Damien! How's it hangin'?

In happier times, on a Sunday ride with Mummy and StepDaddy.

I've been wondering all these years what that demonic little bastard Damien has been up to. I'm sure he must have gotten tired of all that Nanny recycling and Priest skewering at some point. I never really bought that bullshit that went down in Final Conflict, I knew he would find a way out of it somehow. Turns out, he did!

"I'm coming for you, God."

As it happens, he is now the leader of the sleepy little nation of Canada. I guess a little name change and a sneak across a terrorist-sieve border are no big deal for the Anti-Christ. I really should have noticed earlier, the dead eyes and love of scorched-earth policies were a dead giveaway. He picked a great place to launch Armageddon from, no one will see it coming. Hell, does anyone even know we are here? At least Canadians will be happy that the world finally noticed us. Well, good luck to you, "Mr. Harper!" Please don't kill me.

Celine and her Dad show how it's done.

In this crazy world of runnin' off to get hitched in some Moonie ceremony at the same time as ten thousand other people, and waking up in a fleabag motel room with an overdosed hooker wearing a matching ring, it's nice to think of the simpler times like those pictured above.

Back in the day, Celine Dion's Dad made the arduous wagon train trip from her hometown of Fontaine-du-Merde-de-la-Mer, just so he could be there to hold her hand and walk her down the aisle. I wonder who the lucky fellow was that Papa was about to deliver his baby girl to?

Wait, what did you just say? You're kidding, right!? The guy in the picture is the husband!?

That is sooo fuckin' gross.

Anger: It's all upside.

Yesterday I made a trip to what passes for our local auto parts and repair emporium to enquire as to whether some parts we had ordered recently had "made the scene" so to speak. When I strode up to the counter (that's right, strode), I was pleased to see only one other customer in front of me and two people situated behind the counter, strumming the keys on their computer terminals. Not wanting to assume my own importance, I took a position just askance of the fellow already being helped, in order to give the unoccupied customer service representative the chance to wave me in when he was ready. After oh, several minutes of standing there waiting for my turn to be served, the fellow looked up from his screen with an irritated glare and said: "Whatcha lookin' for?" Hmmm. Well. I adjusted my monocle, gave a quick flick of the brim of my top hat, hooked my thumbs in the sides of my waistcoat, cleared my throat and said: "A little bit of fucking friendly customer service my good fellow, but it looks like I'm shit out of luck here, you ignorant turd!" Then out loud and back in reality, I muttered something to the effect of "I am just here to check on the parts I came here to check on yesterday that you told me might be in today" or some other rambling, inane response. After exchanging the least possible amount of words with the twit necessary to extract my required information, I turned and left, gritting my teeth all the way out the door. I spent the rest of the day with a serious case of l'esprit d'escalier.

Now that I have had time to think some more about this silly little incident, the thing that keeps popping up to me is my own anger about the whole thing. Really, does it make sense for me to get homicidally angry over some guy's offensive service mannerisms? And could I be part of the problem? Thanks, I didn't think it was me. As usual all this thinking got me to well, thinking about anger in general and its place in our society. I did a little bit of studying on emotions in a Psyc course and I learned some interesting facts about anger in our culture. It will come as no surprise to most people that studies done on the subject have shown that North American men and women express their emotions in several different ways, often depending on the situation and their perceived roles. Generally, North American women are more emotionally expressive, both verbally and nonverbally. On average, North American women smile more than men, tend to touch others more, and use more expressive facial expressions and body language. It has been shown that women discuss their feelings and emotions more easily than men and are more willing to acknowledge that they are vulnerable at times. In essence, women do the vast majority of the emotional heavy lifting in North America, and men are generally expected to mask or conceal their feelings. In fact, studies have shown that men in North America only express one emotion more freely than women. One! Weird.

Now what could this one emotion be that is so awesomely powerful it is the only one men require to survive and exist on this crazy planet of ours? Why, it's anger, of course! Those of you in the room who had your hands up excitedly, ready to tell us all about the power of love, don't look so dejected! Anger is an exciting, dynamic emotion, with endless subtleties and varieties of expression. It's not a loss for us, it's a gain. Most men know that it was (probably) God who once said: "If I start out liking you, I might be disappointed, but if I start out hating you, there's nowhere to go but up!" Men have always instinctively known this to be true and are thus much better prepared to face the world's troubles (and dickheads) than women with all of their "different emotions" (confusing!), "expressive feelings" (tiring!), and "getting along" (boring!).

Studies have shown that men in other parts of the world are much more expressive with the other, shall we say, more "delicate" emotions than are North American men. These other parts of the world include France, Italy, The Middle East, and Spain. Is it any coincidence that these areas currently lead the world in random explosions at this time? See what unfocussed emotional expression gets you? In other areas of the world, including Germany, England, and Switzerland, the men may in fact even more freely express their sadness than the women (la-ame!). Wait, I thought Switzerland was "neutral." These same studies have shown that Asian men and women control their emotional expression equally, which is understandable because I would think Hari-Kari would take one steady frickin' hand. The emotional tally appears to be: World: quite a few emotions, Asia: no (discernible) emotions, North American Women: every freakin' emotion (fortunately for Dr. Phil) and finally, North American Men: one very special emotion.

What all this study reading and theorizing and making up of information has left me with, besides a warm and fuzzy feeling, is a sort of detente with my concern about my anger issues. I am not surprised that I was right to go to anger first all these years, why it is in my very nature! In fact I am so confident in my approach now, I may even try out some of the other emotions for fun some time and maybe put on my wife's clothes and carry around her little handbag telling everything that moves and has fur "I love you!" Christ! Not likely. I was also glad to see that, as usual, us men here in the New World are leading the way for our peers and that we have found the path to enlightenment: sweet, irrational, fearsome anger. If the Dalai Lama is on the ball, he should really consider "losing it" one of these days. He won't regret it.

Why the change?

Simple. The black background was absolutely awful to try and read. Even though I thought it looked cool. Looks like I have no choice but to live and die by the written word, substance over style one might say. It's a choice I hoped I would never have to make, mostly because I really thought I would pick style, and that's a little embarrassing.

Is the Content Warning worth it?

It has recently been brought to my attention that my..ahem...liberal use of profanity peppered throughout my little corner of the blogworld is shall we say, "superfluous." By "shall we say superfluous" I mean that there was a direct comment to the effect that the swearing was in fact superfluous. I don't think I could ever get tired of saying the word superfluous and the more often you say it, the more it starts to sound like a word from some weird alien language, which makes it even more enticing. Page 598 of my spine-broken and well worn Mini Oxford Dictionary defines the word "superfluous" quite succinctly and in a mere two small points as: more than is needed or wanted, useless. Ouch. Now I suddenly realize why I shouldn't have ever felt proud when people have said things in the past such as: "Well now that Brent has enlightened us with his superfluous commentary, has anyone else got something interesting to add?" I always thought that meant my ideas were somehow super and that those to follow could not possibly be anywhere nearly as interesting. I also need to contact a certain professor whose front-page-of -the-assignment scrawled comment of "What a pile of superfluous bullshit!" has suddenly taken on new meaning. I must admit, "pile" and "bullshit" should have set off some alarm bells through the self-satisfied fog I was in after receiving a "SUPERfluous." Sadly, the emphasis has been in my head all this time.

Now don't get me wrong, I don't take offense to it in the least. In fact it got me to thinking about the nature of all of this get-yourself-out-there, look-at-me-world, I-need-validation blogifying(?). It occurred to me that maybe I was wrong to choose the Content Warning for my little pulpit. Although the only people who will ever read it will undoubtedly be family and friends with (obviously) nothing better to do, what if some random person were to think my title seemed somehow more appealing to them than say,"Oh, for Fuck's Sake," or "Oh, for Fu*k's Sake," or even "Oh, for F**k's Sake" (trust me, they are all out there). Maybe this random person would think that my asterisk-filled title somehow set me apart from my foul-mouthed blogren, and that I was just giving a cheeky wink to the others with my almost-naughty name. Now let's just imagine this guileless avid reader spending a lazy Sunday afternoon reading random people's blogs and they decide to click on mine. Up pops the Content Warning. Goodness! One can imagine the thoughts racing through their head at this point: What am I in for? they might think. Why is there a Content Warning attached to this blog? they might ponder. What does it all mean? they might query themselves. I would hope that they wouldn't be worried that scantily-clad Amateur Housewives and self-gratifying monkeys lurked behind their next mouse click, but how would they know for sure? Could it possibly cost me a new person's access to my insanity? Do I care? And am I already selling myself out right here by not saying: "Do I give a fuck?"

I guess what all this introspective claptrap has shown me is that maybe I do care. My family and friends already know me and, warts and all, accept me for who I am, including my sometimes (always?) salty language. It does bother me a little to think that a stranger might judge me a cad due to my random use of the F word and its associates. By the same token, I have no respect for anyone who is offended by the use of a word just because they happen to find it offensive. In order to sound as pretentious as possible I will mention some other words and phrases that have been found offensive in the past: "Communist," "Democracy" and "Gordon Campbell." Okay that last one was just pandering to public applause, and technically has not lost its offensive lustre. I will stipulate to the fact that swear words are all too prevalent today for all the wrong reasons, and I am as guilty as anyone in their misuse. That being said however, I "clean up real good" in proper company and can hold my own without the use of profanity. The real issue for me is that I like to use it, and I live in a world where its non-use would be considered weird, so I am going to have to keep on walking the razor-thin line between just enough and too much. Much like offensive television programming in which viewers have the choice to change the channel, people are welcome to make a choice to participate or not. Hopefully I don't lose too many along the way. We might just have some fun here.

I am going to leave the last (paraphrased) words to a gem of a television show with the ability to produce hilarious comedy without profanity. In the Flight of the Conchords episode "What goes on tour," the boys' manager, disgusted with their (not so real) tour antics has decided to stomp out in protest. Their exchange goes somewhat like this:

Murray (the Manager): You guys make me so mad, I feel like swearing!
(He never swears on the show.)

Bret (band member): Aww, Murray you wouldn't do that.

Murray (face looking like a tomato about to explode):

Go fuck yourself, Bret!!

Appies!

Today is our friend's surprise (like anyone hasn't screwed it up yet) 50th Birthday Bash, and I have undertaken making one or maybe more later-in-the-evening appetizers for us to take to the party. My wife was intending to make her World Famous Spinach Dip, but she had a course out of town today, so I convinced her I could handle the appy thing. So here I sit with a copy of "The Complete Book of Party Food and Appetizers" open in front of me. I am looking at page 48 right now which consists of a checklist entitled "Dinner Party Planner." Forty eight pages in and not one recipe. I am reminding myself that we have a frozen bag of battered cheese balls in the freezer that I could really dress up with a couple of celery sticks and some three cheese ranch salad dressing as a dip. However, I would like to try something new within my solidly defined boundaries of "Don't overdo it." I guess I'm going to soldier on and hopefully find something that appeals to me and meets my demanding criteria: can be made with shit I already have in the house. Page 94: Yay! Food! Can anyone in this world actually hold 93 pages of party food planning and basics in their head? And if they can, do something useful with your life, for fuck's sake!

Now a bit of background is probably in order. I love to cook. Absolutely love it. There is no greater satisfaction to me in this world than creating something that puts a smile on people's faces. It's obvious why our mothers enjoyed the serving of meals to their families. I know the making got tiresome though, and the trying to think of what to make was the worst part. I know that for a fact because I am going through it now, and it is extremely frustrating (the cheese balls are lookin' good). I have always liked to cook, probably driven by the fact that I love to eat (waay too much). It can be a very creative pursuit, and when I fuck up, it satisfies my daily rageaholic requirements of swearing and pissing and moaning about things that cannot be changed.

The kids, God bless them, take it all in stride. They often ask me questions when I'm cooking like: "Brent, if you went on Hell's Kitchen, do you think you would win?" I like to tell them that if I went on Hell's Kitchen I would tell Ramsay to go F himself, at which point he would probably try to make out with me and the show would have to be cancelled due to the the new, difficult-to-sell (in the testosterone fueled world of professional chefs) gay subtext. Hell, we know Ramsay's a manly man, he's been cheating on his wife with a "professional" mistress for years now! Manly stuff, that. If I had my way, we would win the lottery and I would spend all of my days, free of stress, cooking my heart out. We would all end up monstrously fat, and die deleriously happy from obesity created medical disorders. They would need to use a cold chisel in the funeral home to remove the fucking smiles from our faces (so we could get that just-resting look for the viewing). If we had decided to be cremated, I hope we'd croak in the Spring, the aroma might get everyone around town thinking about BBQ season.

So getting back to tonight's menu, I am thinking maybe Thai Chicken Bites and Peanut Sauce. The book informs me that the food should suit the occasion, but the Thai connection just makes me think of wrinkly old people in speedos at all-inclusive resorts, pothead backpackers, and repugnant sex-vacation types. I'm not sure there will be more than two of those population subtypes at the party tonight. Food for our types of parties (laughing, drinking, fun) may not be within the scope of the book I am using. It seems written for a different type of party (forced laughs, bloated egos, and longing glances exchanged with members of the wait staff). The person with the best insight to the whole food-fits-the-occasion thing has got to be the hot-dog cart guy that works out on the street after the bars close. He gets it. After a night of heavy drinking and sweaty dancing, a smokie fits the bill to a T. Hold the chardonnay.

Yes, yes, I hear you little cheeseballs. We might just see you yet.

Busting my literary cherry (How romantic!)

Well, I guess it's kind of official. I have become one of the blogging horde. Obviously Facebook's little comment section just wasn't enough to satisfy my big ego and small vocabulary. Just kidding, I have a nicely sized vocabulary, my wife assures me that it's more than adequate. So now that I have set the tone with my claim that I am an angry overprivileged white male I should probably follow through with a ranting diatribe. Okay, so here goes...

Today's topic for an off-the-cuff rant will be....Susan Boyle. WTF!! I know, I know, I promised a lot of anger and those who read my profile have probably already logged off by now, but...

Earlier today, I was wasting my life commenting on other's comments on Facebook (Step 11 out of the 12 Steps of Suicide, Step 12 being the act itself). I had made comments to the effect that I thought it was ludicrous that Piers (Pinch Face) Morgan had let it be known that he wanted to be the first to kiss Susan Boyle. What a lucky girl! Perhaps Susan's dream is to be kissed by someone who's pockets aren't being lined by photo-op cash. Maybe she doesn't want to be kissed for fuck's sake (blog title references will abound, be forewarned). The people that have lined up since her performance to condescend to her and use her as an example of their own so-called moral breakthroughs make me puke. None of these assholes would have even remembered her name if she didn't have such a wonderful voice. And don't lie, we were all ready to share a titter at another goofy talent contest wannabe, but personally, it felt good to feel like an idiot when she did a great job of the task she set out to do: singing. We should definitely be more aware of the manipulations these shows are putting us through, a fresh set of eyes would be good for us all in the future.

Now that I have attempted to purge my own guilt, let's get back to good old Piers (Job Description: Donald Trump and Simon Cowell's Towelboy) and his ridiculous attempt to seem "earthy" and "connected" to the little people by claiming he wanted to plant the first smackeroo on Susan's virgin cheek. Piers, people (real people) don't fucking buy it when you show interest in them just because they dun good y'all. Susan deserves a kiss from someone who knows her and likes her and wants to kiss her, not someone whose (enlarged) paycheque depends on her. Lets face it, if she makes it through the competition and her talent is as valid as it seems at first blush, she won't need losers like Morgan and Cowell, she will be able to write her own ticket, and that is real power, ladies and gents.

Since I want a stream of simmering anger to run through this blog, I would like to say: Susan, I hope you win the whole thing and wipe your ass with the X-wielding losers standing in your way.
And please, for the Love of God, don't let Piers get his stripper-tainted lips near you. What? He is rich. And no, you-know-who, I am not on meds yet (you would be amazed how long you can fly under the radar with undiagnosed personality disorder!)

Feel free to comment, people, I desperately love to argue.