I’d never thought I’d reach another end
When all I want is to be myself again
So why so soon we were having so much fun
Sometimes I wish I’d never learn to run
Ask me why I’m sad I’ll say it’s not so bad
I’ve done too much growing up today
Excuse my bitter half
He’s too disturbed to laugh right now
I’ll find you when it’s done
I wrapped regret around the chance I’d never take
Discarded dreams for too much time awake
Now where did it dissapear to
Youth I fought my way out of
And it feels like I’m running out of time
Ride fucking free, forty below, it’s the car that kills the punk. Pedal for momentum, feel the fucking vibe, blaze through traffic, burn the red, push my luck. There’s not much I need, I ride a single speed, my toque and mitts protect me from the freeze. Hadron Collision. I’m ripping through a cloud of exhaust. A fucking conniption, in their cages on wheels they fucking rot. I might be trapped in a world going backwards but nothing’s in vain – right now I’m happy just to clog up your lane. There’s not much I need, I’ll leave you with your greed to wallow in your shit ’til you can’t breathe. A head-on collision, a species that’s lost all control. We’ll learn by extinction: we don’t need all that shit we’ve been sold. We might be headed for the brink of disaster but nothing’s in vain – right now I’m happy just to clog up your lane. If all that I can do is just stay on the move, keep a few cents from your grasp – that’s all I need to prove. I’ll see you on the bus. It’s the car that kills the punk.
I wanna be stereotyped
I wanna be classified
I wanna be a clone
I want a suburban home
Suburban home
Suburban home
Suburban home
I wanna be masochistic
I wanna be a statistic
I wanna be a clone
I want a suburban home
Suburban home
Suburban home
Suburban home
I don’t want no hippie pad
I want a house just
Like mom and dad
I wanna be stereotyped
I wanna be classified
I wanna be masochistic
I wanna be a statistic
I wanna be a clone
I want a suburban home
Suburban home
Suburban home
Suburban home
These are our demands:
We want control of our bodies.
Decisions will now be ours.
You can carry out your noble actions,
We will carry our noble scars.
Reclamation.
No one here is asking,
No one here is asking,
But there is a question of trust.
You will do what looks good to you on paper,
We will do what we must.
Return, return, return.
Carry my body
It is my three-year near-death birthday. Three years since enlightenment. My enlightenment included little more than an awareness that haircuts are unnecessary, and therefore this three years has only yielded two haircuts.
The first signified the start of my second life, done hours after my near-death, done with vegetable scissors. We buried the hair in the garden.
The second was done inside of Primetime Bar directly after a Habs third-round loss. The hair was buried in post-lost beers.
Maybe I will wait until another significant life moment to rid myself of this ponytail mess. Maybe my graduation from a prestigious university, the birth of my first child, or legitimately publishing something deemed acceptable. But more likely, it will be here to stay until I get run over by a train riding my bicycle and paramedics cut it off in order to sew my face back on.
I sleep best with the rain upon this shed
Still counting miles but I’m not sure how many good ones I’ve got left
In some ways I know that I should settle down
But it ain’t in me right now
So I’ll keep it slow
And keep looking all around.
A mind don’t turn
With feet nailed to the floor
Keep a pounding heart full of love for all
Turn no one away but keep close what’s yours.
Man, life ain’t half bad here, but it sure as hell ain’t ideal.
Can’t sort what’s been gained, to what’s been stole
And how hours can add up to all these years.
Morning’s best when health’s leaning on my side,
Have some coffee, get on a walk for some air
Just to clear my mind
Come afternoon, although I’m tired and drained,
I get my work done without a sound and wonder if it’s even worth the pain
By nightfall when I’m alone and can’t hardly move,
I can’t call it common sense, but I fight to not drink, I fight to play my next move
I shouldn’t be this tired yet, I shouldn’t put so much into not knowing
If I should’ve stayed or gone
Or who I could’ve let down
Or what I did right
Or what I did wrong
Carry me on, let me get some rest
I know I said that I’d be alright when you left.
But carry me on, let me get some help.
It’s hard to admit now, but I can’t do this by myself.
I can’t believe no one ever told me about Fugazi. I mean, come on, it’s Fugazi. Fugazi, man. I remember a poster in the basement as a kid, what I remember as a Fugazi poster anyway, with a caricatured figure of a colourful man with long hair, shirtless and maybe grabbing his dong, an advertisement for a Fugazi show in the summer of 2001 that my brothers likely attended, but I did not. Since then the band has long been a familiar name but not a familiar sound; a band that no longer existed and thus I believed was not worthy of my music-loving time. Until recently.
The bands you discover yourself are often more influential than those that are shown to you. The same goes for food, books, haircuts, shoes, contraceptives, lifestyle choices. I don’t know when, but at some point I discovered hummus. Hummus the spread, the dip. The ultimate replacement for sandwich mayonnaise, for cream cheese based dips, for ranch dressing, for anything spreadable. I am not claiming to be the first man on earth to make his own hummus, to be the inventor of a fabulous elixir of which none have seen or heard, but I discovered it, likely on my own, lonely and confused in the grocery aisle. It now means that much more to me. And since I have recently run out, I will spend the majority of my day off taking the bus to the south end to use my parents’ twenty-five-year-old food processor. Give a man a fish, he eats for a day. Let the man figure out how to fish for his goddamn self, he actually enjoys eating the fish and doesn’t crave beef.
There is something to be said of personal discovery. When the TV tells you what to buy and your friends recommendations and online suggestions and reviews and software that tells you what you’d like based on your previous decisions, discovery is being drowned by expert advice. This may explain my hesitance to accept advice on bands, books, movies, restaurants from anyone. A personal discovery is more than just searching alphabetically through a library for a recommended title, a robot’s reaction. It is a mystic bond, a fatalistic event that brought you and the other together for an ultimate purpose. It is true love on the dance floor compared to a date set up by a friend.
For some yet unknown reason, I have recently stumbled upon Fugazi, a meeting of the souls that will doubtlessly bring about a fruitful relationship of love, connection, and life-long discovery. Thanks to those who neglected to tell me about Fugazi, and I would be forever grateful if you neglected to recommend anything to me ever again.
All swelled with pride, your chest blown out. Face the flag as you declare “We are the greatest country in the world. Richest, smartest, most advanced. Who can keep up with us?” And where has it gotten us? Take a look around. As miserable as we have ever been; Violent, mean, pulling our hair out. As fourteen year olds march through metal detectors; Bitter, unhealthy, empty. Most dissatisfied of societies. My granddad weeps for the simple days. Everything that you could ever dream of five minutes from our fingertips. Prettied, processed, packaged, shipped right to your door. We need everything in every colour to feel that we’re alive. We’ve got to brag to all the world about all our toys just like when we were five. I hear you chant “Everything is alright, it’s gonna be alright” As you rush to your night job, everything is gonna be alright. Knuckles white as you grip your purse. You scream that things could not be better as the flames lick at your face. And I’m as fucked as anybody. The bright lights catch my eyes I’m as scared as anyone. The blood rains from the sky. We can’t tell what we want from what we need, or which one matters more. It’s all a spinning mobile, it’s all a catchy lullaby. Everything is gonna be alright. So suck your fucking thumb.
Why do I daydream?
Oh why do I get my hopes up at all?
I’ve been living this Walter Mitty life for too long
Somebody save me
I’m a prisoner of my own fears
Sometimes fantasy is the only problem I bear
My mind is a dream filled balloon
Dripping dreams into my shoes
And I’m too afraid to move
To face the real world
And when I fall, I fall down hard
When will I ever learn?
Don’t take your dreams to heart
You’ll only wind up getting burned
Well maybe I’m lazy
But circumstances always knock me down
So I’ll just lie here
Never get up, off the ground
Well maybe it’s crazy
To sit and think of all the things I want to do
What’s the use of dreaming
When dreams never come true?
And when I fall I fall down hard
When will I ever learn?
Don’t take your dreams to heart
You’ll only wind up getting burned
Why do I daydream?
Why do I daydream?
Why do I bother?
WHY?
Why do I daydream? (Time to get up off your ass)
Why do I daydream? (Pull your head up take a chance)
Why do I bother? (Grab whatever you can grab)
WHY? (There’s no such thing)
It’s time to get up off your ass
Pull your head up take a chance
Grab whatever you can grab
There’s no such thing
It’s time to get up off your ass
Pull your head up take a chance
Grab whatever you can grab
There’s no such thing
It’s time to get up off your ass
Pull your head up take a chance
Grab whatever you can grab
There’s no such thing
No such thing
The day before I broke my ankle at the Heritage Building at Regina’s Exhibition Grounds, I wrote a testimonial as to why I believed the indoor park should receive extra funding.
Six days before I broke my ankle at the Heritage Building at Regina’s Exhibition Grounds, I broke my skateboard deck. Because I still can’t ollie properly, with my feet on both trucks as I land, the centre of the deck broke like so many of Jeremy’s growing up. Liam went in the back room and pulled out an old skateboard. He didn’t know from where it came. I was fairly confident I had seen the board before: Enjoi deck, orange Tensor trucks with blue wheels. I believed it to be my brother’s. Kris later confirmed. He also confirmed that it was the same board on which he broke his ankle when he was about 23 years old.
If coincidence existed, this would be a rather wild instance of it. But I prefer to see things as signs. That either I am not supposed to skateboard ever again, or that I was living life a bit too fast, or that I am not supposed to drink for another month, or that this particular deck was cursed by the skateboard gods, or that I need to finish writing a book that is actually good. I have yet to decide which of these I feel is correct.
They hailed me for taking it well, as if I had broken my leg before, or as if they expected me to be crying and screaming as if I was giving birth to the artificially inseminated child of Dr. Danny Devito (I plan to watch Junior in the next few days). Maybe it was nothing more than a sign of my absolute manliness. We’ll take it as that.
If your gonna be dumb, you gotta be tough
When you get knocked down you gotta get back up,
I ain’t the sharpest knife in the drawer but I know enough, to know,
If your gonna be dumb, you gotta be tough
I lit my brain with Rot-Gut whiskey
‘Till all my pain was chicken fried
And I had dudes with badges frisk me
Teach me how to swallow pride
I took advice no fool would take
I got some habits I can’t shake
I ain’t the sharpest knife in the drawer, but I know enough to know
If you’re gonna be dumb, you gotta be tough
If you’re gonna be dumb, you gotta be tough
When you get knocked down, you gotta get back up
That’s the way it is in life and love
If you’re gonna be dumb, you gotta be tough
I’ve been up and down and down and out
I’ve been left and right and wrong
Well I’ve walked the walk and I’ve run my mouth
I’ve been on the short end for too long
But if they gave medals for honky tonk wars
Hell, I’d keep mine in my chest of drawers
With my IRS bills and divorce papers and all that stuff
If you’re gonna be dumb, you gotta be tough
If you’re gonna be dumb, you gotta be tough
When you get knocked down, you gotta get back up
I ain’t the sharpest knife in the drawer, but I know enough to know
If you’re gonna be dumb, you gotta be tough
Balls of Rice 