H*ly Fucking Shit - imissthisguy 1 Year Anniversary

It's been a year or something in that neighborhood of imissthisguy and I'd like to start this post by saying thanks. I've got a shitload more out of this than I've put in. We've had people from all over the world stumble to this thing in one way or another, but much much more than anything else it's been a way to talk to the people that matter most in an informal, jocular laid back way - a meager but effective replication of life back in T.O.. Some technology isn't bad... Thanks for reading.

It's Halloween, of course, but you wouldn't know that here in Denmark - there's no such thing. I complained about this to a few guys at work and they took the bait, criticizing the holiday for being commercial, lame and for kids. I smiled the smile you get when you know you're going to put people in their goddamn place. I explained, sure Halloween is cool for kids, grabbing candy, decorating pumpkins, cooking pumpkin seeds - all that shit is neither here nor there. But then you stop trick or treating when you're about 12 and you think the whole thing is over. Maybe you hand out candies and feel like a grown up. I sure did, often wearing a blazer and smoking a pipe.

I continued to explain, the real Halloween - the Halloween these Danish douches don't know about, gets going when you're around 17. It's when the surreal, take mushrooms and freak yourself out parties get up to speed. Year after year, what party was better than Halloween for tripping the fuck out and and getting sur-fucking-real? Always, always, always the party fo the year. The thinking mans New Years Eve. In our 30's the mood changed from shrooms and joke costumes to gegootz, lingerie for the ladies and... joke costumes (think: Mr. Canoe Head).

There is a holiday in Denmark this weekend - they release the Christmas beer today and it's a pretty massive party across the country. I suppose an argument could be made that beer is the "candy" of Denmark. After all, children here are only allowed (by their parents) to eat candy on Friday and Saturday - the candy is called Haribo and it's disgusting (black licorice). I went to a grocery store to get some Christmas beer and when I checked out saw it came to 189 kroner for 6 bottles ($36 CDN). I asked if there was a mistake and twenty minutes later (and a HUGE line-up) the guy realized he had charged me for six, six-packs. Another ten minutes later, I was out of there with a full refund and the beer, again getting more out of it than I put in.

Happy Anniversary

Graduation

It's funny the little hierarchies and systems that develop in a small social environment like our Danish class. Yesterday, the Italian guy moved from sitting beside the guy from Nepal, to my direct left. Now the class has all white guys on one side and dark guys on the other, like we're a basketball team in the 1950's. The Italian guy was probably sick of sitting next to Nepal guy who is the most uniquely talented shit disturber I've ever met. He keeps on asking for Danish words to tell his wife he's cheating on her (she doesn't speak Danish).

I've advanced from level 1A Danish to level 1B, which is basically like making it from Kindergarten to grade 1. The teacher said I'm doing well... here are a few things I've learned: Jeg vil gerne have en ol - I would like to have a beer. Eva er altid pa toilet - Eva is always on the toilet.

I Don't Have Any Apples At Home

I broke out in a solo fit of laughter during last nights Danish class. Everyone stared. The teacher asked me what my problem was and if I was feeling okay. I wasn't laughing that hard, so I replied the sentences we learn are appealing to my abstract sense of humour in a way I can't easily describe (see title of this post).

Thank God for the guy from Nepal, cuz he started laughing too. We looked at each other and lost it, slapping the table and making general asses of ourselves. This guy is the best - he's always smiling and every question he asks in class makes absolutely no Gaddamn sense. The teacher asks him to repeat himself again and again until I start to laugh and we can move on. I guess this time he felt like he was coming to my rescue.

We're the only ones that laugh (at all) and it's getting a little uncomfortable. If clowns shot out of my dick, the Iranian guy beside me wouldn't crack a smile. How can he not see the humour in this shit - if you want to say it's 5:35, in Danish, you say it's five minutes past thirty minutes before six.

Ballflubbery Jones

Saw this clip on thedanzatap yesterday and consider it the highest form of cinema. Few 43 second films have expressed such a complete story with beginning, middle and end as this shinning example of rhetorical ballflubbery. We live in compelling times my friends.

It's About Time

So, the clocks changed here over the weekend - daylight savings time, or as the locals playfully refer to it, "6oqeirjnfgvipfaj nv;pnasdf;jlnivbad14alkfjsv;zc". Of course, I knew all about this time change because of the incredible stream of information available to me in English, which contradicts the fact I just realized the time changed, about 36 hours after it happened. I'll let you guess which is the truth. Things move slow here to begin with, often by the time I hear about it... old news. Did you guys know OJ's back in jail? Apparently Michael Jackson is planning a big tour next year - I'm going to buy some tickets. I predict a fast start for the Toronto Maple Leafs, if anyone wants to place a wager.

A Bird Named Friday

Was biking to work and stopped at a red when a crow landed on top of the stop light. Tried to grab my phone to take a picture of the pitch black bird spitting down on the world against a gray cloud canvas. But bike traffic is fierce here and as I shuffled out of the way, the bird felt me move close and flapped away. Like most evil things, posing for pictures aren't a part of their operation.

I turned my rusty two wheeler to the lakeside path and took in the scenery, moving a little slower than usual. A young girl walked arm in arm with her grandfather and stopped so he could say something significant. A string of children holding hands marched. A swan shook the water from its feathers, then it started to rain. I looked up to the sky and there, hovering a safe distance overhead, was the crow. "Hello Friday", I said and took a sharp left off the path and into the city maze.

GOLF

Read today that the etymology of the word "golf" is the acronym, "Gentlemen Only Ladies Forbidden". Didn't believe it, so I looked it up and sure enough... not true. Had me there for a minute.

What else, what else... Read a script for an old boss of mine and she told me some of my advice was rhetorical. From now on, I'm telling people they're rhetorical. How fucking awesome of an insult is that?

Balance

I think we've pretty much given up. As little as thirty years ago, sensible people would take to the street to protest various obvious inequities in society and the world. These days, we don't bother. It's not that we're lazy - it's just that we realize there's nothing we can do and our energy is best spent elsewhere. Stopping to eat meat or drive a car or protesting to encourage policy on reduced carbon emissions isn't going to change jack shit. Our planet is completely fucked and standing on Yonge Street with a sign isn't going to change that. Like being on your 23rd vodka, we're past the point of no return.

Layne

Ummmmm..... Alice In Chains is coming out with a new album. Pretty interesting news considering the lead singer was found dead in his hotel room what, like six years ago? He was so fucked up on junk and dead for so long his carcass was literally deep fried - amazing how the band has been able to regroup after that. That's science for ya. Or maybe this is one of those Hollywood prequel things where this album will be the album before their first album?

Let's Do It Live

Trying to write a kids TV show and have to think back to my younger years. Strangely, some of the more memorable moments involve being scared senseless of my Dad's booming "angry" voice. Playing a T-ball game in piss soaked pants was a highlight. My Dad was a good parent and I love him like crazy, but when I think back about how scared I was of the guy it doesn't make sense. The math doesn't work. As far as I was concerned, the guy was stronger than ten rabid gorilla's and meaner too.

The Ladies

I remember a class at McGill where the teacher explained how men and women think differently by drawing (on the chalkboard) a straight line to show mens linear thinking and a oval to describe women's circular thought patters. Ironically, the way the sexes think, when illustrated, looks somewhat like our genitalia. But, perhaps that's all about to change (the way we think, not our sex organs).

Isn't the straightforward nature of man communication the result of thousands of years of military and sports training? Evolution hasn't afforded us dudes too much time to talk while under attack or trying to move a ball down a field. We've learned to abbreviate and treasure an economy of language. But aren't women playing more sports than ever before? Aren't they in the military? How long before the illustration of the way men and women think are two straight lines? It's not going to happen anytime soon, but it may happen. Imagine.

Good or bad?

NOOB - this clip is for you:

Bad Toilets Equal Blog

Main difference between life in North America and here in the old world has to be the amount of time spent on the shitter. Back home, you get a nice bowl and a nice seat and soft toilet paper with drawings embroidered and reading material and central heating in the winter to make sure the seat doesn't create a shock to your anus region. My Dad could sit in there for hours, reading and composing new theories. He'd come out two days later looking refreshed and completely satisfied.

Here, the seat is less than half the width than normal, so you can barely sit, let alone relax on the thing. If you shift one gram of weight, you could drop right in. The paper is so rough, if you're not careful it will cut your hand. There's no such things as fans in toilets, so they make sure there's a healthy draft coming in through the uninsulated window. And of course, there's basically no water in the bowl. I'm typically in and out in just over the amount of time it takes to piss.

It's not such a bad thing. With all this free time on my hands, I've taken up leatherworking, learned to fly, trained chickens to dance and started a blog.

Captain Lou Albano

Nothing used to piss my Dad off more than when I'd watch wrestling. Three hours later he'd still be wondering aloud how he raised me to be a houligan. I was six.

Captain Lou Albano passed recently, well known as the manager with the most elastic bands in his face. Who were the other good managers? There was the music guy with the piano tie. And there was Ted Dibiasi, the million dollar man. Wonder how that million dollars is doing?

Lou's celebrity crossed beyond the upside down doors of the wrestling world, playing Cindy Laupers Dad in the "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" video. He was from the vaudville school of horseshit and could have easily been a circus barker or a senator... in other words, he was an original houligan.

The Man With No Brain

I've got fuck all today. Someone tell me a fucking story in the comments section. Thanks.

Randy Quaid

Worked on a movie with Randy Quaid once and was not evenly remotely surprised to see he and his nut-job, former model wife Evi have been arrested for failure to pay a $10,000 hotel bill. This guy is trouble everywhere he goes and last year was the first Oscar nominee to ever get thrown out of the actors union for behavior unbecoming an actor. Think about that for a minute. And his wife might be worse.

He was relatively well behaved while in Canada, considering what he's proven capable of. Some highlights include, showing up to his five star hotel room, taking the gift basket, and checking himself into a more expensive five star hotel room. Another good one was when he showed up for rehearsal, two days before we started shooting and he insisted his character had an Australian accent. Funny thing is, he nailed the accent and it actually gave the character more depth and back story and it improved the film. I'm still trying to figure out how his hotel room bullshit made the movie better.

Germs

Was watching a show on Discovery and they did this experiment that shows how germs get spread around the house and shit like that. They made a big deal about sneezing and not rubbing your eyes and how to wash your hands and use hot water. By the end of it, my head was spinning. Germs are fucking everywhere and there's basically fuck all we can do about it. What kind of a balloon head thinks that if they're super careful, they won't get any germs?

Number one, they're invisible. You can't see 'em and they move in all kinds of ways all over the place. How the fuck are you going to avoid that? Number two, there are fucking billions of them. Blink and you just killed a million germs hanging out on your eyelids. Number three, and this is critical, germs are fucking idiots. They don't care if you kill them with powerful shit. All they'll do is get immune to that powerful shit and come back the next day all fresh and ready to do their thing.

Long story short, relax. And stop giving a crap about shit you can't do nothing about. Your welcome.

Below, an old favorite (that has nothing to do with germs)...

Seven Letter Words

I was in language class the other night when a guy pulled a real kiss-ass maneuver. I thought to myself, "fucking browner" - a word that hadn't crossed my mind in at least a decade. "Browner", as in short for "brown noser", meaning that the guy, figuratively, sticks his nose in teachers asses. The word also implies this is something the teacher would enjoy having done, giving you two landed insults for just one, seven letter word. Good value if you ask me. Better than the four letter words. Sometimes, you have to spend letters to make gravy if you follow my train of thought here. Which you probably don't, you morons.

Snart Part 2

From this point, if there's an interesting tidbit I learn about the Danish language, I'm going to keep it to myself. Nobody cares. Obviously. By the way, they don't have a word for please here - what a rude bunch of fuckers. Ooops. Sorry.

I said I wasn't going to talk about language and I meant it. But, isn't language amazing? Being here, surrounded by these people that talk like they have live fish in their mouth, I feel repeatedly and majorly blessed to have grown up with English. In our language, we always have the perfect word to describe what we want. If we don't, we can make one up (majorly) and you'll get the idea. Here, they have a fraction of the words and have to use inflection to express varying degrees. Having a crap language looks frustrating - we should be thankful. What's worse, is that most people speak English here, so they know their language is shit. They have this guilty look when talking in their mother tongue which says, "I know this is fucking idiotic - don't look".

Snart

So there I was, biking to work, when I see a new store being built around the corner from the office. I gave it a good look, admiring the half-ass workmanship on the facade and the complete lack of safety procedures or factoring of pedestrian traffic. Then, out of the blue, like a lightning bolt of awesomeness, was the sign, "auben snart", which I have confirmed means, "open soon". Can you fucking believe they use the word, "snart"?!?!

That little word situation has a million uses. Watch. "God, my snart is iching like a motherfucker". Or, "If you don't give me back my ladle, I'm going to snart you so bad." Try, "We're late - let's get the snart outta here".

FCK

Went to my first football (soccer) game on Sunday. Asked for a ticket in the "rowdy" section and caught the live action between FCK (Kobenhavn Fotbal Club) and Esbjey. Sat next to a plumber from Poland that invited me to his house (I accepted, but didn't take down his details). You can smoke in the stadium, a privilege almost all took advantage of and most were enjoying drink of the golden variety.

The opposition goalie was given a red card less than a minute into the game and Santin (the guy who's name is on the team scarf I bought) potted a penalty shot and another to help the home squad to a 2-1 win. But, the real shit worth watching was in the stands. I'd say 80% of fans were male skinheads - not exactly the image you get when you think of Copenhagen - but they're around and they look fucking nasty. Before and after the game, the players applaud the fans by pointing their "claps" towards the stands - it's a "feel good", borderline popo moment that's a decent metaphor for the sport.

Marble Mouth

Had my first test in a while - how do you say disaster in Danish? Whoever designed this language needs to rethink the whole situation. I feel like I need to speak to the (Danish language) manager and get some kind of a refund or free meal.

In the language class I'm sitting near a British guy that just had ear surgery. He had all the bones replaced by some plastic stuff and he can't hear very well. The teacher thinks he's retarded. I heard his stomach make a very small noise, but he must of thought the whole class could hear it because he interrupted the lesson to apologize. People had no idea what he was talking about and when they pressed him about the apology, the guy refused to explain his mistake.

To give a brief idea of how odd Danish is, to write the English word, "you", requires only a capital "I" - in other words the opposite of the way we say it. But, that's not all, the way they say "I" sounds like our "E". Long story short, this shit is fucking with my head.

The Buzz

Thanks to Larry Bort for mailing in today's news item about the Turkish bees. Long story short, a truck with bees in it crashed and the bees stung the living shit out of the survivors and rescue workers. No video available.

Got stung by my first bee about a month ago. Another useless item off my list. I accidentally sat on the fucker, which it apparently wasn't a big fan of. Hurt less than I thought and the bump went away in just a few days. No big deal. How little things like bees can make humans freak out captures our species paradox beautifully. An elephant can take on a pack of tigers to protect it's young, but God forbid a mouse should cross its path.