You’ve sold your house! Yay!…Aw crap.

Enjoy hammering this sign into the ground. It will be the last time you don’t feel homicidally angry for a long while…a real long while.

I’ve been away from the blog-lar system for the last week because I have been busy participating in that most utterly enjoyable of activities: moving out of our old house and into our new (to us) house. It took almost a year to sell our old house, and it didn’t happen a minute too soon. If I heard one more idiot present a lowball offer with some list of “reasons” why it was so low, I think I was going to fucking lose it. Why in the name of Christ would I care why they thought they should offer less than our asking price? Doesn’t the phrase “sold as is” mean anything any more? We know the driveway isn’t paved, morons, so don’t tell us that’s why you knocked five grand off the price. It wasn’t paved when we put it up for sale either, duh!

The most wonderful part of the selling, however, had to be the mad panic to make the house look like it leapt off of the pages of Better Homes and Gardens magazine for every viewing by a prospective buyer. There is nothing quite as wonderful as walking in the door at five o’clock at night, after having gotten up at three in the morning to hear “Showing tomorrow at ten, could you vacuum?” or spending your entire Sunday cleaning to pretty up the house for a showing on Monday morning. Just once, when someone came to look at the house I wanted to be sitting on the couch in my underwear in front of the TV, watching a football game, chunks of pretzels all over my belly, and a half empty beer helmet on my head, emblazoned with a “Go Raiders!” sticker on the side. I would look up when they came in, and spitting my beer straw out of my mouth, I would say: “What? This is what you’re going to be doing here once you own it!” I am sure the wife would be mortified, but the husband, he’d understand it. You goddamn right he would.

Once the sale has happened, things get nasty quick. First, it is decided by the powers that be (not you, if you are the husband) that everyone should go through everything they own and separate it into items to keep, items to donate to charity, items to throw out, and items to go into the “Going-to-pay-for-the-new–stuff-at-the-new-house-garage-sale.” Garbage Garage Sale. Even writing the words just now is causing me to break out into a cold sweat. What an epically colossal waste of fucking time. As it so happens, no one comes to a Garbage Garage Sale intending to spend over ten dollars, and they plan to leave with no less than five items for that ten dollars. They are all also hoping to one day appear on Antiques Roadshow and tell the host: “I found this at a garage sale. I bought it off the moron for like, two bucks!” And the haggling, oh the haggling. Sample exchange between a prospective customer and myself:

Customer: “This Sony Vaio laptop says two dollars on the price tag. Will you take a dollar for it?”

Me: “How about I smash the laptop over your head and pry the two dollars out of your hand to cover the damages?” and then out loud: “I have to ask my wife.”

Customer: “I changed my mind, I wasn’t planning on spending that much for a top of the line laptop.”

Me: “Fuck you.” and then out loud: “ Thank you, come again!”

That’s two Friday evenings and one Saturday morning I will never be able to get back. The very best part of the Garbage Garage Sale is that afterward, you get to sort all the leftovers into items to keep, items to donate to charity, and items to throw out. Good times.

Look at all the stuff! Look at all the stuff nobody wants! Hey, that’s pretty much all of it!

After crushing all of the dreams of new goodies financed by the garage sale, it’s time to pack up! If you are a woman, that means that three or four weeks before you move, ninety percent of the items in the house are boxed and ready to be moved, or have been sold. This lets the family spend it’s last weeks in the home living like European backpackers, eating dry toast and leftover condiment packages from drive-thrus and wearing the same clothes they had on when the “sold” sign went up. When the big day arrives to start moving, everyone pitches in to help, except teenagers, whose contribution seems to consist entirely of laying on the couch to make it heavier to put in the moving van, and randomly yelling: “Are we going to eat soon?” The one upside of packing all of the shit off to the new house is I now know the exact weight of every item we own: heavy. A lot of times I’m sure it pays to just hire the pros, like these guys:

They offered to move us for ten bucks and two forged Canadian passports. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to come up with the ten bucks, and I still owe my cousin for the passports. Anyone else out there named Firin’ Explosama or Farouk Al-Waxmani?

Once everything has been packed into the new house, all you have to do is unpack it and put it away, which is the easiest part by far, as long as you hide out in a seedy bar somewhere and don’t participate. Oh, and while you are unpacking, you will have to separate everything into items to keep, items to donate to charity, and items to throw away. You will also need to attend couples’ counseling for a year, or maybe even retain the services of a divorce lawyer. As far as moving’s location goes on a list of “Fun Stuff to Do,” I would rank it somewhere between jumper cable clamps on the ball sack and a Cher/Celine Dion double bill evening in Vegas. If I could give any advice about selling your house and moving it would be simple:

• Torch the old place and everything in it and get new shit with the insurance money.
• Have someone torch the old place and everything in it for you and get new shit with the insurance money.
• Have a Bighorn Sheep repeatedly head butt you in the nuts to simulate the moving experience and get you in shape to tackle it.
• Stay right where you are. Seriously. Don’t even think about it.

Fall TV Season Preview, “I Wish” Edition

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Having a Bad Day? It Could be a Hell of a Lot Worse…

Every once in a while I start to feel a little sorry for myself. I’m sure we all do at times. Maybe you haven’t achieved the goals you set out to in life, or haven’t felt like life has been going your way recently. Hell, maybe that racketeering conviction stuck on appeal. You’re going to have to spend a little stretch in a maximum security lockdown, and you haven’t been doing nearly enough pushups to fight off your giant future cell-mate’s ass-plundering advances. You should have been in the gym, instead of listening to that two-bit shyster you hired that promised you would walk.

Obviously, we’ve all made some bad decisions that we have lived to regret in one way or another. Or are about to regret, in an excruciatingly painful, and humiliating way. Fortunately, at times like this, we can take solace in the fact that we’ve never made decisions this bad:

Marnie had always dreamed of competing in the X Games. A long time lover of extreme sports, the Nearly Nude Wooden Nipple Clamp Downhill Thong Luge had been her obsession for years. She wasn’t prepared for the size of the big blue-tipped nipple clamps used in professional competition however, and she was distracted by the how the bright red helmet she was forced to wear clashed with her pink ass cheeks and pendulous rosy boobs.

Sadly, throughout years of dedicated practice, she had also not taught herself how to stop. Shortly after this picture was taken, she speared through a portable hot dog cart at roughly sixty miles per hour. Unfortunately, the impact did not immediately take her life, and she suffered the horror of a slow death by scalding sauerkraut water. In a final indignity, she was awarded last place in the competition. As per official X Games policy, anyone dying in an event receives a last place standing, and multiple deaths result in a tie for last place. Godspeed, Marnie.

This sad fellow above, is former Klingon Army Master Corporal Robert Sliizaaqquia. He is pictured here in a polaroid shot by a New York City SWAT Team member shortly before his death in a hail of beanbags, rubber bullets, flash-bang grenades, and repeated tazer shockings. It turns out that if you use enough different non-lethal methods of force at once, they can actually be lethal in combination. It’s interesting what you find out in the field.

Anyway, back to Robert. After being dishonorably discharged from the Klingon Military for failing to maintain acceptable fitness standards, Robert had fallen into a deep depression and had become prone to spending long hours in his favourite comfortable folding chair in front of his computer, watching carp porn (it’s a Klingon thing). A friend that had left his apartment shortly before the incident above stated that Robert had been attempting to be more positive of late and had been preparing to take a picture of himself for his just-opened Lavalife profile. Robert felt that the Klingon Military Formal Dress would be most appropriate for the picture, explaining his state of attire shown above. The friend stated that Robert had expressed a desire to “Get himself back out there, and mix it up a bit.”

When the police knocked on Robert’s door (by mistake actually, they had intended to do a kick-in at the drug dealer’s apartment next door), he answered and followed the accepted Klingon practice of offering his guests a gun. A very polite, but very bad decision, indeed. His death was not in vain, however, as SWAT teams have now adopted the practice of writing down the address of a planned assault instead of someone saying “I’ll remember it.” It is truly interesting what you can learn in the field. Thank you, Robert.

It’s Canada D’eh! (Well, a d’eh late).

It’s It was our nations 142nd birthday today yesterday! In honour of this momentous occasion, this post will celebrate all a few things Canadian, and maybe even some things we wish weren’t Canadian. While we are at it, we will enjoy some pictures of the fantastic scenery to be found around this great country of ours. Then, when we are done, we will head outdoors to finish off the day celebrating Canada Day in traditional Canuck style with hot dogs, softball, poorly attended parades, and blind drunkenness. If we still have some time left over, we might even tell our loved ones what we really think of them. Fun!

First, let’s start off with some of the things that make us proud to be from the Great White North:

Cheezies. They are so good, only half the bag made the photo shoot. They also come in handy if the power goes out and you should need a candle, or a campfire. Yup, they burn that good. Real slow like.

Giant Beavers. Not to be confused with ridiculously oversized vaginas. That is a topic for a completely different but nonetheless extremely important post.

Our hard-working government employees. I took this picture of a uniformed Canadian Coast Guard Ice-Checker out my front window this morning. They even work on our nation’s birthday!

Canada is also know the world over for its stunning scenery and awe-inspiring landscapes. Some of our world famous landmarks include the Rocky Mountains, Niagara Falls, and Pamela Anderson’s magically expanding and contracting chest. Another interesting fact about Canada is that it shares the world’s longest undefended border with our friends to the south, the United States. Just in case our American neighbours should find this fact disturbing, due to fear of terrorists using Canada as a launch pad for activities in the States, there is no need to worry.

Although technically undefended, the US-Canada border is watched over by thousands of stone-faced, humourless, tight-assed border guards who are deftly skilled in the art of stupid question asking. If there is one test a terrorist fears more than any other, it is answering stupid questions. More than one suicide bomber has accidentally answered a US Border Guard’s skillfully worded question: “Y’all got a receipt for that bag of Cheezies?” with: “I come to destroy you, infidel!” resulting in their immediate arrest and deportation the sixteen feet back into Canada. Asinine questions are like Kryptonite to terrorists. If those of you reading this in the States should have any further concerns, we hope you sleep better at night knowing that Canada has recently spent literally thousands of dollars upgrading our border security measures, as shown by this photo of our new, state-of-the-art border crossing facility at Beaverlodge, Alberta:

“Did you hear a knock?” “No, I didn’t hear a knock.” “Phew! Thank goodness, eh. I heard terrorists always knock first before coming in.”

Well this has been just a short list of the things that make this great country so special and super-interesting. I feel like I would be remiss if I didn’t also pay tribute to a few famous Canadians who make their livings far from home. Although they might be feeling a little nostalgic today about their homeland, I would like to assure them on behalf of all Canadians that there is no hurry to rush back. In fact, feel free to stay right where you are. Forever if need be.

Seriously, Celine. Caesar’s will miss you if you leave. Just stay. Stay right there.

C’mon, Paul. What would Dave do if you left? I mean really, it’s not like retarded monkeys grow on trees you know. You should totally stay. Totally.

All joking aside (except for Shaffer and Celine, them I wasn’t joking about), the people we should take a moment to think about today are our men and women of the Canadian Armed Forces serving in Afghanistan. Despite what you might think about the reasons for our country going there, these people are putting their lives in harm’s way to try and help the Afghan people claim some of the freedoms that we take for granted. Showing support for the members of our armed forces is not jingoistic, misguided patriotism. It is a sign of respect for the boots on the ground, and the danger they face each day. Until Afghan girls can go to school without the fear of acid being sprayed in their face or witnessing their teacher being beheaded in the front of their classroom, these people are willing, able, and ready to help. They do so with pride and respect for the Afghan people, and return tour after tour, hoping to make a difference. Will it all work out? Who knows? I hope so. Until then, let’s take a second to remember how good we have it, and wish our forces a safe and happy homecoming, one day soon, I hope. Let’s also hope they can leave behind a safe and free Afghanistan, so their sacrifices will have been worth something.

Hang in there and be safe.

David Suzuki!? Not you, too!!

In more credible times with unbelievably sweeter hair.

Earlier today while doing intense research for tomorrow’s Great Canadian 142nd Birthday Extravaganza ©, I happened to stumble upon the disturbing image below. I know. I was as devastated as you are now. Of all the people in the world that could be caught in such a compromising position, who would have expected it to be Dr. David Suzuki himself? With his long standing commitment to the environment and distinguished career as one of Canada’s preeminent scientists and teachers, we, as you had I am sure, believed he was beyond the reach of greedy multinational corporations and their suave, charismatic pitchmen. As host of the science-focused television program “The Nature of Things,” Mr. Suzuki has guided our generation to a love and respect for the wondrous natural world around us. He also taught us that things with “Big” in front of them were bad. Big Oil, Big Timber, and Big Chicken were but a few of the examples of these enemies in our midst.

In recent years Mr. Suzuki has concentrated his efforts and those of his foundation, the (in our humble opinion) oddly named David Suzuki Foundation, toward helping the public to understand their role in the emerging and scary environmental problem of Global Warming (tm). Time and again, Mr. Suzuki has spoken out about the planet-wide crisis that is possibly Global Warming (tm). He has cited examples of extreme weather events and ever-increasing planetary temperature averages as evidence of the existence of and hell-bent-for-leather path of Global Warming (tm). I don’t think I would be mistaken if I said most of us believed the words of this great man.

Until now. If a picture could say a thousand words this picture says about seventeen thousand three hundred and sixty-one, not including footnotes and photo credits. There is no mistaking what is going on here. David Suzuki has sold out to Big Cold. There could be no more damning evidence than to be caught in a public embrace with Big Cold’s nefarious pitchman, Frosty the Ridiculous and Sexually Ambiguous Quebecois Snowperson. Frosty’s ‘Joe the Camel’ like kid-friendly persona has convinced countless children that the cold is their friend. We can now see that Mr. Suzuki is none other than Frosty’s henchman-in-arms, charged with the responsibility of luring adults to the seductive power of Big Cold’s Hidden Agenda, using the ominous and vaguely defined threat of Global Warming (tm).

We believed in you Mr. Suzuki. This is truly a sad day:

“Just look straight in zee camera and smile, Suzuki. Remember, you could zell ice to an Inuit Person! Ha Ha! I make zee, how you say, in-the-side joke! I swear, I slay myself sometimes! Now, let’s get out of here and chain-smoke our way through a croissant or two.”

Michael, we hardly knew ye. Well, we wish we hardly knew ye.

So much potential…so much potential. Sadly, that large thing lurking in the background of this picture is not a huge tree. It is insanity.

Is this the seventeen millionth blog posting about the death of the King of Poop Pop? Yes. Has everything that could be said about it already been said? Yes. Do I give a fuck? Hell, no! My three readers have probably avoided reading the other stuff until now anyway, due to their hating Ol’ Wacko Jacko. Unfortunately for them however, they are mostly family and thus feel obligated to read this particular blog posting.

With all of the focus on unpaid debts, shit-flinging life-long monkey companions, and minor annoyances like multimillion dollar hush money payments to loud mouthed children, some of the wonderful lessons Michael taught us have been lost. Since it is hard to put a more positive spin on his passing than, well, his passing, I won’t dwell on that here. I would just like to acknowledge some of the important contributions he has made to our collective general psyche over the years. Some rules-to-live-by, if you will:

• White guys (or guys of any other shade, for that matter) should never put on a white glove, fedora, and jeri curl to go to a high school dance. The chances of getting laid that year will plummet considerably, as will the chances of ever getting laid in any other year in that town, or any other towns within the range of telephones, letters, or rumours. Might as well skip the reunion, too.
• Moonwalking is for people who can actually moonwalk. All others should practice more, or fuck off. Consequences of non-compliance with this rule can include those outlined in item one.
• Dangling infants from hotel balconies, while once a perfectly acceptable practice in some parts of the world I am sure, is not a good idea in Europe. Or anywhere else where people know how to operate cameras, think rationally, or have one single iota of common sense anywhere in their bodies.
• Letting your kids sleep over at a rich guy’s house, with him, in his bed, is not quite the harmless practice leading to fame and fortune that one might think. No matter how many Llamas, roller coasters, and tight-lipped, well-paid security people the rich guy might have, improper conduct may occur. Actually, maybe we should just not let our kids sleep at any guy’s house, in his bed, ever. For any reason. Or should that be “for obvious reasons?” Simple test: Neighbour Dude: “Hey, can Johnny come over to my house tonight for a sleepover with me in my bed?” You: Option 1: “No, you fucking pedophile!”, Option 2: “Sure, just let me pack up his toothbrush and innocence. You boys have fun!” Trust me, the correct answer is Option 1. How could you have let me go, Mom and Dad?
• Surprisingly, being stinking rich does not protect you from the public scorn directed at you for your stupid and psychotic actions, only the consequences of those stupid and psychotic actions. Yup, it’s true. Even after the cheques have been cashed, people might still think you are a douchebag. Sorry Mad Mel and OJ (Round 1 anyway).
• Finally, Michael taught us that change is not always a good thing. If you start out life as a good lookin’, ‘fro-sporting African American dude, it is okay to end it like that, too. At no point in one’s life should one succumb to peer pressure or insurmountable insanity and spend millions morphing into a baby-powder white, tinkerbell-nosed, freakish ghoul. Even if you have the money, and that hair-straightener that got re-gifted back to you from your niece last Christmas.

It’s probably a good thing it happened when it did. Two more shades and he would have been clear. Then we would be able to see the inner workings. I picture a lot of demons with a poor little ‘fro sporting kid tied to a chair and gagged. He’s got to be in there somewhere.

Unfortunately, Michael’s death has put millions of losers worldwide into a state of misguided mourning and holocaust-denier-like vehement ignorance regarding the less savoury aspects of his life. Fortunately for me, however, I have a new potential guest for future editions of From Beyond the Grave. Once he’s done with all of the lake-of-fire stuff and has a spare moment, that is.

Blog Page Challenge, Part 1

Here in good old Beaverland, home of everything that is good and right and insecure in this world, we used to have a long-running panel quiz show called Front Page Challenge. Front Page Challenge ran from 1957 to 1995 on the CBC (Canucks Broadcasting Canadians) television network. The show featured a panel of notable journalists (and the occasional celebrity), all of whom asked questions of a mystery guest in an attempt to guess their identity.

Many of us have fond childhood memories of sitting around the igloo or teepee on a frigid mid-summer night, watching Front Page Challenge while we waited for Grandma to thaw out and bake us some seal-blubber cookies. Poor Grandma, she would often get lost on the four hour return trip to the shit-hole chipped through the lake ice. We would find her frozen stiff, squatting against a tree, her knickers still at half-mast, a startled grunt etched into her face. We would dutifully carry her home and prop her up next to the pot-bellied stove, and wait. At times like these we found ourselves entranced by the flickering black and white images and lock-jawed wooden demeanors of the Front Page Challenge panelists. We all dreamed of one day making the FPC panel, or even better yet, appearing as the mysterious and mystery-ish “mystery guest.”

Sadly, in 1995, Front Page Challenge was cancelled by the CBC. An escalating series of budget cuts during previous seasons had seen all of the quiz panel replaced by wooden mannequins save for one (the change oddly going mostly unnoticed), and the mystery guest replaced by Rich Little, doing his classic brand of charmingly shitty Canadian impressions. By the fifteenth episode of the lone panelist guessing the guest’s identity as “Rich Little doing someone? Maybe a famous person?” it was obvious the show’s heyday had come to an end.

Since we are feeling nostalgic, we have decided to recreate a version of Front Page Challenge here in our very own humble little blog. We have invited a panel of today’s preeminent journalists to participate, and they will attempt to discern the identity of our mystery guest through their insightful and probing questions. Without further ado, I would like to introduce our esteemed three-person panel of respected journalists and one guest celebrity:

Our panel of journalists includes: Andy Rooney of 60 Minutes, Conservative commentator Ann Coulter, and Canadian Journalistic Icon Rex Murphy. Today’s celebrity guest panelist (and the only name celebrity drinking in Toronto this weekend that could come in) is Socio-Fashionalite and Deserving Heiress Paris Hilton.

Hint: our Mystery Guest has recently been featured in the news as both a victim and a victimizer.

Okay, panel, ask away! We’ll start with you, Ann.

“Are you a Jew, Gay, Ethnic, Homo, Liberal, Fruit, Jihad-Lover, Pansy, or Godless America-Hater?”

“ No, Yes, Sort-of, Yes, Yes, Yes, Not sure what that is, Yes, sometimes.”

 

 

Okay, thanks, Ann. Andy it’s your turn to ask our guest a question now.

 

“Do you have any idea why toilet paper is perforated? I’m almost dead and even I can tear toilet paper. Is the whole thing just to make the toilet paper look better? It’s for wiping up shit isn’t it? Is this what’s wrong with American productivity these days?”

“ Ummm…no. That might be why, I’m not sure. Yes, shit-wiping is it’s main function. Yes, that probably is the root of the productivity problem, I think we’re in agreement there.”

 

Good question, Andy! Okay, let’s hear from Canadian Journalistic Icon Rex Murphy now.

 

“It seems to me, and this could be completely out of left field, don’t hesitate to let me know, that when one appears as a mystery guest, and mind you, I could be missing the point here, one has implicitly agreed to be a complicit accomplice in the process of demystifying ones’ self in a most public fashion, and forgive me if I have misstated or understated the weighty gravitas of the issue in any way, and please don’t hesitate to weigh in on the issue as yourself or even, as oneself. Please, discuss, if you should be so inclined, and if I’ve neglected to cover off some of the more salient and pertinent points.”

“ Uhh..did that guy just ask a question? Are you Canadians fuckin’ retarded?”

 

 

Excellent question yourself, Mystery Guest! To answer I would have to say I’m not sure and  probably! Well, so far we aren’t making much headway. Maybe quasi-celebrity guest Paris Hilton will have a little better luck. Quiz away, Paris!

 

“Uh, are you, like, bigger than a breadbox?”

 

“Did you just call me fat, bitch? Watch it, you might find yourself on the internet with “slut” or “ho” written across your picture if you don’t control that mouth of yours!”

“Hey, I think I know who you are! Did you just recently get punched right in your stupid face and make everyone laugh at a club in Toronto? And did you also just recently commit career hari-kari by trying to ask a Miss USA contestant about her thoughts on gay marriage even though people could not possibly give less of a fuck what some dipshit beauty queen thinks about anything, let alone a serious issue? Do you have the same last name as me, but without the inheritance or importanance? Are you none other than loser blogger Perez Hilton?”

“Yes, it’s me, Paris. How the hell did you figure it out? I don’t know why I agreed to be on this stupid Blog Page Challenge remake crap anyway. Twenty Canadian dollars and a blowjob from Rich Little sounded good at the time, but having to talk to you dickheads just wasn’t worth it! And just to let you know, America does care what vapid, bleach-blonde beauty queens think about important stuff, why do you think anyone even talks to you?" Oh, right, the leg-spreading. Never mind. And on another note, fuck you Canada! Don’t be surprised if you see yourself featured on my blog with white stuff dribbling down your chin, and “ho” scrawled across your picture!”

Well, that went incredibly poorly! I really didn’t expect Paris to figure out our Mystery Guest’s identity. I guess it just goes to show how these bottom-feeders can sniff each other out! Hopefully our next attempt will go a little better. Maybe we can increase our budget and afford some real panelists and guests, instead of tonight’s lineup of Hitler Youth Volunteer Troop Leader Ann Coulter, Re-animated Fossil Andy Rooney, Marble-Mouthed Nonsense Spewer and Canadian Journalistic Icon Rex Murphy, and Hollywood Pin Cushion Paris Hilton.

Until next time, remember to put another log in the stove for Grandma.