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Friday, May 15th, 2009
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1:11 am - Houses of Parliament Sauce: A Special Report
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If you are Canadian, you are already aware that HP is the finest steak sauce ever devised. I don't claim to have tested many or any of the steak sauces provided by your favourite saucemen and women at local restaurants or what have you. But those are special, for one, and probably not especially good, for two. In any case, there is no widely available sauce that can compete with HP.
Have you ever tried A1? A1 is pathetic. Surely no one who has tasted both important two-character steak sauces would favour A1. It's somewhat like Tobasco, I imagine. No one really wants Tobasco on their anything, except maybe eggs, but it is often the only available method for defeating blandness. Tobasco tastes like watery baby food blended with red pepper flakes.
We've bought A1 once since I moved here. I used it once for something I can't recall. Again another time for my rice. Not good enough, which is why 80 percent of the right-angled glass bottle is untouched. When I hear my favourite rapper ever, Prodigy of Mobb Deep, rap about eating A1 sauce sandwiches as an impoverished child on the track "Never Change" from 2004's Americaz Nightmare, I can't help but feel sorry for him, knowing he never had access to HP. I would eat an HP sandwich right now, if I were hungry or had HP.
What I haven't yet mentioned is that HP sauce is perfect on far more than steak, a rather insignificant part of my diet as a vegan's husband. HP sauce brings a pleasant kick to cold pizza, transmogrifies ramen into satisframen, and turns mashed potatoes into a full meal. Though I notice that the label no longer claims to be served to that uppity cunt of a Queen, I feel confident that I could win Top Chef and Ramsey's Eternally Damned Kitched Nightmares blindfolded with my legs asleep if I slathered each dish in HP.
In an achingly sensitive act of love, for Christmas, my sister put together a selection of items available in Canada but not in Glendale, such as Crush cream soda, dill pickle/ketchup flavoured chips, Smarties, macaroni labelled "Kraft Dinner", and a bottle of HP sauce.
Imagine my growing discomfort as my HP supply dwindled. How can I enjoy life without putting HP on my ice cream sandwich? I rationed it for special occasions. But several weeks ago, I was thrilled to be released from my deprivational bondage. My mother, Nancy G., and I went to Glendale's Cost Plus World Market and I found HP sauce, specially imported from Britain! My prayers were answered.
OR WERE THEY?
/end of part 1/
current mood: (they weren't)
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(5 comments | comment on this)
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| Wednesday, May 13th, 2009
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10:55 pm - A Rare Update of Commensurate Importance
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You very rarely hear from me, so it is important that when you do, only my most important thoughts come across. Here is number one on the list.
I am happily married. It is not an interesting phenomenon, not something juicy or dramatic or hilarious. It is a simple, boring, banal fact about me. If I were me, which I am, reading about someone who feels as I do, which I'm not, I would hate him for being a smug dickhole with a hole in his dick through which pee flows. Well maybe you'd understand better if I tell you that I would feel as though that person were the late, great ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) boodee, writing about her possibly secretly lesbian boyfriend who is undoubtedly cheating on her.
I derive a great deal of pleasure from living with my wife, going with her to music festivals and casinos and two dollar matinees. If my wife, Valerie Ann Greenaway, the initials of whom you may derive at your great giggling pleasure, were a brand of smoothly blended, finely aged Canadian Whiskeys sold in a faux-velvet sack, she would be Crown Royal. If she were a beloved, recently deceased cat of ours (there are two), she would be Paxton. If she were a host on the Food Network popular primarily for being lovely, she would be neither Giada de Laurentiis nor Robert Flay, but Nigella Lawson, whose cans surpass both of their culinary achievements.
On a scale of one to ten, I suggest you suck yourselves, because I am happier with Vally than I can recall being in any number of the years prior to 2009, year of the Tiger Lily, if I'm not mistaken (I'm not).
Next Post: Houses of Parliament Sauce: An Investigative Report
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(10 comments | comment on this)
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| Friday, February 6th, 2009
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12:37 pm - s my d
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I've been granted Permanent Resident Status by the U.S. government. Feel free to suck my dick at your earliest convenience.
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(3 comments | comment on this)
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| Monday, January 26th, 2009
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8:39 pm - Even one of his new singles
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Sup kids. I just want to take a moment to talk to you about PSPs.
I know you're probably psyched that you can take a Playstation with you for long bus rides, lunches alone, and sitting on the can, but there is a hidden cost. What happens to you when you want to listen to the music on its memory card in the L Building? Well sure, you could put in your headphones and not bother anyone, but what if you like 50 Cent even though it's 2009, man, honestly? I have a solution: play the music on the external speakers where people are studying and nod your head like a jackass to "High All The Time."
BONUS JOKE
You can tell this one to your friends.
Q. Why doesn't your mom ever make smoothies in her Magic Bullet?
A. Because she likes it rough I'll be here all week, folks.
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(5 comments | comment on this)
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| Sunday, January 18th, 2009
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9:29 pm - I have shape now
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Hi internet.
We drove all day, saw a movie, bought books and drank coffee. Valerie took pictures of Pasadena's city hall and I dicked around with a laser pointer.
My laptop is new. It has a number pad.
We went to Chinatown with her sister yesterday. What ethnic flavour! We bought 70 pairs of flip-flops and a kitty that waves for good luck. Perhaps because Chinese people have largely symbolic vestiges of feet, a great number of them were either sizes five or six. I'll have to make an exchange for better sizes, presuming that I can depend on the return policy of someone who sells bootleg Winnie the Pooh cell phone charms at 12 for $5.
I'm ready to go now, so see you again soon.
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(7 comments | comment on this)
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| Wednesday, November 5th, 2008
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7:33 am
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| Tuesday, November 4th, 2008
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6:06 pm - A Dispatch from America
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I woke up at four this morning, moved slowly, and made it outside by quarter to five. It was raining. I rode a bus into downtown Los Angeles and took the subway to North Hollywood. I emerged from the tube. It was no longer raining.
I volunteered for the No on Prop 8 campaign, which aims to prevent people from pushing homos around. A worthy cause, because it's the only issue on the ballot for which voting the wrong way makes you a bad person. How passionate can I get about high speed rail to San Francisco, a nonpartisan redistricting panel, or war with Iran vs. war with Pakistan? Well, fairly, if you push me, but I'd lack the smug certainty.
So I ended up handing out palm cards at a polling station in Studio City, where the stiffest opposition I faced was a swift walk past me. People were warmly supportive, and though a more heterogeneous sample of people might have dampened my feelings, I can't help but feel good about democracy today.
People are showing up to participate in huge numbers, even in California, where no one cares about us. These individual voters will accomplish nothing, yet it will all add up to something greater than the sum of its parts.
In Canada, election days come and go, and I do enjoy them, but the feeling is different here, today. I've been striking up converstions with people on the street, on buses, on trains. They are interested in voting, they are interested in my button, they are interesting to me.
As I walked home, a young black gentleman with a white shirt, gold chain and a tenuous gasp of English asked if he could use my phone. "No on Prop 8? Whuss that about?"
"Prop 8 eliminates same sex marriage in California."
"You support that shit?"
"Same sex marriage? Yeah, I do."
"Why you support that shit?"
"It doesn't do me any good to take it away from 'em."
He looked at the phone. "How you dial this thing?"
I also spoke with, most notably, a short man with a comically high-pitched voice, and a No supporter straight out of My Giant.
I haven't witnessed a U.S. presidential election night in 12 years, what with the deer season and the drinking and the killing. But being in L.A. today, I've never been happier to be sort of an American.
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(11 comments | comment on this)
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| Saturday, November 1st, 2008
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10:30 am - Shining Time Station
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I forgot how soulful the theme song was.
More importantly, Shining Time Station strikes me as vaguely anti-Semitic. Set in the heartland of Real America, in a small town of 5006, give or take, one might not expect much drama, save perhaps for the shenanigans arising from Mr. Conductor's magic dust. But of course there is, thanks to the character of Schemer, in a pretty blatant allegorical representation of World Jewry. The name is damning enough, but think about it: He owns the arcade (i.e., the media, the banks, Kroger), a business run FOR PROFIT. He is constantly involved in scheming, whether to get more MONEY or to disrupt the lives of GENTILES like Didi Conn and Ringo Carlin.
Why can't he ever quite win at Shining Time? Because the rail system is a point of White Pride, calling to mind the Patriotic Christian Robber Barons of the nineteenth century. No Jew will ever win over the train system.
What do you think? Is Shining Time Station dedicated to undermining the success of Jews in America? Or is it a Jew Plot to portray them as silly and weak so that we don't take their plans seriously? Speak on it!
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(15 comments | comment on this)
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| Friday, October 31st, 2008
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10:57 am - Pictures
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1. Happy L'hallowe'en!!!!! 2. We had four pumpkins from our Saturday evening pumpkin carving party, some prettier than others, but they all collapsed into juicy squishy messes filled with black mold. Pumpkins don't last very long at 96 degrees. We are go-getters, however, so Valpal and I bought new pumpkins and made, respectively, a cat with a jackal intern and the Kool-AIDS man. Pretty slick craftsmanship, as ever. 3. I've been putting in some work for queers lately. Calling people, telling them to vote for guys doing it, the same way they'd vote for you doing it. On Sunday I'll go to the Anti-Christian Liberals Union to get homotraining, which I will apply Tuesday morning, when I go out into the streets on the behalf of destroying America's families. 4. My throat was sore all week, but now that my condition has improved I can only wistfully reminisce over my dead-on impressions of McGruff the Irish Criminal Dog and Robert Stack. 5. I am now legally employable in the United States, perhaps including Guam. Where the white women at?
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(10 comments | comment on this)
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| Thursday, September 18th, 2008
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9:08 pm - blowing guys
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Hello, friends.
I don't want to scare you off or anything, but you should be warned that this post contains ideas and cold hard throbbing facts of an explicit nature. Do not share this with children under the age of consent.
I have an idea for a bumper sticker or perhaps a series of bumper stickers based on the most frequent type of bumper sticker here in Glendale, California. There are of course a number of "Obama '08" and "Bush has a vampiric appetite for Iraqi blood and more importantly the blood that runs our economy, oil" bumper stickers, but by far the most common bumper stickers, and the ones that really stick into my bumpercraw, are "Proud parent of a STUDENT/CITIZEN OF THE MONTH who also achieves honors in such challenging classes as naptime at a local elementary school."
These stickers are intolerable. I guarantee you that you could place me into any grade 5 classroom in the continental United States and I would run circles around those kids. They would be crying, unless they have developed defense mechanisms that subconsciously seek out flaws in more successful people, such as excessive body fat, lack of street smarts, or being a childish asshole. Also they're unlikely to cry if they don't measure their self-worth by their academic performance against a 21-year-old Canadian university dropout.
But then I would tell them their parents are getting divorced.
More to the point, I think the solution to these stickers is obvious. Here are some contenders for the counteroffensive:- Proud Parent of SHIA LaBEOUF
- My child is a JUNIOR DIABETIC at Crescenta Valley Elementary
- Proud Parent of THAT ANNOYING LITTLE FAT KID FROM TWO AND A HALF MEN
- My kid and my money go to COUNTRY VILLA REHAB CENTER
- Proud Parent of BROOKE VALIHORA
- Proud Parent of A STILLBORN CHILD I BURIED AND NAMED AND MADE A FACEBOOK FOR
Hopefully some enterprising graphic designer will make these a reality.
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(11 comments | comment on this)
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| Wednesday, July 16th, 2008
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8:31 pm - and we'll do it doggystyle
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| Friday, May 9th, 2008
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7:03 pm - what happens in vegas
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| Friday, April 4th, 2008
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1:19 am - December 30, 1996 - April 2, 2008
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Winston, an African-American lab, was our first dog that didn't outrank me in both age and maturity. We bought him in Leamington on February 15, 1997 for $100. He was one of the top eight dogs evar.
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Anecdote:
Winston was always willing to take the fall for others. Living outside suburbia, we never had any neighbour children to hang out or build the social skills necessary to live life outside of an internet shell with. And we didn't have cable. So for fun we would set sticks on the road and hide in the ditch waiting for cars to run them over. One evening, I chose to try a variant of this: namely, standing next to road holding a stick and making the motion as if I was about to throw it. When the first minivan came by, I mimicked the throwing motion so effectively that the stick left my hands and hit the windshield. The van reversed and pulled over. A hockey mom and her hockey son, wearing an Amherstburg Stars jacket, stepped out.
"Oh god," I shat my pants. "I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to actually throw that."
"What are you doing?" hockmom asked, apparently unhappy with my conduct. "What did you throw?"
"It was just a little stick, I seriously didn't mean to let go, I was just--"
"No way was that a stick," said hockboy to his mom. "It was really loud. He must've thrown that newspaper." He pointed to the River Town Times lying on the driveway.
"No, I didn't, honestly, it was just a stick, a twig!"
"What are you even doing out here by the road?" asked hockmom. "Where are your parents?"
I was deep in some shit that would get me into trouble, which I didn't really get into as a matter of practice because I was a boring nerd. So this was the end of the world for me.
Deus ex machina: Winston runs up from across the road, probably after being yelled at by Nixon, our angry old neighbour. He never was very good at staying where he was told.
"Is this your dog?" hockmom asked. "You need to keep him under control."
"I know, I'm sorry." I grabbed Winston by the collar. I wasn't big enough to hold him if he wanted to run again, and perhaps the Aerostar Twins sensed it.
"We don't have time for this. We have a game to get to."
"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to hit you, I swear."
They left, and not a moment too soon. My parents came outside as they were driving off.
"Why were you talking to that lady?" my dad asked.
I must have been either beet-red or yayo-white. "Winston ran across the street from Nixon's house in front of their van. They pulled over and told me to keep him under control." That's essentially what I said, omitting the stammering.
My parents bought the story entirely. "I don't know what we're going to do about Winston," my mom said at dinner. I felt guilty about that, but at least I was home free. And it couldn't have happened without Mr. No-Strings-Attached Bailout, Winston.
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Winston got cancer. He was cool with that for a long time. My parents had him put down yesterday. He was everyone's favourite, because he was big. You could wrestle with him or feed him sticky candy that made him appear to speak. His tail spilled countless beverages, and his poor discipline netted him hundreds of chicken balls, stolen from the counter each time we ate Chinese. He would stay off the couch whenever my dad was around. He threw up from eating margarine.
He lived a good life, and he made ours better.
He will be missed.
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(8 comments | comment on this)
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| Wednesday, March 26th, 2008
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2:25 pm - WHAT THE SHIT
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| Wednesday, February 6th, 2008
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11:17 pm - living in america
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"You were laughing in your sleep last night."
"I know."
"You know?"
"I was only half-asleep."
"What were you laughing about?"
"There was a joke in my dream."
"What was it?"
"I can't remember. Something about autism."
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(13 comments | comment on this)
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| Thursday, January 24th, 2008
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9:37 pm - Unfortunately, a Personal Post
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Yo baby yo! I've been working in the United States, and allow me to tell you: I think things are going rather well. My young friend is enjoying a lull in his schoolwork, and he has the potential to enjoy some independence.
Here's the trouble: he doesn't want independence. What he likes is what he knows, and if he escapes that by, say, controlling a computer without the help of anyone else, he won't have the mandated interaction he requires. His life is a difficult and at times unpleasant one. I think technology can improve it.
As for my personal life, Vally and I are living well. We get along more often than not, we check out dinosaur bones, and we're going to San Francisco. Just for a weekend, until we get cocklust out of our system. I'm not working big hours these days, but I will be soon. It promises to be a season of mad scrilla. I'll be squirreling away some of it to accomplish Lord knows what.
With the notable exception of my young friend, I don't have any friends here outside of Valerie. I'm struggling to think of a way that differs from my Canadian life, but nevertheless I could probably use a new friend, or perhaps an older model transported here. Anyone want to live in the L.A. area? I hear it's real sunny.
I love you all,
Dave
PS: If you do manage to emigrate, please fwd some hot tips. I could stand to do that too.
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(9 comments | comment on this)
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| Wednesday, January 16th, 2008
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5:38 pm - all-new post
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| Thursday, December 20th, 2007
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3:01 pm - i don't wanna lose your love tonight
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Millionaires Have It Easy
By Dave Greenaway
As a financial consultant, I am frequently chastised for the pain I cause my clients. As they approach fortunes of one million dollars or more, clients become awfully anxious about what might happen to them. I try and tell them to settle down. Money is the best pain reliever there is, better than opiates. As counterintuitive as it may sound, millionaires have it easy.
If you are a millionaire, chances are you are hungry. Eat! One of the benefits of millionairity is that you can afford a meal any time you like it. Whether from a grocery store, a restaurant, or the kitchen of a trusted friend, you have access to foods for all times of day. You will probably get fat, but it is obesity that proves your wealth to friends.
Millionaires come to me every day, money spilling out of their pockets or blouses. "I'm so tired of this!" they tell me. "I don't want all this money in my face all the time! Brar!" Everyone needs some time to herself or himself, but remember why you like money in the first place: It has pictures of kids playing hockey and heals your inner problems. Maybe take a vacation without your money. After a couple of evenings in the Arizona desert, what could you want more than to "make it rain"? Bank accounts are another good way to keep your money from getting too clingy. Bear in mind, however, that a million dollars requires a lot of storage space at a bank, so they will charge a lot of rent.
I don't blame them for it, but sometimes people neglect the simple joys of having upwards of $1 million at their disposal. So quickly they forget that they have chandeliers to provide them with ample lighting, public transit to get them from place to place, and bidets to keep their hands odorless. You need to remind yourself of these things! If you use them you'll save yourself a world of hurt.
I don't mean to be hard on millionaires. They are some of our most important humans. Keep them in your hearts, obviously, but don't stress out over them. If you see a millionaire hitchhiking, pick him up, but don't kick out a friend to make room for him. We need to be fair to everyone, whether their watches are pocket or digital.
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(27 comments | comment on this)
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| Monday, December 17th, 2007
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5:29 pm - only god can judge me
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I'm still Dave, and I'm in Southwestern Ontario, doing what people tend to do there. News from home: My big, cancerous dog consistently fails to die of cancer, which is something everyone can be proud of. Our small, youthful dog pees on the patio and bites faces. Our small, hateful dog growls at the youthful one all day long, and sits in the car after a trip rather than come in to see him. Snow is present, and our car is broken. I'm going to Scarborough tomorrow, pending $1000 repairs on the 1998 Cavalier. I will be leaving on the 27th, missing the Amherstburg Pub Crawl, which is probably for the best. Janitors have a hard road.
I feel antsy when I'm here, almost as though Los Angeles were my home or something. Valerie ought to have come with. But it is good to feel the cold so that I really can believe Christmas is here.
I didn't sleep too well last night, but I managed to write in bed. What will it all lead too? Big things, believe. Want a part of it? I'll sell you a share of me for $20.
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| Saturday, December 8th, 2007
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8:36 pm - MEMETICS: Reader's Digest Version - Year in Review
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