Some Butts

Some butts are soft like butter
Some butts are hard as rock
Some butts are round and plump
Some butts are chiseled from a stump
Some butts are smooth as a baby’s
Some butts can scour a pot
Some butts are petit
Some butts are gros
Some butts are cool as cucumbers
Some butts warm your bed
Some butts roar like rockets
Some butts purr like kittens
Some butts are worth a million bucks
Some butts smell like socks
Some butts are a joke
Some butts are blown up with smoke
Some butts litter the sidewalks
Some butts become president

Inspired by A Number One Bites the Dust as well as the 2024 Presidential Debates. Compiled statues illustration by Fred Ni.

A Number One Bites the Dust

It finally happened. The robots took over military defense and accidentally launched nuclear weapons. A faulty chip failed to correct for colour-blindness and the robots pressed the red button instead of green. Three million years later, the new civilization arrived from another multi-verse, hoping to decipher what had destroyed planet earth. They unearthed a large blue foam replica of what looked like a hand with an enormous index digit. They surmised that this was a rudimentary proctology-type of equipment gone wrong resulting in the release of inordinate amounts of methane into the atmosphere which spontaneously combusted. Only the donkeys survived.

Inspired by Just So and Queen. Image from eBay.

Just So

“I don’t get it,” said Nick. “What the fuck just happened? Why would anyone do something like that?”

     “I don’t know,” said Atalanta. “It’s Jason. It’s just the way he is, I guess.”

     “So, you’re telling me I should’ve seen it coming?”

     “Didn’t your mother ever tell you about leopards and their spots?”

     “But how does someone even get that way?”

     “Who knows, but maybe you’ve something there—you know, like all those stories they used to tell us in kindergarten: How the Camel Got his Hump; How the Giraffe Got his Neck; . . . ”

     “Like, How the Ass Got his Hole?”

Inspired by Well, that levy went dry. Image by Microsoft Copilot.

Well, that levy went dry.

Earlier this week I contemplated penning a humour piece. At first, after dinner and half a bottle of wine, it sounded edgy and hilarious, and I hit the hay dreaming up puffy bits to stretch it out into a decent story. But as daylight chafed, it didn't fly and ran a real risk of offending. I won't elaborate on the content or for whom I wrote it, but the punch line involved Las Vegas, a vibrator and the full recitation of American Pie.
     “Why would you even WRITE THAT?” Rich said, appalled. True to form, it landed foul on the grass.

Inspired by Dance with Me. Don McLean’s suggestive thumb from the cover of American Pie. United Artists, 1971.

Courage

Jan Karski was an agent of the Polish underground during the Second World War. He infiltrated the Warsaw Ghetto to document conditions, disguised himself as a guard to investigate a concentration camp, was captured and tortured by the Gestapo. He escaped and, not once but three times, travelled across occupied Europe to France and Britain with details of Nazi atrocities in Poland. The detailed reports he carried to the Allies were dismissed. No one could believe the scale of the Nazi death machine.

      Touching his statue’s arm, rubbed shiny by countless hands, I wondered: would I have had such courage?

Inspired by Dance with Me, and death-defying courage. Photo of the statue of Jan Karski in Kazimierz, the old Jewish district of Krakow, by Ron Thompson. See the sequel post, Courage 2, here.

Dance with Me

Dance with me. You pull him to his feet.

He resists. Can’t. My boss is on my ass. I have 600 new emails in my inbox. The air is full of smoke. The news is full of war. I woke up with this pain that won’t go away no matter what I do. There’s so much crap around—everywhere I look. I don’t see the point anymore—of any of it—of life. Tell me, tell me, what’s the point?

This, you say, this is the point. A fast song comes on the radio and you pull him up.

Inspired by In his Chamber of Lust and Love. Image of a late 18-century print “Il Ballo” by Giuseppe Piatolli from the the Uffizi Gallery collections.

In His Chamber of Lust and Love

Jesus Jesus lying in the night
said, “Hold me tight, hold me tight.”
In his chamber of lust and love
a thousand candles whispered (yes) and burned
It was warm and bright
and she held him tight (yes) so tight
He closed his eyes and it was still so bright
All he felt was brightness, lightness, life
There was a breath against his breath
(yes)
There was a heart against his heart
(yes)
Burning and bright it was
The meaning of life it was
flowing through her blood to his;
hunger it was
flowing through her body to his
(yes)


Inspired by Angel of Harlem. Painting is The Kiss by Gustav Klimt.

Angel of Harlem

She hovers under the archway, Jesus keeping her company from his Cross. Fed by the neighbours like a starving stray dog, her face is reddened by the sharp winds of Winter and the scorching Summer sun. 

It’s easier to avert one’s gaze—objectify her in the garden of the religious paraphernalia. But she will look directly into you if you let her; a stoic living statue with piercing eyes.

Once a child playing and dreaming of her grown-up life, she’s shrinking day by day now. She’s soon to exit this world like we all will, alone and into the unknown. 

Inspired by In Local News and U2.  Image based on a photo by Patrick Asselin.

In Local News

Remember that clock radio next to your bed, and the half-awake news every morning? Especially the local stuff, like the story of the flasher, who for the past three years had been prowling the paths of High Park?

     A group of west-end women had given up on the police and gone to the press. It was the same guy, they knew, because of his particular routine of hiding in the bushes and whistling a birdsong to get their attention. They put up posters declaring “We know who you are and what you look like.”

     They called him the Whistling Pervert.

But in that funny-not-funny moment, we also learned that the guy had been getting more brazen, and that some women had talked about arming themselves.

     This and some casual threats of vigilante justice was all that it took—after years of complaints, and what the police had dared call an “intensive investigation”—to get them to actually start beating the bushes and maybe dress up some female constables to flush the guy out.

     And so it was, just one week later, that Toronto awoke to the news that the cops had arrested not one, not two, but four whistling perverts.

Inspired by The Good Doctor. Photo by the author.

7 For All Mankind Was My Business

A reel about our over-consumption plays on my social media feed: A woman rushes into an elevator, and like Jacob Marley and his accounting books, she drags a long chain of handbags tied to her ankle. She exchanges looks with a second woman wearing dozens of scarves. This week I decided to undertake a HUGE closet clean out. I do these regularly, but this was a deep dive. My clothes are mostly friend exchanges or thrifted, but I still culled four massive bags. Had I been in that PSA, my ass would have been encased in fifteen pairs of jeans.

Inspired by It’s Just Weather. Image from Holé.

It’s Just Weather

He shifted in his chair and went “Hmmph.” Here was yet another woe-is-me climate report, some pointy-heads claiming that if we continue ‘business-as-usual,’ the world’s economy will be one-third smaller in 2100 than in 2024. That, with two billion more people in it. Ridiculous! That would mean everyone is poorer, and why? Because the world’s a little warmer? Winter’s too long anyway! Besides, if it ever heated up, it wouldn’t affect us. Not here.

      Jesus, he thought, even the Weather Network has gone woke. It’s all a hoax to raise taxes! Angrily, he flicked the channel back to Fox News.

Inspired by Biblical Times and “The Macroeconomic Impact of Climate Change: Global vs Local Temperature", the study by those pointy-heads. Image of the 2021 Abbotsford BC flood by Jonathan Hayward, Canadian Press.

Biblical Times

We make a run for it. We’d been packed for days—just the essentials of course, and Freddy, our Maine Coon cat, whining in his carrier. Hit the traffic jam on the road south. Horns honking. People driving up the sides—an exodus of Biblical proportions. But so is everything these days. Last year with the wildfires. The year before with the plague. When the flood closes in, we all abandon our cars. A human swarm scrambles to higher ground, ditching “essentials” along the way. We let Freddy loose. It’s up to him now whether he follows us or not.

Inspired by Raccoon. Image by Rawpixel.

Raccoon

While we wait for ice cream, a hundred fires burned all the days of summer. Racoon, still an infant, on its back, blank-faced towards the sky and there, a thousand starlings swarm in silence where once there were ten thousand, where next year there will be few dozens.

No entrails, no blood. Its paws are burnt and something looks broken. I pull the racoon off the road. Its body doesn't need to be desecrated by drivers who will swear at it for soiling their cars when they splash over it. Better use of it as meat for a hungry coyote.

Inspired by Walk the Line and and also The reality of Canada’s new season of fire. Illustration by Fred Ni.

Walk the Line

The men stood, lined up, single file. There were a few young children strewn about unchecked in their activities, looking uncomfortable with their parental arrangement. The men marched one by one into the place. Moving in a robotic and obedient fashion, like an altered version of an episode of The Handmaid’s Tale with Kate Bush’s This Woman’s Work playing in the background. The faces determined, eyes darting seeking camaraderie, and a hint of fear in the air. They disappeared into the place and reappeared with purchases, swiftly making their way home.

It was Mother’s Day morning at Cherry Bomb Coffee.

Inspired by last Sunday, and The Handmaid’s Tale. Photo by Wendy Whelan.

The Good Doctor

You hear him before you see him pushing his shopping cart. His kindly face and long beard and sturdy legs. One time, after a particularly robust round of exhortations he returned from No Frills with just two frozen pizzas. That night at a dinner party I recounted the event only to be schooled about food insecurity. This lent Larry David vibes to the second telling and the soubriquet Dr. Oetker to our hero. But this dear man walks by my house every morning, praying, preaching, sending us blessings and magical numbers. I think he’s holding the world together right now.

Inspired by Beyond. Image: Daily Blessing by Laurie.

Stumped

To drabble thus can be a chore

The goal, you see, is not to bore

But entertain with a few bon mots

Tell story smart and in the know

With crisp tight plot and punch line clever

No hanging threads, uncertainty, never

Sometimes though, nothing'll flow

Without idea or inspiration

Fuelled by angst and perspiration

I stare at page in search of words

And generate a gross of turds

I should’ve learned the trick by now

Not who or where or what, but how:

That at the point where you are stumped

Just grit your teeth and write some bumf

Inspired by writer’s block. Image by Elliott Park.

Beyond

Beyond fast clothes bought and shed like dead skin by celebrities and those who follow
Beyond moneyed pursuits of influencers and those who follow, their need for all-things-shiny, cars and guns, mansions and jets, adulation and new pussy
Beyond genocidal war lust of singular men and those who follow, yearning for rape torture child-killing and other thrills of conquest
Beyond god
Beyond even our precious feelings
Here it is and here it comes
Bebop-de-doo-wop
With hard teeth and clenched red hands
Tra-la-la
And a big ol’ morningstar spiked hard-on
Fa-la-la
Climate is karma
La-di-da
Climate is karma
Blah blah blah

Inspired by Sour Cherries. Photograph by Fred Ni.

Sour Cherries

This past week the masses descended upon High Park for the annual Cherry Blossoms. Like so many traditions something has got lost in translation. No longer an immersion into the magnificence of nature but an event to be captured.

     Anticipating the high from Instagram, the throngs, excitable with their phones and selfie-sticks, swarmed the trees, dangled from the trees and struck unnatural poses with the trees. Propelled by the insatiable need for cyber belonging, multitudes of photos were taken, filtered, seemingly perfected and furiously posted with thumbs on crack.
     What I didn’t see was anyone actually looking at the trees.

Inspired by A Brief Survey. Photo by Wendy Whelan.

A Brief Survey

There’s the hill down to Grenadier Pond, where the signs prohibit tobogganing, but really stop no one at all. There’s the smaller one north that pulls in the sakura crowds. Hawk Hill, by the restaurant, is for the birders; and east is where I caught the last of the park’s soapbox derbies. Vomit Hill is Julie’s name for the end of Spring Road and the effect it has on some runners, and that stretch past the zoo was once called Half-mile Hill, though it’s barely a fraction that long. But, hey . . . you did ask why they call it High Park.

Inspired by the hill in The Parallel Eclipse. Photo of another hill in High Park from the City of Toronto Archives.

The Parallel Eclipse

The sky grew dusky as the eclipse approached, though we would not experience total blackness. To the south, a seething dark mass indicated the path of totality. It blossomed into pitch and the light where we were dimmed ominously—at which everyone gasped as one.

     I wonder about that moment of shared uncertainty, our collective vulnerability to forces beyond rational perception. An eclipse of sanity is upon us, a global psychosis embodied by neo-cZars, by autocrats, quislings, anti-truth denialists, and bulbous ballcaps. All eclipses pass, and so will this—unless we close our eyes.  Unless we blink into their madness.

Inspired by Moony Monday, our other eclipse pieces, and the zeitgeist of our times. Photo by the author.