Zit

There’s a zit right underneath my eye. I hate having something on my face just within my peripheral vision, because my animal instinct is constantly going “There’s something on our face!! Get it! Quick, before we die and can no longer contribute to our tribe and family!” And I’m like “Relax, it’s just the culmination of our unnatural diet – the fact that I can’t drink a coffee unless it’s full of milk and white sugar.”

People also put chocolate in their coffee – generally cappuccinos. Why not just rub a melted Kit Kat on a cow’s teat and simply breastfeed every morning? Suckle the intestine-warmed milk straight from the source? (Is fresh cow’s breastmilk warm? More importantly, can something so disgusting not be warm?) Miss the coffee part out completely. It just gets in the way of helping you feel like a child.

When you drink black coffee, you are saying to the world: it’s not yet appropriate to drink whisky. You need something bitter enough to add context to the outside world. Don’t believe it? Watch Deadwood.

Then I’m like, “Shut up, animal instinct. What are you doing alive anyway? I thought I killed you ages ago with all the sitting around, watching television and using escalators.”

Watching television is enough on its own to drive animal instincts to madness. Like when you watch a dog watch TV and see it’s incredulous panic. Incidentally, how bored are you that you’re watching something watch something? That’s like watching paint watch other paint dry. Probably not very bored, just lazy. I agree. With what, you ask? Nothing, I just agree, it’s easier. I’m so lazy I can’t even disagree without breaking a sweat.  

The only time it’s fun to watch something watch something is when you watch a guy try to check out a girl without anyone noticing. Like they turn around to clock the chick’s butt and then have to pretend they were actually looking to see if a bus was coming. And you yell “It’s a one way street, dickhead!” and then you are ironically hit by a bus.

But yeah, our animal instinct must hate TV. That’s why when you actually see something other than the inside of a subway car or your friends getting drunk, you can’t believe your eyes. I remember the first time I saw a wild bear in BC. I was like “Holy shit, a bear! Look out everybody – it’s not inside a television!”

So I have to tell my animal instinct to shut up, it’s just a zit. I’m like “you’re confused. Go sit over there in the corner next to lust.” And lust is sat there, wild-eyed and muttering. Going: “I don’t get it, I swear every night I’m having these insane orgies with mounds of tattooed American women and then just when it gets really good I’m suddenly alone again…” Every time you watch pornography is like Shutter Island for your lust. That’s why watching porn when you are having regular sex with your gf/bf is cruel to your lust. Just when it starts to feel better you are tearing away reality again. Before you know it, it’s like Linda Hamilton in the beginning of T2 – aggressively ranting in the insane asylum.

www.mikesheer.com

www.twitter.com/mikesheer

 

Me, Myself, & Anger

I read the news in the morning to set myself up with inner rage for the day. Whether or not it remains nestled in my cerebral cortex like a snoozing dog sleep-growling depends on what happens. I might manage to keep it a secret. But the bigger the city – and city-related problems – the less likely I am.

Luckily I engage in this cathartic thing of stand up comedy. I get asked sometimes why I do open mics (since they don’t pay money) and it’s for this reason. Owning your anger is next to Godliness. Getting laffs from your genuine disgust and rage is completely worth the bad mental chemicals you’ve leaked. Even if you don’t get laffs (highly probable) you still have done an activity.

I’ve just been reading about Mike Tyson. I got curious due to a Facebook Friend (TM) saying how they ran into him and his family at the airport and how nice he was etc. As a child of the 80s I was mainly educated about the man via his exploits in domestic abuse and rape. We were told he was a very bad man by our teacher Mr. Television, which juxtaposed strongly with the adoration we already had for him due to “Mike Tyson’s Punch Out!!” Living through Little Mac, we would happily beat the shit out of Glass Jaw, unbeknownst that all the while Iron Mike was playing his own live version with his young wife.

After very very very extensive Wikipedia skimming, I came across several direct quotes from the man discussing how he horrible and ‘empty’ he felt, post-young-life. What horror. It’s a cute thing to publicize and eat up greedily as voyeurs, but any empathy within you must respond to the baking terror of all those unethical years. But that’s just a feeling, everything is relative. Beating women and fighting make you feel scraped out. Do I know this first hand? Close enough to say in a lost blog, sure. Why not, they’re only fingers typing.

It seems now that he wants to be better, while the wound is still held open and we the world look in. Breathing our rotten bacteria-laden breath into it, grinning. We are looking in with the New, Young, Western, American (?) version of interest: a tremendously sarcastic/ironic/satirical vision where we all want to be the funniest and look for such meat to cook. Or linked to the funniest, so we stand next to the barbeque and hold the true chef’s beer.

All this casual brutality and ass-kissery makes me angry. It’s the search for Newsmeat. There is nothing whatsoever funny about it, which is the challenge.

Read, hate, muse, giggle, repeat.

The Mean Streets Of Rat Nation

Last night a friend of mine was robbed while walking on his own through an empty park in an infamously “stabby” area.

He described the occurence to me in such detail, and I know the spot in question so well, that I feel justified in thinking about it. I’m offended for him. I’m boiled-blooded for him. Almost as if it was me.

It was a rangy, scruffy, skinny, betracksuited, scabrous, weasel of a man with the revealed butt-end of a screwdriver as a weapon. The thing threatened: “stop or I’ll put one in you” and my friend finally stopped and lent an ear. Turned out he only had a tenner on him, so lost that and an old iPod (TM). The robber – feeling something that couldn’t have been guilt – said my friend could keep their phone. Then scurried off.

The details are sensationally boring to recount for you here (I would make the worst journalist), but the essence of the situation was Pity. My friend felt this, but also – more importantly – something weird that might be machismo shame. In that, my friend felt he could have kicked this man’s ass, thus ruining this already lacklustre robbery. But he didn’t.

Should he have done it? Because the friend is someone I care about, you think ‘definitely not’, because the business end of the screwdriver could have punctured a very unwanted hole into the human side, searching. And then red red krovvy. And later, other horrors. So best to just be plain old tennerless and with an awkward tale.

Even this morning I was weighing this in my head, knowing the still flexible shame of non-confrontation. But as I was doing this, I peeked over at a neighbouring commuter’s Metro and saw a headline about two Britons killed in a robbery, when refusing to hand over their shit. (I later learned this was in Florida, along a balmy & palmed passage. Having wandered the blacked-out streets of unknown Australian cities in powerful heat myself, I can just imagine the absolute terror of such a confrontation. Night time heat still secretly terrifies me, because anything can happen – including, but not limited to, supernaturalish violence. I feel capable of (vaguely) handling myself in plain human warfare, but when it’s hot I think of gunshots and broken bottles. I think this was from a bicycle double ride in New Orleans several years ago, where my Canadian brain was assured of the gun-related scariness that awaited amongst the swirling nightly vortex of certain streets. ”If you go down that street you will definitely get shot at.”)

There’s rough, and there’s gun rough. Nowhere outside of America have I ever felt in danger of the latter, but in the crazy tropical darkness of Australian suburbs it only takes a distant scream to make my guts knot. Maybe I’m paranoid. Maybe it’s mescaline. It’s also what you are told, and the abject nothingness on the faces of “half-caste” (half-white half-Aboriginal) who suck on chrome spraypaint while looking everywhere but your eyes. And you know their living conditions are even worse than Kenny’s or even Nelson Muntz’s. I’ve been attacked on the street by these guys, appropos of nothing, in one of Melbourne’s several bitter cousins (it begins with A).

The fella who attacked my friend did it alone. This reminded me of what I once read about rats – that when you find only one rat in your house it likely means he’s been kicked out of his pack due to uselessness. His mate has gone with another bull rat to help her and her team of mewling ratlings weather life as a rat. So lone, shit rat is forced out into the hateful wilderness to continue his brutal attempts. We had one lone rat in our house that didn’t want to leave – out of fear? Or did he just want a new family? Pity and revulsion are often in bed with each other.

These spurned rats lurk in the wings of your daily performance. Waiting for the opportunity to snatch the things you mask yourself with – phones, iPods (TM), running shoes. Ancient and heartbroken Mr Rat. Reality in a tracksuit, horrible as an anus. Within real life’s walls, crawling.

Okay fine, it was me.

www.mikesheer.com

Oil Do The Talking

I just heard an English guy say “he’s American so he’ll probably want to be paid well”. There was no malice in the speaking man’s tone. However, I imagine there is malice in the particular American’s tone.

I literally just sat down to write this when I overheard this statement. My intention was to write a blog about oil, hence the wacky title. But perhaps we can somehow pair it with a similar topic, and it will blend smoothly – like coffee and non-expired milk – instead of sludgily – like love and guilt.

Is there anything as important in the world as money? Sometimes you (and by you, I mean I) speak to certain individuals and they make it all so clear. If you aren’t doing It for money, you are doomed. I wish this was true. It would make life very easy. But it’s not. Does anyone even believe it? Money is a religion, isn’t it? Aren’t all things that drive us just religion? Such a boring, boring topic.

I used to work in the money business, as an idiot just slightly younger than the idiot I am today. There was a lot of ‘fleecing’ going on. I read in the Metro this morning of an executive from Goldman Sachs who has quit after 12 years, citing a brutalist culture that has sprung up in his work environment. I disagree – I don’t think it is a new development, I think he’s just started getting invited to more parties. The article had a picture of the gentleman, and – bless him – he has weird eyes and a silly face. Not exactly the type that already goofy-looking alpha financial types are going to want hanging around while they attempt to fuck young girls behind their wife’s back (not literally. In fact, they go through great expense to put as much distance between their fucking and their wife’s back as they can, when the two should be synonymous, no? Depending on the whereabouts of your morals). For example, the CEO of one of our client companies, a man in his 50s with a wife and children, I caught in the lobby of our Las Vegas hotel with a tiny prostitute. This was especially confusing because of his previous racist intimations and the colour of the young girl’s skin. Although with true racists I wonder if it is as much about actual skin colour as it is about the general idea of the race?

Capitalism doesn’t completely work for me beacause I am yet to meet a capitalist who likes people. As in, fellow humans. They usually hold a very real disdain for this species of animals. Again, such a boring topic. Everyone knows this. There’s even songs about it.

In regards to oil, which is what I originally wanted to talk about – a friend has just alerted me to the theory that oil comes from dinosaurs that have been compressed under layers of shit over the years since they died. Hence the term ‘fossil fuels’. Similarly, it is believed that it’s from these little plankton type fellows’ corpses – heated and pressurized.

I looked into it, and there is a few theories – the one that seems to be more widely accepted is that oil is from…

Look, I’m not really that intelligent. I was born like this, into this. My brain literally does hurt when I’m faced with science and math. I have a deep love of knowledge but I have to fight neuron by neuron to register or retain anything in this, my brain. Things I find easy include walking, drinking and I am quite a good listener. So with this in mind, know that I researched this oil thing extensively and have trapped none of the scientific shit in my head. So I’m just going to say it as naturally as I can:

Oil from a place deep in the Earth and it’s regenerated often because of pools of something something something. They stuck a thing in a meteorite-induced crack in the earth’s crust that’s in Sweden and it sort of proved this because all this oily crap came out – so it’s believed that there is even more oil lurking in the depths of the Earth’s belly.

Basically it’s a theory based on a lot of chemicals and minerals and stuff doing their thing. The true origin of oil still remains a mystery because we have yet to fully explore the innards of the Earth with our own eyes, not to mention most of the ocean.

I like the idea of it coming from dead things though, because let’s say it IS from dinosaurs. We’d be better off with the actual dinosaurs running around alive on the Earth than their sweet, valuable corpse juice driving our very human madness of greed. Dig that! We tell Jurassic Park-like tales of how horrifying it would be to be accosted by dinosaurs when in fact they have a waged a much deeper assault on us. A psychological manipulation. Bringing out our worst side. The lust that runs lower than sex. Haunting us with their dark & liquid ghost.

It’s like if we discovered the ashes of the cremated dead was the new milk. Nourishing and strengthening to our children. That would get messy, wouldn’t it? It would. I’m not asking, I’m telling. There would be a lot of arguments.

Okay, so keep in mind this idea of the dead now living on and infecting our brains via oil like a very real zombie situation.

In my brief bit of research I came across this: the Creationists (TM) say that yes oil is from the heated and pressurized fossils, but not of dinosaurs, not of planktony things…

Of the remains of all those drowned by God in the Great Biblical Flood! Like when Noah had to build his ark and shit!

I want to believe that one. It is so incredible an idea – God was like “you people are fucked, I’m going to kill you all. Noah, build this thing and save the animals”. And Noah is like “phew, thank fuck he warned me. Now I’m going to be fine (and my wife too?)”

But then the idea that God had made the flood as an armageddonal chess move, knowing full well that many moons later the liquidified dead would push the replenished human race towards a savage and destructive frenzy?

I love it. You can’t buy that shit.

www.mikesheer.com

No Technique

There is an oft bandied about quote, I believe by the very hilarious Canadian stand up Tony Law, regarding an abundance of “young men in t-shirts noticing things” in the world of comedy. I don’t think I’ve ever personally seen these words coming from his actual mouth, but I have read and heard it from others, attributed to him. The point is that this descriptive terminology has become the slogan used by folks to condemn the average young male comic.

Without getting too pedantic (I happen to own many t-shirts and don’t see any fault in them, they can be quite efficient in conveying one’s interests to a wide spectrum of people. For example, how would you know I like The Clash if it wasn’t advertised on my chest?) I’d like to just point out that there are many styles of joke-telling but only one good one. It’s called “good”.

I think who they are referring to is not “young men in t-shirts noticing things”, but actually “young men with no life experience or self-awareness noticing things no-one gives a shit about”. The wave of such characters is inevitable considering the comedy climate at the moment – where the dream of being a professional stand-up has become an old whore banshee, luring drifters.

But there is a wide and varied menu of jocular styles out there – and a new one merges every time a comic finds their voice. However, there’s actually only a few different kinds of people. So until the comedian actualizes what it is that makes them special, they are going to come across as beige, t-shirt wearing mud.

In England, comedy is approached with the same weariness the English have when faced with most things. It can be intensely analytical. I’ve heard terms used here that I’ve never really heard used anywhere else. Such as the “proper joke” – which is almost always some sort of pun that feels generated by a computer. The “pull back and reveal”, often condemned as an easy out for a punchline (although this technique nearly always makes me cry with laughter, even when executed sloppily).

There is “whimsy” – which was once described to me as being when the comedian makes frequent reference to badgers, owls, and cheese. I get the impression this is one of those terms borne from spite towards comedians of this ilk (or should I say ‘elk’!). I’m guilty of having my perception of certain comics coloured by being previously warned of their whimsical tendencies, only to find they transcend this stupid word and are hysterically funny in a true way. “Fiction hides the greater truth” – not sure who said that but yeah.

The term “urban” has somehow seeped into the lexicon from across the Atlantic, much to my chagrin. I despise this term, as I was born and raised in an ‘urban’ environment (read: city) and I am never welcomed on ‘urban’-themed shows. In fact, I think it’s actually quite urban indeed to be young, wear a t-shirt, and notice things. This is used more when referring to genre, rather than a particular style of joke. Of course, it’s practical in a marketing sense – when it comes to desperately trying to suck the moisture from the bricks of the depleted well.

And many more. Now when you see these terms being co-opted, and feeding highly successful marketing strategies, it’s easy to become jaded. But, to those who are discouraged by the “clogging of the drain” (a term used by embittered comedians in reference to the masses of floppy-haired children keening into microphones world-wide) – you should focus on the tiny world of your own notebook, your personal home. Yes there are scores of hopefuls in comedy, but only the good survive. And the persistent, who will become good. And I think part of this is being open to all techniques to create your own Thing.

Now get out there and start noticing things.

“Learn the principle, abide by the principle, and dissolve the principle. In short, enter a mold without being caged in it. Obey the principle without being bound by it. LEARN, MASTER AND ACHIEVE!!!” – Bruce Lee

Hands Up If You Have Hands

I’ve got smooth little hands. Like grasping luke warm water. When they are cold you want to drink them. My hands are a refreshing drink.

I have always been a bit of a stroker. I like petting cats. And they like me doing that to them. I believe I am gifted.

Sometimes I shake hands with a person and am perplexed by their powerful titan grip. Like my friend, who we shall call “!” and who lives in a city we shall call “Woopsy-on-Thames”. Whenever I am in “!”‘s home city of “Woopsy-on-Thames”, I am struck by his farmer’s grip. Seriously, he is a total wussbag yet has the dynamic paws of a robot boxer. My own pale hands pale in strength in comparison. They are good for naught but turning pages and gesticulating wildly.

I am North American. I am loud and I wave my hands around when I speak. I also love low-quality coffee that features lots of milk and white sugar. We call that “double double” in my home nation – which is, frankly, genius. No other country thought of that, yet for some reason it hasn’t caught on. 

I also dig peanut butter sandwiches very much. Also, I have a drive to be relevant that no amount of meditation will ever counter.

I believe in good hands. Good hands maketh the good man. Mine are not very good. But 200% better than no hands. No offense if you don’t have hands. I’m sure you have other skills, like kicking.

Hands make typing a breeze. I am quite boring.

The “thumbs up” is a popular gesture. In that it will make you popular. If you frequently give people the thumbs up, they will like you more. Fact. I read it in National Geographic. I have used this is in my daily doings very much, and I am liked by many people. In a way that, when I see them on the street or whatnot, we will exchange thumbs up. The truest form of comraderie. They might not know my name, or be willing to do me any sort of favour in times of need, but they acknowledge me via an upraised thumb. That’s enough for me. I don’t need their fucking help, the cunts.

The wink is a similar gesture in the UK. I could trade winks with fellow grown up men all day, every day. A simple wink is just a quick way of saying “I don’t want to stab you”. A lovely little flex of the facial muscles that really puts a man at ease. Especially if that man doesn’t feel comfortable around working class people. That doesn’t apply to me however – I’m just your ordinary adult, carrying a wallet and carefully hidden lust. Of course, sometimes you will get stabbed but that’s probably because you looked overexcited when winked at. I have made this blunder in the past and have the banana-like rictus of scar tissue on my lower abdomen to prove it.

Fun With Weeping

This is best read while listening to Nick Cave’s The Weeping Song – because it too has the word ‘weeping’ in it a bunch of times.

I would have to say that today started wonderfully, in that it did not begin with hot tar being forced into my eye sockets. Or hot tears, being forced into my eyes. That would be ironically painful – having another man’s tears forced into your eye sockets. I assume. Due to the salt. That’s ironic in that it would then make you shed tears, due to the pain.

I have a tremendous amount of empathy. For all humans. Some of my repression skillz (of the nature which I mentioned in an earlier blog – the kind we use to quash our permanent terror of death and, indeed, existence). What was I talking about?

Ah yes, I use a lot of my repression to fight the urge to weep at the horror of all things. Namely, jerky idiots. Let’s face it, there are many things in this world to weep about. But nothing is as crushing and frustrating as the will of idiots. The saddest thing as that we are humans, and there is no hard & fast body rules when it comes to love. In that, it is out of our control oftentimes. All we can do is try to up the repression-o-meter. Become jerks in our own right. I’m getting quite good at that, if I do say so. And because I have filed away the area between indignation and yelling, judge me if you dare.

It’s a very sorrowful thing when love goes awry. I guess there are many chambers of the mind, and when the person you have basted in your love, indeed stuffed with your love – like the turkey receptacle they are (Hey, when did turkey’s become dead receptacles? This is why eating meat is also a real tragedy, we turn it into one. The Native Canadians believe to set the animal’s spirit free you have to use the whole thing, bones and all. I guess we do that on Thanksgiving, where we stuff the turkey with all sorts of other garbage and then – if your family is stereotypical – you use cutting the turkey as a tool for dominance over the rest of your clan. Anyway. I know turkeys are ugly, but they don’t even really taste good.)

They say if you love something then set it free. I think this makes sense more in that if you love someone it is going to bring you nothing but pain (or butt pain). So set it free, as in get it the fuck away from you. You can then continue your so necessary quest to become a jerk.

Because the will of idiots is strong. And you can love an idiot and not know it. Then this leads to weeping, which is actually quite fun.

There I said it. Weeping is fun. Why is it fun? It just feels good, like smelly farts. Something horrible and delightfully personal. As a man it is difficult to fit weeping into one’s daily life. This isn’t a consciously macho thing for me, it’s just there’s no time. I want to start weeping much more. Make time for it. Bring weeping into my daily routine. Wake up in the morning, have a cheeky weep over a coffee. Probably for the best that it doesn’t come naturally anymore, if it’s anything like masturbating.

The thing is, tears are indeed delicious. They’re hot and salty. What I would like to do is be able to weep on cue. I would save money on soy sauce. I could just weep into rice – same effect. I bet the Japanese have tried this. Probably by accident way back in the day, when obsession with honour kept everybody proper weepy. I bet the old fashioned samurais enjoyed a long weep after a day of trying to look tough. Or if they accidentally sliced their baseball card collection in half – ruining their Joe Carter MVP card, and others.

So what I’m trying to say is this: there is a lot of emphasis these days on dating and relationships etc. these days. But they lead to ruin, if the person you’ve fallen in love with is an idiot. Love is not a choice. Henceforth, put yourself only in the radius of a practical being. Or not at all. And you can supplement the time you’d spend being romantic with weeping time. And if anyone judges you, they probably don’t know the weepy fun they’re missing out on. Which should be enough to afford you a small smile, penetrating your weepy visage!

Weep on,

Mike