January 14th, 2005
Corvus corax

The last time I tried to contact Chloe, a raven shit in my eye. So I didn't go back.
I'm not a religious man, but when a raven shits in yer eye, I take that as an omen.

Maybe I didn't go back cause she was fucking some accountant.

Either way, I thought about how that raven shit burned my eye when I got a phone call late last night, after my night cap. I didn't pick it up because I was stoned and staring out the window at the everblack sky, with the city reflecting faintly off its mantle, on account of all the ice. Bitter fucking cold, but I like the clarity of it. Before I turned over and slept, I checked my message and heard that voice, quiet and weeping, and the sting was there, immediate, like that rancid raven piss, blazing out my cornea.

I didn't phone her back. All I could think of was holding out my hand to that big wild bird and watching him in flight, and the unstoppable blast of hot shit hitting my face.

But I will. It's fucking January, and the temperature keeps dropping and the nights don't seem to be getting any shorter.

There was a time when I really thought about caving in that accountant's head with a shovel. Probably not something I should admit, but I really don't care these days. It was that kind of heat, I have to say.

January 13th, 2005
What Weapons of Mass Destruction?

Though I have not commented on the American war in Iraq for some time, this was too good to pass up:

The United States has given up trying to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The consensus is: there are no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, nor have there been any for about ten years.

The important point of this is: the United States invaded Iraq because of the threat posed by Saddam Hussein and his WMD. The administration has quite successfully used all kinds of propaganda to retrofit the reason for invasion to include 9/11, liberation, regime change and democracy, but the fact is, none of these buzzwords were the official reason for invasion. The United States invaded Iraq because Iraq's weapons were a major threat to national security. Colin Powell, Secretary of State, pitched this to the United Nations. GWB and the rest of his cronies repeatedly told the American public that there was no other reason.

Of course, the pitch was wildly incorrect, and the US has sunk itself into a potential Vietnam Part Two, with 1300 dead soldiers, 10 000 dead civilians, hundreds of billions of dollars, international outrage and a country ready to cut itself apart at the seams in two weeks. All, officially, for a batch of weapons that never existed, no matter how hard a team of 1200 people have been trying to find them for nearly two years.

I don't know why I've been concerned about telling the truth. This is, as Michael Moore has famously said, a fictitious time we live in.

For a bit of truth, try reading the full details on this shocking development at the Guardian, The NY Times, or the International Herald Tribune.

January 12th, 2005
Reprints & Corrections

Due to moral outrage over yesterday's statements regarding truth and untruth, we, the management, have requested that Mr. Tourette retract his previous statements. However, due to legal precedents, and in the interest of integrity and the Hippocratic oath, we have chosen to clarify, rather than retract, said statements.

Mr. Tourette's claim that he would 'lie like a motherfucker throughout the entire manuscript' during the writing of the epic of the pink ambulance is misleading. We prefer to cast his exercise of truth within the classic Twain approach, wherein the narrator relates a series of tales, some true and some exaggerated. Instead of the word 'lie', we now present for usage 'embellish', or, in the sense of the noun, a 'tall tale'. We will encourage Mr. Tourette to adhere to this code of conduct while relating any stories of the ambulance.

To give you an example of this code in practice:

It is true that Mingus Tourette slept for only three hours in three days while driving the ambulance back from Montreal to Brandon, Manitoba. He may therefore relate said claim in any form he so chooses.

However, Tourette's claim that he engaged in foursomes in the back of the ambulance in Vancouver, MooseJaw and Thunder Bay is not correct. Fact checking reveals that only the Vancouver foursome involving three female English students is legitimate. Therefore, we would ask Mr Tourette to restrict his descriptions of the foursome to the Vancouver setting. The length, depth, breadth and number of pages Mr. Tourette chooses to dedicate to the description of the foursome is entirely his own matter.

We trust that this will satisfy all critics, particularly the pundits from the Church of Latter Day Saints.

Respectfully,
-The MGMT

PS. Please bundle up. In E-Ville, temperatures may reach a low of minus 62 deg. Celcius tonight, with wind chill.

January 11th, 2005
lies and epics

After a rather strange conversation with my publisher, I dug back into old Tento's journals to see if I could find some material to fit a possible travel manuscript. A few years before he died, Tento made his own journey across the country, writing haiku as he went. It has never been published.

A few weeks ago, my good friend Marvin Gander suggested that from a career perspective, it might be a good idea for me to write out the mostly true story of the pink ambulance. We had a few beer, and I tossed around the idea of combining the story with Tento's haiku, adding in the publisher's perspective on the journey, and calling it a book. I offered Gander the foreword for doing such a hot fucking job on the last one, and told him that he would have to edit the whole book, and that I would probably lie like a motherfucker throughout the entire manuscript, and it would be his job to try to discern what was true and what was bullshit. And that 'truth' could be one of the underlying themes, as I did discover what an irrepressible liar I am on the journey, among other things. That is, I am so full of shit, there are times when I am no longer sure if I'm making something up, if it is only partially fabricated, or if it really happened at all.

Gander pointed out that after the book was published, we could all drive across the country in the ambulance again to promote the story of the first journey. Which would make fine material for the sequel. And he figured that he could tell which was truth, and which was fiction, but I don't think he has a shot in hell.

I went home that night and I finished up a book I've been reading for seven years. I've carried it to the Czech Republic and back, through the streets of Serbia's Belgrade and slept with it shoved in my pocket on the cold ground of Mont Royal. The book starts and ends like this:

"He went on a long journey, was weary, worn-out with labour, returning he rested, he engraved on a stone the whole story." - The Epic of Gilgamesh

January 10th, 2005
Puerile Dreams

Mingus's Cure for the Common Cold

Ingredients

3 multivitamins
1 L orange juice
1 shot of high test Jamaican Rum
12 Contac C tablets, daytime
1 Contac C tablet, nighttime
4 Sudafed tablets, expired
8 packets, Neocitran, likewise expired
18 tablets ColdFX
Ketchup
1 pack, Nicorette
Notebook, w/ red pen
Wastebasket

Instructions
1. Crush tablets with mortar and pestle until all solids are in powdered form.
2. Heat orange juice over the stove until small bubbles are seen forming at the edges.
3. Mix all powdered ingredients together in a red cooking bowl that can fit, if necessary, on your head.
4. Turn on your CD player. Insert "Culture Club's Greatest Hits". Press play.
5. Add powdered ingredients to the orange juice. Mix until all powders are dissolved. Add ketchup for colour and taste, accordingly.
6. Remove pot from stove, place on counter to cool.
7. Place red cooking bowl on head.
8. As the opening chords of Karma Chameleon strike, lift pot to mouth, ingest contents.
9. Place notebook, red pen and wastebasket beside bed. It is recommended that the wastebasket be of the plastic variety, due to injuries that may be caused by spastic reactions to any potential nicotine overdoses.
10. As drugs take hold, attempt to record visions in aforementioned notebook. If recordings are in excess of 48 pages, package unedited, and sell as 'avant garde' poetry. Include the word 'tortured' in author bio.
11. As vomiting occurs, we recommend cleansing the palate with a lime sorbet.

Enjoy!




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