Hitler Loves Chinese Food but Hates Thai

I wrote the subtitles.

Abandon the Pope and All who Sail in Her

Joe Bloggs loved television and movies. That was his passion in life. He didn't need much in his tiny appartment; a worn couch, television and DVD player were the celebrity items of his living space inventory. He wasn't rich by any means, yet with his factory job which didn't pay overtime, he managed to save enough each week to keep his flabby body alive and to purchase a DVD movie from the local video store. He loved movies, they were his adventure; he didn't even need to leave his appartment, because all he needed to do was memory quick dial the fast food burger place, which he lived two doors down the road from, and they would bring him his burger and fries, about ten minutes later.

Payday tomorrow. Mmmmm, money left to spend and off to the video store to buy a DVD movie, as he sat on the bus that towards his home. The simply named, Movie Shop, was not far from where Joe lived. He already knew which DVD he wanted and went directly to the shelf where it sat. The Monkey Bride of Marbados sat in its shiny shrink wrapped packet, among its clones - like virgins, they waited nervously to be picked, to have their clothes torn off and ravaged by some dirty bastard's DVD player. With his grubby hands, he snatched the DVD off the shelf, flipped it a few times while his eye ogled the pictures beneath the glare of the wrapper. 'I WANT IT!' he shouted, seconds later, a spotty kid beckoned Joe over to the cash desk.

The kid looked spotty but clean: he smelt clean, yet his spots oozed pus. Joe stared at the boys skin under the glow of the tube lamps, they were like red nipples on soft skin; he licked his lips. Beep. The acne kid ran the DVD through the scanner, the price appeared on the display. Joe panicked as he stared at the illumiglow figures, "That can't be right ya bitch, that is higher than I usually fucking pay - ya bitch."

The kid stared lifelessly at Joe, put his clean hand out, palm facing upward, with its surface normal perpendicular to the ceiling. "Do you want the DVD or not?"

"Look here ya bitch!" Joe raised a dirty knuckled fist at the boy, "I work my fucking arse off at the factory making packaging," his eyes started to tear up, ".. I work my fucking fingers to the fucking bone, and all I want to do is watch a fucking DVD..." he wiped a tear from his eye, "I saved up to buy that DVD, is that too much to fucking ask?"

The boy stared droopy eyed at Joe, dropped his hand and swiped the DVD of the counter and held it in front of his face, "Do you want the DVD or not?" A spot volcanoed on his face, some pressure differential beneath his skin, no doubt caused by rising stress levels.

Joe rubbed his face, eyebrows sagged. "Give me the fucking DVD!" he pulled a banknote from his pocket and tossed it onto the counter top. The boy with his immaculate clean hand picked up the scrunched note with his fingertips and examined the watermark underneath the glaring lights before tapping the buttons of the cash register.

He handed Joe the change, "Want a bag for that sir?"

"Of course I do, I fucking paid for it, gimme that fucking bag," he snorted.

One Thousand and One Samosa Nights

Bobby, his surname was Swizzlestick - that wasn't a real family name; he adopted it himself; he loved the sound of it as much as he enjoyed the product, a sweet sherbert candy dip from which he ripped the name. You see, Bobby's legal name for the sake of a birth document is Robert Smith; the most mundane name you could have. If his name was an object it would be a plank of cheap wood, cut from some tree which nobody ever bothered to find out its species, in a part of the world where names didn't matter too much - the dimensions of the plank of wood would be a boring, unfussy, two by four.

My head hurts thought Bobby; it throbbed from all the artificial additives which made Pickie's Jelly Beans TM such a delectable habit. He had bought a hundred bean bag from the popular Joe Schmell's candy store in a trendy part of Queen Street. Bobby wrapped his hands around his head and applied pressure to the sides of his head, hoping that somehow the pain would go away. He had already eaten over three quarters of the bag which he handpicked from the dozens of assorted flavours in their rainbow coloured bins; all the colours in the bag were the same, he only chose one flavour, his favourite which was called Green Monster Puke. Bobby couldn't cook; he ate candy for dinner.

You have to understand this thing about Bobby, it may make you like him more, or less even; that does not really concern me my dear reader, but it is something you should know - Bobby's skin is green. He never saw a doctor about his skin colour, although if he had, the doctor would have discovered high levels of a toxic green addictive, found exclusively in a particular brand of candy, after examining tissue samples. So Bobby has a green tinge to his skin colour, oh don't discriminate against him (my dear reader) - it's his own fault... oh but the beans, they taste so good, he'd say when someone suggested that they were no good for him.

Minding it's own business, the newly opened Nancy Reagon's Samosa Bar sat idyllically at the corner of Dufferin and Queen West. It's hand painted sign on a white washed rectangle of chipboard hung lopsided over it's door. An hour later, a man with a greenish skin walked through that door clutching his head, he walked up to the counter where a woman who looked like a fuller version of a former US president's wife was rolling pastry on the small space of a cluttered counter; a till sat uncomfortably on a pile of spoons, pens and notepaper lay scattered among pieces of dried pastry. Even though a bell rang when Bobby walked through the door, she continued, uninterrupted. I need food, and this is a place which sells this stuff which makes my body work, thought Bobby as he read the crumpled motivation posters which looked like they had been printed on a cheap inkjet on the wall. One had a clipart picture of a monkey eating a banana with flies around it's head, the slogan, "WORK HARDER!" formed a foundation for the monkey's bum. Another one had a pixellated photograph of a man carrying shopping bags, "NO PAIN - NO GAIN!" was it's loud capitalized message.

Eventually, the woman, who looked like Nancy Reagon, sleepily raised her neck, though her back remained hunched; she continued to move the rolling pin back and forth although she was now absentmindedly banging it against the drawer of the cash machine. Bobby noticed that her knuckles were bleeding. "How can ahh help you?", she drawled, the words appeared to suck her vitality as she spoke them. Bobby looked nervous, he had never purchased food (directly) from a person before; it was quite strange, but it forced him to contain a giggle.

"I need some food substance. My head hurts. I have been eating jelly beans. I need something to overtake the jelly beans in my tummy." He said forcefully - communication not being one of his fortes...

Nancy Reagon narrowed her eyes and looked at him with pursed lips for what seemed like an eternity, but was actually more like three point two seconds. "We have a variety of samosas, all hand-cooked, individually parceled in a crispy crisp crust for that extra crunch." She swung her hand over the cluttered counter where unbalanced baskets of cold samosas fought for space like farm animals waiting to be slaughtered. Bobby smiled, and looked at the labels which he read out loud.

"Beef!" He shouted excitedly. A customer who sat at a wobbly rustic table rolled his eyes and went back to reading his newspaper and sipping his coffee. "Chicken!!", the sound of an angry meow came from the back room of the store. "Pork and Peas! I want pork and peas!" The sound of agitated coffee sipping could be heard from the other side of the room.

"Cold or hot?" asked the woman who now looked mildly awake.

"Ummm..." Bobby thought for a while. He knew that if he answered the question wrongly, he could end up with something that did not quite achieve his cullinery standard. "Hmmmm... Ummm...", he placed a hand over his mouth and rubbed his lips as his other hand wrapped around the elbow which belonged to the mouth hand... (hmmm, well you get the idea, my dear reader - please don't make me explain too much), anyway, those fingers drummed on his elbow with the rhythm of a flat footed marathon runner. A bead of sweat grew out of his forehead as he glanced at the woman who seemed to grow increasingly awake. "Ummmm... Hmmmm... just gotta think..." The woman looked at her watch, sixteen minutes and fourteen seconds had elapsed.

"Okay," exclaimed the woman after the long silence, she swallowed Bobby with her eyes, "let me cut you a deal, K?" He nodded. "I'll make you two samosas, one hot and one cold, K?" Bobby nodded. She grabbed two pork and pea samosas from the basket, liberating them from their insufferable anxiety, she snatched Bobby's hand and slapped one samosa into his hand, "that samosa," she checked his eyes for acknowledgement, "is the cold samosa, K?" Bobby nodded slowly and wide-eyed. The woman shuffled backwards and reversed to the microwave which balanced precariously on a wonky wooden stool, her eyes remaining fixated on Bobby's, "See look, now I take this samosa," she punched it angrily into the air, and pressed the door release of the yellowed plastic Japanese magic cooking box, it popped open, "and then I put it in..." She tossed the samosa haphazardly into the small space, it banged against the back wall of the oven and then settled as if knocked unconscious on the rotating plate. She slammed the door shut and quickly pressed the buttons. Beep, beep, beep. Bobby looked bemused as he clutched the samosa rigidly. "Go and sit down now, eat that thing in your hand, the other one will be ready and I'll bring it over to you." Bobby did as he was told.

Bobby settled his large behind on an old, rickety school chair next to the customer who was lost in a news article. He brought his hand onto the table, and like blooming petals, slowly straightened his fingers to reveal the cold food product which he had unwittingly purchased. It looked like an overgrown fortune cookie, except that it had the colour of a mahogony stained toilet bowl. He had long forgotten about his headache, as far as his brain was concerned, the headache had never existed - it faded as fast as it had onset. He brought the cold parcel of pork and peas to his lips; it smelt of fried lard, he thought to himself. By the way, the dear reader might be interested to know that the pig which the pieces of pork once belonged to was named Geoffrey; it was once the pet of a cute little girl named Annie, but it was sold to an unscrupulous butcher in order to pay the hospital bills of her dying parents. Hmmmm food, Bobby stared momentarily at the clever assembly of animal and vegetable matter before biting voraciously into a corner of the said nutrition object.

One hundred, thirty-two and a half seconds later, the only remainder of the food form were the peas, pork and pastry bits scattered over the wooden surface of the over-stained and over-varnished table. If an expert were called into assess the situation of the table, he probably would have called it 'messy', scribbled into his notepad and estimated that only sixty percent of the original samosa had entered into Bobby's food tract. Bobby sat back and rubbed his stomach. Seconds later, a steaming samosa thudded onto the remnants of his last meal, scattering them again.

Pool Night Finale

What drives people to write? Some are driven by the writers bug more than me; I've managed to refrain from sharing my thoughts for some time. A moment of lucidity or enlightenment I might share with the dear reader. Perhaps it is ego, or merely the need to pass on a discovery of knowledge so that it can further our understanding of our selves and our existence. What gives? I give, and I come back with a need to share a journey, albeit short, it may provide a foundation upon which to build a thorough standing of our need to communicate and open ourselves to ridicule...

I had walked home from my weekly pool tournament. As always, I tend to drink too much. Inebriation doesn't prevent from being a competent competitor, I've always played pool; the actions are ingrained in my muscles as the wrinkles around my eyes. Pool, for me, represents the decisions we make in life, where choices are made based on the confidence of our own abilities.

I sat at the bar, a pint glass of beer, half full, sitting before me. 'This is Canada' I said to myself - awareness is is something that we take for granted; I repeat to myself on a daily basis that I am in Canada. The man next to me frowns at the bill he has been handed. "More than you expected?" I slur at him, the words avalanche from my mouth, burying him in furrowed contemplation.

"No it's fine." he replies. I look at him, he looks as if the world pounced upon him for a piggy back ride. I smile deceptively. The barman glances over and continues to dry glasses as if he had pretended to be deaf many times before. I spin the beer glass in my hand and recall earlier that night:

"I have something to show you...", I pulled out the three transfers from my back pocket. Two read 13th October at 3.33PM. "Look at this," I said to the couple next to me, "I didn't even wait for these, I just showed up," I dragged the third ticket out and exposed it in their direction, "14th October, 4.44PM... Is that weird or what?" The girl looked at me as if undecided about how to respond. "I didn't wait for these, I just showed up..."

Once again at the bar, I pulled the tickets out. "I'm psychic you know" - When I said those words, it was as if I had committed a grave sin; by declaring yourself psychic to the world, you may as well commit to a mental asylum. They looked at me then continued as if I had not said anything at all. The alcohol coursed through my veins and I could feel it, thinking how crazy I might have sounded - "Yeah, it sounds messed up, but I'm psychic, even I find it hard to believe myself." Nothing, silence from confusion.

After what seemed a long time, the guy next to me replied, "So what make you think that?"

"I can see everyone's life." The words spring from my mouth without warning and I am thinking I sound like a crazy person.

The (Fucking) Happy Truck Driver

Jason Pilchards poked, actually not just poked, but bullied the blanched broccoli around his plate. What a fucking useless thing, he thought to himself, musing upon the utter pointlessness of vegetables – particularly ones that had been teased with hot water then placed under a cold shower to calm the excited atoms within its material composition. No! He won’t look at the thing anymore, that green lump of matter which human beings ingested because it allowed them to absorb essential nutrients vital to constitution and thus prolong a miserable existence on this tiny rock called Earth. His mother, the sagging skin bag which contained water, lots of red stuff and some ethanol compounds, two eyes, the stalks of which were hidden inside a solid piece of crust that contained a brain – watched him.

‘Jason…’ she began, as she finished forcing some cooked creature flesh down her food tube. She almost choked – a piece of phlegm shot up the back of her throat and stopped abruptly like an ambulance speeding to an emergency but slamming on the brakes as an old lady in a banged up three wheeled Triumph suddenly pulled out into its path without looking, ‘…finish your peas.’ She picked up a glass of fragrant, damn expensive, red wine, placed it to her lips to guzzle it down; minute pieces of half-chewed and oily food swam into the remainder of the liquid.

It was an expensive restaurant, well, expensive to poor people, but affordable to the rich. Wednesday afternoon, that bloody fourteen year old again with his fucking disgusting mother – Pierre Gonzo Smith, the restaurant owner stared at them with hate seething from beneath his eyelids. They always ate there, same time, same place. He didn’t know anything about these people, all he knew were that they often came in for a snack; who the fuck snacks on creature flesh??? He looked at his watch – still on his break; he stood in a back alleyway, hunched over his cigarette – he hated smoking, he hated his job, he hated himself. A truck was attempting to reverse into the alleyway; the furniture store next door was receiving goods. The drive, his face sweaty, the armpits of his t-shirt damp from perspiration swung the front of the vehicle into on coming traffic.

The broccoli never did anyone any harm – or so it thought. Little did it know that it was responsible for the deaths of over a million people, but that’s another story, something that the reader probably won’t be interested in – I mean, who or what would be interested in an amputated vegetable. Jason stared at it, fascinated by its texture; it’s like tiny world within tiny worlds, repeating; he caught himself saying out his thought out loud.

He looked up and saw a truck reversing into the alleyway. The driver’s face was flustered as onlookers stood on the sidewalk expecting failure. Jason’s eyes scanned the streets – eight people visible, not including the driver. A man inside the car was rubbing his face, his chest rapidly rising up and down, hands clasped so tight around the steering wheel that his knuckles turned white. The truck driver wiped his forehead with the back of his hairy forearm. The rear tire caught the pavement and anchored the truck against the kerb. Jason watched the gorilla of a man wrestle the steering wheel, the engine revved angrily, one loud rev excused the truck from the predicament and the truck slid in between the buildings. A smug and contented smile crept across the driver’s lips, and if it were okay for one to do so in society, he probably would have leapt out from the cab to do a song and dance then take a bow, but he didn’t, he struggled hard to stifle the grin, it looked awkward; he looked like he was having a minor stroke, not enough to raise the concern of gathered audience, but strange enough to make them wonder whether the driver at some point in his youthful life had suffered some kind of heart condition. Jason sneered – he knew exactly what was going on with the driver.

Pierre dropped the cigarette stub and rotated the bottom of his shoe over it, fifteen degrees clockwise, then fifteen degrees anti-clockwise, then stepped back into the kitchen of the restaurant as the truck rattled past with a very a happy occupant inside. That was a pretty good cigarette he thought to himself, now I have to deal with those pig customers.

What's Eating ZombieHellMonkey_Grape?

So, he said, "I'm going to be quite busy", he said.

I am in the process of writing my paperback novel, so he said.

That's right, he said. He said tagged itself like a parasite to his words, he said. A self replicating he said.

Oh! halt all!

I am currently writing my novel. It's ground breaking, cutting edges with a blunt knife, never been done before, only because I don't know the rules, f-i-c-t-i-o-n.

That outline took long enough to write; the idea itself was sitting in my head for a couple of months before my brain ran out of storage space and I had to cast it in ink.

MySpace: A Good Reason to Hate It

MySpace, that ugly site on the internet for wannabe bloggers who can't spell.

You've probably guessed that I'm not a fan of Myspace.com, that's because I have taste, and plus I am a graphic designer. In the evolution of all things internet, I'm surprised that Myspace lasted as long as it did.

If I were to define Myspace, it would be a cross between an internet dating site and a streaming porn server. The users are obsessed with the way they look and the people that appear on their friends list. If you really care about how others perceive you, I wouldn't invest spending time building your Myspace page.

For internet networking, I'm currently subscribed to Facebook.com, a classier site which has been developed with forethought and considerable planning. If Facebook was a car it would be a BMW, although not supremely aesthetic like a Lamborghini, it is functional and efficient; Myspace would be equivalent to a Skoda, not very pretty, gets you about, but when you sit in it, you look like a bit of an idiot.

For further information on MySpace hatred go to: ifuckinghatemyspace.com

Nutrition and Freedom: Speed Blog Series Part I

Welcome to part 1 of the speed blog series. Since I will be spending less time on my blog over the next few months, I've decided to condense my usual long rants.

Here is Part 1: Nutrition

I've always associated the idea of nutrition with freedom. In order for the mind to function properly, the body must be in good constitution. When the body becomes weak, the mind soon follows. Fundamentally, at the heart of any system is a physical infrastructure.

Access to information is the most important, secondary to that is education. Healthy minds are efficient minds. Good education is useless if the mind is not fully able to absorb knowledge. I believe that culinary and nutrition awareness classes are as important, if not more than, as mainstream academia.

It is proven fact that a healthy diet containing the recommended intake of vitamins and minerals produces an individual who is able to think with greater clarity. This is particularly important with young children with growing brains, denying them a proper diet can impede the growth of their bodies and minds. Students who eat healthy have been shown to do better in exams.

Many of the ills and problems in modern societies can be attributed to bad nutrition. With processed foods becoming cheaper and therefore more accessible, people are turning away from freshly cooked meats and vegetables. Large corporations can be blamed for gradually introducing the dependency of 'quick preparation' foods. The cycle of buying the cheaper processed foods will, by a process of supply and demand, keep the prices of fresh food towards the premium.

Aside from cancer and other diseases, malnutrition is known to affect the attention span of the human brain. Deficits in certain vitamins and minerals can cause antisocial behaviour. Tests on prison inmates have shown that a good healthy diet can improve cooperation. Therefore, if the government invested more money into education and diet, then less would be spent on policing.

A healthy community is one that has less crime and fewer diseases. A more holistic approach targets the root cause of many of the problems, rather than the western 'quick fix' method which although effective for the short term, eventually overburdens itself.