Lunch

Hey all, it's been a while. All kinds of sorry about that. The last couple of months have been crazy hectic. New job, new place. A month and a half staying with (wonderful) friends. Mr. Charlton has been busy! Bad News. Might be a little more time before I write another blog post. I'm lacking an internet connection at home, and it could be some time before I make that happen. In the mean time, I'll share with you an email that I sent to my entire office here at work. All 650+ of 'em. Enjoy.

Hi all. My name is Sandy. You might, might have seen me around the office at some point. If not, here’s what I look like.

Look at that handsome sack of pistols and chillies

Anyways, you might be wondering why I’d send out a massive email to everybody. That’s a good question. You see, I love Lunch and pretty much every Friday, I go out for Lunch. That’s what I do. Friday? Out for Lunch. I used to have a rule, that every Friday, come rain or shine, I go for Lunch. This isn’t some sort of thing I buck on either. If it’s Friday, I go for Lunch. Always. No exceptions.

Maybe you think I’m kidding around. Some of you might be saying to yourselves “Surely sir, you jest”. I do not jest. Not about Lunch. Oh, ol’ Sandy here will joke about a lot of things. But I do not tarnish the greatest meal of the day by kidding around. Lunch deserves respect.

Some people might go ahead and say that the most important meal of the day is breakfast. Maybe that’s true. I can tell you one thing right now, though. It’s certainly not the best. Because that happens to be Lunch. You can argue with me all you want, but the moment an entire meal can be replaced with a smoothie, that’s when the meal has given up and thrown in the towel.

If drinks had emotions, this one would be feeling shame and regret

I can hear you now. “Well then Sandy, why don’t you just go for Lunch?” That’s another good question. Because I need a Lunch crew. I can’t go for Lunch all by myself, that’s not cool. What am I going to do? Who am I going to talk to? Myself? Crazy people do that, and the only thing I’m crazy about is Lunch.

I’ve tried getting people in my own department to head out and grab some grub, but they all want to stay in the office. They’re not huge fans of Lunch. That’s okay. I’m not angry.  But I need a team of people to tackle this midday repas.

So I’m extending this call-to arms, if you will, to the entire office. Everybody. I figure, hey, if you don’t know me yet, you do now. It could be that people will know me as the Lunch guy, and that’s not a bad person to be. It’s Tuesday now with Friday right around the corner. You people let me know. Keep me posted. You wanna come visit me? Here’s a map.

I am not showing you a map of where I work.

I hope to hear from some of you soon!

Sandy

p.s. I am down for any kind of Lunch. That means; Vietnamese, Chinese, Dim Sum, Indian, Pub Food, café or Diner, Thai, Caribbean, Italian, Sandwich shops, Lebanese, Middle eastern, and pretty much anything I haven’t listed. I ain’t hard to please. Except for fast food. We can do better than that.

p.p.s. Notice how I capitalize Lunch every time? I take it that seriously.

p.p.p.s. If there is already an established Lunch guy around here, I ain’t here to steal your thunder. I’m fresh as a daisy around here, so bear with me. You can be the Lunch King, I’ll be the Lunch Duke or Earl or something. I can absolutely live with that.

Sincerely,

The Illustrious Mr. Charlton

p.p.p.p.s. To all the people stemming from the blog, yes, I caught a fair amount of shit for this email. Thank heavens I'm pretty.

Kony 2012

Alright folks, let's talk about Joseph Kony. If you haven't already heard the buzz, Joseph Kony is the leader of the LRA, the Lord's Resistance army. I've probably seen the video posted roughly a couple times on facebook but here it is again.

Are you angry? Upset? Getting up off your couch and fighting the good fight? Here's what I want you to do. I want you to run around the block a couple times. I need that angry energy outta you for a second so that we can talk. Yes, Mr. Charlton wants to have a nice little chat about this. This sensational video has a lot of people upset. It does a very good job of making you emotional. Unfortunately people in an emotional state tend to make poor decisions. This issue is unfortunately not as black and white as it first appears.

"How in the sweet mother of pearl can you even say that, Mr. Charlton. I knew you were a prick but never would I have imagined that you would stick up for a warlord!". Calm down. I'm not sticking up for anybody. Did you run around the block like I asked you? Sounds like you didn't. Let's have another look at that video and I'll explain why I'm perhaps a little perturbed by it.

There are two items from the film that really stood out for me.

1) Kony is no longer in Uganda. Due to pressure from the Ugandan military and the international community, Kony fled the country.

2) The first solution to remove Joseph Kony is to provide the Ugandan military with aid and technology to find him and prosecute him.

I'm gonna mix the two together like a bad cocktail. Joseph Kony is no longer operating out of Uganda but our solution is to train the Ugandan military to hunt him down. The United States military's track record for training foreign soldiers isn't necessarily the greatest.

Had the best of the best train him and his freedom fighters to purge Afghanistan of Russian invaders during the cold war. It turned out great, right?

There's also the fact that Uganda invaded and occupied the Democratic Republic of Congo during the Second Congo War, a war that had 5.4 million casualties. Also, the current president, Yoweri Museveni, has as of 2006 abolished the presidential term limit and his presidency has lasted since January 26th, 1986.

Here's my issue with the whole thing. By supporting the Ugandan military and instigating them to track down Joseph Kony, you may be inadvertently supporting the Ugandan military to invade and occupy it's neighbors, resulting in further regional instability and the possible outbreak of war. 

On another note, Uganda is an incredibly poor country. The Kony 2012 movement is spreading like wildfire and with that fire comes generous donations from people like you. There is a lot of people in Ugandan government that know that once Kony is captured and brought to justice, that train of generous donations will end. It may very well be in their best interest to not capture him. Cynical, yes, but truthfully this sort of thing has happened numerous times in the past. Quite often our donations can end up in the hands of warlords who exploit children for slavery, for soldiers and for sex.

To top it off, the charity Invisible Children Inc. is not the most transparent of organisations. Child Navigator, a non-profit organisation that dedicates itself to 'intelligent giving', gave Invisible Children Inc. a 51.52 rating out of 70. They received only two out of four stars for accountability and transparency.

Some of you might be actually angry with me right now and it could be for a number of reasons. You might think I'm cynical (I am). You might be upset that you've gotten caught up in the hype. Maybe you wanted to be part of something massive and huge and that would change the world. You know what? You still can. But people, as a global society, we need to stop biting off more than we can chew or else we're gonna keep choking on that sandwich. Rome wasn't built in a day. I'll give you an example.

Here's the story of Anthony Omari. Omari is the custodian of Faraja Children's Home in Ngong, Kenya, where his mother looks after the orphans. At the time of his story, he was looking after 37 children and sleeps there to protect them. It was the fourth time that month that thieves had entered the building, and this was the second time at night. He managed to fend off the attackers, resulting in a gash across his face. Word of the story made it's way Ben Hardwick, a 21 year-old Penn State student who was working as an intern in Kenya close by. Ben paid Anthony a visit and was so impressed with the story that he felt he needed to do something to help both Anthony and the children. Ben put the story up on Reddit, asking for $2000 in donations for walls to keep intruders at bay. Within 24 hours they had raised over $65,000. Now the orphanage has eight foot walls, padlocks, two security guards and new beds for the children.

Anthony Omari. Just a lil' gash.

You know what's awesome about this story? No middle man. No organisation having to take it's share for administrative costs. It was small, for sure, an isolated incident. But it avoided the perils of groupthink. It doesn't always have to be big. It may only be 37 children but their lives will be changed for the better. Maybe this is a better direction to go in, little baby steps in the right direction rather than a massive leap in a direction that may be wrong. With baby steps, you can always change your course. If you leap it might be into a pit. Maybe this event is the first of many, how a social network is truly supposed to function in charitable causes. Not a thirty minute video that has the undercurrent of a two-minute hate.

Kony is an insane despot that needs to be brought to justice, that's clearly evident. The way we're handling the situation, with a witch hunt across borders with armed combatants may do more harm than good. I don't have a solution but placing a timeline of a year to rectify over twenty years of brutal bloodshed seems rash and poorly thought out. 

Maybe I'm wrong. I am cynical about the whole situation. But I think that cooler heads always prevail, and getting angry and pissed off isn't the best way to approach charity. Charity should be approached with humility, understanding, education and love. If it's our anger that drives us to do good, we're going to one day find that we're truly reaping what we sow.

I'll be funny next time, I swear.

Sincerely,

The Illustrious Mr. Charlton

p.s. I grabbed that photo of Mr. Omari from badassoftheweek.com. Check it out!

p.s.s. You know what really creeped me out about that video? It's that this part reminded me of this. Mobs of people scare the shit out of me.

p.s.s..s. Two minute hate, if anyone didn't get the reference.

Uh Oh...

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Home

Some have you may have probably been wondering. "When the hell is Mr. Charlton going to write another blog post? What am I going to touch myself to now? Porn?" I know people, I've been slacking off. I'd say I've been busy, which would be true, because I've been busy. Sort of.

I'm no longer living in Victoria, in fact, have decided to move back to Calgary. To the people who got me both going away gifts and bought me drinks, I'm sorry you gave me presents for what amounts to a two month vacation. Truthfully, that concept in itself is so wonderfully my style it's not even funny. Mr. Charlton gets gifts for going on vacation. Let that sink in, people. All I know is I have a wonderful taste in my mouth. Matt, Kate, Rudy and Deneen, I promise I'll whip up something tasty for you guys with the knife set you got me.

Now comes the big question. Why the fuck am I coming back to Calgary? How fucking flat on my face did I fall to come swinging back to Calgary with my tail between my legs? Shit, you read that first blog post I did in the new year. I was STOKED to be leaving Calgary. Tasty Sea treats and all that! Shucks, I might have even said a rude thing or two. Rude things may have come out of my mouth! So I'll give a play by play as to what went down in Vic and why I left.

Reason number one: I brought a really shitty little laptop with me instead of my rig.

Sad, Sad Little Machine

You see that little thing? That's a netbook. One of the first generations of netbooks. It's tiny. It's made for surfing the net. Thing is, because of it's tiny, tiny, tiny little solid state drive it can't actually hold a copy of Windows. So it runs on Linux. A Linux distribution that is no longer supported. Which meant that updating anything or installing anything like, let's say, a web browser, was going to be a crazy large pain in the ass. I am not a fan of large pains in the ass unless I'm getting spanked by a 400lb dominatrix named Big Betty.

You might be noticing something about this wordstyle hero's electronic internet journal. It's got motherfuckin' pictures now! And italics! The way I wanted it. They say a pictures worth a thousand words, so that might triple, even quadruple my output. Efficiency people, I'm all about it. And italics! There's a proper English use for them, but nuts to that malarkey. You can almost hear how damn excited I am to be using a better format. On that little guy, I couldn't even see the damn 'add picture' button. No fonts for me to play with. No damn colour. I'm not a man who likes having his options squandered. My New Years resolution was to write more. This little teeny weeny laptop was limiting my efforts and I thought the blog suffered because of it.


I'll give you an example. Here's Facebook on that little punter.

At least I didn't have to see that news ticker bullshit

Reason number two: Victoria is unfriendly and people there aren't always cool.

When I first moved to Calgary, within a week I had a place to live, a job and about 10 new friends. Not just people I worked with either, actual people I was hanging out with. Goddamn did I struggle with meeting people in Vic. Me! The guy who just randomly starts conversations with people. The guy whose let strangers  sleep on his couch in the past 'cause they seemed like okay people. Struggling! Like a fish outta water. Christ, I even joined up to Meetup.com just to find people with similar interests. I joined a damn website to meet people. It's not even a dating site or anything. I can kinda get behind that, I guess. But to use the internet to make friends? Not my deal. Wasn't cool.

Victoria? More like Dicktoria

Not to say I didn't met some totally rad people down there. The boys my brother chilled with were all kinds of rad. The people I took a bar tending class were all cool. There were cool people all over the place. Just not my people, you know? Hard to describe but I just got weird vibes about the town.

Reason number three: I have learnt I cannot live out of a backpack.

I was telling people I'd be travelling the world, having crazy adventures and touring the world Bruce Wayne style, a man on a mission to find myself. Didn't take very long. You know who hates camping? This guy. This guy right here.You know why? Fucking in a hotel room is the bomb. Fucking in a tent is going to attract bears. The only time I want to be cooking over a fire is when I've got a gas stove to use. I don't want to be more than one kilometer away from a decent cocktail. I like having a choice of suit jackets to wear. There should a damn cheese store within walking distance of where I live. And here I am telling people I'm going to go overseas and busk harmonica to see the world. 

And you know what? I wasn't going to have any crazier adventures out there than I was going to get at home. It was just going to be crazy adventures in a language that I probably wasn't going to understand, not to mention the fact that would be broke and dressed poorly. Weird shit happens to me on the way to the grocery store. I've had people dressed as bears asking me for hugs. I've been threatened by a clown. I've had girls dance in front of me and then give me money! I've gotten into hi-jinx, shenanigans and sorts of tomfoolery. Why the hell was that going to be different elsewhere? Don't get me wrong, I'll get over there one day. Not out of a backpack, though.

Reason number four: I actually need to be drafting. To keep me sane.

I've got a whole of weird nervous energy that my chosen profession sucks up like a sponge. I tend to have some weird OCD-like tendencies that start to bloom if I'm not doing anal retentive artwork. My career is so finicky, so picky that all this energy gets eaten up and then some. It frees my mind so I can be myself. The uglier the project, the better. When I'm not doing it, I start to get squirrelly and strange. This is hard on me and the people around me. Idle hands are the devil's plaything and he was using my hands to touch people inappropriately (metaphorically touching).

Reason number five: I missed my friends.

Sounds sappy, I know. God awful truth. I really missed hanging with people I had some to know over the last ten years. I don't want to go out and make a whole new mess of friends. I liked the mess of friends I already have. Some people I haven't seen in WAY too long. Was that how I was going to go out? Not giving a proper goodbye? My departure was rushed and sloppy and it bothered me. People come and people go, but there was a lot of people I want to keep, even it's just for a bit longer.

So there you have it. The reason I'm headed back. Back to the land of plentiful work and cold-as-all-hell winters. Back to a pub where most people know my name. Back to the people I'm not quite done with. 

And goddamnit, back to the place I love calling home. Even if it is just Calgary.

Sincerely,

The Illustrious Mr. Charlton.

p.s. And where in the all flying hell was I going to get another bowl of that crazy Pho that's made downtown? I used to eat there at least every couple of weeks. I mean, that satay sauce they use is just so damn creamy, I get all hot and bothered just thinking about it.

Banging a Dolphin

The internet never ceases to amaze me. If there is ever a point in my small little life that makes me feel like I´ve chosen the wrong path or I haven´t succeeded, I head straight to the tubes and bask in the glory that is the internet. Usually I head to a website called Reddit because it´s basically 4chan with a filter. If none of this makes sense to you, you are more than welcome to google both of these websites, although I urge caution when heading to 4chan. As 4han can rarely offer both insight and wisdom, it is mostly known to provide perhaps the most twisted images from the bowels of the network.

Anyhoo, if I ever feel the need to talk about something other than myself on the ol´ blog here, I figured that due to my nature of coming to a conclusion with neither evidence or research I could simply wander the halls of cyberspace and comment about a story or a new fact that I learned or a political movement that I should perhaps rally myself behind. Or, you know, I could talk about a guy who wrote a book about banging a dolphin.

Let me just get this off my chest. I´m not an advocate of animal fuckers. That isn´t what Mr. Charlton is about. The thought of meerkats running all over my naked body doesn´t get me hot and bothered. The sight of a giraffe, with it´s long, slender neck doesn´t pull weight in my bathing suit area. Let´s not even get started on how two hermaphroditic slugs getting it on isn´t a steamy affair.

Wikipedia actually has a page on zoophilia and apparently furry porn has been around for quite some time. One of of the first images of beastiality was a dude with an erect penis standing behind a donkey. Standing a little too close, if you catch my drift. My mind wandered back to high school english class, where we talked about ancient greek gods banging animals or turning into animals to get banged. People fucking their pets isn´t a new phenomenon, apparently.

I´m not going down the road and talking about furries or yiffies or whatever the fuck they call themselves. That mine of weirdness is a vein far too rich to be harvested in one blog. Especially when I have the topic of man/dolphin coitus to talk about.

I´m gonna say this right off the bat. He didn´t rape the dolphin. Dolphins are incredibly powerful animals that could mess you up two ways to Sunday if you ever pissed one off on their turf. They´re also incredibly sexual animals and have been known to enjoy sex, engage in sex for fun, engage in gang bangs and all sorts of kinky stuff. Flipper doesn´t fool around when getting his rocks off.

So what ended up happening, you may be asking yourself? I have no idea, as I haven´t read his book, so I´ve decided to obscure facts by making shit up.

Peter Seafarrow, a tall, handsome man is at Seaworld one day, after a particularly nasty breakup from his girlfriend. To cheer himself up, he decided to treat himself to a fifteen minute swim with the dolphins. He heads to the change room, where he dons a banana hammock thong and greases his perfectly toned bronze body before he heads to the tank. Jumping right in, he swims out a little to where the dolphins are. The dolphins are splashing and playing dolphin games. He looks to the right and his breath is taken away in an instant. He spies this beautiful creature, this wet goddess glide through the pool and right up to him. She looks him in the eye and he gazes back into hers. Finally, after what feels like an eternity, he asks ¨My, aren´t you a lovely creature. What is your name?¨ She raises her head to repond ¨Eek-EEEK-eeekekeke-EEEEEEKKKKKK.¨

The man is stunned. ¨I wasn´t aware you had such a lovely singing voice. Perhaps this is a bit forward, but would you care to dine with me tonight? I know of a lovely little seafood restaurant.¨  She playfully poked his belly with her snout. ¨EEEEKK-EEEEK!¨ He smiled. ¨I´ll pick you up at eight.¨

Later that evening, after a few bottle of wine and a few buckets of sardines, they head back to his place, where they begin to...

Alright, I promise I didn´t write erotic dolphin fiction on porpoise. We´ll keep this PG-13, I´m not going a step further. If you´re really interested, the website about the dolphin incident book is actually called wetgoddess.net. The link is safe for work, certainly not safe for the mind.


Sincerely,

The Illustrious Mr. Charlton

p.s. If you think this was twisted, one day I´ll post my erotic pokemon fanfiction. You´ll wonder why you even talked to me in the first place.

p.s.s. Yes, the entire piece was written just so I could use that pun in the last paragraph.

The Joys of Work

I once told a man, it´s not the work I hate so much, it´s the working on another man´s schedule that happens to bother me. I´m not one for plans, if you need an example, the move out to Victoria should be more than enough to show that I tend to throw caution to the wind. Thankfully, I still have quite the bank account holding me afloat that the need for employment has yet to be a necessity.

They say do what you love for work and it won´t seem like work at all. If there´s one thing I can certainly confirm, it´s that finding new euphemisms for the word ´genitals´ is a tough fucking career choice. I don´t mind sex, so I´ve considered the prospect of selling my body to sixty/seventy year old women in exchange for presents and food. Both of these career choices seem a little far fetched, but you´d be surprised what kind of situations Mr. Charlton has weaseled his way into (it´s how I earned the nickname Weasel, actually. Story for another day).

Most jobs are places that people would rather not be at. I´m not saying that they´re bad jobs, but if I gave most people the choice between their passion and file management, well, let´s not kid ourselves. The employment world, noticing this, has attempted to emulate fun at the workplace. This can create mixed results. Spirit teams have now replaced what once was a bottle of bourbon tucked in a desk drawer. Corporate games are now all the rage, with bouts of laser tag and tug of war to stimulate the weary worker.

Some companies, that lack the resources to host such events, have to make due with the resources they´ve got. At one firm, after I had mentioned that I play the harmonica, I was told it might be fun to start a ´company band´. She further suggested that I name the band ´The <insert company name> Band´. I politely told her that I´d rather nail my foreskin to the floor and play the cock bass than do the aforementioned. At another company, the workers would tease each other with racial slurs and homophobic rants. The vice president once mused that perhaps a solution to homosexuals was to put them in a furnace (no people, I´m not making this shit up).

I´ve met some incredibly intelligent, thoughtful people through work. I´ve also met some people whose lack of self perception was so thoroughly stunning that it shocks me to this day that these shitty people quite often have children. Maybe that´s why I´m a little hesitant to get back in the game. I still have time, so I might as well use a little more of it.

Is that to say I´m not preparing? Fuck no, people. Mr. Charlton doesn´t allow himself a lot of downtime. If I´m not writing stuff or learning stuff, I´m out and about meeting people. It ain´t what you know but who you know, if anyone tells you otherwise, they´re selling you snake oil. In this day of facebook and fifteen minute fame, you´re no longer selling a product, you are the product. And you better goddamn well believe what you´re selling is the bomb or else the market will smell your lack of confidence and jerk you around because they know you won´t be struggling. You want a job? You better have an in with someone on the inside, a spokesperson. You want someone within the company selling you or else you´re just another resume in a stack. And be sure that your spokesperson isn´t a fuck up. If the guy is getting blazed at lunch time or has crashed the company truck one too many times, that person may not be the best person to be selling your brand.

Truth be told, I despise marketing bullshit to the core. Half the words that came outta my mouth make me want to stab myself in my voice box. It´s the truth, though. It´s what we, as people, respond to. Psychologists for the last eighty to ninety years have been paid to find a way into the brain to sell a commodity. After all these years, we´re not even selling a product anymore, we´re selling ourselves. Is that a bad thing? Maybe. If you ever wanted a reason as to why a grown man would spend his life collecting dolls (I mean action figures) so he could be the ´Ninja Turtles Guy´, maybe we can look to the fact that every Saturday of his childhood was spent watching hours of thirty minute long toy commercials.

What´s my point? Work sucks. That about sums it up. I guess I just find it bizarre that people spend so much time and agony and frustration at work with the only upside is a lifestyle they feel isn´t shameful. That an entire life is spent trying to feel... shameless. You want my advice? Stop worrying about what other people think about you, because usually they are far too worried about what people think of THEM to spend the mental energy to focus on you.

Sincerely,

The Illustrious Mr. Charlton


p.s. You wanna know how I stopped giving a fuck? I´ve studied under fucking GURUS of not giving a shit. Maybe one day the student will become the master. But who gives a fuck.

Correspondence

Ladies and Gentlemen and everything in between, I have a confession to make. A secret that many of you already know but have yet to bring up. That´s okay, we both know of my dark little fault. We both know that because of this, some of you would gladly smack me upside my (extremely symmetrical) head and say ¨God Damnit, Mr. Charlton, you are BETTER than this.¨ You are right, I should be better than this. So what is this small fault of mine, some of you may be asking?

I am terrible with correspondence. Flat out fucking awful at it. As in, there is no depth as to how lacking my skills of correspondence are. I rarely reply to emails, I find facebook to be an utter nuisance and I think it´s perfectly fine not to reply to a text message for days. I refuse to wish people a happy birthday over the internet. I typically shun most forms of modern day communication. I´m a bit of a miser about it, to be frank.

You see, I´m a little bit old fashioned. I don´t actually like a lot of the new technology that´s been coming out these days. I certainly find some of it useful and novel, but for the most part I find most gadgets to be short lived and a waste. Anytime someone mentions to me that a piece of technology is beautiful, the first thing that comes to mind is that in two years that same person is going to be cursing that his worthless hunk of junk isn´t up to date. Then his once beautiful toy goes into the trash.

Come sit on my knee, internet. We´re going to have a little chat about the difference between something that´s beautiful and something that´s attractive. Yes people, there is a difference. When something is beautiful, it´s timeless. It´s rare and could possibly be there for only a moment. The Mona Lisa is beautiful. An old bottle of wine can be beautiful. Baby´s first steps? That beautiful moment is only gonna happen once.

Attractive things are used to symbolize status. A 60¨ television in your tiny living room? Nice, but it´s not a thing of beauty. It´s not making people weep. New shoes? Catches the eye, but I´m not tearing up over here. Now to be fair, this is obviously subjective. I´m sure there are some people out there who well up when they get a new phone. These people also videotape themselves opening the box for the first time (look up ´Box Opening´ on youtube. You´d be surprised). These are the people who have every phone they had before locked up in a box somewhere or in extreme cases, have them framed and mounted.

I know what you people are thinking. You´re saying to yourself ¨Mr. Charlton, you started off talking about how you were an asshole for not getting back to people. Now you´re talking about how you´re an asshole for being a pretentious fuckhead.¨ Whoa, whoa, whoa, don´t you worry, I´m coming full circle on this one.

I have a hard time responding to this new form of communication because in my opinion it´s not beautiful. People used to have a stack of love letters that was hidden up in the attic. Now we have sext messages of each others fuck sticks and snatch boxes, and even that shit is more than likely going to be erased. Getting a email from a friend used to be rad, now I´m wary to check my inbox because there´s 900 new emails! Either from either Prince Suliyarwa in Nigeria who is needing my credit card number or Ron Jeremy telling me that if I don´t take these dick pills I´ll NEVER be able to grow a 16¨ cock that has the girth of a Louisville slugger!

Am I exaggerating here? Of course I am. To be fair, you´re talking to man who cringes when he sees txt wrttn lik dis. A man who almost pushed a teenager in front of a cement mixer when they uttered the word ´LOL´. But the world isn´t going to change on my behalf. It´s not going to slow down, so I might as well speed up. I´ll try not to think your mother drank a lot during term when you send me an extremely poorly spelled text message. I promise not to die inside a little when you buy a 55¨ television to replace your 54¨ television. I swear I won´t cry in a corner, weeping for humanity the next time someone posts on facebook a ´If you really care/are really my friend/part of the hivemind then you´ll agree with this post´ message (seriously folk, the ol´ copy and paste is the laziest form of slacktivism out there).

And folks, as it´s my New Years resolution, I will stop being such a stuck up, snobby, nose in the air sort of guy and will actually reply to messages and emails and facebook comments. But lemme tell you, it´s gonna be a struggle.

Sincerely

The Illustrious Mr. Charlton

p.s. Jon Jeremy thinks a penis is for three things; To crush his enemies, see them driven before him and hear the lamentations of their women. *Rimshot*

p.s.s. If you actually have a cause that´s worthwhile and you actually want to take it somewhere beyond facebook, send me a message. We´ll see if I can give you a hand. 99% of you will read this but only 1% will actually DO something about it. Tables have turned, haven´t they?

  ╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻

p.s.s.s. If you´re going to continue with the ´99% of you vs. 1%´, please for the love of Peter change it to 100%. That´s not how that shit works.

It´s a Brave New 1984, circa 2012

Do you know how I´m laying this sucker down right now, this here post right now? On my phone. I am writing to millions of people across the interwebs (I really should be a little more honest with myself right now, it´s more like maybe 30 people) on my goddamn phone. Not my laptop, because that thing is a four year old antique. On my fucking phone. Technology is grand, isn´t it? Let´s go through a typical day connected to my peers across the globe, shall we?

First thing is I get up. Woken, of course, by my phone, with it´s darling little chime at 7:30 am. I head to the washroom (with my phone) and begin to masterbate furiously to midget goat pornography, shot with HD and sent from a region of the world where midget goat porn is well within the bounds of the law. I thank the Norse Goddess Lofn for this bounty of illicit unions available at my fingertips. All of this provided by my phone.

I finish quickly and head to kitchen. I look to my phone for guidance. I search for ´killer awesome breakfast recipes´ and the phone returns to me with a gathering of only the finest ´killer awesome breakfast recipes´. I choose the recipe with the highest rating, as the hive mind has spoken. After my wonderfully banal selection has been prepared, I twitter on over to my facebook and see if anyone has commented on the clever quip I have left up upon my wall. Four comments! Not only am I a poet, but I am a poet with an audience! Jubilations!

And lo, what is this? I have received a message from a new friend! Two days ago I had no idea who she was, but we are now friends. How quickly this technology has allowed us to forge bonds! I text her right away to tell her we should meet for coffee (the place we have chosen has Wi-Fi). I check my phone for the bus schedule. I can make it in seventeen minutes, the phone assures me. I take off!

We meet for coffee and have one of the greatest conversations a person can have while an electronic leash is barking at you every thirty seconds. We almost connect at one point, talking the horrible effects that SOPA will have on our freedoms. Even if this act isn´t taking place in our country. Even if there an even more insidious act is taking place in the European union called ACTA. Even if our own government is trying to put in place a similar bill, Bill C-11. We both stand firm in our resolve to sign an online petition to combat SOPA. Our good deed is done.

After coffee, I check my phone for any updates in the world of media. My favorite band has released a new album! I hit the music store application and pull the music right from the airways of digital information that wafts though the space in between us. I look at my phone, marveling at it´s magnificence. I wonder how something like this could have been conceived. Was it one man? A team of geniuses? Was it the mobilized forces of Chinese workers, willing to work for mere dollars a day while pulling 12 hours shifts, seven days a week, able to completely revamp and redesign an entire factory with in ungodly schedule deadlines, in conditions that most of the western world would consider slavery? I shuddered at the thought of this labor force put into the industry of warfare. I pushed this big idea out of my head and choose to believe that it was conceived with magic instead.


Back at home, I playing a game, watching a movie and texting at the same time, all with my phone. My speech was becomin shortr n shrtr. We ddnt ned a mnstry of newspeak. We were cnstrctin 1 far bttr than they culd hav eva imagind. Whos dreem wuz this? Who said ¨1984? Brave New World? Why can´t we have the best of both?´



From the desk of the Illustrious Mr. Charlton


p.s. Sent from my IPhone.

MurderBall

Alright, my last post may have come across as a little preachy. It more than likely came out that way because I had been drinking. Heavily. In fact, I was half way through a bottle of vodka when I posted it. Hemmingway once said ¨Write drunk, edit sober.¨ I had neglected the last part.

When I woke up the next morning, it felt like a herd of cats had nested in my mouth and had died at some point in the night. My head hurts, my muscles were weak, breathing was a struggle. What I needed was a beer and a tasty blue cheese/broccoli omelet. That was not going to be happening. Thanks to my liquored memory, I had forgotten what I promised my brother the day before.

¨Get ready man, we have about an hour drive to get to Duncan and we still need to pick up Jeff.¨ Every word that came out my brother´s mouth was a cacophony of death bells ringing out through my head. My eyes watered. I didn´t want to go. ¨Kelly, I´m not sure...¨ He cut me off. ¨Holly got called into work, so I need your help unloading the wheelchairs from the van.¨ Kelly wheeled past me, the sound of his tires grating against the back of my skull. ¨I´m gonna... I´m gonna have a shower.¨ I said, the words hardly squeaking past my lips. ¨Well hurry up fucker, we don´t have all day.¨ The water poured over my head. Standing was difficult. There was a knock at the door. ¨What is taking you so long? You´ve been in there for twenty minutes!¨ Already?

Today was not going to go well.

After the shower, we hopped in Kelly´s jeep and got some burgers. Grease was exactly what the doctor ordered. We swung by Jeff´s place, switched vehicles and headed off to Duncan. I was feeling a lot better. Definitely still hungover but recovering nicely. I had brought my laptop and was getting prepared to hammer out a little writing while these guys played their ´Murderball´. I really had no idea what Murderball was all about, except that it was described to me as ´Wheelchair rugby´.

We get to the arena and I started to unload the chairs. Whoa whoa whoa, who are you, I ask in my head as this cute woman starts giving me a hand moving the chairs. I make an introduction. This day just got a whole lot better. I walk inside. Wait a minute, there´s a few women here, two of them my age and not holding children. I walk up to my brother. ¨Hey, what are these two doing here?¨ ¨Those two? They´re doing some sort of vocational training thing through the program they´re taking. Sports Physiology or something.¨

At least I have a few people to talk to while I´m sitting around. Not to mention a couple of these girls are sorta my style. I might be hungover but that isn´t going to stop me from putting on the old macking shoes and...

That phrase in my head was cut off by a thunderous crash that rang throughout thee arena. My headache was back in full force. What the fuck was that noise? Holy shit that was noise was fucking...

CRASH!!!!!!

This time it was louder. The boys were getting warmed up. I hadn´t been paying attention until now. Shit, I hadn´t even bothered to have a good look at the chairs until now. They were flying round at high speeds crashing into each other. The chairs seemed more like little tanks than wheelchairs. Kelly drove into another player, Jordan, at full speed. Both chairs tipped up a little, the noise rippling through the air. I tried to distract myself by firing up a conversation with the girl sitting next to me. I was just about to mention something about her fingernails (they were painted) when Kelly sped up to me. ¨We need an eighth player.¨

¨What, you mean me?¨ Kelly looking right at me. ¨You heard right, get into a chair. Josh, the ref, will explain the rules to you.¨ He took off.

I was not prepared for this. Standing up straight was still taking a lot out of me. Playing Murderball? I´d be using muscles I haven´t used in a long time while sweating out the last bit of shitty vodka that was still in my system. My mouth still tasted like a dead cat orgy. This was going to be a nightmare.

I hopped into a chair. Kelly lent me some of his gloves. I started asking about rules. Josh filled me in; The goal is to carry the ball across into the endzone, you can only hold the ball for ten seconds so you either have to pass it or dribble it, you have 12 seconds to get it across the half when your team first gets possession, The ball goes in your lap when you´re moving, you can grab at this ball but you can´t grab at their hands. Those are the basics, he says.

There´s the tip off and we begin playing. Chairs crashing into each other, people chattering about positions and blocking. I was lost for the first minute or so. I tried to stop one of the guys charging my endzone, he carved around me as if i wasn´t even there. I spun around to chase him but was hit by one of his teammates. I tried to move but was locked into the chair of the gentleman who had just collided me. He was preventing me from moving so the other guy could continue flying through the endzone. Point for the other team. ¨They´ll do that, prevent you from moving. Make sure that doesn´t happen.¨ said Calen, one of my teammates.

I was starting to see the strategy in the game. They were running blocks the same way it was done in basketball. I was also starting to sweat like a clown on a hot day. My head felt spinny, my mouth still felt like a murder at the cat boudoir. Not only that, these guys were good. Really, really good. I felt like a pylon that was there to be wheeled around. I mentioned it to my brother. ¨They should be good,¨ Kelly said ¨Both Shawn and Peter play on the BC team and some of the other guys used to play on it.¨ Fuck me.

None of these guys had the use of their legs anymore but it wasn´t going to stop them from sticking their boot up my ass.

First quarter was done. I swung by the fountain to grab some water. I was about to puke. Between breaths I was trying to drink water and not throw up. Fuck you, dead cat fuck parade in my mouth. Kelly came up to me. ¨So brew, what do think so far?¨ I tried not to vomit. ¨ Good... man.  Intense ... sport.¨ He kinda laughed. ¨Struggling buddy?¨ I tried to talk but just kinda waved him off.

¨Second quarter, ball to the white shirts.¨ The ball came to me. I put it in my lap and sped off. I was about to be cut off when I saw Kelly pull up next to me so I handed off the ball. He sped off and scored a point. I was starting to feel good about this. I was getting the little nuances of the game. Comparatively I was a lot slower than most of everybody here. At the end of the second quarter I had sweat most of the liquor outta my body.

We played the last half, then another quarter for kicks. I´m not a sports journalist and because I spent a lot of the game praying for death, I can´t give you an exciting play-by-play. Check out Murderball on youtube, that will certainly give you a better understanding of the sport. One final note. As we were leaving I asked my brother if he was going to try out for the BC team. ¨Can´t man. It´s actually a sport for quadriplegics. These guys all have limited use of their arms.¨ Getting schooled by people is always a little humbling. Getting schooled by someone in a wheelchair who only has limited use of their arms?


Sincerely,

The Illustrious Mr. Charlton

p.s. My mouth still feels a little like a dead kitten sex party. No joke people.

Marilyn Monroe

Alright people, let´s have a little chat. There´s been some memes floating around the net recently and when I say recently, what I´m actually saying is that they´ve been around for a couple years. Whatever. I have been seeing a surge of Marylin Monroe based memes on facebook in the last week or so. I´m certain you´ve seen them, the pictures with Marilyn standing next to a current model or actress who happens to be skinnier than a rail with a caption along the lines of ´Fuck Society; This is what real beauty used to look like´ or something like ´This is what a healthy woman looks like´.

There´s a lot of guys who are patting themselves on the back for liking this or agreeing with these statements. People acting like internet white knights, riding their silver haired horse to save the helpless damsel in distress. So I figured, being one of the few sane people on this miserable green space rock, I´d chime in with an opinion.

Dudes, Marylin Monroe was a lot of things. She was an actress, a model, a celebrity and easily the biggest sex symbol of her day. She was also mistreated, abused, passsed around like a toy by one of the most powerful families in America and she was a pill popping junkie. A typical day in her life started off with cleaning one of the Kennedy brothers spooge out of her vag, followed by dropping a dozen barbiturates into a class of scotch. I´d say she´d be crying but we´re talking about a woman who grew up in orphanages and foster homes, a woman who was depressed as shit but put on a brave face and smiled for the camera. Marylin was hard as fuck. Beautiful, yes. Healthy? No fucking way. If you have a daughter, the last role model you´d want is Marylin Monroe.

Point two. I get the idea, you´re comparing old school actresses with the new ones, saying the skinny new ones are sickly looking and the old ones are ´what women should look like´. I put that last phrase in quotation marks for a reason. White knights, you´re doing two things here, two things that I know piss a lot of women off.

First, you´re comparing women with... other women. I once had a girlfriend call her makeup her ´Warpaint´. She wasn´t fucking kidding. Women have been urged to compete against each other. Compete for jobs, compete for men, compete for status. Women aren´t pokemon. We´re not gonna stick ´em in a ring and have them duke it out. Nor would I ever use the phrase ¨Gotta catch ´em all¨.

Second, and this is the reason I put that phrase ´what women should look like´, is that you don´t get to decide what women look like. I mean that in both senses of the phrase. You don´t get to pick what you are going to look like. I´ve known one girl, who was a thick girl, literally eat nothing but salad, did a two hour workout every day and literally was pumping herself full of drugs to lose weight. When I say pumping herself of drugs, I mean going to the doctor and GETTING HERSELF INJECTED WITH DRUGS TO LOSE WEIGHT. That´s seriously fucked up. On the flip side, I´ve seen skinny girls pound back steaks, drink shakes and stuff themselves stupid trying to gain weight. Big girl envy thin girls with tight stomachs, thin girls envy big girls with their big ol´ titties. Everybody is miserable. Also, you don´t like the way a girl looks? Ain´t your fucking business, ain´t your decision.

That´s the end of my rant. A lot of boys out there might think I´m kissing ass right now. Truth is, most of my friends are women. I´d rather chill over a glass of wine with a bunch of ladies that hang with a bunch of dudes. I´ve got a group of men I´m super tight with, but the sad truth is that men are hard to find these days. My boys don´t dress and act like clowns when we´re out. Straight up solid group.

One day I´ll get around to writing about where all the real men went. I´ll just say this right now; if your idea of manliness is based on what kind of vehicle you drive, what kind of cocktail you drink or how big your muscles are, then you my friend are a boy trapped in a man´s body and you probably take beer commercials way too seriously. You can fool a lot of people, you ain´t fooling me. But the first step in the right direction is to stop judging women based on what they look like. I thank whatever dead God you believe in everyday that my ass isn´t taken into account when I go for a job interview. And that folks is something, as a male, I get the privilege of.

Sincerely,

The Illustrious Mr. Charlton

p.s. If I ever order a Cosmopolitan at a bar and some motherfucker calls me out on it, the next thing I´m ordering is a tall glass of I´m gonna fuck your girlfriend.

What on Earth are You Doing?

Many people have been asking me "Sandy, why are you moving out to Victoria?". I've been in Calgary for ten years. Ten years is a long time in any place and that city was beginning to seep into my pores too deeply for me to continue feeling good about Calgary. It's a cold city, both in temperature and in temperament. There was nothing left to explore, which left me surrounded by boors with far too much money telling me how much they've spent on their watch. To summarize, I wasn't moving to Victoria. I was leaving Calgary, as well as numerous, wonderful people that I've grown fond of over the years. My friends are the only thing I'll be missing. That and a couple of fantastic restaurants. In all seriousness, I'm not sure I'll ever find a bowl of Pho Sate that will ever be the same.

Many people have also been asking me "What are you going to be doing for work?". I haven't the foggiest and this response usually shocks people. I've gotten the same look over and over again, the 'You're a complete fool' look. They might be right but I pride myself on being malleable and flexible. Needless to say, employment isn't something I'm terribly concerned about at the moment. I have a pleasant little nest egg saved up and I am entertaining the thought of working in the hospitality industry.

Let´s get back to the big question. Why I moved to Victoria. I moved because Calgary was a safe place where I had a safe job and lead a safe life. I got a safe education that prepared me for work in a safe industry. And people, let me tell you, that fucking life style was killing me a little bit every day. I hated playing it safe. I have no desire to start a family and I doubt I´ll own enough things that would warrant the purchase of a house, so there was no real need to continue playing it safe. I played it safe for so long because it was expected of me. I played it safe because it was easy. I played it safe for way too long.

So I sold or gave away most of my things, packed the rest and shipped myself out west. I hardly know anyone out here and work is hard to come by. It´s going to be a challenge but I´m more than up for it. Besides, seafood is expensive and hard to come by in the prairies and I´ve got the hugest food boner for tasty sea treats.

Anyhoo, that´s the story of why I moved out here. It could be the dumbest thing I´ve ever done but thankfully getting hot sauce on my pecker was pretty fucking stupid. I take solace in the fact that I´ll have to fuck up pretty badly to top scorching my knob with delicious habanero sauce. No need to fret, I´ll one day retell the tale of me burning my weiner. In fact, they´ll be plenty of stories about my penis to both enthrall and amuse you in later days.

In closing, I´ll leave you this thought. When people start talking about the glass being half full or half empty, that´s usually when I crack another bottle of wine.

Sincerely,

The Illustrious Mr. Charlton

p.s. I´m hammering this out on a tiny little netbook. If the layout looks strange, that´ll be why.