Jihad For Dummies

Spam I received today:

From: Angelia Salemi (ahtmo@kln.forthnet.gr)
Subj: When the darkness comes, we know how to shed the light on it.

Become new today and love the new you


We have partnered with best producers to provide the best online service...

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Weird. I received this as I was writing about Dionne Brand's use of light imagery and Christianity in one of her poems and the connection between Christianity. Weird. Weird.

Although the second sentence in the email is nearly as vague as a Biblical passage (or better yet, an academic paper).

Some people think that masculinity and silence are synonymous. That to be a man means to say as little as possible. That somehow saying very little means you are some intelligent observer of the world who only occasionally graces the mortals with the turds of divinity that spill from your mouth.

I think this policy of silence and masculinity is weird, hillarious and totally fucked. Many men in my life have practiced it and I've always found it strange.

Its especially interesting though to see dudes who work together eat lunch in virtual silence both fighting for eyespace over one copy of the newspaper. The stilted conversation, the one word answers and the staring off into the distance to avoid eye contact. Why? Not? Talk?

I once worked an entire week on a truck delivering food to Tim Hortons. Over the week I worked with 5 different drivers. One of them said less than 20 different words to me over the course of a 10 hour shift. There was no small talk whatsoever. He was the most manliest man I know.

Note to self:

If you ask your mom if she wants to invite person A, B and C to your wedding, assume that she will, immediately after talking to you, call person A, B and C and invite them to the wedding. Despite the fact that I haven't seen neither A, B, nor C in the last 10 years and she doesn't really talk to them anymore, they have just got the verbal invite.

Crazy world of weddings.

I'm thinking of telling her they're not invited and that she gets the fun job of uninviting them.

Sadly we can't invite every single person who has entered our lives in the past 30 years. Jr. hockey coaches, Toronto Sun bosses and people we don't see much of will have to be left out. That's the life.

I went to see Austin Clarke on Monday evening, having missed him at Word on the Street (I was trapped in Exeter, On watching people ogle plastic cups - don't ask).

Clarke is a good speaker and quite entertaining for both an author and a man in his 70s. Being an author typically means that you are a drab bore who insists on lecturing at length on the splitting of infinitives and the importance of effective and tempered semi-colon use. Being in your 70s usually means you talk at length about things that no longer exist like onion-powered hydroplanes and slide rules. Combining the two is usually a letahl cocktail of irrelevance and boredom (ie: Philip Roth).

Clarke, however, was none of these things. He does speak slowly, but he talks about things that are very interesting so the slowness just adds a layer of anticipation and narrative arc to everything he says. Furthermore, he is a pretty smart guy, a Toronto gem and an all around Red Smartie of an author. Finally, he has cropped grey dreadlocks and dresses in a grey pinstripe suit so he kinda looks like your anticolonial Rasta Grandfather. We all have one of those.

Clarke's talk was quite good and it made me feel recommitted to the study of immigrant writing in Canada. Also there are some very interesting links between his new novel and some of the other work I've been studying.

Most importantly for me though was the simplicity with which he described his writing. For him it was no massive intellectual production but rather a day to day working through of the problems and anxieties of the world. This is a model for writing that makes me think even I can do it and as I listened I was forming the outline in my head for my own story of life in Canada. Starting with 80 dollars.

The scene in Crank where Jason Statham rapes his girlfriend in Chinatown is probably the dumbest scene I've seen in a movie in the last 5(0) years. Its not just the slight reluctance of someone not really into sex but who is persuaded by their partner. Statham's girlfriend screams no, is wrestled to the ground, punches him, eventually is pinned down by by Statham and has her screams muffled by his kissing.

Eventually, after enough kissing, her screams turn to whimpers which turn to moans which turn to 'Yes! Yes!'. This whole scene is witnessed by a crowd in Chinatown who applaud and cheer his refusal to accept refusal.

No means Yes.

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Stephen Harper's claims that ordinary people don't care about arts funding in Canada and his attempt to strike some radical division between artists and ordinary people is totally astounding.

The '905 Everyman' that he tries to construct is a total fabrication. I grew up in the 905 as did some of the most artistic and creative people I know (some of whom still live there). People in the suburbs or who aren't members of the 'chattering class' DO care about arts and do see a value in things that aren't necessarily immediately quantifiable. You don't need a PhD in drama to appreciate the value of Canadian television.

Sure, funding the arts does create jobs in a sense. The CBC is a big employer and all the movie sets, commercial shoots, bookstores, theatres and other cultural industries in Canada employ all different types of people, from carpenters to cameramen to engineers to writers.

Also, developing an independent and thriving artistic culture in Canada is one of the best ways of avoiding our assimilation into the United States. Developing and encouraging Canadian culture requires investment in that culture and funding to make it possible for people to earn a living working in that culture.

Finally, are we really to be expected to think that 'regular people' don't see an intrinsic value in developing Canadian culture, that they don't recognize that there are things worth spending money on that don't provide an immediate economic return? I think there are many 'regular people' who don't visit museums or art galleries on a yearly basis but who understand why we should have them and are happy to pay for them. I think these same people may not read poetry everyday but they understand that having poets in Canada is a good thing, even if every dollar spent on poetry prizes does not yield a return $1.17 in 5 years.

This attempt to both construct this 'double double/two four/Don Cherry' Everyman is totally just a piece of Conservative sophistry. Not only that but the desire to treat every component of society as though it ought to be quantifiable and ought to yield a financial return is just one of the many reasons why I could never vote for them.

I feel sad for the 20 something year old guy sitting outside this coffee who is begging for money and drinking a beer. He has hidden the beer inside a free newspaper box and he drinks it when no one is walking by. The guy rode here on a bicycle and is obviously homeless. I know people can do whatever they want with their lives but I feel bad that this guy doesn't have anything better to do than beg for money and drink on a Monday afternoon. Leftist sentiments of loving the poor aside, that's not a good way to spend your life.

I often have phone conversations in which the person I am talking to essentially allows me no room to speak whatsoever. They leave little space between their statements and offer none of the usual cues or pauses that would enable me to interject.

Two weird observations: These are alway older people. I usually really enjoy these conversations.

I heard a talk at a conference about speech patterns and how we learn to converse with one another - leaving appropriate spaces for someone else to speak, listening to people when they talk, not cutting people off when they talk.

Everyone can be accused of cutting people off a little bit, as conversations are never perfect flows of information between multiple people. That said, I've learned that conversing is definitely a skill and many people do not possess the necessary skills that enable conversation. But also, I think its interesting to see the ways in which people talk without listening, or feel the need to interject at inopportune moments.

This is the perfect weather for literary production and consideration. Its warm enough to sit on a patio but not so warm that you're roasting. Comfortable in jeans and sweatshirt its ideal for spending the day reading and writing.

I think a lot of the success of British writing has to do with the climate. Yes there were a few geniuses but its easy to produce geniuses of the written word when the weather is so shite outside that all you can do is imagine an alternative life where the sun shines and you're not forced to eat boiled bread for most meals.

Only under the environmental conditions of England could we have had books like Clarissa and Middlemarch. If you live in an environment where life can take place outdoors you may be less likely to produce 1,500 page novels that dissect the nuances of parlor room interaction. Similarly, the British sense of conversations loaded with subtext and dry irony is largely a product of the environment.

When you have whole families packed into tiny living spaces where potatoes are boiling, kettles are screaming, rain is pounding on the windows and hearths are barely glowing, those people have to develop a way of speaking where they don't feel totally oppressed by the presence of these other people. Dry wit and subtext are natural developments of that environment.

Only in England would someone have written 'Bleak House'.

My totally generalizing sweep is that in Nordic countries the environment was far too bleak to encourage anything other than animal rape and suicide. Similarly, in the Southern countries the outside world was so enjoyable that spending your days indoors writing hundreds of pages on the inner lives of butter churners in provincial Spain just didn't make sense. You'd rather soak up the sun and swim in the ocean.

In colonial, pre-multiculti Canada the environment lead to insanity and slaughter of native people, or at least according to Atwood. But the harsh winters are usually replaced by comfortable and enjoyable summers, a weird oscillation in the mental and physical environment that I think leads to some kind of Canadian gothic.

But only in England where its grey everyday, where the skin is blotchy, the teeth crooked and the food is only one step above cardboard does the environment become such a factor that you get Jane Eyre. The book opens like this:

"There was no possibility of taking a walk that day. We had been wandering, indeed, in the leafless shrubbery an hour in the morning; but since dinner (Mrs. Reed, when there was no company, dined early) the cold winter wind had brought with it clouds so sombre, and a rain so penetrating, that further out-door exercise was now out of the question.

I was glad of it: I never liked long walks, especially on chilly afternoons: dreadful to me was the coming home in the raw twilight, with nipped fingers and toes, and a heart saddened by the chidings of Bessie, the nurse, and humbled by the consciousness of my physical inferiority to Eliza, John, and Georgiana Reed"

Yes, these are indeed Krispy Kreme donuts with a bacon cheesburger in the middle.

Feed you cattle, feed.

I love this weather for the warm coolness, the fact that sun shines down on you just enough so that you're warm but can wear a coat and enjoy the breeze. This is a weird inbetween time of the year when life feels kind of daunting and terrorizing but actually its fun and exciting and building.

Canzine. Word on the Street. Fall.

I have been going to Canzine and Word on the Street for like 10 years now, missing a few here and there but generally trying to attend. It is so enjoyable to go - the feeling of contentment and curiosity that comes with both events is really important in my memory and life.

Meanwhile, behind the facade of this innocent looking bookstore.

The summer isn`t really over in my head. Susan and I have been in Italy and England for the last two weeks so we skipped all the end of summer city activities like the closing of the CNE and the looks of malice and abuse on kids who are shopping for duotangs and mechanical pencils. So the summer is over, I know, but it doesn`t feel like it.

That said, today I was sitting near Union Station being ready for fall.

I`m going to Kingston for school tomorrow for the first time in 4 months. It feels so weird to go back and be part of the school. Its a strange ritual that I don`t enjoy, but luckily the place is filled with amazing people who make it better.

The drive home along the 401 in the dusk is always nice and it feels good to watch the sun set on Ontario while inside a car. That`s not good for the environment but most fun things aren`t.

I wish I had more time.

The Apple Store is the weirdest place in the world. Here is the description of the store from the Yorkdale website (what poor creative person is charged with maintaining that website?)

"Come experience the digital lifestyle on a Mac at one of Apple's own retail store at Yorkdale. You'll find an inviting atmosphere and plenty of staff on hand to answer any questions."

What exactly is the digital lifestyle? And anyone who has been into an Apple store knows that its not at all an inviting experience. It is usually rammed with 30 to 50 thick-rimmed glasses in their Yo La Tengo t-shirts all oohing and aaahing over 24" LCD monitors and bluetooth enabled earpieces.

To get any support you have to make an appointment in advance with their 'Genius bar' where you will be served a drink of 1 part support, 3 part hipster douchery and 8 parts corporate rebranding strategy. Calling a white plastic desk in a room in a mall with a few 20 somethings making $11 an hour a genius bar is as inaccurate as calling Steve Jobs a genius.

You can trace the death of a blog in a variety of ways. One way is that the blog just stops being updated for 6 months to a year and then finally there is the 'I obviously have given up on this blog' post which is followed by the deletion of the blog a month later.

Another sign of a soon-to-be-discarded blog is the increase of posted videos on the blog. When the blog becomes a dumping ground for funny youtube videos, that is surely a sign that the thing is done. The author feels obligated to add content but doesn't have the interest/time to write anything, so videos of babies running into Christmas trees and newscasters making freudian slips proliferate.

A lot of my friends who had blogs have long abandoned them. I lamented this for a while primarily because I am prone to projecting future-tense nostalgia onto moments that I am in. I am in a moment and imagine the future when I will look back on this moment with fond memories and have nostalgia for the thing that is currently happening. So when many blogs were disappearing I felt sad for the lost community that was slowly dying away.

That said, I think for many people the idea of a blog is at first attractive and interesting but it soon loses its appeal. A blog might, at the beginning, have the appeal of HAM Radio or a Hula Hoop. But after bitching about their mom a few times or posting short stories that they wrote in a creative writing class, the blogger loses interest. And of course that's fine.

For me, however, I think writing is a critical component of my life. I've always written, whether it be for school, as part of some online hacker group, for the many zines I've written, for activist groups or in this blog (and like many other people I have secret dreams of writing a novel). This blog is a good outlet for that writing, so I attempt to keep it up, not only for the sake of my own literacy and articulation but also to express things that I find important.

The writing I do for school is of interest to about .001% of the population, so writing in this blog not only allows me to write about things that don't fit the academic world, but also to write in a way that doesn't require the degree-babble of academia. Also, its good to actually write in a place where a totally varied group of people will read what you have to say. That way, your arguments that animals deserve voting rights or that the letter 'e' is undeniably racist get the thorough bashing they deserve and you get the brutal honesty that is often missing in polite, postmodern academic society.

Besides, having a place where you can discuss the girly undergarments of an unnamed Ottawa Senators' captain is important.

And my sense is that a person's writing, like most things, gets better with practice. I don't think many people have just sat down at a table, composed an amazing piece of writing in one day, published it and lived off the royalties for the rest of their life. At some point I'm sure Shakespeare produced a cliche-laden piece of shite where he became King of England and lived large with 500 sex-starved Ophelias, pounding flesh to the rhythm of the tin flute.

Eventually, after lots of writing and lots of practice, his writing became better and better and finally came up with Titus Andronicus (best.play.ever). So writing, in my view, requires lots of practice, and this is an excellent venue for that practice, a great place to fuck around with imagery, voice, metaphor and irony. Its with that in mind, as well as the general desire to engage the world and call bullshit and have bullshit called on me, that I want to keep this blog going for some time.

I submitted a conference paper to my supervisor for review more than a week ago and I still haven't heard back. Its not necessarily that I need to hear back to proceed, but I have no doubt that she'll write back with some note explaining that I need to account for the vast body of scholarship on 18th Century Line Dancing and will forward four volumes that I will "need" to read. So I would like to get her feedback a little sooner than later.

Its a sort of mixed blessing, because I am secretly worried that when I get her email she will say 'You need to start again' or explain to me that 'This steaming pile of shit is like a drunken CarretTop fondling his nipples on the floor of a fecal-laden saloon'. I worry that her email will be titled 'The paper shredding industry appreciates your business'.

BBC NEWS
Media criticise Gaza death ruling

Reuters news agency says the Israeli army has made reporting in Gaza "almost impossible" after it cleared a tank crew that killed one of its cameramen.

Fadel Shana and eight other Palestinian civilians, mostly children, were killed by a shell packed with darts in April.

The army's top lawyer said the troops acted properly as they suspected his camera tripod was an anti-tank weapon.

Reuters says it shows the army is not meeting an obligation to protect civilians in combat areas.

Shana was filming some Israeli tanks from about a mile (1.5km) away on 16 April when one of them fired a flechette shell, an anti-personnel weapon which releases a shower of darts.

Nine people were killed, including Shana and eight young Palestinians, all unarmed, aged between 12 and 20.

The incident, which Shana caught on film before his death, shows the tanks fired no warning shots and there was no other fighting.

"The army itself admits that they could not tell whether they were looking at a camera on a tripod or an anti-tank missile system on a tripod," Reuters Jerusalem bureau chief Alistair Macdonald told the BBC.

Although there is no record of Palestinian militants using such a system before, Mr Macdonald says, the tank used "devastating force with a weapon that is designed to kill as many people as possible" in a wide area.

In the previous half-hour Shana's car, marked with TV and Press stickers, had driven within 700 metres of the tanks, Mr Macdonald said.

Israeli officials have called the incident a tragedy but insist it had not been possible to identify Shana and his soundman, who was also wounded in the incident, as journalists.

"In light of the reasonable conclusion reached by the tank crew and its superiors that the characters were hostile and were carrying an object most likely to be a weapon, the decision to fire at the targets... was sound," military advocate-general Avihai Mendelbit wrote to Reuters.

Earlier on the same day, three Israeli soldiers had been killed by Palestinian militants and there had been a grenade attack against a tank, the lawyer said.

"The tank crew was unable to determine the nature of the object mounted on the tripod and positively identify it as an anti-tank missile, a mortar or a television camera," he wrote.

Mr Macdonald called the ruling "very disappointing" on two levels, because the journalists had been identifiable and because the Israeli army admitted it was not sure whether they were militants or civilians.

"This policy to shoot first if there is the slightest doubt has rendered it almost impossible for us to do our jobs in Gaza along with the rest of the international media," he told the BBC's Today programme.

He also accused Israel of not co-operating with the media to improve journalists's safety in Gaza.

Government spokesman Mark Regev said Israel understood the role of an independent, free press in a free society.

"These are situations that are faced internationally and we have got to find a better way to try to make sure journalists are not caught up in crossfire," he told the BBC.

Committee to Protect Journalists representative Joel Campagna said: "These findings mean that a journalist with a camera is at risk of coming under fire and there's not that much that can be done. That's unacceptable."

The CPJ says at least eight journalists have been killed in the West Bank and Gaza since 2001, seven of them were killed in attacks by Israeli army.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/middle_east/7560672.stm

Where I grew up in Brampton Ontario, there is a forest called The Heart Lake Conservation Area. While I'm glad that there is a desire to 'conserve' the forest, I don't think that name really expresses what the place means to most people.

Admittedly some people visit the conservation area for the official 'tourist' 9 - 5 activities that involve paying a fair to get into the park and then having a hike and a barbeque. But for my friends and I, we never pay to go into the forest (which is what we usually called it), nor did we go for barbeques. We would go in there primarily because it was a relatively undisturbed place where you could evade social supervision and drink beer and smoke drugs.

Brampton is weird in that they decided to put a fence around the forest. I think that image of the forest that must be fenced in says a lot about the type of people who find Brampton attractive to live in. There is clearly no benefit, to the local community, to fencing in the forest. Everyone I know in the vicinity would enter the forest through various 'breaks' or 'cuts' in the fence that teenage philanthropists would make as soon as the new fence went up. There is also no benefit to the wildlife in the forest who are not, in any way, protected from marauding suburbanites invading the woods.

Rather I think the fence exists simply to keep a clear division between places, to ensure that the ideology of the woods does not leak into the ideology of the suburb nearby. That which occurs in the woods must not occur in the school or at the plaza or in the houses. This is one of the underlying theme of A Midsummer Night's Dream, but in Brampton that difference between places has been militarized.

Brampton is also a place where public space is considered suspicious and public activity is borderline illegal. As teenagers if you were wandering around at night and you ran into a cop, you would likely be stopped or at least be blasted by a police light. No doubt the cops used to be teenagers and never did anything productive with their lives so they've committed their existence to harassing kids and beating up black people at night.

The residents of the city like this.

So with that in mind, the forest becomes a very suspicious place where youth cannot really be monitored and potentially subversive activity might occur. If you need to go into a forest to do something, you shouldn't be doing it. Sitting on the hill by the forest at night, the police would regularly shine their floodlights at us in an obvious attempt to say 'STOP... Do not traverse the borders!'. They would never enter the forest if we fled, hopefully for fear that we would kick their ass in the anonymity of the woods.

Enclosing a forest with a fence and then trying to charge people to enter it is so ridiculous that it sounds like something out of a 1970s science fiction movie.

Ever since living next to that forest with its insane fence that serves no purpose other than to remind people of the inherent illegality of stepping out of line, I've watched the world for equally insane borders that try to keep clear divisions between places.

The second cup that I'm working at has a patio that is enclosed by chrome metal barriers. They could probably stop a midsized vehicle from illegally entering the patio. They make absolutely no sense as there is also a natural barrier of a garden that surrounds the patio. The fence simply reminds me that I have paid for the right to be inside these borders and that the scum walking nearby better stay on their side of the line.

I'm not trying to make some crazy comparison between the borders of Heart Lake Conversation Area and the Israeli wall. That would be nuts. I am saying, though, that the way we design the places we live often makes no sense and encourages people to be afraid and draw within the lines than to reimagine a better way of living and encourage compassion and understanding.

Suburbs as a place and an idea are totally fucked.

Scholarship is supposed to written by old men with long grey beards, long grey cloaks and long grey fingernails in rooms where the stairs are made of books and newts are sipping from every second vial. The place is supposed to be perfectly silent other than the occasional shout of YES! or the random bustle made by the scholar's non-coital (l/w)ife partner who insists on cleaning up after the dreamy-theory headed genius.

My life is not like this.

I prefer to do my work in some of the loudest places the city has to offer. I feel like the noise and the movement of people brings my work more in contact with the world in a sense. When Jack Astors music and the voices of Caribana hopefuls are spilling into my brain, my work doesn't feel like it takes place in a vacuum (figurative and literal) but instead is part of the bustling complicated world that it claims to describe. I'd prefer one of my papers to blow away and be lost at the intersection of Front, York and University than to have perfect preservation of my porcelain wunderbrainchild of a paper. I'd prefer to put footnotes in my paper about homeless man who harass me while writing than to have a coherent argument.

I think if I could I would like down in the tiny space between the 10 lanes of the 401 and write there. If they would stop traffic for me for just 10 minutes a day, I'd write in that tiny exposed space.

I'm supposed to be writing a conference paper but the writing is S.L.O.W. Sometimes it comes so quickly and you fill up a few pages in no time. Other times it takes forever and you stare at the same few lines of text thinking 'What the hell does that mean?'

I think for now I need to set it aside and maybe try printing it off and working on it tomorrow. Working with actual paper instead of on the computer screen makes a huge difference in terms of editing and thinking logically about arguments. Plus it means you can't go look at the internet every time you think 'This is boring'.

I met up with Alexis and Andrew last night for some patio drinks at the Black Bull. Excellent time. Susan arrived around 830 and we enjoyed the warm weather with some greasy food and beer. For some reason I get along so well with those dudes. There's never a tough moment in the conversation and I feel like I can totally be myself.

As you become more entrenched in couple life you tend to spend a little more time hanging out in coupled environments. Not necessarily intentionally but largely because you don't wanna leave your partner home all the time. As such, I'm glad that Susan and I have such great friends who are also great couples. All very cool people both alone and in their coupling-Voltron form.

Speaking of leaving your partner, this past weekend I left Susan and went up to Allan's cottage in Algonquin park for a weekend of 100% sausagery. It was a fun time, if a little heavy on the testosterone. You could feel the cabin fever setting in by the end of the weekend where people's patience was beginning to wear a little thin. Alcohol can only hold off cannibalism for so long.

I know for myself that when I get tired I get irritable and become less fun. I think most people are like this. This is not a revelation.

The weekend was fun - lots of drinking, magic, swimming, and cooking. Admittedly at times I thought that it was slightly boyish and I wondered if I would do it again in that exact way next time. I'm all for sausagefest weekends (sick) but eventually you want them to involve more man-like activities and less boy-like activities. I think I am coming to the slow awareness that I am no longer 21. Note that this is not a desire to play less magic, simply to do so in an older way.

I do contrast the time I spent at Allan's cottage with Drew's cottage or Aimee's cottage and definitely feel more at home in the latter two. That's more the pace / type of living that I find comfortable.

I am also now the shamed owner of an iphone. Yes, I'm that yuppie. My old cell broke and I went into the Fido store demanding the cheapest phone available. They informed me that I had 400 Fido dollars and that I could get an iPhone for free. Whut whut. So I'm selling my 16gb iPod touch for $300 and am loving the iPhone. It is truly fucking sweet.

In the tradition of 'fleece a sucker' Mondays:



Have you ever thought about what will happen to your pets after Jesus comes back to claim the souls of the saved during the Rapture and deliver them to heaven to enjoy ever lasting life? The bible clearly teaches that only those that have accepted Jesus as their savior will enter heaven (John 14:6, Romans 3:23), and we all know that pets do not have the cognitive ability to do this, so what will happen to your beloved pets? Surely without you there, they would be stuck inside your empty house, starving to death with no one to feed them, let them out to potty, or clean their litter box. This is probably not what you envision for your pets after you are gone. This is where I come in.

I am here to offer you pet care service for after the rapture. As an atheist, I will surely still be here on this earth post rapture and would love to look after your pets for a small fee and make sure they are still well taken care of after you and your family have been raptured. You will be able to look down on them from heaven and see them being well cared for by me and living happy, healthy lives. Do not let my atheism scare you! I am a moral and loving pet owner and would never do harm to any animal.

For a small deposit of only $50, you can be assured that your pets will be well cared for from the time that you are raptured until the end of their natural life. They will get adequate amounts of food, water, and shelter as well as plenty of exercise and socialization as I would imagine there will be a lot of pets that will be abandoned by Jesus the pet hater that will need to be cared for.

If interested, please email me for my PayPal address (you can also send me a check if you prefer) so you can assure that your pets will be taken care of after Jesus comes to take your soul to heaven. $50 is only a small price to pay to know that while you are enjoying everlasting bliss, your pets will be cared for until their end days. Thanks and have a great day!

From craigslist, Kansas City

My sister had a BBQ over the weekend and it was a great success. Admittedly the rain kept us indoors but her boyfriend braved the downpour to do some outdoor-thunderstorm cooking and he managed to make some excellent food despite the weather. One funny moment came when there was a lull in the conversation and everyone went silent except for one woman who, at the exact moment of silence, asked another person "Would you rather such a dick or eat an orange?"

A few people started smiling and others just stared at the floor. Hillario.

PS: I vote orange.

"Topics for the man"

"I am overwhelmed by what these people do with ladies"

"Sam updated his blog with some sizzling pictures of his spouse"

"I have information what girls do on a farm. DON'T leave them there abandoned."

"Generic drugs ... the only way to go" (from keefer heckie)

"Separation Grounds. Creatures involved" (from jock dob)

"Get your left hand ready"