cNutgroist

Sometimes you just see the most extraordinary things...

Wanted: A tattoo artist to practise on me.

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Reply to: sale-321351149@craigslist.org
Date: 2007-04-29, 10:57PM EDT


I would like to have a tattoo but do not have the $$$$ to pay shop rates.
If there is anyone who is putting together a portfolio and would like someone to work with i am open minded and willing.
Cheers !!!

• Location: toronto
• it's NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests

PostingID: 321351149

And...

The "Treskilling" Yellow, or 3 skilling banco error of color, is a postage stamp of Sweden, and as of 2004 the most valuable stamp in the world. At a price of $71 billion (USD) per kilogram (as of 1998) it is one of the most valuable things in the world by weight and by volume. (However, it is not as expensive as antimatter and some radioisotopes.)

and to answer your next question...

...in 2004; the annual production of antiprotons at CERN was several picograms at a cost of $20 million. This means to produce 1 gram of antimatter, CERN would need to spend 100 quadrillion dollars and run the antimatter factory for 100 billion years.

I bought some soy sauce the other day from a Japanese corporation that have been operating since 1645

I heard that it's not unknown for black people who visit China to have scores of local people following them around asking them "to do a rap". If only I had hotlinkable proof. Will this do?

Oh, and it was a significant date yestertoday: So a big happy birthday to your-friend-not-mine, The Devil, from all here at Hellonearth. And while we're at it, a big boohoo deathday to Mr Adolph G Hitler and wife, who tragically had a bit of a suicide on this day in history.
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i said i was not the only one...

from this post

to this video

and from this post

to *shudder* this video
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Due to popular remand, I offer you the amazing Tuna Mayo sandwich recipe, courtesy of Rajiv the Red.

1. Tin of BC Wild Albacore Tuna.
2. Organic Baguette, purchased from Organics on Bloor, 476 Bloor St West
3. Mayonnaise, if you have the time made this way. If not, you can make the time.
4. Dijon Mustard
5. Capers
6. Red Onion
7. Organic Romaine Lettuce

Split the baguette lengthways. I use a large, sharp bread knife, though there are other ways. If you have a good band-saw, for example, or a sharp laser. Spread the mayo and the mustard inside quite liberally, say 3 parts mayo to one part mustard. Again, a knife is good for this purpose, though try not to use one as large or sharp as the knife mentioned above. A softer, gayer knife would be good for this creamy, mustardy, mayowawy mix. If you don't have one, you can use your fingers or perhaps a chocolate finger if you don't have any of those. Then flake up the tuna and plonk it in chunks all along. I use a small fork but a more modern Tuna flaker can be employed. However, be careful to remove tuna from the tin first for more effective edibility. Empty tin can be used as a flavoursome bird bath for birds or an aspirational pond-dwelling for a shrimp. Or both.

Salt and pepper the tuna with salt and pepper, then place a significant amount of capers and chopped red onion on top. The best method is to take the capers in small amounts, even individually if you have the time and dexterity, and transfer them from the caper container to the soft, fishy landing strip. Chopped red onion is best achieved by peeling a red onion and then chopping it with a sharp chopping knife on a surface suited for chopping. Try a specially made chopping board if you live near a source. I chop it into small sizes, personally, but you can try medium or large if you prefer. Do not attempt to add the onion whole, even a trusted friend or counsellor advises this method. It will not be of sympathetic flavour or texture and your meal will be ruined.

Wash or don't wash the lettuce, that is a personal choice. I do wash it but only in moist air, since to introduce gushing water can instantly make the lettuce wet and difficult to dry out again without losing colour, shape and flavour. Read instructions on the back of the lettuce for more detailed information. To ensure there are no insects or creepy-crawlies caught hiding within the leafy filaments, I always introduce a few medium spiders to the lettuce for a couple of hours beforehand. Spiders eat everything both creepy and crawly but are completely allergic to lettuce, so they make ideal symbiotic partners for such an endeavour.

Drizzle a bit of Extra Virgin on top, ideally Olive Oil but any Mediterranean girl sufficiently young, juicy and hard-pressed with a peppery taste will do. Return the top of the sandwich to its rightful place and eat with mouth.

Tomorrow, digestion.

Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings - Fish in the Dish
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People are coming to see my apartment at the moment. It's a sure sign I must be moving out.

I don't mind too much having so many people come through and judge my standards of living, it's just that i'm trying to live and work here at the same time. A case in point, a good friend showed me his fantastic tuna mayo sandwich the other day and i've been eating it ever since. Two days ago, i'd hungrily put together this fishy beauty and was halfway through wolfing it down when my bell goes and i remember that yet another couple has kept an appointment i've failed to remember. Thankfully on this occasion i'm neither asleep, out or in the bath, all of which have happened recently.

So they come through into my flat and they are clearly, immediately, totally Rock. The guy is in his early 40's and super-talkative, with long thin jet-black hair, pendants everywhere, handlebar tache, a billowing white shirt down to his knees and tight black jeans and leather boots. He looks like an Italian Bill Bailey. His girlfriend is tall, short spiky blond hair and stick-thin. She doesn't say much. Despite a very imposing presence. I like them. But they're greasy. It's a Canadian phrase I've picked up which, like, totally exagerrates, y'know, dude?

But they are. They're greasy. Almost groisty

So they wander around, check a few fundamentals and then decide quick perceptively that it's just too small. He turns to see my office and says "Well, I can see you've got a sandwich on the go, so we'll be off". We shake hands and they prepare to leave - a short walk indeed to the door but I've already turned my back on them and walked two paces to my kitchen sink where i proceed to wash my hands before rushing back to my hand-held lunch. And it's THEN I hear the door click, realising that I have just delivered the ultimate insult: Shaking a man's hand and then immediately turning round to wash mine.

My stomach once again intervening between my head and the outside world.

I was going to upload Kathryn Williams doing the Nirvana song 'All Apologies' but then I noticed that the next tune on the album is her cover of the quite frankly much better and maybe more apt Pavement song Spit On A Stranger
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Happy Earthday, Screw You
Happy Earthday, You Too
Happy Earthday, Where's my fucking cake then?
Happy Earthday, Boo Hoo!
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I'm sitting on a train to Toronto, a not unusual state of affairs for me these days it seems. It's late, the carriage is half-full and people are getting tired. It's a 5 and a half hour journey from Montreal with literally no scenery between Lake Ontario and the St Laurence. A more boring landscape you'd be hard pressed to find. I found 1000 miles of car-wreck littered, meth-fueled inbred-hick prairie infinitely more gripping than this. God should apologise for this little bit of the world, it really just does not stand up to his other achievements.

(EDIT: God's been in touch to say that due to an oversight he actually missed out a few areas of the world, the Ontario/Quebec border being one of them [The Saudi Peninsula, the Kerguelen Islands and Luton were the others], in the 6 days he gave himself to complete the Universe Project . He'd already booked his skiing trip for day 7 and it was non-returnable, non-refundable so he was forced to subcontract. To the Devil)

So everyone's trying amuse themselves in other ways. Old people are playing cards and discussing events that didn't happen the way they remember them 50 years ago; young couples are cuddling, giggling, watching action movies on their laptops; the franco-geeko-robot opposite me with the serious, impassive, acquiline face has been playing Civilisation without removing his gaze from the screen for even a single second. Not in fact since before he sat down, took his coat off and opened up his laptop. Me, i'm sitting here working, listening to the recently hype-believed Joanna Newsom and writing this because when I look round at all these people, I see something I've always wanted to see and at the same time, really never wanted not to see:

And it's obvious, really. With the huge growth in laptops, cellphones and portable dvd player usage in public places, coupled with a general increase in liberal attitudes, eventually I was bound to see someone in public quite blatantly watching something extremely private. I guess I'm old fashioned sometimes, because I expected a large, bearded, more-than-half-blind social misfit wearing a bomber jacket, odd socks, edible thong and a sign above his head saying 'Im horribly fucked up' doubled over throttling a bit of himself over a sticky copy of Razzle. That, at least, was a good honest public pervert in my day. But instead I see a mid-20's (and how i hate this next word, but it's so apt i'm going to use it anyway...) hipster couple two seats behind me quite clearly watching footage of a gigantic Japanese gangbang. What looks like several HUNDRED couples, spaced neatly on judo mats in what seems to be an enormous sound stage, having choreographed sex which on its own would be quite deathly boring but done up like a Janet Jackson video (no, not that one) looks quite extraordinary. Not that I was looking intently or anything.

There they are then, two regular people just unapologetically watching a bit of dirty porn in the absolute non-privacy of a Via Rail train carriage (Train 69 from Montreal, I shit you not). I remember when the net first became widespread and the media really frothed about how pornography would be readily available just about absolutely everywhere and how the liberal intelligentsia were planning to make nice middle-class families watch 2 hours of hard Gayness instead of University Challenge and tennis every evening. Apparently this would also encourage working-class families to breed more feral children, misappropriating the anus to double the amount they can squish out. Soon they'll be forcing foetuses to watch Dutch fisting films in kindergarten etc etc. But it didn't quite happen, did it?

Then cellphones got more sophisticated and some people dredged up the grainy fear again, this time a fear of other people who might be watching their favourite hot teen dog buggering series whilst waiting in the queue at the post office, or waiting at the dole office for their free house, car, salary and wife or whatever it is all these twisted asylum seekers obviously get upon entering a safe country. Again, it didn't happen, though we did get a full-scale demonisation of these straw men in order to sell news and foster controlling opinions - yet the attractively paranoid prophecy remains unfulfilled. If you're feeling nostalgic, don't worry, it's recycled and regurgitated often enough to come by again soon.

I wasn't looking round, of course. I wouldn’t have even noticed this couple and what they were doing if i hadn't been spying on...sorry, if I hadn’t heard giggling – loud giggling – over the plucky plucky harpy chirrups (see tune below) in my headphones. They were watching it and laughing. That's fair enough, it was pretty comical. Most adult entertainment is, especially when set up against reality. You can show anything and everything on camera - except for passion. That's not so easy.

I am very tempted to get up and see if she’s giving him a tommy tank or he’s giving her a jiminy whig. They did suddenly go very quiet but they're still watching. Im guessing they’re from Montreal rather than Toronto. God, what a city. I should have guessed when we passed that pillar of salt on the other side of Mont Royal.

And they’re watching it on the in-transit wifi service, by the looks of things. Like, how much do you have to need to see porn that you would boot up your laptop, pay 8 dollars sign-on fee plus 8 an hour, on a not even remotely empty train journey? With your partner? I wonder if there are any laws against that sort of thing? Or if the Quebec law is different to the Ontario law?

This is your captain speaking. We are entering Anglophone Canada, please adjust your language and extinguish all pornography. In the compartment in front of you, you will find a large stick. You are required by Ontario Law to stick it up your ass for the duration of your stay. Have a good trip.

Joanna Newsom - Cosmia

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Maybe this is a subject too delicate for someone with my sausage-fingered writing to tackle, but I still have to ask: Is it just my imagination or are the Chinese the original inspiration for science-fiction aliens?

To Western eyes, they’re the closest thing to a people from outer space and really they were the first minority to enter a lot of countries that resembled no other. Sure, there were the odd African and Arab traders in European cities, not to mention the Jews and Gypsys of course. But in each case these were practically subsumed into the dominant culture of Europe, leaving any remaining noticeable differences to be viciously seized upon, then enslaved, exterminated or ostracised.

Whereas, Chinese people look very different, speak very different, their written language and food both entirely unrecognisable as such to Western eyes. They were perceived as clever in such different ways, had a reputation for inscrutability (because we couldn’t read their body language? what more basic barrier can there be?), a different code of ethics, honour and loyalty. All ripe areas for misunderstanding which led to... Alienation.

Now look at movie aliens, so frequently portrayed as having certain human-like characteristics: slitted, slanted or bugged-out eyes; tiny or non-existent noses, just nostrils instead of proboscic protuberance; hairless; altogether uniform in their features; hugely numerous with total devotion to a leader that closely resembles the rest of them; infiltration through integration but always keeping a separate identity. How far back does it go? Late 19^th century with H.G Wells and Jules Verne? And how far back does Chinese immigration go? Someone please tell me. I don't have time to do the reading.

Im thinking both about 1950’s B-movie aliens here and indeed the more modern ‘grays’, but also the expressionless monsters from Dr Who and of course Star Wars. Lucas went so far as to make the two scheming ambassadors who played one side off against the other in The Phantom Menace (usually reserved for the Jews) so undeniably Chinese that even they noticed and complained (JarJar just had a more effective lobbying group so you might not have heard about it). Blade Runner and other futuristic films featuring humans and aliens living together always
seem to have the Asiatic peoples as more in tune somehow with our interplanetary friends, don't they?

Maybe the original thinking was ‘they have to deal with all our dirty laundry and build our railroads, they must be here for another reason’? Whatever, I am suggesting that such work comes at least in part from our subconscious way of dealing with the first significant wave of immigration into Europe and North America. It's the concept of the Yellow Peril transplanted into the distant future.

...And another thing about Star Wars: Is Chewbacca really just a Space Yeti? Doesn’t Jabba the Hut remind you of Chairman Mao? Weren't the furry things on Endor in fact Vietnamese tree people or the famous Wild Men of Borneo? Was C3P0 made in Japan? And R2D2 the cheap knock-off from Korea? I could just possibly be taking this too far.

Even Gremlins, which isn’t sci-fi exactly but does explicitly deal with the weirdness of the something originating from China, portrays both the cute side to the Mogwai and the ugly, nasty side of that same creature when it turns into a Gremlin. That film could be interpreted as the ultimate in paranoid Middle American fantasies – or perhaps it’s a parody of that? You could read it as a parable about immigration, where the locals are thinking ‘just one won’t hurt’ and ‘if we look after them properly we’ll all get along just fine’. But of course one slip-up and 'they' start multiplying. Soon they’re taking over, killing indiscriminately and oh just absolutely ruining Christmas. Interesting as well that when they take over the bar, they suddenly become Black – boozing, whoring, fighting, swinging from the chandeliers and playing their crazy jazz music. Is there a single greater fear in small-town America?

Now, Gizmo is still the good guy and so we get to see the two sides of this unwelcome presence play out its conflict. Of course, this is the movies so after much death and destruction Good does eventually triumph over Evil, much like American history. Except that in the film, they learn a valuable lesson.

Gizmo was always the good immigrant and as such doesn’t try and upset the status quo. Moreover, he’s solitary and is quite literally owned by an American. It’s when his dark side comes out, which threatens to kill him, that we see his true colours (Red, White and Blue in case you missed the leaden metaphor falling onto your head). He’s the kind we want. The new, non-threatening, buying-into-the-dream citizen. Not the other kind. Not the ugly ones with fangs, scaly skin and their own culture. Let’s microwave those motherfuckers.

There's even a sexual subtext here - Don’t ever get a Mogwai wet or it will breed.

I still think it's a clever liberal parody of American values and fears, though. At least I hope so.
And just what do the Chinese think? Of course they're not saying, because they’re too busy plotting the takeover of this planet / trying to eat us with noodles.The other question is: what sort of aliens do the Chinese put in their sci-fi films? I do hope they're blond-haired, big-nosed giants who don't work very hard and have no effective leaders.

Big Bang - Ping Pong

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Saw this last week, from the Michigan Daily...

Masturbating trespasser booted from frat

Woman refused to leave PIKE house in mid-afternoon

By Jessica Vosgerchian, Daily Staff Reporter
3/26/07

Police have been unable to locate a woman who entered the Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity house without permission on Thursday and began to masturbate on a couch.

While fraternity members were eating in the dining room, a woman entered the house's living room, took off her clothes and started masturbating, said LSA junior Dan Nye, the president of the Washtenaw Avenue fraternity.

No one saw the woman enter the house or knew how she got in. Nye said she could have entered through the front door, which was left propped open while it was being repaired.

Fraternity members asked the woman to leave the house, but she refused and continued masturbating for about half an hour, Nye said.

When members asked the woman if she was all right, she casually replied that she was fine, he said. The woman was talking on her cell phone at one point, said LSA sophomore Adam Bayard, a member of the fraternity.

She walked out of the front door wearing only a thigh-length black coat after a fraternity member called the police, Nye said. When police arrived minutes later, the woman had already left.

According to a police report, the woman was between 20 and 30 years old, had short brown hair and appeared to be under the influence of drugs.

"Obviously, she was very disturbed," Nye said. "It was not how a normal person would respond to people."

The woman told fraternity members that her name was Melissa and she was a student at Eastern Michigan University, according to the police report.

Fraternity members said they will throw out two couches in the living room because of the incident, Nye said.

Police said the break-in appeared to be an isolated incident.

Now what's interesting to me is that when I tried a similar stunt in a University of Toronto sorority yesterday...
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It was a full-moon last night. They seem to occur almost monthly these days.

There's tension here in Toronto, nothing tangible that anyone else can feel but maybe I'm just more attuned now I've become a native Quebecquois? We Canadiens understand this. Vive nous libre, etc

Police in Britain have known for years that a full moon signals a spike in crime statistics (and indeed crime..*ahem*) as more and more people get more and more rowdy and things in town centres the length and breadth of the land kick off just that little bit easier. So we get more coppers put on the streets on such nights to keep the peace and stop people acting so much like the hairless scared monkeys they are. Because everyone calms down when they see a group of policemen waiting for them outside a nightclub, ready for a fight.

As I watch the hairs on the palms of my hands grow thicker and oilier, it occurs to me that this is where the Werewolf myth might originate - it's all about the Beast Within, isn't it? A hidden wild animal, completely unfettered by considered behaviour, that only comes out at rare moments and then wreaks absolute havoc. We all have the capacity for tearing a throat out yet we barely see it, blithely overlooking a dim glimpse of our destructive nature and failing to hear the whisper of fear (of self?) from within. Thank god we in our modern society have made room for the timeless, ancient rituals of going out at night and getting dangerously pissed, dancing badly to loud, shitty house and garage, then trying to mate with anything that temporarily can't walk.

It's not so unusual to suppose that the moon may affect our behaviour. Just think of the etymology of the word 'lunacy'. Just ask the nearest pre-menstrual woman. Though keep your throat covered. Just ask the nearest sea.

We're born this way, highly sensitive to our natural environment. Only when we encounter the rather more unnatural environment we've built around ourselves, of a 24/7 season-less year with every convenience on tap do we risk losing touch with it. The challenge is to get back to that stage of natural sensitivity without smashing a beer bottle into a random stunned stranger's stupid baboon face at 3am. Unless they've been staring at your girlfriend's tits, in which case fuck it. He was asking for it.

What are the benefits in embracing this beast and letting it out? Do the scary underclasses just fuck and fight, the middling-classes go snowboarding and work on aggressive new marketing campaigns whilst their ruling classes idly spend their days figuring out new ways to quietly manipulate the lifestyle choices of the fuckers, the fighters, the snowboarders and the soulless dicks? Is it really true happiness to realise your animal nature?

Recent research shows that each of us is born with a genetically coded happiness, a "set point" which we return to regardless of our circumstances in life. Whether you're in love, grieving, dying or you've just won the lottery, your level of happiness eventually settles down to the predetermined degree that applies only to you. This is great news if you're generally very happy but also there's no need for despair if you're a miserable old cunt. You're born that way.

Isn't life dandy?

!!! - Must be the Moon

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