Classic Snivel

May 11, 1997.

After my afternoon engaged in the criticism of the personal possessions of so many people in this city, I had an appointment to meet an old friend recently returned from school at a cafe, so I took leave of my company and walked down what is called Bank Street, which essentially defines the core of downtown Ottawa. Everything radiates from it, including the Byward Market, which was my cafe-saturated destination.

Strangely, as I was making my travels, I came across two people I'd spent my high school years in nodding acquaintance (they were friends of closer friends), standing on the corner with bewilderment upon their faces (My friend Charlotte will know them as our friends "Mick," and "Menny."). I was fond of their evil counterparts, so I waved and said my greetings, and asked them their present fate. They were looking for a friend who had mysteriously vanished, and they told me his name, but it meant quite little to me, having never heard it before. They clarified by asking "You don't know Gomez?" which finally did make a connection somewhere deep in my synaptic pathways, and up came the freshly dredged memory of someone I knew vaguely, through the same friends, in my last year of high school, when I emerged from my shy, nerdy, Star Trek lovin' hiding place to become the social creature you all know today. Apparently he had been drinking that afternoon, and the group of them were on their way back to his apartment to fraternize, and continue with the imbibing.
However, being drunk, he had some pressing biological matters of some import, and ran off to deal with them. They were pretty sure he'd dashed around the corner into a McDonald's, but both the male and female washrooms had been checked with negative results, and it was unknown where this Gomez could possibly be.

We stood around and chatted for a couple of minutes, and finally they decided to head back to his apartment. They had a key, and they figured that ultimately he would make his way there, since it was both where he lived, and where the beer would be. However, at that moment, he came strolling out of the McDonald's, hamburger in hand, with a puzzling story to tell. Now, unfortunately on account of his drunkeness, the accuracy and honesty of the story are suspect, but believe you me, the Evil Rob, I know what of he speaks.

According to Gomez, he'd run inside the McDonald's both to use their washroom, and procure himself one of their tasty burgers. As could be expected, though, he reasoned first things first, and made his way to the washrooms. He followed the directions to the washrooms as best he could -- being somewhat impaired -- and ended up heading downstairs. The important thing to note is that there is no downstairs in that particular McDonalds -- at least, not one that is accessible to the public. He found himself in a corridor, and because this seemed as likely a place to find a place to refresh himself as any, his hopes were high. He wandered into the first room he saw, and what he saw was definitely not a washroom.

He found himself in a room full of suspicious men doing suspicious things. They all turned around to look at him as soon as he entered the room, and made a point of being absolutely quiet -- doing nothing, and saying nothing. Finally he asked them who they were, and what, exactly, they were doing. Their response was: "You don't want to know." In kind, they asked Gomez who he thought he was, and what, exactly, he thought he was doing. Gomez was slightly panicked and confused at this point, and just blurted out that all he was doing was "trying to take a piss and then buy a hamburger!" to which they replied, "You can't do any of those things down here! Leave right now, and head back upstairs!" Then they told him that there would be police coming after him in just a few minutes if he tarried, and that's when he ran away screaming, stopping only to purchase a hamburger at the front counter when he got back upstairs. I'm not sure where, exactly, he ended up peeing.

So that's his story, and while you might feel inclined to draw up your own innocent conclusions about what it was that he really saw, let me say to you now in no uncertain terms -- McDonalds restaurants have secret corridors hidden from the outside world, and in these corridors are the rooms where their most evil and private schemes are executed. McDonalds establishments are fronts for something much more sinister, much more concerned with a global presence than billions of dollars, or good public relations. What Gomez found was a command centre for a chapter of the secretive military wing of McDonalds Incorporated. They are cold, ruthless, excellently equipped, and not quite all human.

The agenda of this faction is more terrible than that of any nation or militia group. Together with Disney's own forces, they ready themselves for any threat to the common order. Hostile voices are silenced, competitors are squeezed and manipulated, and governments are managed like finger puppets. They don't even need to strike. They have the power to overthrow at least several of the world's nations, but there is no need -- so skilled are their coercions and so powerful and beloved are their masters.

We had much the same force in the evil universe, until it was destroyed by right and just forces of evil, who believe in the autonomy of all to be as evil as they please -- for the mandate of this corporation in any universe is the bland, homogenous goodness portrayed so emphatically in their advertising -- and tracked down and flattened every cell.

So I warn you know, citizens of the good universe. They are here. And that's all they need.

M a y 10

So, it's been about thirty hours or so now since the curious accident that delivered me, the evil universe Rob, into your good universe, switching places with the Rob you tend to know and read about. You'd be reassured to know that mostly I look just like him. I've asked the opinions of a couple of Rob's most trusted friends, and they say that the most pronounced difference is probably the sneer that crosses my face whenever you aren't looking directly at me. Plus I have more cool lines for those everyday occasions when most people are stumped for words. Evil people always have the best lines, you know.

Of course, those friends are now tied up on the bed. I couldn't really be expected to tell people of my true, evil, origins and then have them running around jumping to their naive little good conclusions, now could I? But before you start to fear that I'm planning to kill them, remember that in my universe, they're my (evil) friends too. Actually, my plans for them are far more sinister. I've always wanted a harem you see. I'm sure the good Rob has, too. So some of Rob's closest friends are tied up on the bed, bereft of their good universe clothing, covered in blankets and trained to cuddle me, or indulge my addiction to backrubs, whenever I might wish their attention. Doesn't that sound horrendously evil to you? It ought to. People always think of evil in terms of insane murderers, but that's only because in your universe, evil can't afford subtlety. In the evil universe, evil is such an everyday thing that it gets manifested in entirely more creative ways. Practically nobody does any killing in myuniverse, you know. In an evil universe, there are no innocent victims, you see. Everybody wears black, and nobody eats ice cream cones. It's impossible to look evil while eating an ice cream cone, you see.

The next evil thing I'm going to do is leave and spend my day wandering amongst knickknacks at a giant garage sale downtown, spending a horrifically evil Mother's Day visiting the good Rob's sweet good mother.

Garage sales are very popular in the evil universe.

M a y 9

Sometime late last night, we attempted to recreate the same chain of events but instead of transmogrifying into an insane blue guy with amazing hair as I hit the catalytic "delete" key, there were unexpected consequences.

As anyone who watches Star Trek knows, there are two universes: the good universe, and the evil universe. While there are good and evil people living in both, one is more predominantly occupied by individuals inclined towards more or less decent behaviour, while the other contains their precise opposites, down to the last person, amoeba, or mouse. From your perspective, you live in the good universe. You have vanilla ice cream, Mickey Mouse, Superman, Hallmark (actually, the evil universe has Hallmark too) and then there are more ambiguous "good universe good bad things" like good Hitler and good kiddie porn. The difference being that Evil Universe Hitler and evil kiddie porn are far more intense, and evil, and disturbing. Now, something you also know from your episodes of Star Trek is that occasionally by means of queer accidents, people from the good universe, and their equal evil opposites, can cross the barrier between universes and be forced to assume each other's place -- often with hilarious consequences!

So, that's what happened to Rob.

Or rather, your Rob.

Because I'm the evil Rob.

I've spent the past six hours exploring your good Rob's life, trying to figure out what I should be doing while he and I tinker with each other's computers, attempting to reverse the conditions of the accident and send us to our rightful home universes. In the meantime, of course, I've discovered a lot about the good Rob. I know -- you're expecting me to call him a pathetic, sentimental weakling, the way all evil universe people talk about their good counterparts (or evil clones, or evil robots, or evil twins, or ex-boy/girlfriends -- it's just a science fiction mode of thought), but basically we're the same person. I'm just millions of times more horrendously cruel and evil, that's all. Oh, and conveniently enough, my hair is blue, purple, and black, instead of the purple, blue, and black that your good Rob normally has. But no one will notice, because no one ever notices (except you, my observant audience who are privy to ever so many little dramatic ironies).

Although I'm far too evil to have my own Daily Snivel back in my evil room, I'm here in the good Rob's room, and while I'm here I do feel obliged to maintain his habits in order to prevent the suspicion of others. I'll probably be here a couple of days while I sort out good Rob's good computer (why on earth are all your computers white?), so do stay tuned. For now, though, I'm meeting a good friend of good Rob's, whom he hasn't seen in over a year and a half, since she visited one Christmas after moving to B.C. a few years before. I'm assuming he's meeting the evil her this afternoon, too, and I can only hope that he gets the hang of my favourite evil underwear and the random electric shocks of my evil computer.

Oh, and I wish I'd known to leave a note about evil toilets.

Well, he'll adjust.

M a y 8

I was in a hospital today, actually, to visit my grandmother, who suffered a mild stroke last week. I was there with one of my beloved, smoochable, friends, who was offering a lot of support in light of the fact that I find hospitals so creepy and stressful. My mother was there too, and after our visit she asked us to meet her by the elevators, since she had to help my grandmother with a few things before she could leave. So, we were waiting there, and beside us were a couple of unattended hospital beds. And they looked really very quite comfortable. Nice and firm with big supportive pillows, covered in the warmer blankets offered by that hospital, and of course, we'd been on our feet (trapped in giant boots) all day, and to our weary bones the sight was certainly beautiful.

But my friend ended up saying the coolest thing to me. She put a hand on the bed, looked at me with more slyness than I thought possible, and coyly asked "Want to get kicked out of a hospital?"
I've discovered that I'm really a very moral and guilty creature though, obeying even the smallest laws because of my screwed up values (blame my parents, those hippies), so sadly I declined.

I guess it's inevitable that the great public outcry over the Oklahoma City bombing, which created the great public interest in Timothy McVeigh's trial, would lead to considerable press coverage of the trial itself, and speculation on the part of journalists (and everybody knows how much I love journalists. The only think I like more than journalists are journalism students. Because after all, I like things based on their crabbiness, anal retentive powers, and ability to write soulessly and yet subjectively) about his favourite foods, diet tips, recipies, and whatever. But presently there's a lot of interest in a book he seemed to get a whole lot out of, which is of course The Turner Diaries. It's written in the form of the diary entries of a man named Earl Turner. The premise of the book is that a paramilitary right wing neo-nazi insane gooby cult group called The Organization that begins its own little cute revolution by obliterating the FBI headquarters with a truck packed with a fertilizer bomb. Then, of course, the race war begins.

Throughout America, people of non-white, European, lineage are arbitrarily and viciously murdered, as are white Europeans who have non-white lovers. Essentially a campaign to elimate all but the most White Bread of traditional conservative institutions is instigated and -- as is the way in books written to make militia types horny -- of course, it works. America is saved, the white race is cleansed of racial pollution, God is good, and generally people dance a lot of happy neo-nazi polkas, because Might is Right and small-minded Christian values won out over a free world.

But anyway. I really must try not to drip vitriol so. It burns holes in my clothes.

The article I was reading discussed a real winner named William Pierce, who wrote The Turner Diaries, and who runs his own little hate organization out of West Virginia, called the National Alliance. It mentioned that they had a web site, and because hate values raise my ire so, I decided I had to try and go look for it. It took only a little bit of searching on Alta Vista to find it (there are a considerable number of various National Alliances), and while I'll add the criticism that it employs frames (badly implemented frames, I'll further say) and has large annoying graphics, I was soon on my way towards reading it -- as soon as the darn thing finished loading. Stupid web.

What annoyed me is the ignorance that is being promulgated with the simple, ridiculous, assertion that it's really the truth, because you can't trust the traditional media -- because of the fact that it's all controlled by "The Jews."

Without offering any evidence or rational argument whatever, the National Alliance in its mission statement and general drivel makes so many assertions of the superiority of the White Race in terms of morality, intelligence, law-abidingness, and insists that multiculturalism is poisoning America, Britain, and every other "Aryan nation" in which racial equality is supported.

Their mandate is to provide "space" for white Europeans in which to live, work, play, go to school, and further indoctrinate themselves in bigotry. That sounds in a way to just be a radical demand to end racial integration, but the actual idea is to purge non-white influences from North America, Britain, or wherever hate festers. White Pride is a dangerous term. Its defenders imply that it is simply pride in one's race, but unfortunately they neglect to say that in taking pride in oneself and one race, the entailment is that there are races that are inferior. Among their goals is the statement:

"In specific terms, this means a society in which young men and women gather to revel with polkas or waltzes, reels or jigs, but never to undulate or jerk to negroid jazz or rock rhythms."

The National Alliance relies on people's prejudice, ignorance, personal biases and stereotypes to further paranoid suspicions about people and ideas that are different. That's how people like this seek power. To homogenize and skim the ideology of a group, and unite it against undesirable elements in the name of maintaining their rightful superiority over others purely on the basis of racial history. The scary thing is that people buy into it. Everyone wants to blame someone else for their problems. Poverty, ignorance, misery, drudgery, fear, suspicion, stupidity -- infectious wounds, festering with the pus of blame. "America's problems would be solved if it were only possible to get rid of the blacks who are destroying it, or the Jews who are controlling it." They're easy things to say, and easy things to believe. No one wants to be responsible for the problems that are real and perceived. It's far simpler to blame the "inferior races" who are themselves far more greedy and stupid and ignorant and immoral than the group one belongs to -- by virtue of the fact that one belongs to it.

I want to see real proof that there's such a thing as the dreaded "Jewish Conspiracy." I hear so much about it from hate groups, but do any of them have any evidence it exists? Of course not -- because it doesn't. But they can spout it, and believe it, because it isn't the job of racists to think for themselves. They like to think of themselves as free-thinkers who have transcended traditional knowledge 'controlled' by others, but the mentality of militias, hate groups, cults, or however they like to call themselves is that their ideology does not hold up to questioning or factual data. That's why religion and hate go so well together. Both foster ignorance, and both use ethnocentric pride to create an atmosphere of rigid, unquestioning, "We're right -- you're wrong" righteousness amongst their flocks of sheep.

I saw a lot of writing on that web site to the effect that the "Holocaust" (they insist it be put into quotation marks) was by no means the genocide it has been described by "the Jews who won the war and wrote history." Rather, there were only isolated incidents of extermination, and certainly Hitler never ordered any of them. They describe numerous cases where "common knowledge" about the Holocaust have been discredited and are no longer used, without proving that said "common knowlege" had ever been in a history book, or that it had been discredited. They just claimed these things were so, as if that were enough. The reality is that Holocaust denial is really just the saddest expression of human nature. My own grandfather was one of thousands of soldiers who had to tour the death camps of Nazi Germany after the war. He like many others was made witness to the atrocity and death, because even then it was understood by the Allies that someday, people wouldn't believe such a thing was possible. Their own prejudices, beliefs, and a sense of suspicion would force them to conclude that somehow a mistake had been made -- that there was an exaggeration, or fabrication, intended to vilify others while vindicating a group that has always suffered prejudice based on the idiotic hate mongering that comes with religious discrimination. People tend to believe that if they themselves weren't there to witness it, then it couldn't possibly be so. And it's funny, because there is such reluctance to believe that it could be possible that such hate, and viciousness could occur in the form of genocide against the Jewish people, and yet those who most passionately deny the possibility of such hate are people who feel this because they themselves so very hate Jews, and they themselves can and do personally assist in the same, vandalism, beatings, ignorance and persecution, and would happily enforce the same murder and extermination given the chance.

But not a single claim made holds up to any investigation. The National Alliance hates so many things, even feminism. Any assertion of equality or independance that shakes the traditional conservative hierarchy of white man over white woman, and white people over all is a threat to something that should long ago have been destroyed anyway.

This is my rant. Here are some answers.

M a y 7

I bet we all jump out of bed gleefully screaming this every morning, so it hardly even seems like more explanation is necessary, but today's ordeal had me visit a doctor due to the troublesome test results that came about last week when I was violently unable to make good use of my digestive system. They found protein in my urine, and a higher count of white blood cells, and hemoglobin, in my blood, and the doctor insisted I get myself tested for kidney damage as soon as I was able.

The most painful part of the test was the three hour stretch of monotony and screaming toddlers in the waiting room. The rest essentially involved the doctor punching me in the back, asking me occasionally if I were experiencing any excrutiating pain because of it. Then he made me lie down, and poked and prodded my abdomen -- same question, different position. Blood pressure in each arm was checked (presumably each flow is affected by the kidney on that side), I was punched in the back a little more, and then I was off to pee in a cup.

But I'm OK, at least for now. The test is done right in the office, but for assurance, they're sending more of my fluids to a laboratory to be checked out (and catalogued by government agents -- once you control a man's bodily fluids, you can control his very DESTINY...), but presently I'm in tip-top shape to filter impurities from my blood. So, just in case I'm ever in a weird male-slave relationship where I'm involved with someone who gets off on me peeing all over them, rest assured, future slavekeeper, that my urine is healthy and my kidneys are ready to serve.

In puppet news, that adorable, pompous sock Lambchop has made The List. The list of enemies to the future state I shall somewhat benevolantly enforce when I take over the world. Shari Lewis was being interviewed in some waiting room magazine in the waiting room, and one of the interviews was an exclusive with her second personality that allows her to escape from anxiety, Lambchop. Lambchop was asked about Kermit the Frog in its interview, and its reply was: "Who ever heard of a talking frog?"

Now, it's seditious enough to speak ill of frogs, but it is actually beyond High Treason in the scope of atrocities to attack the character of my beloved Kermit. There are none more perfect or closer to godhood than Jim Henson, and the very idea of a sock with cotton glued to it making slanderous comments on such eminence is downright blasphemous.

So, my beloved cult, the order has come down: Kill Lambchop. And at least casually maim Shari Lewis.

M a y 6

At this point, he's just gotten a job out there, thanks to his girlfriend's father. I must say, for a young Smiths Falls person, she has her priorities straight. She's a real sweetie, and my gruff and grumbly brother, in spite of himself, is as much of a suck around her as I or my older brother or sister might be with our respective mates. Her father brought her up well, in spite of the fact that they have a lot of money, which in blue-collar Smiths Falls (the city's claim to fame: A Hershey Chocolate factory) creates a noticable class distinction. He owns an appliance store in Smiths Falls, and my brother is now in his employ as a delivery/installation type. He drives around the Smiths Falls/Brockville/Merrickville area with his parter in a big truck, and they bring stoves and refrigerators to their new domains, install them, and generally they more than earn their eight bucks an hour by lugging exceptionally heavy metal things around.

The best part of the job so far is that he gets to knock out people's stairs with blunt objects. With cynicism and irony that I find refreshing and pleasing (it being another family trait), he likes to point out that people like to make major purchases without actually thinking them through properly. Which is to say, in ways that make it necessary to alter people's houses for them. What happens is that Mr. and Mrs. Customer walk into the store, fall in love with a 60 inch television set, buy one on the spot, and arrange to have it delivered.

What could be wrong with this arrangement, you ask? They bought their television, and by God they want their television. The problem with a 60 inch television is that 60 inches sounds pretty small. A more concrete dimension would be to say that such things are five feet long. So the question is then, when you buy a giant monster of a television to go into your living room, what happens when you live in Smiths Falls and you don't consider the fact that there's no way you're actually going to manage to get it to fit anywhere?

The answer is that you have to choose between having your giant TV, or having stairs. I'm assuming the decision is only a little tricky. ("With this five-foot TV, we won't have to go upstairs and have sex at all! We'll never get that bored.") so my brother gets to break things in order to make the thing fit, or get it inside the house, or both, or whatever. It's all in a day's work.

And that concludes today's Daily Snivel. I have a beautiful person waiting for me in bed, and while I'm open to offers, I'd rather be there than here, even for you. So the moral of the story is: join me, love me, lick me.

M a y 5

I live in the big city now, so I don't actually have the room to care for any animals (or children, so don't send me any of the dirty little pests), but back at home in the country, on the endless dirt road where the home of my adolescence is are my dogs. In terms of country dogs, they perform in most of the average ways, although with my own sense of pride I'm inclined to say that they quite excel in their endeavours to run around barking and chasing things, and chewing a lot of other things into small bits, especially the dead smelly ones. These are my four, black hellspawn terror dogs, who in most respects could be called laborador retrievers, although their genetic history is, like many dogs out in the country, in some ways questionable.

But I love them in my own way, even though generally I've always had a problem with dogs, on account of my experiences with the typical varieties here in the city. In my neighborhood, most of the dogs are small and white, and they exist only to make a lot of high-pitched, frenzied noise in their daily hyperactive routines of scampering around the house with clicking toenails, awaiting those pauses when they find themselves attached to a leash, dragged through a park by a person with a plastic baggie on his hand, waiting with resignation for filthy nature to occur on the behalf of their dog's less socially pleasant end. I tend to prefer cats or ferrets.

We got our first dog eleven years ago, when I was just a kid. She was a puppy then, which means she was all legs and had essentially no practical sense or dignity whatsoever. It also means she was adorable. My stepfather named her Sabbath, which was a sort of clever play on the fact that she was a black dog (Black Sabbath, if I have to put that together for you), but being kids we called her "Sabby." It stuck with me. She was a swell dog. Every kid needs a faithful companion when he or she romps through the countryside, exploring fields and the bush, in winter and summer, with a happy creature most content to just follow you around, occasionally jumping into a spring or a creek as the opportunity presenting itself. We had all these rituals. Like there was a crabapple tree in the front yard, and every fall it would drop crabapples onto the lawn. Sabbath would completely ignore them until you picked one up, and then she would bark and hop around madly until you tossed it as far away as you could, and you could be assured that she'd tear after it, skillfully catching it almost as soon as it hit the ground, and come running back with the prize proudly in her jaws. Not that she'd give it back. That was the game. You had to chase her around like an idiot for twenty minutes while she outran and outmaneovered you, until you finally managed to hold her down and pry it out of her jaws to start the whole ritual again. Or you could just whip something else and she'd lose interest immediately in the old one.

She was a great dog. When she was about one or two, she learned the hard way that chasing cars was not the thing to do, because one ended up hitting her and breaking her pelvis. She recovered in a couple of months, but we had to keep her in a big box in the meantime, and it was going to be hard for her to have puppies. I remember us crying our eyes out when it happened, though, because it looked kind of like she was going to have to be put down by the vet. But she was spared, and we got our dog back eventually.

And yes, she had puppies. A neighbor's laborador ended up detecting her state of heat at some point when I was about fifteen, and wandered down the road several miles in order to visit. Soon afterwards there were five little black sweeties running around, and of course we had to do something about them, so the puppies were sold, except for the smallest of them, whom we named Stripe on account of a small white stripe on her chest. She is a marvelous dog as well, though like her proud mother and future siblings, she was kind of weird.

A couple of years later, when I was seventeen, two more puppies arrived, and we kept them both, making the total count four. It's odd that dogs that are all related could be so very different, but they are. Their only common trait is that they love a good chase, and that could mean being chased by someone who wants the ball/stick/frisbee back, or it could mean chasing people passing by on foot, bicycle, or horseback, or it could mean chasing something in a pack, hunting it down, and killing and eating it proudly. I didn't even realize how vicious beavers could be until I came home to visit and saw the chunks that had been taken out of my dogs before they, well, killed and ate it.

So, as of this April, Sabbath turned eleven. She was getting quite old, and it was sad, because all the hair on her chin was turning white, and she no longer had the same vigour. The other dogs would really humour her a lot, by letting her have the ball or stick or whatever when you played with them, and she still bossed them around angrily when it came time to eat (she would guard every single food dish, no matter how many there were, until she was done eating), but she was getting older, and slower, and she knew it. I love coming home to visit my dogs, but it was really great to see her especially.

Unfortunately, by accident of some roving neighbor's dog, she became pregnant again. A couple of days ago, she gave birth to a single puppy, who didn't even survive long enough to know it had been born, and her advanced age, and the difficulty with which she gave birth (the first generation had been born by caesarean section) proved to be too much. As I heard it from my mother, the bearer of bad news, she lingered a couple of days, and then one day tried to get inside the doghouse on the porch, put her head on her front paws, and quietly died. She didn't seem to be in any pain during all of this, but it's hard to say. I think the tragic thing about pets is that they just expect somehow that you can do anything. And when they're suffering, or ready to die, they just look to you, wondering and hoping what you can do to help them. And we couldn't do a thing. My younger brother came home in the rain, and buried her and her poor puppy with the ceremony and honour deserving such a beloved dog.

I found out about this yesterday. I've been crying on and off about it since. I mean, I suppose it could be said she was just a dog, and that I'm an emotional person, but she was a really great creature, and a good friend. She liked nothing more than to just have a little love, and food, and maybe an occasional belly rub, and even though I sometimes go a year without coming home, I've always loved and missed my dogs, and especially her.

Goodbye, Sabby. You were the greatest dog I've ever met.
Ack, time to cry again.

Brought to you by Jolt Cola, with
the buzzing and mild irritation of
caffeine induced paranoia.

Return to days past for more Classic Drivel.

Back to Purple People Eater Town.