7.26.2010

three little pigs.


Once there were three little pigs who lived together in mutual respect and in harmony with their environment. Using materials that were indigenous to the area, they each built a beautiful house. One pig built a house of straw, one a house of sticks, and one a house of dung, clay, and creeper vines shaped into bricks and baked in a small kiln. When they were finished, the pigs were satisfied with their work and settled back to live in peace and self-determination.

But their idyll was soon shattered. One, day along came a big, bad wolf with expansionist ideas. He saw the pigs and grew very hungry, in both a physical and an ideological sense. When the pigs saw the wolf, they ran into the house of straw. The wolf ran up to the house and banged on the door, shouting, "Little pigs, little pigs, let me in!"

The pigs shouted back, "Your gunboat tactics hold no fear for pigs defending their homes and culture."

But the wolf wasn't to be denied what he thought was his manifest destiny. So he huffed and puffed and blew down the house of straw. The frightened pigs ran to the house of sticks, with the wolf in hot pursuit. Where the house of straw had stood, other wolves brought up the land and started a banana plantation.

At the house of sticks, the wolf again banged on the door and shouted, "Little pigs, little pigs, let me in!"

The pigs shouted back, "Go to hell, you carnivorous, imperialistic oppressor!"

At this, the wolf chuckled condescendingly. He thought to himself: "They are so childlike in their ways. It will be a shame to see them go, but progress cannot be stopped."

So the wolf huffed and puffed and blew down the house of sticks. The pigs ran to the house of bricks, with the wolf close at their heels. Where the house of sticks had stood, other wolves built a time-share condo resort complex for vacationing wolves, with each unit a fiberglass reconstruction of the house of sticks, as well as native curio shops, snorkeling, and dolphin shows.

At the house of bricks, the wolf again banged on the door and shouted, "Little pigs, little pigs, let me in!"

This time in response, the pigs sang songs of solidarity and wrote letters of protest to the United Nations.

By now the wolf was getting angry at the pigs' refusal to see the situation from the carnivore's point of view. So he huffed and puffed, and huffed and puffed, then grabbed his chest and fell over dead from a massive heart attack brought on from eating too many fatty foods.

The three little pigs rejoiced that justice had triumphed and did a little dance around the corpse of the wolf. Their next step was to liberate the homeland. They gathered together a band of other pigs who had been forced off their lands. This new brigade of porcinistas attacked the resort complex with machine guns and rocket launchers and slaughtered the cruel wolf oppressors, sending a clear signal to the rest of the hemisphere not to meddle in their internal affairs. Then the pigs set up a model socialist democracy with free education, universal health care, and affordable housing for everyone.

Please note: The wolf in this story was a metaphorical construct. No actual wolves were harmed in the writing of this story.

- Politically Correct Bedtime Stories: Modern Tales for Our Life & Times, James Finn Garner






7.22.2010

just some things.

An Entomologist's Last Love Letter, by Jared Singer

so i have a new plan
i’m gonna leave you now
i’m gonna spend the rest of my life committing petty injustices
i hope you do the same
i will jay walk at every opportunity
i will steal things i could easily afford
i will be rude to strangers
i hope you do the same
i hope reincarnation is real
i hope our petty crimes are enough to cause us to be reborn as lesser creatures
i hope we are reborn as flies
so that we can love each other as hard as we were meant to.


***

"I think we ought to read only the kinds of books that wound and stab us. If the book we are reading doesn't wake us up with a blow on the head, what are we reading it for? We need the books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us."
- Franz Kafka

7.14.2010

show us your rack!

Totally stoked to play this show! Gnarlie Murphy and Mutiny are brutal.
Last Saturday Rackula played in Brantford with two local Brantford bands Christpunchers and Hangman Pinata. What a fucking night. I learned that I'd much rather play in the middle of a pit of sweaty punks than on a stage. Brantford punks know how to have a good time. A fight broke out in the middle of our set and I almost got swept up in the action while I was playing, without even realizing it.


Upcoming Rackula dates:

Jul 17 - Circus Room, Kitchener ON
w/ Gnarlie Murphy, Loaded Dice, Mutiny

Aug 13 - Portugese Club, Sarnia ON
w/ The One-Eyed Muskrats, Black Cat Attack, One Hundred Proof

Sep 3 - Brunswick Tavern, St. Thomas ON
w/ Oxbaker, Busters, Beyond the Black


Sep 16 - This Ain't Hollywood, Hamilton ON
w/ Kill Matilda, The Alcohollys
Sep 24 - Bovine Sex Club, Toronto ON
w/ Red 5 Mass



Tunes! -




my head really hurts

Black Flag at the now burnt-down Embassy Hotel in London, ON - from 1984:

why is live footage of rudimentary peni so rare???

7.08.2010

what a pickle.

# In the state of Connecticut, in order for a pickle to officially be considered a pickle, it must bounce. Plus, you may not sell a pickle that will fall apart if dropped 12 inches.

# In Trenton, New Jersey, it is illegal to throw a bad pickle in the street.

# In Rhode Island, it is illegal to throw pickle juice on a trolley.

# In some parts of the south, it's illegal for women to eat pickles with their feet up on the porch railings!

# Pickles were mentioned at least twice in the Bible.

# The 57 on the Heinz ketchup bottle represents the number of varieties of pickles the company once had.

# Aristotle praised their healing effects.

# Julius Caesar made his army eat them, maybe because...

# Cleopatra's favorite food was pickles. She said they made her beautiful.

# John Lennon's first girlfriend was named Thelma Pickles.

# And the first American president George Washington loved pickles.


7.03.2010

an offering.

I am the woman at the water’s edge,
offering you oranges for the peeling,
knife glistening in the sun.
This is the scent and taste
of my skin: citron and sweet.
Touch me and your life will unfold
before you, easily as this skirt
billows then sinks,
lapping against my legs, my toes
filtering through the river's silt.
Following the current out to sea,
I am the kind of woman
who will come back to haunt
your dreams, move through your
humid nights the way honey
swirls through a cup of hot tea.

Shara McCallum - An Offering