maybe you make promises within your boundaries.
Santa is magical.
Come up with a magical excuse.
"Santa may not be able to bring you a Furby this year, sweetheart.
He Skyped me and told me that he wants to make a special Furby just for you.
It's like the others, but this one grows its hair back after you give it a haircut"
(Kids love that).
You were lying to them in the first place.
Stretch it and avoid that hustle and bustle.
Get them the newest Foo Fighters album.
By next year they'll have forgotten what a Furby is.
I'm using toy references from eleven years past because I don't know any current ones.
Besides Modern Warfare 3.
And don't get me started on that.
 Back when the Furbies and Elmos were just marginally more topical.

Reasons Fleetings

From my phone.
No Internet where I am going.
Christmas in a hut.
But from me and mine to you and yours... ...I'd love to see you in a shower sometime.
Merry Christmas.
And remember: they don't love you like I love you.

What Do You Get the Generation Who Has Everything?

Steal a roll of drink tickets.
It's Friday.

Why can't the dads be against drunk driving also?
Tragedies can make men empassioned, too.
Sure, it would end up being a FADD, probably, but it's nice to get them off of the couch.
Am I right, ladies?! Am I right!?

I have nothing to tell you people.
I really peed my pants onstage last night, which was miserable.
It's tough to describe the emotional anguish associated with taking a dump under the bright lights.
Imagine the let-downdest you've ever been with yourself.
Then compound that with the shared dissapointment of 30-120 people.
Give or take.
It took me until today to realize that I'm sick of the opener I use.
I just sort of hoped I could use it until I eventually run away from this industry to become a teacher.
But this is the holidays.
I shouldn't be talking about work right now.

It's hard to write things that are positive while you're listening to Fiona Apple.
But she has the tunes.
Lisa Loeb's tortured contemporary.

Fuck Chuck Norris.
We collectively resurrected this man.
We can collectively bury him (a second time).
One dude writes a bunch of wacky shit about your beard taking over Kansas or...whatever.
Suddenly you're on TV again.
The Internet makes fools of us all.
We're going to get bored with it, you know.
The Internet.
There is only so much funny shit your dad can say.
He's going to tire himself out.
The LOLCats will all eventually age, get osteoporosis and die.
The Internet is the greatest communicative FADD the world will ever see.
But there will come a time when Wikipedia is as ICQ as cassette tapes.

And this can't come too soon.
As a moonlighting educator, I know how stupid children are.
They're stupid because they're smart enough to have figured out that they don't need to learn anything.
Look at it from their perspective.
Put yourself back in the classroom of your memory, but this time, take your iPhone along.
They really don't need to bother trying.
And when you think about it, would you?

The cat picture looks welfare, I know, but you get the idea.
It took a great deal of my patience to get it to look this good.
He's saying, "I can haz 15 more minutes?" The stereo speaker got in the way of the text.
That's Puss, in his first blog cameo.
He likes getting into boxes.

Fiona flushed her own career when she said "this world is bullshit."
She was wrong; the world's okay.
But I think it has seen better days.
See! I told you it's hard to be positive while listening to her.
Bah Humbug, everybody!

 Coincidentally, this live performance seems to have taken place during Christmas.

It's A Cigar!

Turpin is going to birth a baby soon.
If Nostradadamus was still around, he'd owe me five bucks.
I didn't do it.
Neither did the Wood Twins (it would have taken both of them).
Peter did it.
His funeral, guys.
But I'm bothered that I haven't figured out the gender yet.
I figured that after the first day I'd be able to look at her and say, "Girl."
"Boy."
"Ninja Turtle."
But I'm as clueless as everyone else, which I hate.
You know how grandmothers used to dangle the spoon over the womb?
That's how they'd get the gender.
Have you read Middlesex?
I sort of thought I'd be the spoon, y'know?
And that I'd be right (for once).
If I can't be the father of this dynamo, at least give me the dignity of knowing what colour to paint their room.
Turpin will no doubt paint it some non-gendered colour anyway.
Which would have been our first argument.
I guess the room is already painted, now that I think about it.
And now that I'm still thinking about it, I guess I would have seen this colour.
I don't know what it is.
But their kitchen is purple, I can tell you that.

Grandmothers never dangle the spoon now.
They're too busy buying the car seat, and sometimes the accompanying car.

Musical Chairs

"Just believe in yourself."
Remember how often you used to hear that as a kid?
This was back when adults encouraged children.
"Believe in yourself and you can become a zoologist."
Teachers, parents...the woman who rented you your movies.
They'd all say it.
And they'd even say it to the kid who was obviously going to become a felon.
Two reasons:
1) Because it's what a decent person should say to a child.
And 2) It's just sound, grounded advice. 
Even the TV would say it between cartoons.
Days gone by.
Now no one of authority tells children to believe in themselves, or anything else.
And what's worse is that we've all stopped doing it as well.
Now we believe in the ourselves that others perceive.
Anyone who thinks I don't know what I'm talking about, ask yourself this:
How frequently do you check your Facebook account?
How pleasant is it when someone comments on your status?
Exactly.
As I was saying.
Focusing on the you that's in other people's heads is a much more dangerous alternative.
Let that manifest for long enough and then you believe in the fake version of yourself also.
Last phase is trying to live up to an iteration of you that you had little to do with inventing in the first place.
That's where a lot of us are currently
(And I'm not saying I'm not involved in this dance).
This is why you find yourself reading information like:
FINISHED LAUNDRY!! GOING TO THE MALL!!!
Who gives a shit?
We all do laundry.
We all have our own lists to complete before supper time
(This dance I'm not a part of, I'll admit. I have no priorities).
Another message that we used to hear as kids?
"Just be yourself."
Is that what you're doing today?

I know. I know.
I know what you're thinking.
And I'm on your side.
I liked the blog more when it talked about me getting drunk, too.
This post was supposed to be about how we don't need religion any more than deer do.
Maybe tomorrow.
 
By the way, the number of exclamation points doesn't make the event more interesting.
It's always one.
It doesn't matter how exciting or outrageous the sentence is.
If Obama was assassinated by Big Bird, that's one exclamation point.
OBAMA HEADLESS! BIG BIRD ONLY SUSPECT!
The people who need to know this aren't reading my blog, but I wish they were.

itallics count: 3

Usually It's My Foot

Clean the bathroom before your girlfriend shows up.
It's Friday.
Avril arrives in Halifax within the next few hours.
Right now, she's scrambling to pack everything she needs before her flight.
We're similar in a lot of annoying ways.

Speaking of crossing sexual boundaries, I put a condom onto a dildo last night.
With my mouth.
I was doing a show at Rodeo (Roe-Day-Ohs) for what may have been a dozen people.
It was arduous. It was an arduous performance.
But the Sexygirls were there.
So that was great.
They sell sexy girl items to sexy women, and less than sexy women also, probably.
Anyway, one sexy girl sat next to myself and Brian Aylward after we had finished humiliating ourselves onstage.
'Humiliate' is a strong word.
But we certainly degraded ourselves up there somehow.
When you're telling jokes and you can plainly hear the machine that makes the ice, that's bad.
She smelled nice and she was one of the few people in the room who had paid any attention to us all night.
And she's asking me to put this condom on this phalace.
She wanted me to do it onstage (I would have, just to take a break from speaking for a minute), but hesitated to ask me.
I hate to let down my fans.
She lists the flavours of the condoms, but I know that they're all lubricant-flavoured.
But I take grape anyway.
Grape is my go-to.
If you're wondering which Wine Gum to save me, save me the grape.
I realize as I'm getting ready to do this that the fake penis is almost exactly proportionate to my real one.
In an unsettling way.
You don't want the stripper to look like your cousin, you know what I mean?
Well, maybe you do want that.
Actively search for it, even.
But you see my point.
I'm committed, though. There's no getting out of this now.
I get it on. I know what I'm doing.
But I definitly didn't enjoy the experience.
I walked away having discovered something else that I'm probably not good at:
Blowing men.

The trick is to suck in on the condom, so you don't lose it out of your mouth.

Book your Sexy Parties now, ladies!
While your incompetent husbands are chopping down Christmas trees.

My Eyes!

I've changed the template again.
With sincere apollogies to the ones, dozens, or trillions of people who may  be reading this.
I hated the temporary choice worse than whatever template I will eventually settle on.
This black and orange affair was the first option I came across. 
I like the colour.
It has a confident, Gordon Freeman quality to it.
I was going to ask you to remind me to tell you about something tomorrow.
But I forget what it is.
I really do. Isn't that stupid?
Anyway.
Here's a photo of the whirligig duck that will eventually be in the design somewhere.
Possibly.

Nothing too Crazy

Lately, this song is all I want to listen to.
Perhaps it fits into your brain also.

Cyborgs' Greetings

This is hilarious.
For those of you who are too uncommitted to check the link, it's an article about Harper's Christmas card this year.
Turns out Harper and the two kids are wearing the exact same outfits as they were in last year's card.
I don't understand how you could make a fuss about such a thing.
Of course they're wearing the same outfits; they're painted on.
If the engineers had allowed the three of them to leave the factory with a standard, stainless steel finish on their robot, animatronic chassis, that would have reflected poorly on Canada's craftmanship (Robotics Division). 
Sure, the "children" aren't programmed to feel sadness or embarassment, but shame on the reporters for wasting everyone's time anyway.
Laureen (if that's a name) is the only human of the group, having married into the robotic family.
That's why they had her show a little gam in the photo.
To give it that human touch.
I feel the worst for her.
Sure, there's a lot of glitz and glamour, but I'd imagine that it's a house without much love
(Unless, of course, they've been programmed to feel it).

My Inner Child

Please Notate:
This is one of those self-reflective, "Who am I? Who would I be in other universes?" sort of posts.
If you want something a little less dramatic, read this one about my brothers and I causing a scene in Burger King.

After my show, I eventually leave the yacht club.
Knowing I'll never return.
But I'm happy about it because then I won't have to speak to Leroy any more.
That's not his real name.
That's the name he gave me before proceeding to continuously interrupt me during the show.
People are dressed in finery.
All of the men, by the way, look like they would be at a yacht club.
Portly, middle-aged. Dark sport coats over pinstriped red and white shirts.
No ties.
And Leroy is wearing a Fubu shirt that looks ridiculous.
It's black and has playing cards or...something all over it.
A lot of gold colouring.
It looks like your first junior high silk shirt
(Which typically wasn't even made of silk).
$250 he paid for this thing.
He told me afterwards.
If I lived in an alley I'd have a hard time using it as shelter.
He pays $250 for it.
None of this has anything to do with anything.
After all of this, Josh was having a party.
So I went.
Primarily because the club gave me free drinks, so it seemed like a logical step to take.
Everyone's more or less wasted when I show.
People are trickling in.
I introduce myself to people and begin moving around the room.
Speaking to individuals.
It feels good.
I yammer on to you about missing something I once had.
And really, this is it.
I used to love meeting new people.
I don't know how I came to hate people as I tend to do now.
I sort of blame Banff and its populace of wiener tourists.
Rather than blaming myself.
At the end of the day, it is this thing I am missing.
This desire to meet people.
And the party felt great because it was back.
It felt like it was back, anyway.
I guess it could have been the gin.
This woman showed up later into the night.
And I really liked her earrings.
I feel compelled to compliment women if they are wearing something that I would wear.
If I were a woman.
Or, y'know, if I were a man (if only).
They're triangular and sparkly and neat.
I want to compliment them.
But complimenting women is far more complicated than it was when I didn't have a sexuality.
Complimenting a woman and have them respond to it as though it were an actual compliment is rare.
It's more common to receive looks, shoulders or boyfriends' fists.
I don't want to make this woman uncomfortable.
I don't want her to think I'm flirting with her.
...
But I really like the earrings.
So, here I am.
Standing in this kitchen.
There are people sitting, people standing.
Everyone's talking, laughing. Whatever.
I don't hear any of it.
Cause in my head I'm thinking to myself, "Mention the earrings, mention the earrings, mention the earrings, mention the earrings, mention the earrings..."
But I won't.
When I talk about me now versus me in high school, this is the sort of thing I'm getting at.
I really was more an entertainer then than I am now.
Sure, my memory's not the best, but I know who I was then.
It might be sex...
Sex may have ruined it.
The me in high school never hesitated.
He would have said, "I like your earrings," the second he met Liz.
He really would have.
Now I can't do it.
Eventually she's sitting next to me.
She has just kissed a roommate of Josh's.
She's not available. I'm not available.
This shouldn't be so complicated.
"Mention the earrings, mention the earrings..."
I break and eventually tell Josh that this is bothering me, and why.
(Josh knew this mysterious former me also).
"Fuck it, man.
Now that I'm 30, I tell women whatever.
'I like your earrings,' or 'Your ass looks good in that dress...'"
He keeps talking and I have stopped listening.
Because he's right.
"Your earrings," I say.
Liz says, "What?"
"I like your earrings."
Liz and Josh's kissy roommate (Corey) begin to laugh.
"I just bought these today. He told me that they were stupid."
Corey now, "I didn't see you wearing them, though. It's different when you're wearing them."
I point out that, "She did the hold-up, though. She held them next to her head to show them to you before buying them."
He admitted that she did.
"It's funny you would mention that," Liz said.
I had to agree.
It was funny that I would mention that.
You should never hesitate.
Neither should I.
I left the party, wasted, realizing that I remembered the name of everyone at the party, and a detail or two about them.
In high school, this would have been the case also.
What I miss about my former self?
He was a good listener.

Gut Feeling

I started a post that explains why the site looks so stupid right now.
A large-ish paragraph that could be summed up like this:
We're under construction.
If I had to look at the old template once more I would have puked.
Because I need to see images of myself during most or all times.
Otherwise I get all wobbly in the tummy.
I am so incredibly queezy as a person.
Still.
When I was four I threw up over my swim bag after an hour-long trip to the Aquarena.
(Newfoundland readers: would you believe that this is not the first time I linked the Aquarena?)

25 years later...

I was leaving a gig with Peter White and Bryant Thompson (T-Burger) the other night.
Driving away from Bridgewater to Halifax, which is where I live now.
And I couldn't help but notice that I was getting mildly carsick while in the back seat.
I was high, so it took me some time to realize that it was because I was playing a game on my phone.
Turns out I can't do that in a car.
In retrospect, kind of makes me wish I hadn't bothered buying a game for my phone.
But then, there are still ferry rides and church services that I'll have to while my way through.
Anyway.
The gig didn't suck, necessarily.
But I still managed to hate it somehow.
Ditto for the gig I did Saturday.
Sure, it wasn't awful. It was good, even.
Yet I still hated myself when it was over.
This is normal.
This is "the biz.."
It's exciting to know that I'm progressing on schedule.

Speaking of hating me, I have my first headline set coming up soon.
End of the month.
I guess this is good.
It's good.
It is.
I told Peter White ("this guy again?") when I moved here that I wanted to be headlining within a year or two.
This is not headlining.
I am not and will not be a headliner after doing these shows.
But it's a start.
I'm trying to concentrate on-
Here's the problem.
It's incredibly difficult, at times, to be yourself onstage.
All I want to do is go up there and be myself.
Two issues with that:
1) I can't relax enough to do this (generally), and
2) I have no idea who that is any more.
I don't want to have jokes.
I want to have conversations.

Speaking of which, I have to tell you about Liz' earrings.
But I'll do that in a separate post so that it seems like I'm writing more.
No jokes or pissing around right now, I had no idea that 'separate' was spelled that way until this second.
That's being real with you people.
'Separate' doesn't even look right.
It explains that song by Elliot Smith where he sings this word and it sounds just as it's spelled.
As it has always been spelled.
The song just popped into my head when the auto correct gave me something to talk about for another few lines.
That's another problem, you know.
Now I worry about time.
How much time I'll take up (we're talking about comedy again), how much time I can do.
It's how long I can stretch myself.
I used to do this kind of thing and wish I had more time.
Because I never wanted to get off.
I'm talking about an era before I ever did a comedy set.
See what I mean when I say that I just want to be myself?
Me neither.